Huge "Gas" Bill

Matt Crane is so excited that he is going to save so much money this year, I quote: "my gas bill is gonna be nothin."
Saturday I called Rachel to see if she could help me out and give me three good reasons why I shouldn't pack up my four kids and go Christmas shopping!
Reason number 1: They would find out what they were getting.
I told her that I was planning on going to Smiths Marketplace and they had a play land.


Again I asked please give me a good reason not to go. Reason number 2 She said, "you have four kids and I am going up to get a load of wood with Matt and I can't watch them for you."


Well to make a long phone conversation short, she asked (in a round about way) if I and the kids wanted to come up! YES YES YES, I wanted to get out of the house, so YES! I decided that it was way to cold and rainy to take Charlee so I called Katie and had here come over to watch her for a bit!
This was not a get wood trip it was more like a beautiful drive in the mountains with a little bit of hauling wood! TWO TREES filled the back of the pick up, Matt said "this was a trial run." A trial run, I came up to help with getting wood not a drive in the mountains! We did give him a hard time about the many trees he passed to get to these two trees. Hey the wood will save him from his "huge gas bill" this winter, but we might run out of fuel before we get to those trees. It was beautiful and the kids had fun. Matt was awesome with the chainsaw, Chainsaws scare me a bit!

The boys loved carrying the wood to the truck with there gloves and smiles on! Aiden is above and Jack is below.

Here is a WONDERFUL picture of me! Thanks Rachel, this should be my motivational picture. WOW

And last but defiantly not least Jacob. I brought a few snacks and Rachel brought Vienna sausages, pepperoni, and Cheese! The boys loved it, YUCK! I am gagging a little just thinking about Jack's Vienna sausage/Ritz cracker sandwich! (eyes are now watery....yuck)
After the wood was all loaded, Rachel suggested that we go d0wn the road to Strawberry Reservoir where the Kokanee Salmon were running. It was really cool to see the red fish swimming up the river.

Jacob was so excited to see the fish, he had a lot of questions for the employee out in the water with the fish.
Jacob and Kendal loved squeezing the pretty orange eggs out of this dead fish. Jacob kept picking the eggs up very carefully and putting them back in the water. Notice the fish behind Kendal. That disgusting orange spot is lots of "hand expressed" eggs. We all walked up to the holding tanks and got a great explanation of the Kokanee Salmon and their life cycle. The cute girl in the tank was so great with our kids. She was telling us all about the male fish and the female fish and how they separate them as they come up the river and then collect the eggs from the females. The kids wanted to know what they did with the eggs after they collected them, so the cute girls said "We put the eggs in a 5 gallon bucket and add the sperm to the eggs." The kids were full of questions. I was just pleased that the girl was full of answers! She kept looking at Rachel and I and we both just nodded.

On our way out we ran into a lady with a bunch of birds of prey. One woman had a barn owl and another had a falcon (I think). Inside the kids were able to pet a red tail BOA (YUCK) and a hedgehog! They also had a fishing pole game that let you practice catching fish, we had to leave before Jacob could play and he was disappointed.Once we got outside Smokey the Bear was waiting and the kids all gave Smokey a big high '5'! Aiden loved that he pulled his hand away and made him miss a couple times.

When I saw Smokey I asked him "oh you must of had c-sections too! You have the c-section pouch under your belt." He nodded (Smokey is a silent Smokey) in the affirmative and we got a good chuckle out of our matching bellies!