Fourth of July Fun

We had an adventurous fourth this year with Kristine. We decided that besides our two family BBQ's we would go geocaching up in the mountains. So we woke up at like 6:30am, got all ready for hiking and such, drove up to the lucky peak area, and found a few caches along the way to the Robie Creek area. It was a lot of fun but mostly ended up being an excuse for Kristine to be able to take her nifty new Jeep on an offroading trip! John kept trying come up with ways to trick her into letting him drive but she wouldn't hear of it! Why she even drove around with her top of for half the trip (okay, nobody panic--that's just me trying to be clever & funny because she took the hard top off of the jeep). When we decided we needed to be done caching and head down to the Groat family BBQ we realized that we didn't really know where we were. We had to stop and ask for directions and then had backtrack to find the right road. It was lucky we had GPS systems though because the main street/road wasn't labeled properly at all. The only way we knew it was the right road (aside from John's GPS map) was the Robie Creek fire station we were told to look for that actually only looked like a little shack and wasn't very clearly labeled. But we eventually found our way down into Boise and drove to Caldwell where we ate and played Rockband with the Groats & the Greens (my sister-in-law's family). That evening we went over to my family house and hung out with friends at the Hall family BBQ. We ate some more, played water balloon volleyball, and then went to my dad's office to watch the fireworks. We also played with a couple fireworks of our own after the parties were over. It was a nice day.

John & Kristine found a few caches on the side of the road on our way up there.

Yay for Geocaching!

It was really pretty outside as you can see.

I rode in the backseat of the GeoCache Mobile! Sweet!

Baby's first caching trip!

John is about to go find another cache...

We never found this one but we sure looked!

We even forged a small creek to see if it was hiding under a bridge.

Sweet waterproof shoes!

I actually look pretty good in this photo...probably cause it's from the shoulders up.

Kristine taking her top off...geocachers gone wild!

Keep on a rockin' me baby!

Waterballoon volleyball craziness... (team one)

John and Eric teamin' up.

(Team two)

John in full storytelling mode.

Judging by Karen's face it looks like I just said something embarrassing (not a first...although my mom is still smiling in the photo so it couldn't have been too bad)

My lovely mother and my lovely Karen!! La la la!

The gang at my dad's office watching the big Mtn. Home fireworks show (and for once that's not sarcasm cause they actually went all out this year!)

A sweet photo I took...ahhh, sweet shutter speed control!

Julie and my mom.

Another sweet photo of the fireworks.

An oh, so lovely photo of me lookin like a fatty...but I am holding a sparkler so I'm happy!

John & Jake lighting fireworks--John decided it was too windy so he was going to light them in the mailbox to avoid the wind
(don't worry I put an end to that thought before it got outta hand)

John lighting the little racecar firecrackers we bought...I love fireworks!

The End!!