Temple, Manito, and Indian Cliffs Trail

Kim treated us to acai bowls for breakfast last Sunday

 We devoured them!

 Our hydrangeas are in bloom and the flowes are spectacular

 We took our annual trip to the temple last Sunday

 We took our temple book and learned about the temple

 The temple president and his wife got there as we were looking at the front of the temple and opened the gate and told us we could walk around the grounds. They even took a picture for us!

 What a choice land #Merica

 Self timer

 After the temple we drove into Spokane and walked around Manito Park

 The rose gardens were beautiful

 So is Lyza

 Kim and Henry shared some laughs

 And kisses

 This tree was fun to hide under

 Nixon released his inner monkey

 Aren't they pretty?

 When Kim says "make a pyramid" we make a pyramid

 This is my favorite because it acurately represents our family. You can get one of them to hold still but not all of them

 These arches are really cool

 We had a really cool moon on Tuesday night (the Full Corn Moon; the last full moon of the summer) so I packed up the camera gear to see if I could get some cool images

You can see it rising here accross the river and over the tree line

 I like this one with the silhouettes of the trees

 It was really cool and nothing I did with the camera could capture just how cool it was (the light trails accross the water are from the sheriff's boat)

 It was really pretty and maybe someday I will figure out how to get a picture that looks like what my eyes could see

 If this is not a breakfast of champions I don't know what is 

 Lyza decided she was going to run all morning and she ran around the backyard off an on all morning

 One of the mourning doves hanging out on our roof

 We are running out of summer beach days

 The kids got to meet their new teachers this week. here is Nixon next to his desk

 Macro shot of Nixon's eye

 Macro shot of Mason's eye (it was soooo hard to get him to hold still)

 Blackberry picking and icecream afterwards. Lucky kids

 He can be so cute when he wakes up from his nap (he can also be an absolute bear, so you never know who you are going to get)

 This was one of the cute days

 He ate A LOT of blackberries

 Nixon had his first soccer practice of the season Mason and I kicked the ball around during his practice

 We took some rests and looked up at the big fluffy clouds together

I tried to do another evening star time lapse but this one was thwarted by cloud cover (still looks cool though)

On Saturday we ventured out to Heyburn State Park. We started with a picnic lunch

 Then we did an almost 4 mile hike. Lyza was suprised at how big these pine cones were.

 We hiked past a marsh area where we could see trees that were cut down by beavers

 There were some bridges

 And we found snake grass

 After our short hike past the marsh we did the Indian Cliffs Trail

 We luckily had a very good tour gide

There were a few smiles along the trail even though it was REALLY hot

 I had my cute little boy on my back

 This was almost all of the way up. There was a lot of discord within the group by this point.

 But then we finally made it to the top

What a happy bunch

 It was pretty smoky so the view was a little bit hazy but still worth the trip

 Everyone's spirits were much higher on the way down

 Henry and I had a good time together

Hand accross the trail

 The last (partial) bridge before the parking lot

We made it and we are all still talking to each other :)

Have a great week!