Road Trip! Idaho cousins and bunnies

While Dave, Spencer and Tyler were backpacking this summer, I took the 4 youngest plus my nephew, Peter, to Idaho and Utah to visit my family. This was the first time I've done such a major trip (with kids) without Dave, and I'm happy to say it all went smoothly. There was some concern beforehand when the Suburban starting making all kinds of new klunking noises, but I got it fixed right before we left (it needed an emergency brake shoe and new brakes), and all the noises when away. 

It was a 12 hour drive to MaryRuth's house in Caldwell, Idaho, and we broke it up into 2 six-hour days. We were going to go straight through, but the car wasn't ready in time. The kids did AWESOME!! We listened to books while the little kids watched movies. Dallin sat in the front seat; he made the sandwiches and threw them back. It was a party.

Most of my kids had no idea who these cousins were, so I'm glad we went there! They were having a huge heat wave, so we went to the library and $3 movie theater to cool down.

The fair was in town, so we went there one day. Oh, it was hot!

Dominic was there with a client, and we ran into him a couple of times. The firetruck was spraying water, and that helped cool everyone down a bit.

Funny kids.

They had tricycle racing, but Chloe got bored waiting for her turn (it all seemed to take forever with multiple heats for each age), so we left and looked at animals. That was way more fun!

Chloe LOVES animals, and she enjoyed petting them all. 

Funny cow story. So I was explaining what kind of meat we get from each animal we saw, and when we got to the cows, I pointed out that we get tritip and hamburger from them. All of a sudden, Levi looked horrified. "You mean they kill it?!" Somehow he had never really thought about that part. It's good to go to the fair occasionally and learn these life lessons.

We bought a humungous bag of caramel corn, which was delicious. 

Seriously, it took us a few days to finish the caramel corn. It was big. We were going to eat dinner at the fair, but we all got coupons for free food from the Sonic booth, so we drove there instead.

At first, the cousins were a little shy around each other; but it didn't take long for them to warm up. They all played together great! Unfortunately, their oldest son Samuel was at scout camp, so we never got to see him. He's between Peter and Dallin's age.

They run a bunny rescue, and they have a lot of bunnies! I think the total count when we were there was 25. Two of them died from the heat. It was very sad.

Chloe was is animal heaven. Whenever she wanted to, she could go outside and play with bunnies. Plus they have 2 cats (her favorite), fish and turtles. And they have 3 little girls with lots of girl toys. She didn't want to leave!

Maryruth's kids work hard to take care of the bunnies. They feed and water them once a day (which takes a long time) and put frozen water bottles in their hutches to keep them cool. My kids were happy to help!

They have bunny hutches in the backyard and garage. My kids begged me to take one of the bunnies home, but it seemed complicated with traveling. Maybe we'll buy one someday.

Makayla is closest in age to Chloe, and she is so cute! They played really well together!

Benjamin is about a year younger than Dallin, and he's a really sweet kid! He was happy to have a bunch of boys to play zombie apocalypse with.

We took a few pictures right before we left. Don't you love Maryruth's red hair?

Thanks for hosting us Maryruth! We had a lovely time!

Alisa is a few months older than Brennan. 

Rachel is a few months older than Levi. She's missing a few teeth!

So cute!

Pretty girls!!

The whole crazy group! This was the first time I've visited Maryruth in her own home since we left for college. It wasn't as far away as I thought, and it was good to see where they live. And now my kids know their cousins, which is huge.