Bloomington Lake and Ollie's Big Jump

 Me and my baby sister Charity at Bloomington Lake

 hiking to the lake

Oliver with cousins Camden and McKay

While it's pretty dry and sage-brush focused on this side of Bear Lake, if you drive around to the other side of the lake to Bloomington (where all my mom's ancestors lived and are buried), there's this gorgeous little gem of a lake tucked into the rugged hills and lush foliage of a totally different little ecosystem over there.  It's become an annual pilgrimage for our family to make the trek to Bloomington Lake each year to enjoy the wildflowers and almost Alp-like beauty.  Plus  there's a great rope swing on a huge tree that lands you in the clear and beautiful (and freezing) water (it's glacier run-off).

This year, Ashton did a bunch of jumps of the rope swing.  Isaac in all his skinniness and propensity to freezingness opted out.  Liza thought about it - for a couple seconds.  Silas wasn't interested.  But Oliver decided he wanted to become the youngest member of the whole Eyre clan to make the jump.  After about 5 false starts (he'd swing out, everyone would yell "let go now!" and he'd swing on back into Jared's arms), Jared offered him a king size Twix to complete the jump and he went for it.  He was SO proud of himself - check out the pictures below.

Check out that little fellow and that cold water with the glacier right there!  The rope is like 30 feet long on this huge old tree

Ahhh... It feels good to accomplish hard things!

 

I asked Oliver what he thought when he hit that water (thinking he'd say something about how COLD it was) and he said "Wew, I went under and I opened my eyes and I thought 'I get a king size Twix!'"  Bribery.  It works.  And sure, he did it partly for the prize, but hopefully he'll remember that great feeling of accomplishment he had a lot longer than he'll remember the Twix.  He's was just so proud of himself and it was great to see all his big cousins congratulate him heartily.  He was on cloud nine.