Rexburg Fun

After we'd partied with the Rays in Bountiful for a couple of days we went up to Rexburg to visit Cindy Lynn and Mahon. We kind of took it easy in Rexburg.

I let out the hem in a pair of shorts so that they would be longer,

Russ & I finally went to see the new Harry Potter movie, (I liked it much more than I'd expected)

Rachel, Jenna, and Jared spent lots of time roller blading around the apartment complex,

And most importantly, we finally got to try shaved ice.

We liked it!

One of the nights that we were in Rexburg we went to Idaho Falls and had dinner with our friends the Wests. We met them many years ago when we both lived in Pocatello and Cindy Lynn was just a toddler and their daughter Gwen was a newborn. Now Cindy Lynn is married and Gwen is getting ready to start college. I can hardly believe it...

The next night we had a terrific adventure. We had hoped to go to the sand dunes north of Rexburg together as a family before Cindy Lynn was married, but that was before we knew the sad truth of weddings--that there is no free time when there's a wedding. So we were determined to go this year.

We gathered all of our warm clothes (the sand dunes are supposed to be freezing at night), got a bunch of firewood, and bought the all important graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate, and headed north.

The St. Anthony sand dunes are fascinating. Out in the middle of nowhere, between mountains and farm land, are these huge dunes of really beautiful sand. My google search says that the sand is made of clear, shifting, white quartz , and that prevailing winds carried the sand from the nearby Teton and Snake Rivers and deposited them as dunes among the hills. Those must have been some prevailing winds, because the dunes are HUGE!

Getting up the dunes took a bit of effort, especially when I decided we should go up onto the much higher dune rather than the closer, lower dune.

Russ, Mahon, and Jason are my heroes for hauling the wood up to the top!

This is what I saw when I was walking up the dune---no feet!

The kids had a great time playing on the dunes. They jumped off of the dunes,

and the little kids spent a lot of time sliding down on their bellies "like penguins."

You would not believe the amount of sand in the laundry room when I finally did all of the laundry from that night. There was sand on the washer, on the drier, around the lint filter, on the edge of the washer & dryer, and on the floor all around. And I had shaken the clothes outside already!

When it came time to make our fire on the dunes we had a bit of a problem--no kindling. But Mahon figured out a way to get some smaller pieces, causing Jared to call him Nature Boy for the rest of the night.

I think Cindy Lynn likes Nature Boy.

Everyone enjoyed the fire and the s'mores, of course!

The best part came after we were done with the s'mores, though. It was the night of the apex of the Perseid meteor shower, and we were hoping to see some shooting stars. We laid down on blankets and started watching...and we were not disappointed. Within the first few minutes of watching we had seen 4 shooting stars, and 3 were the huge kind that leave a streak of light across the sky. It was amazing. Josh and Jenna had never seen a shooting star and they were both pretty excited when they finally did. We lay there watching the stars for about an hour, and it was truly magical. The interesting thing is that my sister & her husband watched for shooting stars where they live and didn't see any, and I watched for the next several days and never saw another shooting star. But we sure saw them that night!