Miss Madelyn

My beautiful baby girl turned five years old this month. She is always keeping me on my toes. When my granma asks how babys doing, Madd always says "I not a baby no more!" She'll always be my baby though! =)

Shootin Practice and Turkey Shoot

Last week we did a bit of practice shooting with the 22's. The boys were pretty excited and Ethan didn't do too bad at hitting targets. All of this practicing was in prep for the turkey shoot last Saturday. My boys did awesome! All three won a turkey! If you could have won a turkey for hitting targets in each round, Ethan would have come home with 5 more turkeys!! After you won a turkey, then each round you hit a target(s) you got to put your name in for a drawing. The girls and I met the guys down there and Haylee and I decidied to give it try. I won a ham on my first shot! I was so happy that Haylee wanted to shoot! I realized though, that she needs my dad to give her a few pointers for left handers! Maddie was in line for a turn, but she decided she didn't want to try it. I am really excited for next years turkey shoot already! I am sooooo proud of my boys! They were pretty proud of themselves too! =)

"I Promise To Be Good"

We took the kids to the old Idaho Penitentiary last week. I wasn't sure at first whether I wanted to actually take them through there, but I am glad we did. The kids loved taking the tour! It was kinda neat being able to see what the inside of a prison was like. This one had a 'tattoo parlor' that showed a lot of their 'artwork'.

There were over 13,000 inmates in the 100 years that it was open. 13,000 inmates is probably nothing compared to the numbers now days! What I found interesting was that kids were actually put in prison back then too. The youngest of the inmates was a 10 year old for killing a man and an 11 year old(who spent 9 yrs there) for shooting his mother!

Solitary Confinement~~

Hayden was pretending he was holding this gun! lol

The Gallows~~In 100 years, there were 10 men that were hung.

As we were walking out of one of the cell blocks, Ethan says "I want to be good from now on so I won't ever have to live here!" He's a very smart little man! :)

I'm Back!!!

During conference week, the kids and I went with Dan on a business trip to the Del Monte seed plant in Idaho Falls, Id. The kids thought it was pretty cool to see where our bean and pea seeds go and how they process them. After our tour, I had to laugh a bit because it ended up being an 11 hour road trip for a 45 minute tour! I really do love road trips with the family. Everyone is all together in one spot talking, laughing and just having fun!

On the way home, we decided to take one extra day for ourselves. We stopped at the Craters of the Moon. The kids loved it! They were so interested in the whole area. It really was interesting to see. It started to get dark on us so we didn't go into the last two tunnels. especially since we didn't have a very good flashlight!

We got to Inferno Cinder Cone (which is the picture below) and decided to climb to the top. It doesn't look like it would be much of a climb, but the point that looks like it is the top, is only the half way point and is a steep climb! I did however learn one very important lesson this day, which is NEVER forget your inhaler in the car when you decide to climb a hill in the cold!

It was really neat on the top! You could see all the cones below and around the park. Our car looked like a little speck down below! There was one lone tree on top that was covered in frost and a bit of snow. It was a gorgeous view!

I think the coolest part and the kids most favorite, was the lava tubes and tunnels!

When it was time to leave, the kids asked if they could come back some day. Absolutely!! :)

New Post Coming Soon

Sorry it has been sooo long since I've last posted. I had my camera taken from the park when we took the kids to play. I was just devasted because there were so many special pictures on it from a family wedding, Hayden's birthday, birth of my nephew, kids first day of school, our family camping vacation, our trip to the zoo with friends plus many more pictures from our summer. Sooooo on a better note, I will get a new post up here in a few days. We've had a great October!

Camping at Ohanapecosh

Last week I drove over to Ocean Shores to spend a few days with my mom and dad. We had pretty good weather and it didn't rain! Dan and the kids met me at Ohanapecosh to do some camping. I was very excited, because last year Dan didn't get to join us on our August vacation after wheat harvest and this year he would! Dan had picked out a great spot!

We took the kids up to Paradise to get a closer look at Mt Rainier. It was beautiful there. The boys and I walked up one of the trails. On the way back to the pickup the kids leaned over the rock wall to look down into the valley. I got my camera out to take a picture of them and then realized that Maggie, our dog, had joined them on the wall! I love the picture. I think it is by far, my favorite.

The kids spent a majority of their time riding their bikes around the loops. Haylee had become quite the little pro in just a matter of a few days without training wheels. I was pretty excited for her. One time I heard a WHOA and looked over to find Hayden had forgot to use his brakes and hit a downed tree head on and flew off his bike. He hopped back up and says oops! Ethan had apparently ran his bike into a tree on another side of the loop, we didn't witness that one, but Hayden had to tell us all about it. We never go without a story of some sort from that kid! lol

We wanted to walk up the trail to Silver Falls, but 'No dogs' are allowed on the trails. We found ourselves pretty limited on what we could do since we had our family dog with us. I really wanted to hike up to the falls, so we went, with Maggie in tow. Technically, she was not "on" the trails. I decided my backpack would make a good dog carrier. lol. We definitely won't be able to do that next year unless we bring a body size duffel bag for her! lol. She just looked too cute sitting back there. She got a lot of attention from all of the passersby who had to stop and pet and talk baby talk to her. She LOVED it!

The weather was gorgeous. It was 87 degrees! We took the kids down to the river a few times to swim and cool off. The kids were so proud of themselves for crossing the river to the other side. The ranger (from Rhode Island) had told us there were no fish in that river and the day before the kids had found a small one in the river where they were swimming. They said "look a big tadpole" and Dan said "that's not a tadpole, that's a fish."

We had a great time! The kids love camping. It was a great way to end our summer before school starts. I still can't believe that summer vacation is almost over and the kids will be back in school already!