Yellowstone Trip - Day 2

The second day of our trip, we drove west, farther into Idaho.  We stopped in Rexburg and drove around the BYU - Idaho campus.  We also stopped by the temple and took another family picture.  Maya is not looking much happier.  However, the temple was gorgeous.  

We spent most of the day in Bear World.  This is a little amusement park place near Rexburg.  You can drive around and look at all the animals they have, safari style.  We saw elk, goats, bison, deer, and lots of bears.  And a few little baby bears like this guy.

After our safari, the park had several kiddy rides the children enjoyed.  Haley and Maya had fun playing with the other kids.  The other kids were my cousins and my cousins' kids.  I have no idea what that means they are to my kids.  Second cousins?  1st cousins once removed?  I haven't a clue.

Haley with Lizzy and Kiana.  They were buddies the whole trip.

Caleb on the train ride, his favorite.

Maya and me, loving the train.

We also had a lovely picnic lunch and fed ducks.  Then we visited the petting zoo inside Bear World.  Caleb thought it was the best thing yet and wanted to attack each animal.  He smacked a huge sleeping pig and we all thought we were goners.  However the pig only stirred and continued to sleep.  The animals must be used to lots of abuse from over eager toddlers.

Yellowstone Trip - Day 1

We took a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks last week.  It was sort of a reunion with my mom's side of the family, and we had a great time.  We left at 5:30 AM Saturday, June 28th and drove northwest to Ashton, Idaho.  This is where the house was that we stayed in.  It was a beautiful house that slept all 26 of us very well.  It was right on the Henry's Fork of the Snake River and had a huge hot tub, pool table, ping pong table, air hockey table, and outdoor games too.  We arrived at about 4:30 PM on Saturday, making awesome time.  We drove through some beautiful country and the kids were actually in good spirits the whole drive.  On Sunday we stayed around the house, playing inside and outside.  In the late afternoon, we ventured out to Mesa Falls, which is near Ashton.

These are the lower falls.  Quite spectacular.

Here is the whole family at the upper falls.  We got 2 pictures, one where Caleb is completely turned around, and this one where Maya looks less than happy.

A Saturday in the kitchen

This was my first project in the kitchen on Saturday.  A loaf of chocolate chip banana nut bread.  We had it for breakfast today and it was great.  Mike said it was too much chocolate for breakfast.  I said there is no such thing.

I also made strawberry freezer jam.  I am very excited for it because the stuff from the store is truly nasty.  This was the longest project and I made about twice what I thought I would.  Need to get another freezer!

I also made 48 cupcakes for a birthday celebration in young womens on Sunday.  

In non-kitchen news, they are estimating it will cost about $2000 to fix the van.  Thank goodness I only have to pay the $500 deductible.  

Also, on Saturday we took the kids to the park and Haley started learning to ride a bike without training wheels.  She did a pretty good job, but spent most of the afternoon crying and claiming she couldn't do it and yelling at her bike.  She is pretty old to be starting to ride a bike without training wheels, but better late than never.  I think I must have been older when I learned to ride without training wheels too, because I have strong memories of it.  For my parents sake, I hope I spent less time crying and carrying on.  

It was pretty windy, so we also flew a kite.  It was a great day.

Tornado!

Mike took this picture from our back patio yesterday.  The girls and I were still at church.  Mike had taken Caleb home early because he was sick and super crabby.  During class, we were interrupted and told to go to the gym because the tornado sirens were going off.  Now, growing up in Missouri, the tornado sirens went off all the time and we never saw any action near our house.  But, sitting in the church, you could hear the golf ball size hail just slamming into the roof.  Mike called from home and said he saw a funnel cloud (picture).  Poor Maya was freaked out and spend most of the time bawling.  We only sat in the gym for about 10 minutes and then we were told the tornado warning had expired and we could leave or wait out the hail.  I ran out in the hail to get the van and took the girls home.  Maya screamed like I was running back into a burning building.  Man, that hail hurt!  I got the girls home and the storm calmed down after that.  I thought the van was okay, but upon further inspection, I have quite a bit of hail damage.  I am taking the van in on Thursday, we'll see how much this costs to fix.  A tornado did touch down in a mall a mile or so from the church and caused quite a bit of damage.  Mike and I agreed we would much rather call the car insurance company about hail damage than the home insurance company about roof or window damage!  

A first of many

A couple weeks ago, Haley had her end of school year music concert.  All the first graders sang songs about people who work in the school.  Secretaries, principals, nurses, and lunch ladies, hence the food tray.  Caleb made it quite difficult to sit through the whole concert and we ended up leaving during the 5th grade songs.  I didn't feel too bad because I know this will be our first of many music concerts. 

Garden Time!

My sweet husband created this little garden for our family.  He has planted green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, sugar snap peas, watermelon, and peppers.  They were all planted from seed, so it will be awhile before we have any fruit/vegetables.  So, this will be our before picture and hopefully we will have a great after picture come late summer/early fall.  I'm so glad he has taken this project on.  I like to think all things outside the house are his domain.  That is probably why we have no flowers in our pots yet.  He doesn't care about flowers.  

More Maya

Today was Maya's end of the school year preschool picnic.  She was nice enough to pose for a picture with her teacher, who she will have again next year.  I am going to have to find some things for Maya to do this summer, especially since Haley will continue on with year round school.
This was her last field trip, to a fire station.  She wasn't nearly as interested as I was.  I guess it is probably more of a "boy" field trip.  I loved that her school had a field trip every month. 

Here comes summer!    

P.S.  This morning during breakfast, Maya declared, "Mom, you are ruining my life!"  I didn't think I would hear that from her at age 4.