We decided last minute to spend the 4th of July in Coeur d’alene this year!  Believe it or not when we asked the kids if they wanted to go they didn’t jump at the chance.  They love our neighborhood 4th of July pancake breakfast/parade and our cul de sac fireworks so much that they almost didn’t want to go.  We finally convinced them but only by promising to leave after the breakfast.  Then a neighbor found out my kids were going to miss the fireworks and several of them offered to join us in shooting off our fireworks early!  So the kids ended up getting the best of both worlds.

On our second day in Yellowstone we covered the southern portion of the park-ie, fewer animal sightings and way more geysers and hot pots.

We gave Reagan a trip to Yellowstone when he turned 16.  He didn’t get to take that trip in October because we didn’t want to deal with Yellowstone in the snow.  Instead we took him the day school got out.  Turns out it was perfect weather and perfect timing as far as the crowds go.  Here’s the story.

Our first day in the park it took almost three hours to get to Madison, a drive that should  have taken 15 minutes.  We started to doubt that Yellowstone was ever NOT crowded when we finally came upon the cause of the traffic.  It was not a traffic jam at all but a Buffalo Jam!!!

Rock has been wanting to remodel our bathroom for years, but I usually prefer to spend money updating stuff everyone else can see and use.  I finally decided to go along with his idea and we recently had our master bathroom remodeled.  It was quite the experience and not really an easy one.  We hired a contractor, but not a designer so we had to pick all the tile, faucets, grout, cabinets etc. etc. etc. Talk about overwhelming!  Some people love this kind of thing, but apparently I’m not one of them. Too much second guessing and way too many options to choose from.  But I learned a LOT about myself in the process and overall, we are thrilled with the result!  Here are the before and afters….

Well, here it is Spring Break and I’m finally blogging about Christmas.  So much for Tis the Season….

So here it is, Super Bowl Sunday and I am finally sitting down to blog about December and Christmas.  I could care less about the game and have never actually seen a super bowl in my life, but my kids have decided it’s cool to watch it.  So we made popcorn and cookies and they are all in the basement pretending they know what’s going on and…bonding.  While I blog.

This school year has been a year of firsts for Cade (and for me).  He has found a great group of friends, boys and girls, and they are always doing stuff together.  They read the Book of Mormon together in 24 hours, they go the temple together and hang out together whenever they can.  Oh, and text each other constantly.  I am now beginning to see why parents want their kids to have a license.  I’m always driving him somewhere!  Cade really wanted to have a kick off to Christmas party so on December 1st we had all his friends over.  He planned it all; food, white elephant gift exchange and Elf the movie.  It was pretty weird, I gotta say, having 15 loud teenagers in my house.  That was a first for us.  But it was fun to see him with his friends and to know he is fitting in and happy.  And according to Cade’s friends, his mom is “so great” and has “awesome hair”.  So that’s good.  Always nice to have the approval of one’s child’s friends.

Along with being super social this year, Cade has joined wrestling.  He has really enjoyed wrestling, however I have not. I just can’t watch my child being twisted, headlocked and bent in all kinds of wrong directions and then thrown to the mat from off someone’s shoulders.  It’s too painful for me to watch.  Soccer, baseball, flag football I can do.  I will leave the contact sports to their dad to watch.  Cade is really growing me up as a mom.  All these firsts.  Another first this year: attending a sporting event to watch your son, sitting by girls who have also come to watch said son.  I used to be that girl, going to sporting events of the boys I liked.  I can’t possibly be this old.

Also back in early December we got some amazing snow.  It’s the only good snow storm we’ve had this winter.  We usually get dry powdery snow that is wonderful for skiing but terrible for snowmen.  Not this time.  The kids made the biggest snowmen EVER!

We had my nephews over for the day on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Levi planned a whole day of festivities for the boys.  It was a hoot to see him running a full on Turkey Day Camp.  The day’s activities included a Turkey Hunt outside, a Turkey craft inside and other turkey themed games he made up.  My nephews and Liberty, who was also part of the fun, had a blast.