Other June Happenings

Alyse and Lexi had friends over to make cupcakes for one of their friend's birthdays and played games all afternoon.

I made tie dye shirts with the Mia Maids and Laurels for mutual then Alyse, Lexi, I went out to ice cream with a group of Young Women after mutual and saw a beautiful summer sunset.

Alaina and Audrey switched bedrooms, which was a big project.  Audrey had a rough time getting use to her new room and bed and didn't sleep well for a few days.  Alaina and Layla are loving their new beds and being roommates.  Scott captured this one night of Alaina reading aloud Harry Potter to Layla :)

 Audrey, upside down in bed, but finally asleep in her new bed!

 Practically every night for the last few years, Landon has sat on Daddy's back during family prayer.  This time, 3 girls tried to take his spot :)

Landon playing Legos :)

Scott took the littles to the park after work while Alaina, Layla, and I painted ledge shelves for their room

And other than a major renovation in the living room and making new beds and rearranging bedrooms (final reveal to come), that was June!!

Tree Planting

Scott got 4 trees for Father's Day, but they didn't come with planting service!  When I got home from Youth Conference, we got started on planting since they were needing a home after waiting a week for the lines to get marked in the back yard.

Landon and Audrey were great 'helpers' and other than when I had to say when the trees were straight, I was tired enough to lay down on the cement :)

Youth Conference and Fire Station Open House

We were home for 2 crazy days from Yellowstone in which I worked on projects and shopped for a meal and a snack for 280 people and Alyse taught her music lessons and then Alyse and I were off to Youth Conference, a mini trek in Chesterfield, Idaho. (Shopping for that many was quite a feat!  It included 20 watermelons, which was 2 carts full, and a lady at Win Co actually came up to our carts to get out a watermelon and couldn't believe they were actually ours :)  Fitting 20 watermelons, 14 cases of Powerades and all the rest of the groceries for taco salad into my van was fun too!)

It was a ton of prep, and I'll admit, crawling into bed the night before at midnight, I told Scott that I didn't think it would all be worth it, knowing all that I put into it and a glimpse of what so many other leaders put into it to make it happen.  I was dead wrong though!  It was awesome!  It was worth it!

Our ward off on the 3.5 mile mini trek

(we only had 2 young men from our ward attend, but they faithfully pulled that hand cart the whole way, never slowing a step, pulling in to camp still full of energy!)

One of our Young Women has knee problems and was hurting, so we finally convince her to ride!

After lunch, the youth were divided into groups and rotated through different stations which included kick ball, line dancing, a water relay, a listening obstacle course, waffle ball, and team building activities.  Our ward was over snack time in the middle of that.  We cut up a lot of watermelon!

After dinner, we had an awesome fireside and then ward quiet time where we made yummy scones and then told pioneer stories around the fireside.

The next day, after taking down camp and breakfast, we trekked the 3.5 miles back to Chesterfield.  This time we had our Bishop with us to help us pull the cart and our 2 faithful young men who still full of energy!  IT was definitely modern day trekking with a Popsicle stop!

 After arriving in Chesterfield, all the youth got to work on a service project and our ward served a taco salad lunch then we headed for home.  It was a wonderful youth conference!

Lexi babysat for me all day Friday and got to take the rest of them to a primary activity and stay and help at the fishing booth.  They had a good day and then Scott came home and BBQ'd with them and rented the Good Dinosaur for a movie night :) and Saturday took them to the fire station open house then came home and practiced fire drills.  They are awesome!

Bear & Wolf World at West Yellowstone

The next day we spent at Bear & Wolf World in West Yellowstone with Aunt Carla and Uncle Cliff.  We was a cool place and we got to see shows about the bear chasing dogs, watch the bears eat, see Eagles and other birds, see wolves, and learn about living in 'bear country'.

 

When in got hotter in the afternoon, we left to go swim!  It was definately more fun this time for Alyse, Audrey, and I :) 

I taped up Audrey's little finger with lots of tape over the band aids and she kept her finger out of the water, but she was running on the side of pool (after I told her not too!) and fell and scrapped up her ham. She snuggled with Aunt Carla and looked at Carla's pictures for the rest of the time and told Lexi, through sob tears, that she would 'never run again by the pool!'

After swimming, we went back to Bear World and explored the rest of it and watched Sam, their biggest grizzly, who stands at 10', eat.

We BBQ'd for dinner back at the hotel, played at the playground until mosquitoes came out, then snuggled up and watched the new Cinderella in our pjs :)

 The next day was moving day again as we loaded everything back up!

 Thanks Carla and Cliff for sharing your nice timeshare with us; it was awesome!

Audrey snuggles her teddy bear "Patty" on the way home :)

 We got home, unloaded and I went to work on building two head boards :)

The girls played Monopoly

and when Daddy got home from work we gave him his favorite poke cake and his Father's Day cards since we were away on the Father's Day... better late than never :)

Father's Day & Yellowstone National Park

We spent Father's Day exploring part of Yellowstone National Park.  I had been to Yellowstone as a kid, and remember seeing Old Faithful erupt and some of the scenery and wildlife, but I didn't remember all the other awesome things to see there.  So it was amazing to me to see the other geysers and waterfalls!  The park is huge and we only had a day together there, but we tried to cover all  the south west side and then the waterfalls on the north east side.

 

A herd of bison were right by the road on each side!  We also saw a few deer and the waterfalls.

We had a fun picnic lunch in the forest and continued on exploring until little Audrey fell, just a few feet away from getting back in the van.  She was carrying a big stick, tripped, sliding forward on her tummy and hands and where her fingers were wrapped around the stick, it smashed her ring finger between the stick and the cement as she slid forward, taking most of fingernail off and peeling skin off at the tip as well.  POOR THING!!!   After we got it cleaned and bandaged we decided to call it a day and stopped at a little general store in the park where to get her some ibuprofen and I got her some ice cream too... it helped distract her from the pain and worked as an ice pack!   She calmed down as she ate her ice cream and then fell asleep for the rest of the drive back to the hotel and awoke much calmer with the ibuprofen kicked in.  At bedtime, when I changed the band-aids and she looked at it, she said, "Cool!"  Lexi then said, "I guess she could be a doctor or a nurse!"  This picture was taken the next day.

After dinner we had to tell Scott good bye and he left for home :(  then Aunt Carla and I took the kids swimming.  However, shortly after getting in the pool, Alyse got a noise bleed which wouldn't stop so Alyse, Audrey, and I ended up back in the motel room keeping ice cubes in Alyse's mouth and impatiently waiting for it to stop for nearly an hour! Then I went back to get the rest of the kids out, who had been having a lot of fun at least!

ice blocking & popsicles :)

Ice blocking with friends!

That evening, my sister Carla and her husband, Cliff, stopped by for a quick visit and dinner while passing through Pocatello on their way to Yellowstone.  They had plans to go to Yellowstone with a family from Cliff's side, but due to a funeral they were delayed 4 days, and so we spontaneously decided to join them!  Then we went ice blocking as we had planned, had a blast, then Scott ran to get some groceries for the trip while the kids and I packed then we loaded up and left at 8:50 p.m..  We had to drive separately because Scott had to leave Sunday evening to be at work Monday morning and the kids and I stayed till Tuesday.  We got to the hotel in West Yellowstone late :)