Like Pulling Teeth

To say Blake hates getting his picture taken is a HUGE understatement!  I let him put off taking a few shots all summer but finally forced him to go out with me this evening.  He was REALLY grouchy the ENTIRE time, but I was able to get a few I liked.

At 5'8 he sure isn't our "little boy" anymore.  We can't believe how big and grown up he is getting...time sure has flown by!

Dreaded 1st Day of School

The big day finally got here this week!  The kids were less than thrilled to head back to school though on Wednesday.  Now that they are older and involved in lots of different activities they dread the end of summer vacation. And they both finally started to enjoy sleeping in each morning!

 Ashlyn graduated to the upstairs level of her school as a big 4th grader this year...I can't believe it!

And this is Blake's last year of middle school as an 8th grader!  He is excited that he is CLEARLY taller than me this school year at about 5'8 already and an 11 1/2 size shoe.

Ashlyn was excited to have Rainy, one of her BFFs in her class again this year.

Here's to a great school year!

R5 - "Austin Moon My Boyfriend!"

Ashlyn loves the show Austin & Ally on Disney Channel and if you are on Disney Channel chances are you are a singer as well.  The main character who plays Austin on the show - Ross Lynch - fits that mold...him and his siblings have a band R5.  They play on Radio Disney all the time and some of their songs are on main stream stations as well. I heard an advertisement that they were coming to Boise the week Blake and Rick were going to Scout Camp and surprised Ashlyn with tickets.

  For the two months she had to wait for the concert everybody teased her with a quote from one of the episodes - "Austin Moon My Boyfriend."  I even tried to get her to make a poster for the concert, no luck though.    

To make the whole thing even better she found out that one of her BFFs, Alexis, got tickets too, sitting in the row in front of us.  We met them at Red Robin for an early dinner and headed to the show together.

We found their tour buses right away...the girls didn't seem to see what the big deal was about that though.

They had to get matching concert t-shirts to wear, even though Ashlyn had her Ross Lynch shirt on already.  They can't wait to wear them to school the first week of school.

After lots of photo ops we went and found our seats...ours was 11th row and center stage.  It was like sitting on the back row of the chapel, pretty sweet to be so close!

Their younger brother, Ryland, came out first and did kind of a DJ thing to get everybody on their feet dancing and pumped up.  Ashlyn was pretty shy and wouldn't dance or sing saying she didn't want to bother anybody.  Eventually I got her to loosen up when she realized it was so loud nobody could hear her singing along and she was ready to be crazy like everybody else by the time R5 came out.

Jacob Whitesides was who opened for R5.  We've seen him on Disney Channel interviews before but weren't very familiar with his music.  He was really good, so it will be interesting to see how popular he gets.

 She was pretty excited when it finally was finally R5's turn of the show!

These two pictures were our view of the stage without zooming in for pictures!

 Ross Lynch, isn't he cute?!

At one point he was the only one on the stage, playing the keyboard and singing...it was really good!  He plays the piano on his TV show, but we weren't sure if it was real or not.

 Rydel is his sister and played keyboard most of the time and back up vocals, but on their new album she has a song that she is the lead vocals on. Ashlyn really liked watching her.

Rocky is an older brother who got into acting before Ross.  He sang back up and played lead guitar. Ashlyn was pretty grossed out by his long hair.

Then Riker played bass and sang backup vocals.  When we told Grandma about going to the show she mentioned he had been on last season's Dancing With the Stars and won Runner up...we were sad we didn't know and missed watching.  We were hoping they would do some dancing during the concert, but no such luck.

This is their drummer, who is actually just a friend, Ellington Ratliff...so staying with the R theme because of his last name.  He was really fun to watch because he REALLY got into it..we have quite a few funny pictures of him...

...this was my favorite, looking like he is singing opera.

Being Ashlyn's first concert she was constantly amazed by the lights, lazers, smoke machine and how loud everything was.

It was so fun to watch her reaction to everything and see how much fun she was having.

She was pretty excited to get an autographed light stick to wave during the show...kind of like their version of waving cigarette lighters.

At one point Ross and Riker walked to the far corners of the stage and jumped to a short wall the divided the first 3 rows VIP section with the rest of the seats and sat and chatted with the crowd for a few minutes.

 And sang a song from there...boy was Ashlyn wishing she was sitting right there!

It was a great night and definitely more fun than Blake's first concert, which was The Wiggles!  I can't wait for her to really get into bands to go to more shows with her!

 (This was at the end, after the encore.  Unfortunately, I had already put the camera away so snapping this shot with my phone, it didn't turn out great, but couldn't pass up a group shot.)

"Oh, Canada!"

Our poor deprived children have been whining that they have never left the country before, so we decided to get passports and head to Vancouver, BC Canada for a family trip.  Rick's older sister Kristen and her daughter Danielle came with us too.

We were surprised to see that all the "beaches" were just on the bay since it is made of 100's of islands.  It was BEAUTIFUL scenery, but wasn't the same as the open ocean.  

We enjoyed spending a morning checking out Stanley Park, which is an island/rain forest in the middle of city.

There is a walking/biking trail all the way around the island that was full of joggers and the kids couldn't help jogging back to the car to try it out.

The park had all kinds of these trees that were HUGE and hollow in the middle, which were fun photo opportunities.

We couldn't have asked for better weather while we were there so the kids were able to swim each day in the hotel pool.    

We kept our eye out, but unfortunately this was the only Mounty we saw while we were there.

The main reason we picked Vancouver to go to was to check out the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park.  Everybody was surprised that I would even contemplate it since I have major anxiety issues with things like this!  This sign that put things in perspective at the beginning of the main bridge made me feel a lot better though.

 The main bridge went all the way across a huge canyon and was LONG.  It was hard to walk across with it swaying like crazy - it felt like you were in a wave pool.

 But check me out, I even have a smile on my face!

I made it across, but not gonna lie - my heart was beating pretty fast when I got back on solid ground!

 The rest of the group wasn't bothered by it at all...even though we all had a hard time walking steadily across.

There were lots of smaller suspension bridges, board walks through the forest and a string of bridges that went for awhile along the top of the canopy of the rain forest.  This one was pretty crazy that it went out around the cliff like it did.  Luckily it was solid and didn't move though!

One of the afternoons we drove around to look at the various Olympic venues, stadiums and the cauldron and then went out to see the temple.  It is one of the small ones, but unique from the small designs we have here and of course beautiful.

The kids always love getting souvenirs...we couldn't help snap a picture when Blake and Danielle were twins trying on their new shirts at the hotel.  

Ashlyn wanted to wait to find something else besides a t-shirt, but ended up getting sick the last 2 days of our trip and was pretty miserable, so she never picked anything out except for her new soccer gear we got earlier on the trip.  She was pretty sad when we got home and she realized it.

The last day we were there we went out on a 5 hour whale watching tour.Don't you just love our outfits!

We had a blast!  Talk about a BEAUTIFUL ride through the sound around all the islands out past Victoria.

 There were tons of seals around sunbathing on lot of different rocks during our ride.

 At one point I went up to the top with Blake a Danielle for a great 360 view of everything, but it was REALLY windy.

We are excited to report that we saw a mink whale and 7 different killer whales on our ride!

 The camera was REALLY hard to hold still to takes pictures since the boat just drifted along in the waves while we watched the whales so I had a hard time taking pictures that were in focus...not to mention it was hard to time when to snap the shot...but we were able to get quite a few good shots.

We had a blast and would recommend a whale trip to anybody!  Well worth the time and money!

Vancouver is an absolutely beautiful city with all the islands, bridges, bays, beaches and rain forest to visit.  We had a great time.  Thanks Kristen and Danielle for coming along...now we need to start planning the next trip to use our passports for!