Mesquite

After a night or two at home I loaded up the van with little girls and hit the road again - headed to Mesquite this time to play with cousins and grandma.  Parkinsons, Yorgasons, Easton twins and London created quite a party.

As a Father's Day gift for Greg the girls acted out some of their favorite stories from their parent's childhood.  Here we have Emily sneaking around pretending to be Greg stealing the last slice of applesauce Jello.

And Dahlia dressed as Grandma Nani telling the boys not to blow up Barbies with firecrackers.

It wouldn't be a trip to Grandma's without a glorious tea party complete with: pinapple ice cream, chocolate covered popcorn, root beer floats, vienna sausages, cheese curds, yummy potatoes, lots and lots of lemonade, frozen sugared grapes, donuts with raspberries, twix cookies, milano cookies, cucumber sandwiches...seriously Nani doesn't do anything half way.

Kate spent the week between Yellowstone and Mesquite at London's house and while there London cleaned out her toys and sent a bunch home for Lily and Emily.  Here Lily shows off her new treasure.

Emily, Cecily, and Hazel made themselves comfortable by taking the mattress off the hide-a-way bed and camping on the floor.  They spent hours together in the front room creating a store, laughing, crafting and just enjoying each other's company.  It was so fun to be there with so many cousins.

Hiawatha Trail: Take 1

To take a break from painting the house Grandpa invited Isaac and Mack to fly with him to Coeur d'Alene then drive to the Hiawatha Trail on the boarder of Montana.  It is a 15 mile bike trail down and old railroad line.  As Natali was walking out the door that morning they invited her too.  They had such a blast.  Natali asked a million questions about the plane and flying.  That inspired Grandpa to start figuring out how to get her a pilots license (we will see😳).

 

The bridges and tunnels were so amazing and the scenery gorgeous.  However, the wet tunnels and the speed of the bikes led to lots of mud splattered all over the kids legs and backs.  But all worth it.

Natali couldn't resist taking a picture of the way Grandpa had misspelled Isaac's name on the reservation.  You see where I get it???

Florida

I left home around 6:45 am,  put on my mask at the airport and didn't take it off again (other than eating and drinking) until walked into Spencer's house at about 9:30 pm my time.  Over 12 hours with a mask was a bit weird but I got used to it.  Sadly, because of Covid -19 the rules for Spencer and Keeley going and coming from the hospital were very strange and none of the rest of us could see the baby at all.  Once Keeley left the hospital she couldn't return either.  It was pretty lame.  So they stayed at the hospital as long as possible and I just enjoyed the girls.

We took lots of walks, played games, cleaned, baked, made crowns and super hero headbands and danced.  

I was reminded of how exahusting it can be to care for littles.  I loved it but I'm glad that is not my phase of life any more.  After a few days Keeley came home.  She had some rough moments hearing news about the baby from Spencer and I had one 4:00 am wake up call so I could drive Keeley to the hospital becuse they weren't sure Winston would make it through the night.  She ended up staying through the weekend, even after the crisis past just to hold him a little longer before saying goodbye again.

Unfortunately, my last minute trip to Florida meant that I missed Mack finally getting his drivers license.  Yeah Mack!!!

As I write this Winston is almost 3 months old.  Keeley can now go and come.  He is slowly developing, growing stronger all the time but he still has a long road. What a miracle.

Yellowstone with Easton's

We pulled into the garage from McCall, unpacked and then started packing for Yellowstone.  We left bright and early the next morning.  It was really fun for the kids to meet up with Nani, Randy, Kya, Parkinsons, Beth and her kiddos, and Brad to share this place that we love so much.  

There were lots of animal sightings but for those details you will have to reference Greg's journal.  I remember watching the cousins get excited about waking up early in the morning in order to catch better animal viewing.  They got sucked right into Andrew and Greg's passion.

Much to Natali's pleasure, we stopped at lots of geothermal sites and enjoyed their beauty and mystery inspite of their lack of wildlife.  It rained intermittently the whole first day we were there and we got absolutely soaked walking around the paint pots; minutes later there wasn't a drop of rain.  Our rain coats came in handy but with that much rain we were all pretty drippy getting back into the car.

We took a 6 mile hike with all of us sans Nani and Randy who dropped us off and then drove around to pick us up on at the end of the trail.  The hike was fabulous, although a little too sunny (I carried a burn on the back of my neck for the next full week).  Brad caught a snake.  It bit him and wouldn't let go.  He had to use a stick to pry it off.  Yikes!  The kids were pretty good sports but we were really grateful they had each other to dissipate the whining.  Towards the end of the hike we found this deep crack.  It was amazingly deep.  We dropped large sticks down and listened as they fell and fell and fell.  The kids named it "Nature's Butt Crack". It really was pretty cool.

There were bears on the road not half a mile from where we ended the hike - good thing we were hiking in  such a huge loud group.  We gave the bears plenty of warning.

We all stayed at Greg's favorite hotel in Gardner.  It was a perfect spot.  Nani took the kids to climb on the Yellowstone gate and they also played at multiple playgrounds in town.

One early morning trip to Lamar Valley payed off with a wolf running across the road not far in front of us.  We got to watch it walk around for at least 20 minutes.  So incredible.  Moments like that remind me of how exciting it can be to see animals in the wild.

Returning from that morning drive, my phone went crazy with texts.  Keeley (who had been in the hospital for a week and who they thought was stable) had gone into labor and had baby Winston at 24 weeks along.  We went out for the afternoon but I skipped the evening drive to make phone calls, read, and bathe.  Spencer asked me to come to Florida and help with the girls for a week.  So I started making plans for when I got home from Yellowstone.

Not surprisingly, Brad became the pied piper and had the kids following him around - especially Lily.  She could find him anywhere and was right beside him.  We spent one evening with Brad in our van rocking out to all of our favorite tunes - everyone took turns picking.  It was a simple but fun memory of all of us singing together.  The kids loved all the time talking on walkie talkies, hiking, teasing, and just enjoing beauty together.  We had a simple but special Sacrament Meeting with the Parkinsons and Beth before hitting the road Sunday morning.  I got home and was on an airplane to Florida in less than 12 hours.

School is out- McCall with Wilford’s

Online school was frustrating and everyone was happy when school was offically over.  We headed to McCall and enjoyed the week with the Wilford's.  The pool was closed due to Covid and the lake was really cold but that didn't stop the kids.

We went for a fabulous walk at Ponderosa State Park, played lots of Kubb and Spike Ball, watched movies, and just enjoyed being together and out of our houses.

We went to Pancake House for breakfast but silly Andrew left his retainer on his napkin.  Luckily, he remembered it before we drove all the way back to the condo.  The employees gave us the bag of trash they had just filled, a couple pairs of gloves, a pile of napkins, and an extra garbage sack (I think they had been through this before).  We dug in without much hope but luckily it didn't take Andrew too long to find both of his retainers - Hooray!  Jared concidered helping after seeing the piles of soggy pancakes he decided to just take pictures.