Alice's Almost Birthday

We decided to have Alice's birthday a tad early this year so we could celebrate with our Iowa friends. So, instead of the 25th, her birthday was on the 9th.


She woke up to presents. A house with little people from us.


And a train set from Myra.



Here's Alice, making sure there's no way Myra will be able to touch her new toys.


We invited 4 of Alice's favorite friends and their families over for dinner and some water fun. We had a fish/beach themed party.


Unfortunately, our landlord cut the grass right before the party and it had rained earlier in the day so everything was covered in wet grass clippings.


It was very hard to get group photo, but we did it! Isaiah is hiding behind his twin brother Elijah up on the slide. Jacob is to the left of Alice and Liam to the right.



We had the slide going into the pool and also bought some sand and spread it on a tarp for some sand castle fun. When the kids got tired of that (in other words, when they started fighting over toys), we turned on the wacky sprinkler (a snake like sprinkler that wiggles and squirts water every which way). They absolutely had a blast with that. After the sprinkler became old news, we had a water toy exchange. There's nothing better than everyone getting to open a present!




As people were getting ready to head out, a huge cloud started moving in. Everyone hurried to get packed up and only one family got stuck in the downpour.



Afterwards, Alice enjoyed some jello. To go along with the theme, I'd put some of the food in sand buckets, with shovels as serving spoons, including some blue jello or 'water.'

Third Destination - Bozeman, MT

By this leg of the trip, finding both of the girls zonked out in the back was a common sight.


This is the start of the nature trail that I have heard so much about over the years. It is close to the house where Bruce grew up and runs along a little river--he spent a lot of time here exploring, fishing, etc.


Here is Polly's entry in the Sweet Pea poster contest (part of the Bozeman Sweet Pea Festival). There were about 40 entries, and Polly's was by far the best (ok, we're probably a little biased). She received an Honorable Mention.


We went on a little hike up to a waterfall at Pallisades, near Bozeman. Alice and I ran the whole way down, with Alice screaming, faster, faster, every time I slowed down a little to get around the hairpin turns. She had her arms and legs out wide and was really enjoying herself.


Alice's first S'more.


Group photo of everyone.


GramME and siblings (Mark, Polly, Heather, Bruce, and Jill) by age.

Second Destination - Arlee, MT

Here's the house we stayed at--the Heartview Center. Very beautiful, with a u-pick raspberry patch across the way and an indoor pool to enjoy.


The biggest event during our stay in Arlee was the presentation of the quilt. Here are the grandchildren gathering in preparation for the big event.


Here is Polly, carrying the quilt in.


Here is everyone around the quilt that we surprised GramME with. Each family member made a square based on a family memory or story. It was presented as a belated 70th birthday gift.

This is Myra with her very first hairdo.

First Destination - Glacier National Park

This is the log cabin where we all stayed. There were dogs and horses to play with and also a trampoline. When we asked Alice at the end of the trip what her favorite part had been, she said it was playing with the dogs.


There wasn't a tub in the house, but Myra & Alice had fun in the sink.

We spent a lot of time throwing rocks into Lake McDonald at Glacier. It was almost impossible to keep rocks out of Myra's mouth so we gave up and washed off a few big ones for her to chew on.


We were surprised Alice wanted to get in the water, but I guess what scared her at the beach were the waves, which a lake doesn't have much of.


Go Myra!


The whole purpose of the trip to Glacier was for the trek up to the Sperry Chalet, which sits on top of a mountain. Part of the family hiked up (I'm told the hike is similar in length and difficulty to hiking Timp) and spent the night at the chalet, then hiked down the next morning. Bruce was the representitive for our family.

Uncle Eric got it into his head that to bond as a family, one must eat grasshoppers together. Well, the cousins caught the grasshoppers, Eric roasted them, and I think most of the boy cousins ate them. Even David did, having earlier that day turned down chocolate pudding because of his picky food preferences. Go figure. The grasshoppers were dipped in honey before being eaten and there was also a side of huckleberries, if one preferred.


Alice saw the other kids doing it and did take a grasshopper and touched it to her tongue. I thought that was very brave of her, having not even wanted to touch one myself.


Our very favorite meal of the whole trip was the breakfast buffet at the Lake McDonald Lodge. Very scruptious, and as you can see from this picture, we were sitting nowhere near our two children for most of the time.

Driving to Montana

Here we are at the world's biggest buffalo on our trip through North Dakota. At this stop we also saw real buffalo, including an albino buffalo.


We also saw the world's biggest prairie chicken in North Dakota as well as the world's biggest cow and world's biggest sandhill crane. I guess North Dakota needs something to attract tourists!

Pre-Trip

Here are some pictures I never got to post before we left on our trip.



Here's Myra standing up in her crib for the first time.



Alice and Myra found a way to share the car. They like to be pulled around, but lately, Alice has taken to sitting on the roof, since it is a little crowded.

Twins!

I do have to write one more thing before I head to bed--I just want to say how happy I am for my best friend Holly who is expecting twin girls (due 12/25). I think I'm almost as excited as if I were having them myself (though thankfully, I'm not!).

Montana and Back

There's so much to say about this trip that I don't know where to start. The girls were troopers, despite 7 long days in the car. I have to be completely honest and say that for me, the trip was more like a trial to endure rather than a vacation. Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed spending time with family (especially seeing Alice interact with her cousins) and I loved getting to tour Bruce's old haunts in Bozeman and see some new national parks (Glacier & Yellowstone), but the kids were just reeling from all the new places and people--they were not themselves and it was hard work taking care of them in an ever-changing environment. I look forward to future reunions when they are a little older!

The most memorable parts of the trip were on the way home though (maybe partly because they are freshest in my mind). After leaving Bozeman on Saturday, we spent the day in Yellowstone. As we were heading out of the park for our hotel in Cody, WY, we were stopped by a buffalo crossing the road. Now, when we entered the park, we received a leaflet specifically telling us not to approach buffaloes. There had been incidents of visitors being gored by 2,000 lb buffaloes. The leaflet also pointed out that buffaloes can run 30 miles per hour--3 times faster than humans can run. We were in the car, so I wasn't too worried, but as we watched the buffalo cross the road, we realized that there were two tourists with their backs to the buffalo looking at a sign. The buffalo was getting pretty close so Bruce yelled towards them that hey, there was a buffalo. Man, the look on the woman's face when she turned around and saw it! Priceless! They attempted to hide behind the sign, which was really funny too.


After we got out of the park and were on the mountain pass to get to Cody, we started seeing these signs about a forest fire up ahead. We were getting a little worried, especially when we turned a corner and the whole mountain was covered in flames! In some areas it was so close that the grass right by the road was burning. There were police vehicles and a fire engine at different points, and they hadn't closed the road yet, so we felt safe enough but it was a little eerie. Twice, we thought we were past the fire, but then we'd turn a corner and there would be another hill on fire.

We spent the night in Cody and also attended sacrament meeting there. Our next stop--Mt. Rushmore! About an hour outside of Rapid City, where we would be staying for the night, our car started making this funny noise. We stopped at a rest stop to just check it out. The check engine light wasn't on or any of the other warning lights and our feeble attempt at looking under the hood (since neither of us knows much about cars) was fruitless. We were 40 minutes from the nearest town and didn't feel like it was reasonable to get a car that was still running towed 40 miles because of a noise, so we pretended it was bad gas (though I think we both knew it was probably something worse) and kept on driving. We drove another half hour before the car made this horrible noise and died on us. Of course, we were in one of those pockets of nothingness and our phone (that we got before the trip specifically for emergencies) had no service. We were fairly close to an exit that had one gas station (and nothing else) so Bruce started walking while I stayed in the car with the girls. He was picked up almost immediately and given a ride to the gas station. Turns out that because of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the tow trucks were tied up towing motorcycles so it would be another 2-4 hours before they could get to us. The people in the gas station were really friendly and were having a discussion about what Bruce could do. Another guy came up and offered to tow our car using his pick-up truck. Bruce got a ride back with him and we all agreed that the best option would be to tow the car to the next town (instead of the one gas station exit), which was 12 miles away. I was a bit concerned about being in the vehicle that was being towed, but there wasn't enough room in the cab for all of us and carseats, and Bruce had to be in the car to steer, so we just all stayed. The guy said he'd go 50 and it would be fine. Let me just tell you, that had to be the scariest car experience I've ever had. He went at least 65 the whole time and even passed someone!!! This wasn't a tow truck--this was a guy's pickup truck and we were tied to a short rope!!!! Bruce had his foot hovering over the break the whole time, ready to break when the guy did so we wouldn't ram right into him. We made it though and he left us in the parking lot of a grocery store that was next to a Days Inn in Spearfish, SD.

The people at the Days Inn were super nice and because of our situation, helped us call around to some inexpensive motels to see if they could find anything cheaper for us. Almost everything was full, and really, how would we have gotten to another motel anyway? Because of the biker rally, there were only two rooms left at the Days Inn, the cheapest being a smoking room for $170 (the manager cut us a deal--it would have been more). That night there was a hailstorm. We were thankful that our car broke down when and where it did, even though it didn't seem ideal to begin with. Better than in the middle of a forest fire or a hailstorm.

The next morning we called and got our car towed to a mechanic (one of two in the town). It did not take him long to call back and tell us our car was toast--a piston rod had broken through the engine block. After we found that out (we kind of figured anyway, but had to give it a try) it was crunch time. Checkout was at 11am and we had to find someone who would take our car off of our hands and also a way to get back home before having to pay for another night at the hotel. To make a long story short, we sold our car for $50 for salvage (we were just thankful we didn't have to pay someone to dispose of it!) and Bruce took a taxi to the airport in Rapid City to pick up a rental car and then came back to get us. Days Inn did let us stay in the room until 12:30, which was very nice of them but we did have to spend about 45 minutes in the lobby. I was really surprised at how few rental businesses do one-way rentals. I called every place in the book and only a few places would even consider it and only one company would do one-way to Cedar Rapids (Iowa City was out of the question, I found out really quickly). Since we'd spent most of the day getting organized and also factoring in the two hours it would take to pick up our car at home and make a trip to the Cedar Rapids airport to drop off the rental, we sadly realized that our dream of seeing Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands would have to be postponed for another trip *sigh.* But, alas, not to frett! The infamous Wall Drugstore had a replica that was almost like being there!


Well, there's definitely more to our vacation than our trip home, so I will post more later. For those who are wondering when or if we are ever moving to Cincinnati, we have been told that an official start date will definitely be solidified by tomorrow. It will most likely be August 25th, which means we'll probably pack up and move sometime around the 18th. Below is a picture of the house we'll be renting in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky.