More Summer Fun

The girls had a lemonade stand twice this week. The first day they set up by the mail boxes so they could entice the people who stopped for their mail. Apparently it wasn't too enticing because they only made $2. The next day they set up behind our building where all the kids (and moms) hang out during the day to play in the water and run around on the grass. This time I made some cookies for them to sell and Emma brought out her hair barrettes to sell. They ended up with $6 this time, but stayed outside all day and had lots of fun with the kids.

The problem is that at any given time or day, there are about 3 kids' lemonade stands in our neighborhood. Our kids are at a big disadvantage because, as we've explained to them, they aren't young and cute anymore. They need to capitalize on something else because the irresistible cuteness goes away right around the time the giant permanent teeth come in crooked.

So for the past 5 summers, our kids have asked if we could get tubes and float down a river together. Each summer we tell them we'll try, but then nothing ever happens. Well, this summer I decided to make it happen. We went up to Island Park and found a place where they rent tubes and take you up the river and then you can float back down. It was only $7.50 each, and we floated down from Big Springs to Macks Inn. It is a 5 mile float, but it took us almost 4 hours!

It started out really fun and we thought we'd found the funnest thing to do around here, but around hour 3 we re-thought our position. The river is really shallow this time of year and we had to paddle our arms to get any kind of movement at all. The girls were either too lazy or too short to reach back and help paddle, so we had to pull them along while we paddled. Lauren held on to my big toe so we could stay together, and Emma and Landon tied their tubes together with a rope we had brought for that purpose. It was just too slow when we were all tied together, though. I didn't take any pictures of our experience because there was no way to bring anything with us in the tube. This presented another problem: we were so hungry and thirsty by the time we got out of the tubes!

We left Rexburg around 12:30, right after lunch, and got to Island Park around 2:00pm. We got on the river around 4:00pm and got out around 8:00pm. We were cold, tired, hungry, thirsty and sore! We called in a pizza order to 511 Main, a newer pizza restaurant in Ashton, and it was ready for us about 5 minutes after we sat down in the restaurant. Everyone kept saying, "that was the best idea Mom's ever had" because I thought to call ahead and have the pizza ready for us.

We saw moose 2 different times on the river. The first moose was a male and it was up river from us, right when we were putting in the tubes. The second moose was a smaller female moose, standing right in the river as we were floating toward it. I immediately recalled all the stupid wildlife shows Landon watches and remembered that moose are one of the most dangerous animals around. I've heard dozens of times how they can trample someone and drown them under the water because they're so big and strong and fast. I was really freaked out to be floating toward it and didn't want to accidentally float right into it. Landon acted all tough and said it won't hurt us and don't worry and blah blah blah, but just the same, we tied all four of our tubes together "to appear really big" (moose must be so dumb), and tried to stay on the opposite side of the river from the moose. This happened to be a really narrow section of the river and it could have easily gotten to us in about 5 seconds, but we just kept our eyes on it. When we were about 20 feet away, it climbed back up on the land and disappeared. I was really relieved, but really nervous every time we floated too close to the shore where I was convinced there were herds of moose waiting to trample us.

In spite of the paddling, the moose, the hunger and thirst, I think we'll invest in our own river tubes and do some more floating in the future. It was fun and I really enjoyed being in the water and laughing with the girls and Landon. Here's something funny we laughed about: I was wearing swim shorts, so my big white legs were very exposed. Landon said that the whiter you are, the closer you are to God. Lauren said that her friend Brooklyn must be really far from God because she is really skinny. Landon and I said, what does that have to do with it? Lauren said she thought we said the WIDER you are, the closer you are to God. I guess she was looking at my legs when Landon said that and assumed he said wider instead of whiter. Maybe you had to be there...it was funny on the river.