Tamarack Days 5 & 6

 The kids all remembered making their special one-of-a-kind t-shirts with Aunt Megan when we were in Tamarack two years ago.  They all wanted to make t-shirts again.  My kids wear theirs alllll the time and love explaining to people where, when and how they were made.
First,  Aunt Megan has each child collect plants, rocks, pine cones, etc. and make a design on the t-shirt.  She brings along some little foam letters and numbers so that the kids can write their name, the date, our location or whatever on the shirts. 

 When they have everything laid out just so, she comes along with a spray bottle of bleach and spritzes the shirt.  Then the shirt sits for a few moments to let the bleach work its magic.

 Grandma took care of keeping Henry busy.  After the bleach has started to work, Aunt Megan plunges the shirt into a vat of cold water to stop the bleaching action.  After the shirt has been rinsed, it is put in the wash to make sure all of the bleach is gone. 

 Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the final results.  For some reason or another--we DID NOT take pictures of all the kids with their  special shirts on this time. 

 They did turn out real cute, though.

 Every year we have commented that we need to take some time out from mountain biking to go play in Lake Cascade or go fishing.  This year we tried to make it a reality.  Tadd and Teddy each brought their fishing rafts and we set out to have some fun.

I pray that this special cousin-friendship will last for all time. 

 Wrangler was in heaven--labs love to swim!

 Uncle Tadd has a small outboard motor for his fishing raft.  The kids took turns going for rides.

 Trouble!!!

 Father and son.

 I hear that the water was nice and warm.  I didn't go swimming that day,  however.  I was sitting on the hill side with a sleeping Henry.  Because my arms will filled with a sleeping baby towards the end, I was unable to photo document the big kids all swimming across the lake and back.  We (some of the adults) totally didn't think they could do it.  And then they did.  Without too terrible much effort.  Don't worry, we had them wear life jackets.

 Our final day was filled with shopping, biking, one last craft and one last trip to the pool.  I only got pictures of the last craft.  We made gak (or oobleck, I'm not sure which).  It is made by simply mixing equal parts corn starch and water.  Then you add a few drops of food coloring and have some fun.

 Each kiddo chose which colors they wanted added and then they played with their gak on a paper plate.

 I was somewhat surprised how long they enjoyed this activity. 

 It makes a giant mess.  However, you can walk away and wait for the mixture to dry out and then sweep it all away.  And I had it even easier--as a thank you for helping them make it, all the girls got together and scrubbed the table and the deck. 

 It was really fun to watch them work and play together.  Somewhat unbelievable to me that there are ten grandkids in our family now.  And they are all so grown up these days! 

I should mention what I alluded to on the first post about Henry.  A few days into the trip he started getting sick.  By our last two days in Tamarack he was pretty bad off.  He would scream and scream for hours--during the day and especially at night.  I knew he had had a cold and figured he had a secondary of some kind.  But we weren't exactly close to an urgent care.  The screaming peaked our second to last night.  I knew that I would have to drive in to Boise (2.5 hours away) to get him to a 24 hour urgent care and I wasn't prepared to do that in the middle of the night.  At some point he calmed down for a little while and I kind of thought his ear drum had burst and the worst might be past.  However, he was not better the few days after that.  Eventually I took him to an urgent care in Pocatello when we were back at Alan and Heather's house.  He had a terrible sinus infection and an ear infection to boot.  Poor baby.  It took him a long time and a lot of medicine to recover.  And I'm sad to say that he got one sickness after another after we got home.  The past 3 days now have been the first that he's seemed healthy since way back at the first of July.  Having him healthy has made me so happy!
But back to where we are in this vacation story--our time in Tamarack, Idaho had come to an end.  Thankfully, we had planned to spend most of another week together back in southeastern Idaho, so good byes did not have to yet be said.