Cooke City 2012

Cooke City.  My favorite place on earth.  I would spend my childhood dreaming about the one week we would get to spend up there each summer.  I would go on and on, but since Hurricane Isaac is breathing down my back I'll just show some pictures.  I really need to just get this Summer trip posted before Isaac hits and we all die and it's too late.

Driving through Yellowstone- we saw a couple of bears.  This is a momma with her cubs.  That's the 2 black dots in the middle.  To get to our parent's cabin, we have to drive through Yellowstone.  I love it.  Some members of my family, I won't mention any names (dad), hate driving through Yellowstone.

Buffalo in the Lamar Valley

Cooke City in a tiny little town nestled in the Beartooth mountains.  Store! You know we are close when you see this.

The kids came home from fishing so excited to show us what they caught!

LOL

Whoa!! I wasn't expecting live fish!!  Well, I guess that's one way to show what you caught to your parents!

Can I just say how fun it was to experience COLD again??  I couldn't wait to have a fire and hot chocolate!!  And wear jeans, and socks!!  I soaked in every minute of coldness.

Talk about good times.

Adaline, Stephanie, and Ashlyn getting ready to ride 4 wheelers

Oh Julia, I love you. So all growing up, when I would shower and wash my hair if I had hair come out I would put it on the shower wall so it wouldn't go down the drain and clog the drain.  It would drive Julia crazy! 

So I took my hair and spelled her name for her.  LOL I know it's kinda gross, but it's kinda funny too.

Hiking- we went out ten minutes and the mosquitoes were so bad we turned around and went right back.

I set up a rope for all the kids to rappel down a cliff.  I thought the teenage boys would like it, and I was right- everyone like it!  Even Gordon went down.  I think he did it just to get away from the mosquitoes.

I think this is Matthew

James

Athena and Nayeli

Notice the mosquito net?  I wish we all had one of those on!

Ellie and Paul at the old miners town,  We took an afternoon to drive up Daisy pass and check out all the old miners houses.  It drizzled the whole time, but nothing to keep the kids from having a great time.

Kyle out in the rain

Gabe chillin in the car with me

Laura and Gordon!!  They were well prepared for the rain and knew just what to do so our picnic lunch would still happen. 

Me with Gabe and Kyle

We drove by some snow- but I didn't get a picture, so I just pointed the camera up and took a picture. 

One of the fun things the kids did was set this trap every day- like ten times a day.  Cause about every couple hours they would catch a squirrel, or a bird or something.  

We decided to feed Gabe for the first time while we were there.  He was 5 months old, and so cute!

The kids had a blast feeding him!

I had to take a picture of how cool my mom has decorated the cabin.  I should have taken so many more pictures!

Battle Creek Falls

Seriously, it is taking me forever to get this trip blogged! It is verging on ridiculous. Anywho..

  One day we took a hike with Darren's side of the family- Nicole, Erica, and Alison.  We decided to hike up Battle Creek falls in Pleasent Grove.  The company was good- but the conditions were not the best. I think going in the middle of the day wasn't the best idea, and we had no husbands to help.  At least it was a short hike and I got to visit with the adults little bit.

The kids had a great time.

My cute kids who ended up getting in a huge fight over this caterpillar.  Paul didn't want everyone touching it so he threw it into the bushes.  Kyle and Ellie kids got really mad and a huge fight followed.   I got so mad at Paul, but the poor kid started crying, "if too many kids touch it, it will die! I was just trying to protect it"  He is still the master negotiator. 

Kyle, Easton, and Ellie

Kyle

Me and Gabe,  too bad you can't see the large area's of sweat from carrying this kid in 100 degree weather.  Or maybe it's all just sweat so you can't tell the difference.  Oh, and yes, I got a haircut. 

Corey and Nicole's cute little one, Lacey

Corey and Nicole's- Sage

These are Alison and James cute kids, Annabelle and Jimmy

Corey and Nicoles- Easton looking super handsome!

  When Nicole picked up her backpack to go home she thought it was a little heavy- Sage had filled it with rocks! LOL

Darren's sister Alison

Corey's wife, Nicole, and their beautiful new little baby Remy- and yes that is her real hair!!

Erica and Mike, holding Gabe.  And in case you haven't heard, they are engaged!!!! Yea, we are soooo excited for them!

Easton and Paul, hiking buddies

Ok, this was too funny.  Lacey would climb up the dirt hill, turn around and slide down.  Then she would do it all over again.  Until she was covered in dirt from head to toe. Oh, aren't kids fun??!!! (the answer is YES)

After the hike we went to Nicoles and hung out. That night was an event by itself.  Some kid grabbed my keys off the table and I spent the evening frantically searching for my parents car keys. I searched for 3 hours!  We couldn't find them, so my dad drove from Provo to bring me a spare.  The next day he had a spare made- it was $100- for a key!! What happened to the days of keys being a dollar?  Give me a break!  Is it coated in 24 caret gold or something?  And to top it off, about 10 min after he had the replacement key made Nicole found the keys in the garage on a chair.   Sorry dad!!! I guess that's how life goes.

The Grapes of Wrath

One thing I miss about Utah is the gardens!  I'm not really sure that people really have gardens here.  I think there are just to many bugs and animals.  One of our friends put some tomato plants on his back porch and RATS chewed through the screen and ate all the tomatoes.  I planted some basil in a small pot and the next day all the leaves were chewed off by insects of some sort.  It makes me miss going out to the garden and picking fresh corn, tomatoes, and peas for dinner.  Raspberries, and peaches are also so good.  We happened to be in Utah in time for the apricots, and zucchini, so I got to have some deliciousness!  

The kids loved picking apricots

I love my parents yard!  We call this part the Garden of Eden.

Check out my parents beautiful back porch

This Grape Arbor is just incredible.  Every year they prune the grapes way back, and every year it fills in beautifully!  There are thousands of grapes just waiting to be put on a bowl of cheerios.  And if you have never had fresh grapes- they are amazing!!  SO much better than store bought. 

YUMMMM!! Too bad they weren't ripe while we were there. 

Spoiled.

One day in Utah, Laura took me and Christina to get pedicures.  As I sat there with my sisters,  getting my toenails painted and back massaged, with Laura taking us out to lunch after, I wondered why I would want to go back to Florida.  It would be so much easier to just have Darren come to Utah! My family spoiled me. 

Step Aerobics

Have you done any step aerobics lately?  I've been pretty diligent about working out since I hit my 6 weeks. I decided I would step it up a notch when the kids went back to school.  So on Monday I went to a step aerobics class, you know, the ones you went to in the 90's? Yea.  Well, the whole time during the class I am thinking, "this is a piece of cake!, what a waste of my time- I need a real workout!"  So immediately after class I went to the treadmill and cranked out a mile- a really fast mile- like under 8 mins.  I had to make up for wasting my time in the step class.  Well, a couple hours later my legs really started to get sore.  By that night I could barely walk up or down my stairs!  Seriously, I had to go up one step then lift my other leg up, then another step, slowly lift my leg up.  Two days later and I can still barely walk. LOL.  I feel like I  ran a marathon!  Who knew step aerobics was such a good work out?  Not me!  So, today I am going to catch up on blogging since I can't really walk. Stay tuned, I hope to finish all our summer activities!  

Adrenaline

So the school nurse just called me and said that Paul had been stung by a bee on his ear!  She said he was doind ok and was not having any sort of allergic reaction, but he wanted to talk to me.  He got on the phone, -hey mom (in a sickly voice)
- hey bud, how you doing?
- oh, well I'm ok, I just have a bunch of adrenaline flowing through me right now and it's making me feel sick
-oh, I think you will be ok.
- I know, love you, bye.

School Starting!!

Is school seriously starting tomorrow?  How can I possibly not be ready for school to start?  I have 6 more posts about my summer vacation, plus an array of cute papers from the kids school work LAST year that I wanted to blog about.  I was GOING to do it all in Utah on my "vacation" in which I got nothing done but complete partying.  Which I don't regret, but now I am totally behind.  I had a whole list of things to get done in my "down time" in Utah.  I was going to blog, go through a bunch of magazines, and take an online photo class.  I think I blogged twice and went through 2 of 40 magazines.  Oh well, maybe I will just have a blog marathon day and stay in my pajamas all day and blog. Sounds fun!