Kyler's Chuck E Cheese Birthday Party

Kyler had a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese this past weekend. It is his favorite place I think. The boys had so much fun running around and climbing on the slide and through the tunnels. Kyler received tons of super hero figurines. He is so funny - he plays with them all of the time - and when he's not playing with them, he is looking to see what others he can talk his Cici into getting for him....

LR Zoo!

Jayden, Kyler and Evan took a little weekend vacation from their parents. They got to stay with their cousins, Morgan and Madison Saturday night. They also got to go to church with them on Sunday. Phillip and I picked them up after church and we all went to the LR Zoo. It was a great zoo day - not too hot, and not too cold, so much fun! The boys spent Sunday night with us. We had a great time Monday morning hiking, making cupcakes and playing hide-and-seek before it was time for them to return home.

More Montana

The Yellowstone River was frozen all the way across in this picture near Gardiner, MT. Phillip and I enjoyed snowshoeing in Yellowstone National Park below. We saw a lot of wildlife traveling through the park: Wolves, Elk, Big-Horn Sheep, Ducks, Geese, Coyotes, Bison, and Mule Deer



















It was another great trip out West! We are looking forward to the next time....

Montana - a little bit of heaven on earth.

I thought that I would blog everyday and keep everyone up-to-date on our trip, but I haven't had time. We are having a great time. Lots of snow. We just got to Chico Hot Springs Resort this afternoon and we've already soaked in the hot pool. The last few days have been very busy, but staying at Chico Hot Springs is the relaxing part of our vacation!

The day that we took the snow coach (picture above) was absolutely beautiful. We spotted a pack of 4 wolves (very exciting) on this day. At times we were less than 50 yards from them. In fact we've seen more animals this time than any other trip. I think the only thing we didn't see was a moose. The next day we had a cross-country ski trip planned, but the high was -6 degrees that day with wind chills of -38 degrees. That was a little too cold for us to be out all day, so we took the ride over to Cooke City, wildlife viewing. Today the temperature was much better - its amazing how warm 13 degrees feels after yesterday. We had a beautiful outing on snowshoes.

We have tons of beautiful pictures which we'll post later.

SNOW!

A beautiful day in Montana. We decided to hike the rims this morning in Billings. It snowed last night so there was fresh snow (picture below of me sinking up to my knees in fresh snow). We hiked the rims alot when we lived here. We hiked about 4 miles in the snow which was a pretty good workout.

Phillip had the camera today, so these are pictures of me on our hike on the rims:








After hiking we headed to Red Lodge. Had lunch there and then shopped. After checking into our hotel we took a walk around town. It started sleeting first, then quickly turned to snow. It snowed about 2 inches just while we were eating dinner. We wanted snow and cold weather and it looks like we're getting what we wished for....the low tonight is predicted to be 4 degrees.

Montana!

We made it here with no delays - flying through Denver. Its snowing now and they have had a lot of snow in the past week. Last year there was snow in the higher elevations, but not in the lower elevations. I think we're going to have snow everywhere we go this time. We spent the afternoon hitting all of our favorite spots. Although we've never been to a Famous Dave's restaurant anywhere else that is especially good, the one here is great. Phillip ate so many ribs that he is absolutely miserable. We're resting up tonight to get ready for Red Lodge tomorrow where we'll probably do some snowshoeing. I'll get some pictures tomorrow.