June 2020

With schools closing down in March, the kids didn't get to participate in guest and goodies where they eat donuts and read to a special guest.  It used to be called Dads and Donuts.  So Shane decided to hold his own Dad's and Donuts and made his own homemade yummy donuts.  It was a fun surprise morning for the kids.

I got to get my hair done for the first time in 8 months!  I've never gone that long.  Alicia, who does my hair was having health problems and took some time off and I just kept putting off finding someone else, then Covid hit and everything shut down.  So finally in June Alicia started doing hair again and I don't think I've ever been so excited to get my hair done, it felt like Christmas.  It had grown a ton and happy to get my gray hair covered up.

The Pace's came visit and spent the night at our house.  We had a great time, as always.  We swam, played in the yard, got snow cones and went to a park.  We always have a good time and the kids pick up right where they left off every time.

Being Primary President has certainly gotten a lot easier.  It's been a nice break not always stressing about finding subs, getting names submitted for new callings and everything else that goes on top of that.  I've been coordinating baptisms and as of now, only immediate family and maybe grandparents are allowed, with no songs or talks, the whole focus is on the ordinances.  It's caused quite a bit of angst among families.  However, as a presidency we decided to do a Primary donut drive-by one day.  We picked the day and thought the weather would be fine...only to realize it was the coldest day.  We had wind, rain, sleet and a little snow and it was freezing but it was fun to see all the kids and their parents drive up and and wave to us and get a donut and drink.  I do miss seeing all the kids on Sundays.

We took 2 trips down to Salem to go to the pond there with the Pace's.  Her parents have this fun canoe and it was fun going out in it.  Even more entertaining to watch the 3 girls go out by themselves and try to maneuver the canoe.  They also loved going to Brigitte's parents house and trying to catch one of his goldfish in his stream with a bucket. And Siena actually caught one...they were so excited!!

My ministering sister, Dana Leavitt, who got us into the the Farm also let us get into the butterfly biosphere at Thanksgiving Point.  The girls have wanted to go to that since it opened but I just couldn't justify the money to go look at some butterfly's.  Well it turned out, it was so super fun and the kids were in heaven.  They got to hold butterfly's, they landed on their clothes and there were so many butterfly's everywhere.  A super fun day there.

We celebrated Shane's birthday.  Shane took the kids swimming that morning and then we took the kids to the Edwards and Shane and I got take out from Chili's and ate it in a church parking lot nearby.  It was fun to get some food from a restaurant and it tasted so good.  Then we celebrated with the kids with brownies afterwards.

The girls and their friend Sorena and sister Ashley decided to do a lemonade stand.  They made all the treats at Sorena's, set it up and did the whole thing themselves.  It was great for me and they loved it.  The neighborhood was more then generous and several came by and gave them 10 or 20 dollars and told them to keep the change.  They each ended up making $20 and I took them all to Target that night to buy a toy they wanted.

The girls made grass heads in school before it shut down and have been watering them and keeping them alive for months.  The kept measuring them and finally decided to plant their grass heads at the edge of our grass.  We took pictures so they could find it and see if they continue to grow outside.

Yellowstone

We decided to take the kids to Yellowstone.  I had been wanting to do it for a while but never found the right time.  We literally decided to do it 2 days before we left.  Thanks to Covid, hotels aren't as booked this year because there are no international travelers, and people in general aren't travelling as much.  So we booked a decent priced room and took the kids.

We spent 2 days in the park and seriously had the best time.  The kids were in heaven looking for animals.  The park wasn't crowded, although still plenty of people there but nothing like summers usually are there. 

The first day we did the northern loop.  So hit some spring and hot pots but mostly it was looking for animals and boy did we hit the jackpot.  The first bison we saw the kids had us turn around, they were amazed this huge animal was just sitting there eating grass.  We went all the way out to Lamar Valley.  We stopped and saw a moose in a spotting scope although no one could really tell what it was.  Then we saw a herd of Elk and after watching them for a minute something set them off and they went 'stampeding down the hill like in the Lion King' (the kids words)  We then saw a huge herd of Bison with their babies crossing the street and the kids were in heaven watching them walk along the road right next to us.  Then we stopped and saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree, which I thought was pretty amazing.  We saw a coyote that looked much better fed then any coyote I've ever seen and then saw a mama and baby bear from super far away (they were literally 2 dots and if someone with a spotting scope hadn't told us we would've had no idea.)

The highlight of the day though was as we drove back towards the entrance right past Mammoth Hot springs all the cars came to a stop.  I was driving so I rolled my window down and asked a guy who had parked his car and was walking up towards the way we were going and he said, there is a bear right off the side of the road.  Sure enough right off the side of the road there was this huge bear just walking around.  As we got up closer we got the best video and pictures of it right as it disappeared back into the bushes.  Seriously our timing was incredible to see a bear that close up.  The kids were in heaven.  I couldn't believe we saw a bear that close up and right by our car...and I was happy we were in the car and not walking.

The 2nd day we did the lower loop.  We stopped at lower prismatic springs and as we were walking around, I heard a girl come up to the rangers and tell them that she wanted to report a bear attack.  She was ok but kind of crazy to think about.  She had gotten attacked on the Fairy Falls trail which is the trail we went on next to get to upper pristmatic spring overlook.  Luckily there were a lot of people around so we were safe but I heard later that they closed that trail for a couple days to let the bear clear the area.  On our way down from that hike we got to the very end and there was a bridge with a bison on the other side of the bridge.  The rangers wouldn't let us cross the bridge.  We sat there for about 45 minutes waiting for that bison to move.  The kids were pretty unhappy because it was hot and it was lunch time.  So we sat watching the bison eat his lunch, drink some water from the river and then slowly meandered off and we were finally able to cross and get some lunch.

We saw Old Faithful which was fun for the kids.  We kept telling the kids that it wasn't that big and we would tease them when we saw little small water shoots saying it's just a touch bigger than that.  So when Old Faithful actually went off they were pretty amazed at how big it was and how long it went for.

We then did the drive around the rest, seeing Yellowstone lake, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Yellowstone falls.  Another super fun day.  

We left only disappointed that we didn't see a wolf and a moose.  As we were driving home through Island Park, we were following a car and right in front of that car a mama moose and her baby ran across the highway.  It was perfect timing to see them and we felt like our trip was complete after that point.

Our kids thought Yellowstone was just about the coolest place ever and we had a blast of a trip.  Little do they know that we can never go back because there is no way another trip there will be as good as this one was.