My Report on my Summer Vacation

The big vacation our family has done this summer was taking a week off from everything and going up to our little laketown place. We got visited by cousins, friends, and ward members alike! I suppose I should've expected that we'd run into so many people we knew, since we got there for Friday of Rasberry Days, but I was still surprised at how many people we could have over at one time!

Thursday night, we went to the Laketown Rodeo with some friends. (Random sidenote shout-out, Tavis is one of the coolest little kids I've ever met.) And I've gotta say, as much fun as it is watching the cowboys go "Yeeehaw!!" after the jump from a successful bullride, the kids events are by far the most entertaning part of the night. The first kid event, open to any kid up to 6 years old, is the calf chase.

The object of this event is for the kids, after they've been lined up straight by the rodeo clown (a line which, let's face it, could never trully be contained by one man in facepaint and suspenders) and after the music begins, is to grab the orange ribbon, tied to the end of the calf's tail, which is released on the other side of the arena.

This year, once the Hamster Dance began to blare over the loudspeakers, and the mob of kids dispersed in a blast, everyone thought they were in for just a few minutes of cute hilarity.
They were wrong.

The calf seemed cornered, and kids in pink glitter shirts and overalls and cowboy hats finally converged upon it, the winner sure to emerge... until the calf appeared on the edge of the crowd, a string of children chasing behind it. It had somehow managed to fight it's was through the throng of children while keeping the ribbon securely on it's tail! This happened five or so times, until at last one persistant boy snagged the orange strip. It was amazingly hilarious to watch.

I believe the 7-10 year olds took a grand total of thirty seconds to catch their calf in comparison.

The next day we went boating. Which was awesome; I got way sunburnt, everybody had fun tooling around in the boat (besides Jake, who wasn't there yet) and... yeah, that's really all for Friday.

Saturday, Mom and Dad came back down to SLC for Dad's school reunion. Jake, Tj (cousin), and Aaron (their school friend) came up, and we slept all day till afternoon, at which point we braved the Rasberry Day crowds for a pizza. They went off and played tennis with Max while Amanda and I drove around in the Mustang and did our best to avoid hitting a wandering skunk while in a convertible. THAT could've turned out messy!

Sunday, we all got up and went to church, seeing several families we knew from the home ward. Nothing unusual!

The next day we went boating again. We loaned our wave riders to some friends from the ward, and as we were in the boat we saw two figures on a wave rider, stranded in the middle of the lake. Dad's immediate thought was that one of ours had quit on our friends, which was very possible, because one of the two does have a few personality kinks. As we got closer, we could tell it wasn't ours, however the two riders were frantically and happily waving us down, so we came over and offered help. The two girls were very grateful for it, adding that they had been towing a wakeboarder in the water who had swam back to shore for help. As we started towing them back, one of the girls said a quick snippet of something french to the other. Dad chimed in (he served his mission in France) and soon a conversation was on the way. As I've only taken a little French, I wasn't able to catch much, but I did catch she was from France. A big boat came our direction, obviously the rescue team for their stranded friends, and one still soaking wet guy jumped off the back and swam our way. He was the newly wed husband of the French girl and had served in the same mission and Dad. It also turned out that the she's in medicine, and Dad had a presentation he needed translated with french medical terminology for a church humanitarian trip to Morocco. Anybody else seeing the Lord's hand, or is it just me?... Also on Monday, the boys went back down to SLC to take Aaron home, and so that Jake could attend his SBO meeting.

Moving along, Tuesday we had planned to be a day off the lake and around the town. We toured the local Paris tabernacle, visited the Oregon/California Trail museum, looked around an antique store, and went bowling. We waited for Jake and Tj before heading out. Jake had an interesting ride home, got his first speeding ticket!

At the Tabernacle, Amanda found a little kitten that followed her around and that she desperately wanted to adopt, as ran after her to the car even after I had carried it back to the flower bed behind a monument. No, we have no cat still. At the museum, we each picked out an item and had a contest to see who could present it as the coolest object there to everyone else. Such an old ploy... I don't know how it worked so well! I found a lot of awesome things at the antique store, including the very first A-track I've ever seen, and an old Hulk lunch box worth $50! Bowling was also a ton of fun, everyone enjoyed it!

Our cousins (the Robertites we've dubbed them, since it's confusing to always ask which Drapers we mean) came on Tuesday, but we didn't do much with them till Wednesday, when we went boating. Now, don't get me wrong, I love boating. But boating is really hard to blog about. So, aside from the part where we were terrified for a while that a truck of fisherman was a Ranger called over to scout us out for anything that might deserve a ticket (we might have been a tiny bit closer to each other and/or the shoreline than 150 feet... occasionally), there's not much I can really say. Lucky you, valiant reader, who has already made it this far in my huge post.

So... this post has been deleted on me twice already, and this is as much as I was able to save. So, I'm gonna end with saying that on our last full day, we visited an awesome glacier lake and Jake and Tj jumped into it from a cliff in the freezing rain. The hike up there and back was gorgeous! Overall: awesome vacation!

Ps. We also went into a cave. Pretty sweet cave.

Max's Garden

I just realized that we have some photos of Max's garden he grew. And, hey, who doesn't need a little green? I figured I'd show off some of my brother's hard work. Sorry, not a lot of captions for these.

Laketown Trip

Ok! This post is very picture book-ish... But which of my posts aren't?

About a month after Jake's Homecoming, we all went up to Laketown together. We painted the little place we bought blue, which makes me very happy. I love blue! :) We've still got more to do on it, like more white to paint, but I'm thinking it's coming along very nicely.

After getting unpacked and relaxing for a while, we all decided to hike on up the canyon.

Also, we saw this little guy! Well, not so little, really. He would have fit just right in the palm of my hand. In fact, he did! This is a Jerusalem Cricket! And if you wanna know more than that... I hope you know about Wiki!

A ways up the trail, there's a little pond that we like to call a lake. We all started wandering out on the pier, and dad recognized a great family photo op.

After setting up the camera, he came over and sat by us too...

But I think I know why he took his time coming...

Max and those burritos...

On the way home, I was taking pictures of everyone. There are a lot of funny ones, but I'll stick to just two.

First of all, Jake and Max caught me taking pictures of them. They decided that if I was gonna do it anyway, they might as well dance for the camera.

Mom and Dad got far ahead of us kids, and I decided to hang back a little too, to snap this shot...

With Mom and Dad, our house, the mill/barn behind it, and Bear Lake in the distance.

And that concludes my family's trip to Bear Lake! I'll write more as soon as I find those Halloween pics... wherever they are...

Jake's Birthday and Homecoming

Ok, so I've been slaking a little. Maybe more than that. Maybe a lot. Ok, really a lot.

But, I'm making up for it now! Jake's birthday was right after school started, August 29th. Mom made him an awesome cake, which I loved! it was easy and wasn't any harder than any other cake would be, but she bought these frosting-marker things that she used to draw dots on the cake. We also decorated his locker with the same colors, and stuck a card in the door that sung whenever he opened it! We had way too much fun. :D

Not too much later, Jake had his homecoming dance. I wasn't able to get a lot of pics, not even any of Jake and his date. But, I did get one that tells a funny story!

The corsage that Jake got for his date looked really great while it was inside the case, but once Jake pulled it out, one of the roses fell right off! There wasn't enough time to get a new one, of course, so, we turned to the guy who can fix anything, who used to tape my crayons back together for me when I was a kid... Dad! He pulled out a medical needle and thread and, wah-la! One corsage, good as new. What can I say, it was awesome.

Wait... school started when!?

I just realized; school started forever and a half ago! It's true. And even though mom takes "first day" pictures every year, we never do anything with them. I think it's time to remedy that.

So here's Amanda! She's sporting our laid back, happy, "first day of 9th grade, no biggie" look. I like that shirt... Hey... hold on half a second! That's my shirt!!

She's secretary of the student body this year, and would like to comment that her algebra 2 teacher is crazy. She's first chair viola in orchestra this year, but claims that it's only because everyone else isn't that great, either. She just completed a bug display for her biology class (she's been hunting bugs all summer)

Here's Jake! He's looking, er... very prepared for a year filled with calculus, physics, honors english, Nerds 101, and a informative class on "how to tell if you should buy a shirt or just make one that looks just like it with paint and a brush."

Jake just got a new car, and he's pretty happy with it to say the least! It's everything he wanted; sun roof, leather seats, drives nice, easy to handle. And it looks good too, which was something else he wanted. Note to self: put up picture of Jake's car. Maybe that'll be his chance to make his own post!

Here's Max, with a bonus Ogi! Max went into 5th grade this year, and is loving every minute! Well, ok, there may be one or two assignments that aren't so loveable, and consequently, not so loved. He's hanging out with friends all the time. He's in the the choir as well as the bell choir, and he's doing a garden project this year. It's lookin pretty good outside, if I do say so myself!

So...yep, this is me... takin' french this year.

So, yeah! That's everybody! I'll have Jake post more about his car later, and I'll see if I can convince him to take some pics too!

Ok! So, I figured we might as well stick up a few pictures of our basement that we're working on right now. If I could find pictures of what it looked like before, I'd stick them up here too. It's weird how different it is... But, I can't find any! But, hey, I figure mom's gonna see these and notice I didn't clean up before taking pics, and make sure that my efforts are more complete next update.

This first one is just as you're comming in the door at the bottom of the stairs... the nice ping pong table, a huge bean bag that's actually filled with fluff, the cool swirly chairs that spin forever and ever for no plausible reason, and the random popcorn bags from watching Planet of the Apes. Ta-da!

And this is our awesome old coke machine! 10 cents a bottle. There's even a handy-dandy bottle opener!

This is looking in on the theater room. Hey, look, there's the bar with no stools!

Here's the couches inside the theater room. They're way comfy, a fact that Jake is quite proud of, 'cause he picked them out the minute they walked into RC Willey's. Even Spidey thinks they're comfy!

Hi! It's Amanda. Well, it's been a while and a lot has happened since we didn't post in December. Dad has been as busy as usually, but always finds time to spend with us. Mom is still keeping our lives in order and we're still doing a good job of messing up that order. Kensey's been volunteering at the Museum of Natural History downtown. Between playing with bugs and learning a lot about archeology she really enjoys it. Jacob's been having fun at wrestling camp and efy, when he's not hanging out with his friends. I've enjoyed my new colt, which came as a surprise with the horse that we bought last October. He's a handful but a sweetheart. Max is taking piano lessons and is currently increasing his lego collection.
Here's a few other things that have been going on with our family.

• Kensey and Dad went to Swaziland for a humanitarian trip with the church. Kensey learned a lot of new african names as she entered them into the computer. Dad taught neonatal resuscitation to people there. As for what that even is, I think it has something to do with helping a baby breath after it's born. I think.
• We finally finished our basement! Well, sorta. The theater room still doesn't have a sound system or a good projector in yet and we don't have stools for our bar, but it's still a way fun place to hang out as a family or with friends.
• We got a place up in Laketown, a small town up in Bear Lake near Garden City and Ideal Beach. It's a really small house but it's plenty big for our family. We've got three acres of land that I hope I'll take both my horses up to this weekend.

I guess that's it for now. We'll be posting some pictures later, once Kensey is around to help get them off of the camera. It's kinda sad, but she's the only one who really knows how to work the thing....

The Drapers are officially bloggers!

Ok, maybe not REAL bloggers, but we've joined the blogging world! And I, for one, (as in McKensey) am quite excited about it.