Conference Weekend

We decided to go up to Idaho and visit my family during conference weekend. My brother was moving that weekend, it was my sister's birthday, and it was conference weekend. We wanted to help with the move, and be there for the birthday celebration, so we headed up Friday, Oct 2nd, after Brian got off work.

The night before we left, I got a string of text messages from my Mom telling us that they had just spotted some grizzly bears. My Dad got the surprise of his life when he headed outside and saw the momma bear and her two yearling cubs just out front of their house on the sidewalk. The bears were eating the crabapples from my Mom's tree! I'm glad he saw them before he got too far outside, and that no one got hurt. He went to get my Mom and by the time they got back to the front window to look outside the bears were gone. This was about 9 or 10 o'clock at night so it was dark outside. My brother Luke whistled for his dog Ranger, and when the dog didn't come, he got pretty worried. Luke and my Dad got their shotguns and cautiously walked out to the pickup. They got in and drove out back to check out all of the horses, cows, goats, and one pig housed in the corrals behind the house. Luckily, all the animals were fine, and they found Ranger, unhurt. I was waiting impatiently by my phone while they were outside, praying that all would be well, and that they would be safe. Finally I got the message from my Mom that all was well and the bears were nowhere in sight.

My Dad got on the phone and spread the word to all the neighbors in Chester. Apparently they all came to my parents house and had a meeting about what to do that night. My Mom jokingly said that all they needed was pitchforks and torches to make a good mob. Haha! They ended up calling the Fish & Game Department. The official told them that since grizzly bears are on the endangered species list, it is illegal to shoot them unless the bears attacked a human. They couldn't do anything if the bear attacked any of their pets or livestock. Suffice it too say, they weren't too happy about that.

An image like this came to mind when I first heard about the bears. Source

The next day, I told Brian about the bears, but didn't really think about it other than that. We left around 6 pm for Idaho, and our drive went smoothly. As we were pulling off the highway into Chester around 9:30 pm, I remarked jokingly that we were in bear country now. I wasn't expecting to see anything. So you can imagine how surprised we were, when about 1 1/2 miles up the road, three bears ran out of a driveway, into the road, and right in front of our car! It was so crazy, and we were so astonished and excited. Luckily we had been going slow, so we didn't hit them. If we'd been going the speed limit, we probably would of ran them over...that's how close they were in front of us. We didn't know what to do, so kept driving slowly up the road. The bears just kept running straight up the middle of the road. We were laughing, because they looked so funny, and it was just so surreal that we were herding three grizzly bears up the road. I called my Mom while we were following the bears, and they got all excited when I told them that we were chasing the bears up to their house.

Source

We followed behind them for a good quarter mile before they ran off to the left into a neighbor's driveway. When we got to my parents house, we weren't too nervous about unloading our car because we knew where the bears were...just down the road. 

My Dad called around, warning all the neighbors that the bears had been spotted again. My brother Tyler drove up to see them, and found them even further up the road from where we had left them. They were munching on apples in the yard of the neighbor just across and down the street from my parent's house. It took us all awhile to fall asleep that night because we were so excited about getting to see the bears. 

The reality was more like this. Source

The rest of the weekend went without any bear sightings. We were careful when going outside, and no one went out after dark. We had fun watching conference with everyone, playing with the kiddies, and helping Tyler and Kelsey move around some furniture and unpack some things in their new house. It was a weekend, with lots of good family time.

At one point during the weekend, my Dad pulled out some photo albums that he inherited when his parents died. We had so much fun looking through the pictures, and my Dad had a great time telling us about all the relatives that we didn't recognize or who had died when we were young.

We also found some great photos of our parents and us when we were young. There may have been some teasing of my Dad when we found this picture of him from 1977. This was two years before he started dating my Mom.

 

I love this picture of me, my Dad, and his dog Charlie from 1983. 

Our little family of four. 1984. Mom is holding my sister Kiley, and Dad is holding me. This might have been Kiley's blessing day.

Isn't my little 1 1/2 year old self cute? My Mom always dressed me in frilly socks. I wish she had saved that dress and those shoes. I love them!

Another cool thing I found in the albums was a copy of my baptism program. I remember my baptism day pretty well, but not the program, so this was really cool.

During the weekend, I also got to see some of the fun little metal creations  that my brother Luke likes to make. He welds screws, nuts, washers, and pieces of wire together to create these little western figures. Aren't they so cute! I asked him to make one for me, so we will see what he comes up with.

Saturday evening after the last conference session for the day, Kelsey set up a pumpkin carving/painting station just outside my parents house. It's a little early yet for it, but this was the only time we'd all be together, so we just went for it. It got super cold and windy pretty fast when we were outside, so we worked pretty quickly. Most everyone painted their pumpkins, just because they were so cold and no one wanted to scoop out the freezing cold seeds and guts. My Mom made a cute witch.

I tried to make a witch too, but mine looks awful! I didn't have a marker or a thin paint brush so I just used the edge of a sponge brush to draw on the features. It was so cold that I was shivering, which affected my painting. Hence the reason the lines are so thick and wobbly. The hat I tried to paint on ended up looking more like hair. I finally gave up trying to fix it. I think she looks more like a badly painted Betty Boop than a witch. Haha!

Kelsey's ghost pumpkin turned out super cute. You can't tell from the picture, but she sprayed glitter all over it. 

My brother-in-law Danny gets the award for creepiest pumpkin. His hand-drawn devil was pretty spooky.

Jamie was the only one brave enough to carve an ice cold pumpkin. She did good!

Little Kaylee painted a rainbow pumpkin and my Mom added a colorful clown wig. Kaylee was quite proud of her pumpkin.

   

Carson started out with just a green, glittery pumpkin, but then decided to add more colors. I like the blue hair and the brown mustaches.

The rest of the fam didn't want to brave the cold to make a pumpkin, so only a few got done. My Mom always grows dozens of pumpkins in her garden every year, so we all picked a few more out to take home. We got a couple good sized ones that we're hanging onto. We'll carve them on Halloween.

We had a yummy turkey dinner on Sunday between Conference sessions at Ty and Kels' new house. The day was sunny and warm, so we had fun running around their back yard, chasing the kids. They have apple trees on their new property, so we picked and enjoyed a few of those too.

We headed home after conference ended on Sunday. The drive was fairly uneventful, except for the one moment when a truck pulling a trailer started swerving quite severely a ways in front of us. Luckily we were far enough behind them (there were a few cars between us) that we were able to slow down and get around him without problem once he was pulled over. As we passed him, we saw that his trailer had come off the hitch and was only attached by the lines. There was some pretty intense sparks flying as his trailer hitch was dragging on the road.

We were tired, but happy, when we pulled into our parking lot. It was such a fun weekend, but we were happy to be home.

**Bear Update: After about a week of nightly sightings, the Fish & Game finally decided to do something about the bears. They set some live traps with bait up in the dry farm by the cliff (where we got our family pictures taken) a couple days ago. Yesterday I heard from my Dad that they captured all three of the bears. They put down the momma bear because this is the second time in a matter of months that she's been spotted around farming towns (she was collared and they'd been tracking her). They didn't want her leading any more cubs down into those areas again in future years. They moved the cubs out and will probably transport them to a different area where they won't cause any trouble. My brother Tyler sent me these pictures.

Momma Bear

One of the cubs.