We really have had a great summer. Here is a smattering of other pictures from this summer.
Family hike to Grotto falls
Family picture with the Mavic
Amazing blue eyes
Beard brothers
Swimming lessons
Fiesta Days rodeo
Selfie
Corn on the cob
Dirt biking up American fork canyon, Mavic pic
Senior recital for Kathryn’s student of 5 years
ATV’ing with my girls while mom was playing a gig
MTC open house
Raspberry snack
Splash pad fun
Best friends
We’ve been pumped for the eclipse ever since this spring when we went to the Faulkner Planetarium in Twin Falls and watched a show on the eclipse. After watching it, we knew for sure that we didn’t want to miss the experience of being in path of totality, and so on that day we permanent inked in plans to be up in Idaho for the eclipse.
We went up a few days early and enjoyed some fun at home. There was lots of good food, swimming, and fun. On Sunday night, eclipse eve, Tim and Suzanne came up and stayed the night with us. We had a good time visiting and enjoyed having the parentals together.
On Monday, we made the trek up to Mackay Idaho. Mom got us a sweet hookup with her friend who had a great place away from all the people. It was a perfect place to watch experience the eclipse. When we first arrived, there was a pretty good breeze, but once the eclipse was passed around 50%, the breeze completely died and it was eerie still and quiet. Then the temperature started to drop like it does at dusk. Then once we entered totality, it was surreal. The corona of the sun was beautiful and very pronounced with striations of light shooting out and other curling around. We didn’t take this picture, but it’s the closed to what I remember seeing.
There was a 360 degree sunset/sunrise. It wasn’t dark like at night and I didn’t see any stars, but planets were clearly visible, much like at an advanced dusk right before it goes dark. It was an awe inspiring sight. I think Ashley summed up everyone’s feelings when as soon as the sun re emerged she asked for us to make the eclipse come back. Two and a half minutes went by entirely too fast.
Tim took this picture. Bravo!
There were lots of worries about terrible traffic, and luckily for us, those fears weren’t realized. We hit some minor snags, but nothing terrible. Most of the traffic seemed to be concentrated from Rigby to Idaho Falls. From Mackay, we got on the freeway at Blackfoot which was pretty much at the tail end of the really bad traffic. So all told, I think we had as good of an eclipse experience as anyone could have hoped for.
The next total eclipse that we’re likely to witness will be in August of 2045. It will pass right over our house and the totality will last 6 minutes. It’s really strange to think that during that eclipse, we will be an entire generation older. Ashley and Eliza might have their own two kids, and we’ll be hanging out with their in-laws having a wonderful day.
It was 4 years ago that we had our first experience with the Springville World Folk Fest. You can remember the details here: https://kandldesign.com/2013/08/04/springville-world-folk-fest/. Over the years since then, we’ve been asked a couple of times if we’d like to host a family. We decided this year to go for it. We hosted two ladies from Indonesia, Yenna and Attek (pronounced Ah-tee). They slept at our house for a week and tagged along on our (Kathryn’s) life when they weren’t dancing or doing other group activities for the Folk Fest. They were a lot of fun to have and they adored the girls. Ashley especially enjoyed having them. It was a great experience to have such a vibrant splash of culture in our lives for a bit.
We try to make a trip every year to see Ben and Emily and hang out with them in California. After several years, it’s turned into a bit of a tradition. Here are some of the posts on past trips:
This year was no exception, though this particular trip was a little extra special because on it we celebrated our 6 year anniversary!
Happy anniversary babe! I love you!
The girls really liked Ben and Emily. Ben in particular was really great with the girls and they really liked playing with him.
On Saturday, Ben and Emily took the girls and Kathryn and headed up to San Francisco for an awesome getaway day together. We ate lunch at the Indonesian restaurant Borobudur. We new that we’d be having some Indonesian people stay with us for the World Folk Fest the next week and we wanted to get a taste of Indonesian food. We looked in Utah but there was absolutely none. However, the incredibly diverse San Francisco didn’t let us down and delivered with a rare and highly rated Indonesian restaurant. We got the Rijsttafel which is basically a family style sampler of the most popular dishes. It was terrific! If you never get a chance to eat Indonesian food, that’s probably okay. It has a lot in common with Thai food, which is quite ubiquitous.
After our scrumptious lunch, we headed over to the Orpheum theater for a long awaited and much anticipated showing of Hamilton! It was oh so good! Both of us had listened to the soundtrack quite extensively, and it was so much fun to see the live performance and the fantastic acting and the personality and emotion the actors put into the performance. Wow! What a fun experience, and a really cool theater!
We really enjoyed our visit. Thank you Ben and Emily for being such great hosts for us!
