August is for Birthday Parties and Trips to the Mountains

We get to celebrate two family birthdays in August, Devin on August 12, and Eva on August 27.

For Devin's birthday, we met for dinner at Gramercy Park in Meridian.

Then we went mini-golfing at Wahoos

Strange looking people, but we had a good time

If you get the ball in the center shute beneath this tiki man, the volcano goes off.

Unfortunately, we all missed and instead got sprayed by water.

That next weekend was our annual ward campout.

Tom invited Grandpa Charlie to come along.

He is a very energetic 89 year old and jumped at the chance to head to the hills and sleep in a tent.

We had a delicious campfire treat that night.

Waffle cones, filled with all types of candy,
melted in the fire and served with ice cream.

YUM!

This must be the place for the Mountain View ward campout

Payette River selfie

We played charades, men against women around the campfire

And sang lots of songs including three original songs written all about the 

members of the Bishopric.

Here's the Bishop's song sung to the tune of B-I-N-G-O

"There was a man who last name was Mavraganis

His Greek Grandpa changed to Morris

B-I-S-H-O-P

His favorite food is pudding

And he loves to use coupons

clap-I-S-H-O-P

He has run the Ra-ace to 

Robie Creek Twice

clap-clap-S-H-O-P

He played the guitar in Jr. High

In a garage band

clap-clap-clap-H-O-P

He took social dance at BYU 

and is a Saturday pancake chef

clap clap clap clap-O-P

He really knows music trivia

And won radio contests

clap clap clap clap clap P

His senior year he was Mr. Pigskin

And he's a total trekkie!

cla clap clap clap clap clap

The Bishop is his name O!"

 

Saturday morning pancake breakfast

Rock painting art project

We stopped at the shooting range on the way home

and met some other members of our ward

Charlie is  a"crack" shot as they say

I finally hit the target.

Of course, Tom is the best

Tom threw cookies in the air for Brother Scheifelbein

to shoot at

They even had clay pigeons and a launcher

and Tom hit 3 in a row and called it good

 

 We celebrated Eva's birthday the next week.

She hosted an "Art" party

Cupcake decorating station

  A couple of days after the birthday party, I took Eva to lunch, her choice, Chick

FilA and then shopping! We had so much fun together.

And to add more birthday parties into the mix,

We celebrated a BIG BIRTHDAY BASH with all the YW

in our ward. A few of our girls turned 12 over the summer and came into Beehives, so we celebrated with an all day party.

We started by doing baptisms at the temple, 

which is a great way to start any party!

Then we had brunch at the Beehive advisor's home,

gluten free waffles and strawberries. YUM!

and made Thank you cards and wrote histories,

then we headed off on a bike ride 

We made it to the YW president's home where we did a

paper clip necklace craft and then jumped in her pool.

We ended by swimming at our pool and eating leftover icecream

sundaes from the Ward campout

 I wanted to include some pics from my morning hikes

this summer

This hot air balloon sailed right over us as we were hiking 

at the Hidden Lakes preserve

 

 

and you can see how smoky Boise's skies are due to all the wildfires

 We end this blog about birthdays and mountains

with pictures from last weekend's excursion to McCall and Cascade.

Since I had slept on the ground the past 3 weekends, 

we went glamping and stayed at the Ashley Inn in Cascade.

Friday afternoon we left Boise and the smoky skies

and found beautiful blue skies at the Golf course in McCall.

Tom's a pro, but me, not so much.

After our golf game, we took a drive into Ponderosa state park.

It was a gorgeous afternoon/evening!

Saturday morning we drove back into McCall and went on a bikeride in Ponderosa State park.

It was so much fun!

After our bike ride, we had a fabulous picnic 

on a rock on the edge of the lake.

9.5

 

We stopped on our drive back to Boise at the suspension

bridge over the Payette river.

It has been there ever since I can remember.

I finally was brave enough to cross it!

Success!

Last but not least, we ended our mountain adventure

by going up to Hidden Springs for an outdoor concert

and food truck feast in the common green with Devin and Sarah and family.

We enjoyed a delicious Banh mi.

 

We are going to enjoy every last minute of this wonderful month of August!