Everybody's workin' for the weekend

Sometimes I love 'em and sometimes I hate 'em. This one was particularly good.
We had a surprise 30th birthday party for my friend Melissa. Well, it was at my house but her husband, Gabe, was the mastermind.
He put together this great video of pictures of her and her friends and family over the years. He did a similar one for my wedding with pictures of Jimmy and I and then added the video of the wedding to the end. I love it! I watch it all the time. So, I am putting an unsolicited advertisement for Gabe right here on my blog....I am sure he will post some of his videos on his blog now that I've put the pressure on. They are so great and they are really professional quality. He's done them for weddings and birthday parties...they are a priceless keepsake to celebrate a milestone.

So...back to the party. We BBQ'd and then we had a famous O'Dell waterfight. They start out fairly innocently with water balloons and squirt guns and end up with buckets, pitchers, hoses and everyone totally drenched. Someone inevitably gets on the roof with a hose. About 1/2 of the drenched people intended to participate....bwhahaha! The measure of fun could definitely be the water that was dripping from the ceiling in my laundry room!

And guess what...I don't have a single picture! I'm sure someone else does so I'm going to try desperately to find some.

I do, however, have pictures from our adventures on Sunday!
My mom took the kids to church on Sunday and Jimmy and I had a leisurely breakfast that consisted of reading our own separate papers (The Boise Weekly for me and American Classifieds for him) and then commenting to one another on something we read. I know we look like two people who have nothing to talk about..or something...but, honestly, I talk to him everyday. However, I don't get to read the newspaper while I eat breakfast...ever! Then we headed over to Joe and Kelsey's to steal a fish from their pond and put it in ours. (Something ate our fish). They were tossing around the idea of going to Crouch for the day so Jimmy and I jumped on the bandwagon.

We plopped our lawn chairs right in the river (the pic on the top right is where our butts were sitting just moments before) My mom calls that "redneck swimming". It was so much fun and so relaxing. The mosquitoes started to come out so we headed into town to look for bug spray but we ended up pulling over at a picnic table alongside the road (right center) and having dinner. There was another little stream so the girls and I played there for a little bit. (Left center and bottom right...I was pointing at a snake)
I love spontaneous adventures and it was really nice to spend time with Joe, Kelsey and Chance. Every time I do something with them (or Warren and Casey) I am reminded how fortunate I am to be friends with my brothers and their wives.