The Hawkins Happenings: July 2019

Yard Update

You guys!!!! The grass is finally coming! WAHOO!!! It is looking fabulous! It has as many weeds as it does grass, but it was finally long enough to mow and will soon be mature enough to spray those obnoxious weeds! Now to just get the sprinklers pulled around the house, flower beds figured out and the last of the grass planted! Hopefully soon!

Aldous Lake, Kilgore Idaho

For our Sunday afternoon drive this week we decided to run up to Kilgore and hike Aldous Lake. It is only 1.3 miles into the lake, so an easy Sunday hike. It was SO FUN to have Ryan and Dallin go with us. They never get to hike with us! It was also fun to hike a hike I did as a kid with my family and as a young woman with my Laurel group as an overnight hike. Kilgore is absolutely gorgeous (even with the bugs this time of year!) and holds a special place in my heart. We made a quick stop in Dubois on our way home to see gram and gramp and of course grams fed us.;)

These boys ALWAYS have to give me a random selfie before they give me a good one. Can you see me rolling my eyes?!?!?!

Lightning Pics

Out chasing lightning storms...

I love this kid so much!

AND.....he did get some INCREDIBLE lightning pictures that night. I'll share some when he sends them to me.

Hugh Jackman Concert

Linn took Katie, Tara, Yvonne and I to Salt Lake to the Hugh Jackman concert this summer. SO FUN!! We did just a little shopping at a cheap outlet (my kind of store!) and then headed to the concert. You can tell he is more of an actor than a singer, but he was still so good. They sang several songs from The Greatest Showman 💓💓💓 and he did several from his Broadway days. It was a family friendly, just all around great show.

Cousin Photo Shoot

I had to run up to Bone to help Ryan and Dale with the gates while they were hauling grain out of the bins so Rhett and the girls decided to take his camera and do a cousins photoshoot. Rhett is getting so good and these two love to pose for him. ;) Laiklie and Sage are such gorgeous girls!

Kayaking

For Yvonne's birthday she wanted to take her big girls kayaking and since everything is better with cousins she invited us to tag along. It was a stretch of the river we had never done before and we actually had to be on top of our game. Several currants to fight through and trees to go around made it a little tricky, but a super fun day together. We sunscreened several times, but after 5 hours on the river we all came home burned. Oakley had the day off so she got to come with us too. It was our first time out this summer on our kayaks and was such a fun day.

4th of July 2019

After the parade we headed to the ranch to shoot guns before grandma and a few cousins and the great grandparents came for a BBQ. Laiklie wanted to shoot the pistol, but was super nervous about it and if you look close at her face she actually closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger the first time. HAHAHAHA! Too funny! We had a BBQ with the Hawkins, then hurried to Menan to have a BBQ with our Jacobson cousins. Laiklie stayed the night with the twins and watched fireworks in Menan. The rest of us met up with Oakley and drove up on the hill to watch the Idaho Falls fireworks. We didn't have a great view, but we didn't have to fight a crowd which was a plus. A few nights later we did a few sparklers and small fireworks in our backyard. Those are always my favorite ones when it is just our little family spending time together.💓 We are blessed to live in this beautiful country and love celebrating its birth.

4th of July Parade

Rhett got to be in the Idaho Falls parade this year with the cheerleaders. We have never done the IF parade, so it was a new adventure for us. The cheerleader float stopped down the road from us so we didn't get to see much other than a standing back-tuck from Rhett, but....I was the only one of our group that actually got to see it so we were kind of bummed. It will be fun to go to the games this year to watch him to his thing!

Pivot Extentions

Rhett, Laiklie and I were Ryan's pivot extention crew. Thank goodness for Rhett's height or we may have never got the job done!

"Mom take a butt picture!" Laiklie is seriously so random!😂

18 Miler

I got invited by me sis-in-law Yvonne and her work out buddies, Alicia and Ashley, to do an 18 mile hike this summer. We started on the Little Elk Creek trail and went up over the mountain, down the other slide (we had to glissade - sled on our butts - down because of all the snow...look close at the snow picture and you can see the little dot at the top...thats me! I screamed all the way down!) We then hiked through Waterfall Canyon. Both the waterfalls were gorgeous! We kept hiking to the Upper Palisades Lake which was HUGE! It took us FOREVER to hike from one end to the other, but the color of the water was incredible! We then hiked to the Lower Palisades Lake and then out from there. It was 18 crazy miles on several different types of terrain. We lost the trail several times because of the snow and only found our way thanks to GPS. It was an incredible hike and an extremely LONG day - we hiked from 6am-6:30pm - but I'd totally do it again! My big toe is still trying to decide if I'm going to lose my nail or not 3 weeks later. So Gross!

1/2 Way up Little Elk Creek

The red tint to the snow is called Watermelon snow and it seriously smells like watermelons. When we would lift up our foot the snow under each step was super red. So crazy!