DaVisit and DaFourth were Great!!

Aaron, Tara and Alana arrived at Boise on Saturday. I understand that Alana didn't like the first leg of the flight to Portland too much and the flight attendants were passing out ear plugs to the neighbors before it was over. Next time they are going to start out from LAX instead of Orange County and make it a one leg trip, reducing the flight time by many hours.

Once they got here, we got all packed and installed in the Lincoln LS and filled it up pretty good. On the way back home, since we had a little bit of room left in the trunk, we stopped by the fireworks factory and picked up a bunch of 'Big Boy' fireworks for the Fourth celebration.

After we got home, Aaron and I went out and picked up food for Pam's birthday diner request. We had fillets and salad and great bread. Pam opened her presents and we all had a great time. Later in the week, Pam made her famous homemade fetticni noodles and I cooked Veal Marsala, and Aaron and Tara did salad, bread and all the fixings. We had lots of great food...

Then, on the Fourth, we had some friends and Pam's mother, Flora, over for dinner and fireworks. It was another great meal. I BBQed beef and pork ribs, Tri-Tip roast and bratwurst. Flora brought some great potato salad and two pies and T&A made the sides. After the feast, we waited until dark and watched the Twin Falls Firework show. During the 3rd and 4th, there had been three fires around DaHouse from fireworks and lightning so we had decided to not shoot off any fireworks we had, but, then all the neighbors were doing them, and all the kids wanted to do them, and... Well, all I can say is that they were great - Just like the big time ones in the shows...

Alana is sooooo cute and was great fun her entire trip here. She loved the new peas that were growing in the garden and spent much time searching for and eating them. Pam got her a little lawn pool and we filled it up with water a couple of times and she loved that also. I think she loved watering the plants and the adults more than the pool, but that was hard to tell. Pam had gathered all sorts of toys for her to play with and she had fun with them all, including Cali the Cat. Cali spent a lot of time hiding around, but Alana would usually find her and they would play until she hid again. Alana was quite impressed with all the stuffed game at Sportsman's Warehouse and she loved all the farm animals that abound here in DaHo.

We went to the local NASCAR race track and watched the 'Trailer Race of Destruction'. It was totally amazing as usual. They also had a new 'event' which involved a school bus filled with guys loaded with eggs, water balloons and paint ball guns, trying to fight off five cars that were trying to flip it over - always some type of big fun here in DaHo... I got free tickets from my local ENT for the event. The 'Girls' left early as it was pretty late for Alana, but Aaron and I stayed until the 'bitter end' and had a great time.

Aaron and I went fishing three times. The first two times, we went for trout and caught a few, but none that were large enough to keep - 20" or bigger. We went where you can see hundreds of them swimming around and they just were not biting much - a very frustrating situation...

Then on Wednesday, we went down to fish for some sturgeon. We ended up catching 4 smaller sturgeon, but a small sturgeon is a BIG fish. They were three to four feet long and I am guessing weighed in the high 20 to 30 pound range. But, since you cannot pick them up, and we don't have any real accurate pictures (there was so much happening at the time),they could have been MUCH bigger... The first one Aaron had on, was the biggest. He was using 'regular' sized tackle and after a long fight, the fish just said later and was gone. He did get close enough for us to see and he was way too big for that tackle... I had fished for them before a couple of times, but had never caught one. You have to have two people to fish for them, because you have to have one hold onto the pole and the other one get down into the water and release them - They are catch and release only and way too big to do by yourself. They put up quite a fight and jump and all that cool stuff. They look much like a shark, but have a mouth like a catfish and no big teeth.

We toured a lot of the local sites throughout the trip. The only real bummer about the whole thing was that we had built up all the crazies that base jump off of the bridge here in Twin Falls. And, thoughout the trip, we didn't see one jumper. I am totally perplexed at why there were not hundreds of them every day during the holidays. We did see one guy packing his equipment down at the river park, but that was it. I guess the deaths and maiming that has occurred recently must have influenced them, but I find that hard to believe. I thought they were much crazier than that.

Then, on the way back to the Boise Airport yesterday, we passed a burning wreck of a truck that had the freeway stopped and backed up for miles. I took them on to the airport, waited until they left and went shopping at the local outlet stores and still had to wait on the freeway when returning for the wreck to get all cleaned up. The freeway was closed for about 4 hours. I heard that the truck blew a tire and ended up catching on fire and was filled with Kodak film. It all burned to the ground - It was one of biggest 'Kodak Moments' ever seen here in DaHo...