Hot summer days

The swimming pool and slip-n-slide were broke out for the second time this summer. Once the kids got used to the idea that it was ok to be cold they had so much fun splashing and playing in the cold, cold water!

Happy Independence Day

I hope everyone had a great day. I love the 4th of July and everything patriotic. I know it stems from the brief stint I had in Russia. Realizing that not everyone enjoys the freedoms that we do (even though Russia isn't communist anymore, many people were still greatly limited because of communism...if that makes sense) made me love this country even more. Even with all the issues we have here, we are pretty darn lucky to live in this wonderful, promised land.

So, to celebrate, Brent and I decided to host our first back yard barbecue. It was fun to plan it and carry out a fun evening of activities.

The set up and food

On the menu: Ribs, corn on the cob, rolls, potato salad, macaroni salad, crab salad, chips, watermelon, and hot dogs. For dessert we had cupcakes and a berry trifle (angel food cake, pudding, cool whip, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries). I think everyone got plenty to eat. We have such nice family that we only provided the ribs, corn, and dessert. Don't you like the nice patriotic decorations? We thought they were fun.

The entertainment

After dinner we just hung out for a while. Some people played cowboy golf and the kids ran around having a great time. I think the hit of the evening was the snaps. Each kid had their own box and we still needed more! So fun. The temperature was perfect for an evening of visiting.

The real entertainment

When it started getting dark we moved the party to the front yard and set up for the fireworks. We started out with sparklers for the kids. They weren't sure about them at first but quickly warmed up to the idea of holding something that is on fire in their tiny little hands. We lit some of the smaller fireworks that we bought and enjoyed all the fireworks that people were lighting off. If you've never been to Evanston for the 4th, you need to come at least once. It is impossible to describe the amount of fireworks being lit off across the town. It was so loud around us that we had to almost yell to hear each other. Crazy.
We watched the city's show and then decided to light one more of our big ones off. Something went horribly wrong and it tipped over. We're talking one of the ones that shoots them high in the air and then they explode. The canister tipped over and started shooting them all over. All over like straight at our house and bushes...and the neighbors bushes and cars. It was a little intense for a minute waiting for the destruction. Luckily nothing caught on fire or exploded. Braxton caught one of the sparks in the head and it singed his hair. After that we all decided that the party was over. Yikes! I haven't been so scared for a long time.
Corbin isn't a big fan of all the noise. He was so tired and fell asleep shortly after everything was over. My niece Jenna, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of the fireworks (she will be one in 10 days). She was wide awake just mesmerized by all the colors and sounds.
So besides the small mishap with the fireworks it was a great evening. We only wish that our party could have been bigger so we could invite all the people that we wanted. Maybe one day our house will be big enough for that...and we'll have enough tables and chairs!
Happy 4th of July!

PS. it is 11:45 and the fireworks are still going strong outside. I think it is going to be a long night.

Cute boys

If you would like to see some cute pictures of my cute boys, click on over to Allie Hoopes' blog. She took their pictures Wednesday night and has them all done for me!

*She just dropped off the CD for me to see all the pictures. Here are a few of our favorites.*

Exciting news!

Ok, so its exciting for us anyway.

First, it is now almost 9:00pm and both my boys have been sleeping for the past hour. Why is this exciting you may ask? For the past two or three nights Bridger has been awake until at least 11:00, sometimes midnight. We decided that he is done napping. If he has any sort of a nap he is up all night. My mom and Angie were darlings today and kept him awake all afternoon. He was out in sleepy land by the time we got to town (from my parent's house) and hasn't woken up since. I love it. The long days are worth every bit of going to bed early.

Second, I went to the doctor today. Everything looked good and he told me that my due date is actually pushed back a week. Since I will be having a scheduled c-section I knew that I'd go a week earlier. Pushing the due date back a week worked into our schedule a lot better. Well, Brent's schedule. Mine is pretty open at this point. So the 7th of October is the day that this little girl will be gracing us with her presence (that is if everything goes as planned). It is exciting to know the date and begin to make plans.

That is our exciting news for the day. Sorry to disappoint you, if you were expecting some sort of fun announcement.

The great outdoors

Checking out the pine cones

mmmm...smores

just being cute

getting the fire started

just playing

We decided to drive up to the Uintas and have a little cookout this evening. It was such a pretty day. The only drawback was the mosquitos. They were everywhere because of all the rain we've had lately. A little bug spray (and a sweatshirt for me) did the trick. Corbin thought it was hilarious when we would swat them. The boys loved being in the mountains. We walked down to the river to throw some rocks before and after dinner. What a perfect ending to such a beautiful day.

Summer time

The lilacs bloomed about two weeks ago. They were absolutely beautiful.
I picked some and put them in a vase so I could enjoy them inside and out!
The boys thought they were pretty nice too.

I'm not so sure Corbin was having much fun sharing the rocking horse, but what can you do?

Yesterday was such a nice day. Bridger decided it was time to brush up on his batting skills.

Look at him watch the ball all the way to the bat!

We went on a trip

I would say vacation, but that implies that we relaxed, ate too much, laughed, swam, and had a blast. Well, we laughed, swam (a little), and had a generally good time.

Let me explain. We headed out on Tuesday morning for what was to be a fun little 4 day adventure to Jackson, Yellowstone, and Cody. Brent had a doctors appointment so we decided to make it fun. Little did we know what was in store. I should have known it would be an adventure when Corbin woke up Sunday night throwing up...

I'll let the pictures do the talking (and yes, there are a lot, and yes, I did only post a few of them).

Exploring Jackson

After the doctors appointment we grabbed lunch at this little gem of a sub shop. It is delicious. If you're in Jackson, find it and eat there. You'll be glad you did.

We thought the boys (when I say boys, I really mean Bridger because Corbin didn't really care what we did) would have fun riding the stage coach. I know it is so touristy...but what can you do? We were on vacation at this point.

pulling up to the station

Mom and Corbin riding in style.

Bridger and Dad riding in style.

Bridger loved this arch and what is a vacation to Jackson without this shot?

Lets just say Bridger was a fan of most of the statues they had standing around the shops.

We stopped in the town square to let the boys run for a little bit. Bridger found a squirrel and they played peek-a-boo for a while.

Waiting for the squirrel to pop up.

Corbin showing off his walking skills. He's getting pretty good at it.

Another fascination that Bridger had was this big foot statue. He loved the thing. So naturally, we took a picture.

Bar J
This is where the fun really began.

We walked along the paths with these little statues depicting different scenes from the area.

Bridger thought this bear was pretty neat.

Waiting for the show to begin.
What was the fun you might ask? Here is how our night at the Bar J went. I felt a little queasy while we waited in line to get our seats, waited for dinner to start, and stood in line for our food. I got Corbin situated with his dinner and looked at mine for about two minutes. That is when I decided I needed some fresh air. As soon as I got into the fresh air I knew I needed a bathroom, fast! I barely made it into the first stall before I threw up more than I remember throwing up in a really long time. I thought I would be fine for a while. Wrong. As soon as I took a sip of water and Sprite, I had to rush to the bathrooms again. I went in a final time to try watching the show. After about two songs I knew I better just stay out side. I gathered up my stuff, handed a sleeping Corbin off to Brent and said, when you're done, meet me outside. I'm sick. Bridger was loving the show so I didn't think there would be a problem. Two minutes later I hear a screaming Bridger and knew we were headed back to the hotel. He had somehow locked his legs around the bench and face planted on the cement floor. Oh, did I mention that through all of this we're sitting on the very. front. row? It was lovely. We got back to the car and I emptied my stomach once more before heading home for the night. Mixed in there somewhere (I can't remember where), Corbin also threw up a little, but not enough for it to be horrific.

This is the scene when we got back to the hotel.
Yeah, we were having the time of our lives!

Corbin and I threw up through the night and Brent felt queasy. When I woke up in the morning I surprisingly felt pretty good. Bridger had been so excited to go see the animals that I couldn't give up and head home. I told Brent that we could make it to Cody and see how we feel.
Corbin then began to throw up again. I quickly called his doctor in Evanston and she called in a prescription to Jackson. That little pill saved our lives...or our sanity! While we were at Smiths waiting to get the prescription filled Corbin proceeded to throw up all over. Brent even got to wash his clothes out in the bathroom. It was awesome. We took the magic pill and headed on our way.
This was quickly turning into a trip and not a vacation!

Yellowstone

If you click on the picture you can see a small dot. That, my friends is a wolf. It was chasing a herd of elk. Outside of any national park. Awesome.

Bridger has entered the "I must look silly in most pictures" phase. Its fun!

Snow banks like these greeted us as we entered the park.
Things were not looking up for us! We packed shorts.

We saw lots of buffalo.

The fish weren't out yet. Bridger liked the bridge.

As we drove over Sylvan pass the ice on the lake made us a little nervous. We were hoping that Cody didn't still have snow.

As we left the park Brent was saying how he was a little disappointed that we didn't see a bear. Literally the next corner we came around there were cars pulled off the side of the road looking at what? A Bear!! We were all very excited to see our first bear in the wild. It was a baby grizzly just scrounging for some food.
Seeing it made up for the semi-crappy day we'd had.
The day also included eating our picnic lunch in the car because it was raining.
I was really beginning to doubt my decision to continue on with our "vacation".
The plus side is that Corbin was getting some much needed rest. He slept most of the day.

Cody
Luckily by the time we got to Cody we were all feeling a little bit better. We checked into our motel, ate some dinner, and drove around looking at the town. It is beautiful. We found this little minature golf course and thought it would be fun.

Bridger had so much fun. After every ball went in the hole he would say "just call me Tiger Woods" or if it was our ball "just call you Tiger Woods". It was funny.

Corbin was content for the first 9 holes and then he had had enough. He wanted to get in on the action.

Bridger giving Brent some pointers.

While we were eating dinner Brent and Bridger had the following conversation: "Dad, why does that guy have a pirate thing on his eye?" (talking about the man sitting not 10 feet away with a patch on his eye). "His eye is sore and it makes it feel better" Bridger: "Oh, what's wrong with his eye?" Brent: "I don't know, just eat your dinner". Awesome.

We got up Thursday morning feeling pretty darn good. No one had thrown up and we got some much needed rest. We headed over to the Buffalo Bill historical museum. I don't remember the official name. It is gorgeous. We skimmed it and took 2 hours.

Bridger practicing his horse riding skills.

I think this picture is mandatory.
After we had our history dose, we headed back for more fun in the park.
We were feeling so good that we even got some snacks out of the cooler to try.

Yellowstone: Part 2

Yellowstone lake was looking gorgeous as we drove around it.

Once again, Brent was wishing he could see more bears. I told him to be content that he saw one. And then...we pulled up to see two bears out in the meadow. For some reason the picture of both of them didn't work. Oh well. There was a grizzly bear and a black bear. When they are side by side it isn't too hard to tell them apart. Pretty darn cool!

Brent got out to get closer and Bridger was wondering why I wouldn't let him get out. Call me a protective mother, but when there isn't much separating my child from a full size bear, he's staying in the car!

The weather cleared up for a little bit and we were able to have a picnic. This little campground was perfect. Far enough off the road to feel like the woods, and right by the river. The boys were loving being outside.

It is kind of hard to see but there were a bunch of buffalo in this area. There were also a bunch of people. The people thought that since they were on a path that the buffalo were not a hazard. Seriously, people were within feet of the buffalo. We thought they were crazy, took the picture, and kept driving.

Pretty cool picture. It hasn't been touched. Nice work, Brent!

This is how exciting Bridger thought the falls were!
We would have explored more of the falls but we only had one stroller. We bought a second one for times like this (both boys sleeping, not wanting to walk, etc.) but didn't realize it was zip tied. Do you think we had a pair of scissors or clippers handy when we needed them? Nope! So our little falls excursion was cut short. It hurt both our backs to carry Corbin very far. He's getting big!

We made our way to Old Faithful only to learn that it was another hour before it was expected to go off again. It was about 5 pm at this point and we still had a 2 1/2 hour drive before getting back to Jackson. We decided to just take some pctures, grab some ice cream and head out. We were all tired by this point. The boys were holding up amazingly well, I might add.

This is the final picture we have of our happy times! Approximately one minute after I took this Brent looked down at Corbin and he was covered in throw up. No really, covered. All over the front of him, inside his jacket, pooled in the stroller. It was lovely. He had made no sound, hadn't cried or anything. Good thing Brent decided to look down so we noticed before we headed into the store. We quickly changed his clothes, threw the stroller away and got back on the road. Well, not before Bridger got a little ice cream. Poor kid, that is all he wanted at Old Faithful!

So we were done. I just wanted to eat some dinner and go to bed.
Bye Bye Yellowstone. It felt like it took forever to get out of there. Brent and I both mentioned that it felt like we were trapped there and couldn't get out (you know, all the windy roads and slow speed limits).

This is the view that greeted us as we came around Jackson Lake.
It is kind of how we were all feeling too!
Luckily Corbin wasn't sick the rest of the night, but we cut our Friday short when Bridger complained that his tummy hurt.

Whew! If you made it this far you are a champ. I'm tired just writing it all down. The whole trip wasn't horrible. We just laugh about it now...and we did as it was happening. I guess everyone has to have those experiences as a parent, right?! The most stressful part was hoping that the boys were ok and praying they didn't lose their lunch (or breakfast, or dinner) in the car.

Maybe next year we'll try "vacationing" in Yellowstone, not just driving through as fast as we can!

Just for the record
We saw the following animals:
wolf
elk x alot
moose x 2 or 3
buffalo x alot
bear x 3
deer x a couple
antelope x alot
geese