Thursday morning we left our house and headed to the airport at 4:30 am. Our morning was a whirl wind because we were honestly running so late. It doesn't help that we were at our friends place until 10pm and were so excited sleep was kind of out of the question. I had to make sure everything was packed and ready to go, which really ended up doing us no good :). The flight was so quick, but boy was I not happy. Flying with allegaint air, you don't get to pick your seat unless you pay for it and what can I say, we are cheap so we didn't pay for our seats. That came to bite us later when we were seperated and the lady I happened to be sitting with actually paid for her seat and wouldn't let Jason and I sit together. Yes... I was a little bitter, but an hour flight by myself was really nothing to get mad over.
Walking off the plane and into Idaho was amazing! The weather was PERFECT and I could actually breath! For a couple of seconds I think I was actually cold. It was awesome! We then took a shuttle to get our rental car, and we were off driving into the beautiful scenery of Idaho.
I will never forget the looks on everyone's face when we drove into Camp Smokey. Our rental car was a 2012 hyundai accent with Wyoming plates. No one knew who we were until we pulled up to my parents truck and asked if they had seen any Ballantynes running around. Everyone commented on our new car while we were there and asked how we were liking Wyoming even though they thought we were in Vegas. It was pretty funny.
Anyways, as soon as we arrived it was lake time! Alturas Lake was right across the street from our camp. We had tons of toys to play with too, including kayaks, a motor boat, a sailboat and an awesome dock to jump off of. Of course the first thing we did was jump off the dock and get our bodies ready for some hard core skiing and tubing. I was so sore the next day from all the tubing we did, and Jason got up on skis for the first time! We had so much fun! I think one of my favorite moments was when Jason and I were scheming to push one of my cousins off the dock. It ended with Jason totally not following our plan and tackling him into the water.
Dinner followed soon after, and it was so awesome to just look around and see everyone from our wonderful family together. All together there were about 50 of us so we were quite a sight. I got to see my brother too, and visit with him and his wife for a little bit which was awesome!
Our reunions include firesides, talent shows, olympic games, usually someone getting hurt, and organized fun through out the day. They are quite epic, and from my experience and others I have taken with me.... they have never experienced anything like it. After dinner we had a fire side and slowly made our way back to our cabins. Jason and I were so exhausted we fell asleep 5 min. into The Lorax which was our first attempt of watching it together since getting it. We decided to watch it simply because we didn't want the day to end, but I guess we didn't really have a choice.
Friday was pretty fun. It rained most of the morning, and we decided to take a trip into Stanley with our immediate family to check out some white water rafting. That ended with us just visiting, calling all over for places that would take a group of 8 on Saturday, and eating ice cream (well some of us). When we headed back, camp was completely empty, and so we went exploring. We ended up finding a ghost town called Sawtooth City, which was about 120 years old. You could really tell, because all of the buildings were rotting away and in ruins. With that, we took a little walk around a historic ranger station and headed back to camp.
Jason and I were totally falling asleep in the car was we drove back to camp, and so our plan was a 20 min nap and hittin the lake with everyone else. Unfortunately our 20 min nap turned into a 3 hour nap and a call that dinner was almost completely gone. We were supposed to help cook it too! We laughed about sleeping that long, but I really wish we would have made it down to the lake.
After dinner was our legendary talent show. We have so many awesome talented people in the Ballantyne family. It is so fun to see everyone share their talents with each other. Jason and I were pretty stoked about this talent show too, because we actually learned a piano and guitar duet (a video will be coming soon). However, we ended up not having a guitar, and the piano was way out of tune, so we did skits with the family instead. We were the commercials in between talents and it ended up being a ton of fun.
Soon after our awesome show, we said good night to a few and stayed up and visited with others. Finally around 1 am we had a second attempt at The Lorax and ended up falling asleep before it even started.
Saturday was a sad day, becasue we had to say goodbye to everyone. Usually everyone heads back to Grandma's house to finish up the weekend together, but not this year. Everyone was headed home, and although our flight wasn't until Sunday we had to head back to Idaho Falls. Luckily my immediate family was able to have one last bang before saying our goodbyes. We all went white water rafting!
White water rafting was pretty awesome! We only had a couple of class III rapids which kind of stunk, but we had lots of entertainment along the way. The boys were in kayaks and upon our first rapid, had a casualty. We thought for sure it was Jason, but once Jason and Tain made it through we were super surprised to see Dyelan floating down the river on his back. He kind of hit the rapid sideways, and well I guess that's not the best way to stay dry. Half way through our trip we stopped to jump off a rock, we stopped for a snack a little later, and continued on our journey. I got to be in a kayak with Jason the second half of the trip, and if I have any advice to give about rafting... it's to take a kayak because they are so awesome!
Our 3.5 hour trip turned into 5 hours and by the time we were on our way to Idaho Falls to see a good friend, we were super late! Jason tried to close that gap of time, but while I was reading the second book of The Hunger Games looked up to find a police officer with his lights on behind us. Jason recieved his very first speeding ticket by going about 15 over the speed limit. A word to the wise, even if you are on country roads in Idaho, you can still get pulled over!
Our night ended with eating pizza with our friend Kyra Rankin, watching Catch Me if you Can, and dreaming of our new house in just one weeks time. First we would have to survive being parents to 4 children for a week...
Sunday morning we attended a singles ward, drove to the rental place, said goodbye to our sweet ride, and sat next to each other in the plane! A nice lady actually gave up her seat so we could be together even though it meant sitting by a lady with her baby. We were pretty happy, and actually got through most of The Lorax on our third attempt.
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