Yellowstone/Island Park 2009

Well we do the yellowstone trip every year and this year was no different. We had a good time. We went with my mom and dad and my sister Halley and her daughter Brenna. We had to "rough it" this year though and sleep in a tent. It was the only year too where we had major rain storms and lightening and thunderstorms. There was a night or two that got pretty scary but we survived. It is nice to have the experience of tenting it with the boys too. We did one day of Yellowstone and saw a black bear and cub and a wolf among other things. We did a day of driving and went to Cave Falls which is the southern part of yellowstone that we have never been through. You actually get through it at the bottom and it is not connected to the major roads through yellowstone. It was nice to see something different that we have never seen before. It has the widest waterfall in Yellowstone. We also took a day and did a drive up by Quake Lake in Montana. That was a pretty place too. It was a nice week to spend time with the family and get away from the every day worries. We may actually do something different next year but we'll see.

AMERICAN IDOL CONCERT

So thanks to my brother David and his wife Alyssa, me and Chelton were able to go to the American Idol concert last week. We had pretty good seats too. I have been a big Kris Allen fan from the beginning of the season and was pretty excited about it. I left my camera in the car and so at intermission I ran out to the car to get it. Then my memory card was full so I had to try to hurry and erase pics on my camera. Then my battery was not charged so I would only get a few seconds of video and my camera would die on me. That plus the fact that I am not very great with the camera and had a hard time focusing in make these videos not the greatest but I got a few that I will post here. I thought all the idols were really good but Kris Allen really took the show. I will definitely go see him again if he comes to town. If next season is as good as this year I might have to make Chelton go again with me.

AMERICAN IDOL PICS

7-year-old Mario Birthday Party

So it has been over a month but I thought I would post Garrett's 7th birthday party. He wanted to have a Mario Party. (He never picks anything easy). We started the party with an obstacle course where the kids had to crab soccer a big ball, go across a Bowser balance beam, make a shot in the Mario hoops and then do the Daisy hula hoop three times and cross the finish line. We timed each of the kids. After that we had a mario baseball throw. We had cut out pictures of different mario characters and taped them on blocks of wood and they were each worth different points. They had to stand behind the line and throw bean bags and add up the points. After that we played a balloon game. I blew up balloons and stuck pictures of four different mario characters. We played three rounds and each round they had to choose a balloon and pop it. They got certain points depending on what character was in their balloon. After each game the kids got a yoshi egg (green plastic easter eggs) filled with plastic coins (just like the coins you collect on the video games). If you won one of the mini-games you got an extra egg. All the eggs had different amount of coins in them. After all the mini-games were played the kids got to pick a prize. The one with the most coins got to pick and so on so all the kids got a prize. After that we did a Bom-omb pinata and then we had a Mario cake (made by my talented husband) and opened presents. It was real fun for the kids and Garrett loved his Mario Party.

Garrett and the Green Lizards

Well Garrett played baseball this year with the Green Lizards. This is the first year he has played coach pitch and he loved it. He was really good at it too. He was definitely more focused this year and enjoyed everything about the game. His strong points are his hitting and he is a fast runner. He loves to hit the ball. He plans on keeping with it. We may have a baseball player on our hands.

Connor's first year of T-ball

Well Connor played T-ball for the first time this year. He played on the team of the blue dragons. He actually didn't like it very much at all......he was so excited to do something because he watches Garrett do all the sports but when the games came he never wanted to go. He got real bored and only really got excited to see what the treat was. Maybe he was too young. We signed him up for soccer next fall so we will have to see how it goes. He sure did look cute out there anyway.