Leah's Favorite Things

Your ring bearer needs to be Covered in Color…

haha…I crack myself up!

Our last little bit of fun in Missoula was Lunch in the Park.

Our tour guide informed us that many local restaurants set up under the tent and offer lunch each Wednesday during the summer.

We entered and started making our way through to check out all they had to offer.

This stopped me in my tracks.

I didn’t need to see any other booth. All I wanted was an Indian Taco!

I love fry bread!

Others settled for some sort of Asian stir fry.

I don’t know what they were thinking.

It was wonderful and divine and made the sixteen hours of driving totally worth it. Husb missed out big time…he loves him some fry bread too!

After we finished we watched a few kayakers on “The Wave”.

Then it was time to say goodbye. Thanking our tour guide for ice cream, hikes and fry bread.

It was a fun trip…Missoula had started to grow on me. Just a little though. Let’s not be crazy! It’s always good to be home.

While we were in Missoula we went on a hike.

We made it very clear to our tour guide that we wanted the least strenuous hike possible.

We didn’t want to be bothered by sweat and muscle strengthening.

Or bees. One landed on Gretta’s hand. I had forgotten how loud she can scream and how fast she can run. If it was a killer bee she would have left us in the dust to fend for ourselves.

We have turned into major wimps over the last couple years. We used to live in Arizona and run bare foot through the cactus filled dessert and hike with Mom in the desert heat.

Well, we made it to the bottom of this hill and decided to turn back. However, Meg and I couldn’t resist finding out what was just over the top of that hill.

We got adventurous.

We got off the trail and hiked our behinds up to the top.

We were so close and Meg couldn’t wait any longer. She had to run for it!

I sang “The hills are alive…with the sound of music”.

It was beautiful! My picture doesn't really do it justice. 

Then we returned to our hiking party and told them stories of our adventure. Like how we had to use our Bear Grills techniques to survive. And how I was prepared to build a stretcher out of sticks to carry Meg down had she broken her ankle. It was a pretty intense 15 minutes.

Later that night we were watching a show on animal planet about people getting attacked by wild animals. Thank you Jesus for not letting a bear or mountain lion eat us!

Mom and us girls just got back yesterday from a road trip to Montana.

It was a girl trip…with lots of eating and shopping.

A boy did crash our party. We put him to work real fast as our tour guide.

He took us to the Big Dipper. I had a scoop of Mexican chocolate and huckleberry. Good stuff.

We also got hot dogs from a corner stand. My sisters thought it was important to document me getting mustard in my hair.

Don’t you just love sisters?

There are no sales tax in Montana. Gotta love it! I was able to restrain myself and only bought two things. I love both of them!

A set of four pasta plates. Each with a different design and recipe. Tasha has a set of pasta plates that I love so when I saw these I couldn’t resist.

This is my new infinity scarf. I love it…husb laughed at it. It’s perfect.

We did some more harvesting from the garden last weekend.

What do you do when you have lots of strawberries?

Make jam! The canned and freezer type.

Some of the broccoli was ready too.

Mike really likes broccoli!

Husb was looking all cute out there weeding.

Meanwhile, I hid in the peas.

Then Serena yelled at me and I had to get back to work.

Just kidding…Mike and Serena are very patient with me. They only laugh instead of throw rocks when I say

“the flowers on the peas look like…OOOOHHHH…sweet peas…I get it”

I’m learning.

I got the recipe here. Of course I did. How can one woman have so many good recipes? It’s sick!

I didn’t even know I liked key lime pie. Actually, I thought I hated it. Then I saw her pictures and recipe. I needed a taste.

Well, a taste turned into half a pie. Whoops.

Don’t worry…I didn’t eat it all myself. I ate most of it…but not all of it.

It’s easy and very good. Give it a try.

The recipe calls for eagle brand. Who doesn’t love this stuff? I feel like eagle brand is the seventh member of my family. Dad puts it in his magic brownies and Mema puts it in her ice box fruit cake. Husb is convinced the Asian ladies at the Thai restaurants put it in his Thai iced coffee.

We are all about the eagle brand.

The baby of the family graduated from high school last Saturday.

So weird. Way to make me feel old Gabby!

I love you…congratulations…you conquered high school and your first two years of college. High five!

You look adorable in your cap and gown…even though you were a brat and didn’t wear your cap for the pictures. And…even though you should have been wearing blue and silver instead of black and orange! I forgive you for ditching SVEC.

Why has this blog been about you so much lately…jeeze!

Love you!

Tasha, Kristel and I went shopping this weekend while the men were riding…you guessed it…dirt bikes.

I swear they are taking over our lives.

See

Anyhow, us girls went to Ikea. I spent all of $9 (about $18 if you count my meatball lunch) but got this cute little white bowl.

Then we headed to the outlet malls to pick up this little fella.

While we waited for him we browsed Gap Outlet. I wasn’t very hopeful about finding anything as I was at another Gap Outlet last week and didn’t find much. Well boy was I wrong. My problem last time? I was missing my personal shoppers! Some how the girls got it in their minds that they needed to pick some things out for me. It was like being attacked my Stacy and Clinton…but without the $5,000. Bummer.

I tried on twenty million cardigans last week by myself and didn’t like any of them. What did the girls find…of course…the perfect cardigan. On top of that the cutest pair of Capri’s. I got a whole outfit with these ladies. I think I could get used to this type of treatment.

Kristel…today I wore a black dress and thought “I wish I had this cardigan in a bright color”. You wanna strangle me yet?

For the last couple years husb and I have gone to The Street of Dreams. It’s a luxury home tour that builds these million dollar homes and then decorates them beautifully. For $10 you get to walk through all the homes they build…through each and every room. We always have a lot of fun.

So, you can imagine how sad we were when we heard on the news that arsonists torched a couple of the homes last year. Idiots! All that work and all those nice materials and furnishings up in smoke. Which I’m sure was very good for the environment, right?

Well, since the homes aren’t very far from our home we decided to finally drive over and take a peek at the damage.

Don’t worry we didn’t catch any anarchists' in the act. It was just some teenage boy burning stuff in a barrel. No clue why.

The new construction is where the house used to sit. The only thing that didn’t burn was the garage. I’m pretty sure they stopped rebuilding. The two lots that burnt are for sale.

Poor sad little community. Not the most riveting pictures…but it’s a gated community and I didn’t want to snoop too much. Especially since they have been so violated in the past. There hasn’t been a Street of Dreams tour since. Probably a combination of the economy and the jerks that decided it was a good idea to burn the homes.

Not sure why I decided to share this. Just one of those random things husb and I decided to check out while driving around in the afternoon warmth.