Idaho Weekend: Friday

We got up at 4:30 on Friday morning to make our 6:30 flight from Portland to Boise. Shaun's mom spent the night so she could take the boys to school and they wouldn't have to miss their Valentine's parties. Wasn't that nice of her?

Andrew picked us up at the airport in Boise. Wasn't that nice of him? We went to breakfast at Goldy's and ran around town doing some errands. We even drove by our old house and saw a mom watching her little girl ride her trike in the front. That was nice. Boise visits always leave me a little melancholy, as I do miss our good times there. It's a great place to live.

In the early afternoon we hit the road to Hailey; our home for the next two nights was to be the birthplace of poet Ezra Pound, courtesy of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, which owns and operates it as an art gallery and cultural center.

I napped very successfully on the drive, though I hated to miss so much of the other-worldly scenery and the good conversation.

We admired our digs (pictures later) had a little rest, and headed out to Outpost. Here it is for real! We are taking a snowy shortcut. The long way was snowy too.

Here's Amanda's tree in the walled garden. She and many helpers made and tied on flowers. She was fortunate enough to find a tree with a bird's nest already in it. Handy.

The leavings from Amanda's plant made of paper became another beautiful piece.

The view looks like a mural, doesn't it?

Cozy.

We spent time indoors and out--a film was projected onto a wall of snow just outside the garden. Fortunately it was a very short film, as none of us had great winter gear. We are city-ish folk.

The tree made quite an impression at night, all lit up. A light breeze fluttered the flowers.

A guest steps in to do bartending duties. Somebody wore the right hat.

It was so nice that we all got to sit together; below you see us and friend Kylee with her friend Mark. Jan made the dinner herself, a pozole so good that we all wanted the recipe. You've got to take your hat off to someone who designs stunning champagne glasses for an occasion and commissions her "glass guy" to make them and then cooks for forty people. Including cupcakes for dessert!

Some of Jan's video pieces were projected onto the corner walls. Below the video you can see a branch that she had cast in bronze. It's lovely.

And, hey, it wouldn't be a dinner party if it didn't end with fireworks!

You'd think it couldn't get any better than that, but after the dinner we retired to night one of the Ezra Pound House Slumber Party. Kylee insisted that we play an "Outburst"-type game which we all ridiculed at first, and of course ended up enjoying completely. At some point Andrew and Shaun worked out some cheating scheme that left us totally flummoxed, and Shaun laughed harder than I have ever seen him laugh in all of the seventeen or so years I have known him. That alone would have been worth the price of a pair of plane tickets to Idaho.