{July}

The summer is flying by.  One more month left to enjoy sleeping in and I'm trying (though, unsuccessfully) to take advantage of it.  I'm sure by the time school starts, I will be adjusted to waking up later, but for now, my body still wakes at 6:30.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  

The fourth of July came and went.  We lit fireworks off in the inlaws front yard the night before.  

The next night, we were the only ones who wanted to go to the fireworks in town, so we went to Sage Lakes golf course, played nine holes of golf, then watched the fireworks from the 14th hole.  We could barely hear them and we were too far away from the car to hear the music, so Ashlee sang to us and we enjoyed being the ONLY ones there.    

Arilee has been doing tons more driving, but still nowhere ready to get her license.  Her driving is improving immensely, it's her parking, turning, and accelerating that scares me.

Jody came to Idaho to attend his 25 year class reunion (are we really that old?) and he dropped his boys off to hang out with us since there isn't much to do at grandma's house.  Jaxon wore the dogs out completely throwing the balls for them.  The dogs were in heaven, but we were pretty sure they would wind up in heaven before the night was out, it nearly did them in.  They haven't moved that much in a LONG time.  

 Arilee and Jaxon arm wrestled.  He may be 2 1/2 years younger than she is, but, he's a tough kid.  She still beat him.

 Arilee went to Evans Hairstyling college and four hours and $40 later, she was a blonde.   We hardly recognized her for days.

 We've played lots of badminton.  (sorry for the blurry picture, we can only play at dusk when the wind isn't blowing).

 I've eaten two tomatoes and we picked our first hot peppers, too.  I smell fresh salsa in my future soon!

 The cat sits at the door and whines all day long, begging to be let outside.  We usually let her, but lately, this is the first place she goes and we spend forever coaxing her back down.  Spraying water on her is the best way to get her down, we've discovered.

 Cody and his dad spent forever pounding pipes into the ground so we could have a more "permanent" volleyball and badminton court.   This way the net can be pulled in and out of the pipes and moved so it doesn't interfere with the mowing.  It's become our favorite way to spend Sunday evening and it's proving to us that we are not as young as we think we are.

 Ashlee can't serve the ball, (or hit it at any time, really) so she tosses the ball underhand over the net.

 Justin had new student orientation at Boise State at the end of July.  It kind of went like this:  We checked him in, had a big ra-ra-ra meeting where they told us it was a safe campus and not to worry, they'd take care of our student.  Then the students went one direction, the parents went another and we had more lectures that were pretty much the same thing.  *yawn*

So after lunch, we snuck out of the lectures, wandered the campus, went bowling, returned in time for dinner with the students, went to the aquarium, back to the hotel to sleep during the opening ceremony of the Olympics.  The next day, we slept in, went swimming at the hotel, then showed up in time to pick up Justin and head home.

We are more excited and more nervous to send him to Boise.   Four hours is an awful long ways away.

The night before orientation, we wandered around campus a bit.  This is the excellence bell on the main part of campus.  The Student Union building is to the far right (off camera), the football stadium and basketball arena's are in the back, tennis courts to the left, and just off camera to the left is his dorm.

 Being the brilliant (book wise anyway - sometimes we wonder about him) boy that he is - among the top 100 students to apply to BSU this fall - he was accepted into honors college, which meant he could live in honors college housing and enjoy all the perks of living with the smart kids.  It's the first dorm, right across from the tennis courts, just down the sidewalk from everything.  They also get their own "room" in the library - which is reserved for grad and honor students only.

 My friend Crysty hooked me up with a free entrance to the Idaho Aquarium.  It's still fairly new and doesn't have too many attractions yet, but what they do have was a lot of fun.  At least half the tanks were "hands on" tanks where you can touch (but not grab) the fish.  Arilee was giddy to be able to touch "Dory" (from Finding Nemo).  I touched a shark and a stingray.

 And bowling.