the last of idaho

that night i was chopping carrots and onions for our various planned dishes and katie was cooking bacon.  after that she cleaned the oven and tackled the notorious pizza stone. if you know, you know.

meanwhile cordell was teaching elizabeth this video game where you are a goose and your job is to annoy people and do mischievous things.  but michealah who was in the bedroom with the baby, needed him so he left.  when it became apparent that he wasn't coming back, i stepped in to help.  our job was to pester a shop keeper and steal items from her shop and put them in our basket.  we also had to get a little boy to put on the wrong glasses.  we had to team up in distracting her and grabbing things or she would take them back from us.  i must say the being annoying part was right up my alley.  elizabeth and i got carried away and stayed up until 12:30 before we could tear ourselves away from the naughty geese.

the next morning cordell had the day off so they could sleep in.  the goose game continued.  now we were in a garden stealing a man's slippers, breaking vases, etc.  or we might of got to the garden the night before...yes i think we moved on to making trouble in a restaurant, stealing cups and cutlery, , breakng a dart game... the last and hardest task was knocking a bucket on the burly man's head while he cleaned up some tomatoes that we scattered.  katie took over for me and helped with that.  and when cordell got up he and elizabeth ended up beating the whole game.

there was more grocery shopping. e and i stayed home and watched her anime show naruto. katie and michealah were standing at the door with the baby in the car seat and cordell was in the kitchen with a bowl.  his fork froze mid air as katie said "it's funny how every time we are about to leave cordell thinks "hmm it's time to eat something.."  a sheepish smile spread over his face. as they went out the door cordell was balancing his bowl, the baby in the car seat, some bags, and i don't know what.  i just know it looked comical, how much he was carrying plus balancing his bowl of food.  

that afternoon michealah went to  class and cordell went to get his hair cut.  i was there when he called to make the appointment.  i thought it was really funny because during the short conversation on the phone, he blew his nose loudly, sniffled a lot and couldn't stop coughing.  i was surprised they didn't ask him if he was feeling well enough for his appointment.  

katie and i continued with our food plans. we baked and chopped chicken, marinated the donair chicken, made lemon garlic mayo, katie put together the thai chicken curry noodle soup and i  worked on the chicken stew that was going into tour pot pies. this was stretched out between doing other things.  our last thing was baking scrambled eggs in muffin tins and ramekins for our breakfast sandies.  then we lay on the floor and put our legs up on the wall.  but that was late at night.  everyone else was asleep.

before that we went with becky to do a graduation photo shoot at byu.  i did my best in the wintery foliage.  i slipped in some mud and then was super cautious.  at one point becky said "i have a walker..." how frail do i seem!  i don't need a walker, i laughed ruefully.  we found some inside greenhouse greenery...i hope we got something/anything good.  when we got home two hours later cordell was dropping becky's son nathan off at a young men's activity.  they were touring a sewage plant which really hit my funny bone.  

we made homemade pizzas.  it seemed like we did the dishes one million times that day.  as we ate our pizzas we watched  13 going on 30, which elizabeth had never seen.  mic had the dvd but couldn't find it and they had to resort to borrowing it from a neighbour.  of course the next day elizabeth found it right where it should be. that's always the way.

e made cookies and we ate them.

friday was our last day and it was a doozy.  a good day.  i woke up went pee and then felt my food making energy resurge after the day before's exhaustion.  i poked my head in our bedroom door to katie "do you want to make the breaky sandies while we have energy?" she nodded yes and soon we had elizabeth roped in. we had an assembly.  katie toasted and buttered the english muffins.  i put one of 3 condiments and added some borsin cheese, passed to elizabeth who added eggs and bacon, back to katie who topped with avocado and the lid, packed into a bag or wrapped in tinfoil, into the freezer.  we were pleased with ourselves.

i forgot to say that the night before we had also mixed up a quick batch of chia seed pudding. chocolate cinnamon flavour.  that morning we ate it with pom seeds.  oh yeah.  i also deseeded the world's largest pomegranate. 

we  had appointments at walgreens to get our covid tests done for our return trip. at the drive through window the lady couldn't find my appointment af first but then we realized she was looking for  laura schofield.  when that was figured out she handed us each a coloured plastic box, what e called a  pencil case, with our own special nasal swab in it.  we unwrapped it, stuck it up our noses for 5 swabs each nostril and gave them back to her.  in a couple of hours we had our results.

we stopped at albertsons because we needed pita's that had pockets.  this time i went in. and thankfully i did because i found cookie butter!  i promptly bought one for me and one for heather.  we also picked up pepperonccini and rese thins to boot.  when we were leaving katie and i said to each other, shouldn't michealah have new mom flowers?  yes she should, we said back to each other.  we decided to buy them and byu, which was apparently cheaper.

first we went to the temple for a  walk and a lot of  photo fun. we didn't plan the photo fun, it just happened and it was fun.  first we were trying to take a selfie in front of the temple and a tiny young woman who was studying her scriptures in front of the temple offered to take our photo.  she was so nice we couldn't refuse, although i did want a selfie as well.  she told us her name was emily.  and thus became tiny emily.  tiny emily had some issues at first taking our photo but it wasn't until after that we saw she took a video at first and then accidentally took some shots of her own forehead.  it makes me chuckle each time i think of it.  after that we walked around what katie called "the bum side" of the temple.  the side in shadow where the snow hadn't melted yet.  around the back and down some stairs we did a lot of jumping shots.  i even got in some of them. elizabeth tried to take some but the timing is tricky especially with my cell, so she kept getting us just as we landed and in one it looks as though my head is very tiny and my neck is gone... it's very funny.  i believe i included it below.  after we were jumped out we had started back towards the temple when i had an idea and asked elizabeth if she could leap from bench to bench, 16 going on 17 style.  she tried it and indeed she could.  we went back to where we had been doing jumps so i could get a pic of her leaping over the temple.  of course this required laying on the ground again but this is just a thing that must be done.  oh yeah, we also took a lot of shadow pics. i also love doing shadow pics.  i don't know why i just do. when we were at the back side of the temple we saw a fedex van at the temple and thought it might be cordell.  we sent elizabeth to run and see if it was him, but it wasn't. that was before the jumping.  anyways we made our way around the templ, took a selfie in the front and a pic of e on the wall with various heart shapes.  little did we know at that time that she had ripped the armpits on both sides of her shirt from all the leaping and jumping.  the day was so sunny and mild and we had such a nice time at the temple.  before we left we saw a man walking around like he was normal--walking like he was going into the temple with the most outrageous curly bushy moustache on his face.  it was remarkable. i wish i took a picture.  mic said students grow crazy moustaches because they are not allowed beards.

we stopped at byu to get fresh mom flowers.  i stayed in the car and sadly missed the wildlife taxidermy museum, and an incident where some people said sorry in a very canadian way.  like sorry i am here. sorry.

we ate left over pizza and reses thins and watched hunger games for lunch.

cordell got home and we decided to try the froggy pose one more time.  not with cordell.  with nash.  we had tried it 2 or 3 times before but never quite succeeded. we didn't succeed this time either.  but we decided to get one of the baby on cordell's arm. (we were doing continuous baby photo shoots alomst every day when we had some good sleepy time from nash and some free time) nash was awake. and things were going well when all of a sudden a huge arc of pee fountained up and all over cordel.  we were all in the room and all lost it, laughing our heads off. i did get one pic with some of the spray in it but not the biggest arc.  i thought the pose was done but cordell was good to keep going so i was like why not.  we turned nash over with his limbs hanging.  he looked like a little monkey.  one of the shots he was looking back at cordell over his shoulder.  we should have taken it as a warning because there was a big fart sound but it wasn't a fart.  it was a poop bath for cordell.  we all lost it again and the photoshoot disintegrated from there.

that night we had a donair feast. then katie put pastry on the pot pies and baked them.  we went out for our last krispy cones and got gas on the way home. 

next morning we were out.  ok we did go back 5 minutes later for elizabeth's shoes but then we were really out.  we made good time and we played many games to stay awake including a one word at a time story game.  but we were at the border by 8:30, katie's by 9 and i was home by 10:30