Jake's golB: 4th of July/Montana

We had such an awesome 4th of July weekend! We went up to visit Mom and Dad in Montana and Tim was able to bring Tay with him too. We got up late on Friday night and spent most of Saturday enjoying the time away from work and responsibility. Mom and Amber and Tay got their craft on and Dad, Tim, and I took Jeremy on four wheeler rides, to see Willey Lake, and to pet the horses. He

sure does love it up there. I also installed Dad's new flat screen TV and we loaded the old big screen into our truck. We got into the hot tub that night and we were enjoying the hot water when Tim and I decided it would be quite the rush to jump off the bridge into the river! It took about 20 minutes of pep talk, motivation, and stupidity to get ready, but we made up our minds and went for it! We both took a couple steps back, ran, and jumped off the bridge into the river! That water was... COLD! But as we came out gasping for breath, it felt like such a rush! It was amazing... So amazing, in fact, that we decided to do it again! We should have stopped at one plunge because that second one was even more cold. Like as in making your lungs hurt to breathe and giving you a headache. Haha. Here's a couple of pictures:

Sunday morning, we got ready for church and took our truck with the big TV down to Jackson. So another topic that came up in the hot tub was about some of our memories growing up on the ranch and we started talking about how cool it would be for Tay and Amber to see a beaver dam getting blown up with dynamite. I remembered that Dad had said that Grandpa had mentioned having a beaver dam backing up the river and wanting to blow it up... So obviously I had to try to make it happen! So Dad and I sat down behind Grandpa and I said, as manner of factly and as loud as possible, "HEY, DAD, DIDN'T GRANDPA WANT TO BLOW UP A BEAVER DAM? WE SHOULD DO IT THIS WEEKEND SINCE I'M UP HERE TO HELP..." Grandpa turned around and it couldn't have been more perfect. "You know, Scott, we could try to get rid of that beaver dam after Church. We just need to find the fuses." A sly grin crossed my face and I immediately started praying for those fuses to become found! I couldn't wait to get back up to the ranch. But first... we had to dump that TV! We took it to the dumpsters and found 3 gophers living fat and happy inside on the trash. That was weird. So we figured they better have a big screen TV to watch with the buffet!

Back up at the ranch, we changed our clothes, loaded up the picnic basket, and picked up Grandpa and Grandma. We also found... the fuses!!! Oh man... it was like Christmas had come early. Like we'd won the lottery. Like we had a whole stick of dynamite and were about to blow up a beaver dam!!! We had an awesome picnic out in the forest next to a stream with hamburgers, fruit, jello, and all the trimmings. It was great. We even had a boat race down the stream. Only one of the boats made it all the way, but it was a blast. And then, it was time... It took a couple tries to get the fuse to light, but when it did, it was like pure magic: