Tricia

Sneak peek

...of the newest Smith car, now with more room for 2 carseats!

Pregnancy

Rachel, a week and a half ago, and blocking Emily. We're at 35 weeks today.

At the Fair

A cute shot of Christy and Karissa.

Karissa got to meet Miss Idaho at the petting zoo.
Grandma Kathy and Karissa ready to go for their "wild ride."

(posted by Tricia for Christy)

Blueberries & Corn

Two Sundays ago we went blueberry picking. It was so much fun. In about an hour and a half we picked 14 1/2 lbs! The berries on this (homemade) ice cream were the giants of the bunch. The criteria for the "giants class" is that they had to be as big as or bigger than the end of my thumb. And they were delicious.On Saturday we got fresh corn from the farmers market. Here's a picture of Esther enjoying it for lunch.

Wild Animal Park in San Diego

We had a great time at the Wild Animal Park!

San Diego

A clipper ship on Harbor Drive in the evening while we were doing our own thing on Monday the 10th.

"Ready"

A pretty row of Sungold tomatoes on our windowsill. Most of these are the result of Esther's excitement over picking tomatoes and my not getting there quick enough. Esther says, "Ready." Because clearly, she knows.

new paint

We decided to spruce up the front porch with some white paint. Still working on the back deck. Bigger project than we thought!

Mushroom hunting

The "fruits" of today's morning morel mosey in Garden Valley, with mom and dad and Rachel and Emily.



Below, one location we didn't find any mushrooms. Apparently we're supposed to be very secretive about where we did find them. Hint: shady mountainside. This one is clearly too sunlit. Also dappled and drowsy.



We didn't really know what we were doing, but Rachel, having some experience in mushroom-wrangling, led the way in finding the elusive prey. Here she is scoping out potential targets.



These next photos are from back at the ranch. See if you can spot the young great horned owl in this photo. The older owl was perched beside it, and unhelpfully flew off minutes before, to parts unknown. You should probably read Farley Mowat's Owls in the Family. It's really short (80 pages, I think) and a good story of a boy with his two pet owls. For some reason I had thought it was a true story of the author's childhood. So I was confused, rereading it this weekend, when the narrator's friends called him "Billy" instead of "Farley". And just now I realized it was just a story. Still good, though.



I don't think I'd ever seen a killdeer nest before, but dad found this one in the open field by the house. We were walking down to check out the owls, and a bird was acting obnoxious, trying to get us to move away from our current spot, so after just a little looking, he saw this little nest. And so we had scrambled eggs with our mushrooms. Just kidding. We had the mushrooms the next day.



And a bonus photo: Rosie the dog taking Emily for a walk.

The new-ish tree.

We planted this Canada Red Chokecherry at the beginning of April. It seems to be surviving so far!

Action shot

Emily on her birthday present.

Lexi and Truck

Kari's Fly Time

The Races

I know that it has been a while since I have posted anything on here so I should put more than one picture on. Sounds like a great plan, but I will put them on different posts.

Sew Cute

Esther's new dress

Tricia made this dress for Esther during our marathon sewing weekend!

An Easter picture

Jake Shimabukuro

This ukulele virtuoso will be playing a free concert at the Record Exchange in Boise on Thursday at 6:00. You should go!

Elk

Finally posting a shot from the feeding of the elk on February 7th....

One

This is Esther's first big bite of birthday cake.

The verdict: cake is good.

* for more pictures, pop on over to our blog.

Big Branch

Here's the big branch that broke off our tree and fell into our neighbor's yard the day before we got home from Christmas vacation. Amazingly, it only cracked the storm window on the corner of her house.