Family Time

One of the best things about visiting home is a whole lotta family time! Here's Sam's sister Janelle with her ukulele and Elle. I wasn't able to get equal amounts of pictures of everyone, so let it be known that I'm apologizing now!

Click on the collage to see it closer.

Mary and Tony

(Sam's Mom and her hubby/ our dad in law, and Grandpa!)

The girls singing... so pretty!

You might want to pause the playlist to the right so you can hear...

Mom and Dad

The kids with mom's famous shakes!

Betsy and Bryant (my brother and sis-in law) and Mom and Dad

The cousins! Bryant and Betsy's kids Brooklynn, Breanne and Ben

Some time with Grandma Jeanne, Sam's Grandma.

Sam's Bro-Andy, and his Dad, Dave ..(caught off guard; oops!)

Thanks everybody! We loved seeing you all!

Berry World

One of our favorite things to do when we're home is go huckleberry picking. You have to go up pretty high to find any and the day we went there was road construction. We had to sit and wait 20-30 minutes while the trucks made their way down the narrow lakeside road. Here's Dad and the kids.

Elle passing the time throwing rocks

We finally made it all the way up the hill! Isn't it beautiful?!

Watch out for stained fingers when picking huckleberries! If you don't want to pick them yourself they go for about 35 to 50 dollars a gallon in town!

Some of Sam's family were in town visiting from Oregon and came along for the picking adventure. From left top; Sam, Aunt Michelle, Janelle-sam's sis, Audrey Aunt Theresa, Uncle Jay, Elle, and Reese Dad being Dad..... cute!

Not only do we get to pick huckleberries, there's a forest of raspberries in Mom and Dad's yard; fenced in so the deer won't eat them all. I absolutely love raspberries and I love going home where I can pick a large bowl full in ten minutes... They're so expensive here in the store that I rarely bother buying them.

I think the kid's rule was two in the mouth, one in the bowl..

This is for all of you who think I was born with a pair of heels on my feet...

My traditional raspberry picking garb; I thought the socks were a nice touch.

Yay for vacation!

Photo Op

Well, we're finally back from Idaho! The kids have been gone a total of three weeks and we're happy to be home together in our own beds... I'll be working furiously to catch my life up to speed and the blog too, so more to come from the trip, but for now, I thought I'd share some pictures we took Saturday morning.
Enjoy!

click on the collages to view larger...

P.S. I've been asked about the necklaces so I'm including their story.. My Dad made one for each of the girls in the family, including me! He carved them and stained them, we think of them as camp Livingston necklaces!

Woo hoo!

I really meant to get a headboard on our bed for the last ten years... but somehow it just never happened. So when I saw the very one I've been wanting for such a long time in the weekend adds, I was up bright and early monday morning; and off to get my bed. Sam seemed to be unavailable for the building process, so Audrey and I decided to tackle the job and get the big boxes out of the house. At least that was the goal. The level is purely for Sam's piece of mind and convincing him that I was careful and competent... I was, I think. Audrey wanted me to pose with the drill so "Daddy could see what a good job the girls were doing!"

Hooray! I'm off to sleep in it!

Independence Day!

We started off the day at a park in West Yellowstone. Here, Elle is playing on what I think is one of my all-time favorite endangered species of the park world. They're the best toys ever! Sam decided to give them a try and our friend Liesl reminded us,

"you know those things aren't indestructible."

No, the person in the background was not there with us, Audrey is just too cute to not use the picture...

Later that night we went to Island Park to watch the boat parade and fireworks. I have to say that I was so impressed with it there, it's the first place ever to really remind me of home back in Coeurd'Alene. The boat parade was so cute, people would go by with the boats all decked out with music playing and lights on them. Here's a video of Elle dancing along.. it was too cute she gets a little embarrassed after her near disaster at the end.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get this video rotated upright, I shot it with my camera turned long-ways but it's still cute.

This picture was funny to me because Audrey is a good head and a half taller than Navy but she stooped down and Navy went up on her tippies to be more alike. Silly girls.

For the fireworks, we were sitting literally 25 yards from the person lighting them, behind the kids you can see in the far right corner something that looks like a fence, (solid light yellow) that was the rows and rows of fireworks. It was so fun to have them going off right above our heads. Sam said they were even better because there was "an element of danger",

and he calls me the pyro..


Here's a video of the grand finale, it was crazy, and yes, you can hear me screaming and hooting like a crazy woman, too bad you couldn't hear Sam right next to me laughing his head off. It really was crazy that they were shooting them off so close to everyone and right above the trees. The best kind of fun is the kind you find unexpectedly. Hope everyone had a great 4th!

The Cabin

We decided to go to Yellowstone for the fourth of July this year. We went with one of our favorite families, the Hoopes. Our good friends Liesl and Travis and their four kids shared this cabin in Island Park, (Just outside of West Yellowstone) . We had so much fun, thanks guys!

I might choose different deck chairs, but our cabin was great! There was plenty of room, everyone had a bed, no sleeping bags required! Woo hoo! It was so peaceful there and we loved the views!

This is pretty funny, my kids were a little creeped out by this deer at first.



Part of the crew; Elle, Audrey, our friend's daughters Navy and Sidnee and Reese. There were also two little toddler boys not pictured, Conner and Clay.

This is a blurry picture but I didn't often take pictures of Travis and Liesl, here we are during one of our nightly pig-out sessions, good times.

The cabin was just right up the hill from Henry's Lake, which is supposed to have legendary fishing...(so we've heard), we fished in the middle of the day with a bunch of noisy kids, and surprise surprise, we didn't get one bite. It was still fun though!



Down at Henry's Lake

Reese and Sidnee are best little buddies. They found a small snail down at the lake and brought it back to the cabin to "take care of". His name was Luigi Slugbug Fredrickson. They loved coming down every morning to see where he'd climbed out and scooted off to. It was fun while it lasted but he had to be set free the morning we left. They were so cute with it.

Amazing Yellowstone!

Wow.

This was just off the side of the road, it was in the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone.

There is a reason that Yellowstone was made into a National Park and is World-Famous, I've decided. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking! For living in the Northwest my entire life, I can't believe I haven't gone to see it before now! We had an amazing time exploring; there was just so much to see. Some day, we'd love to stay for at least two weeks to try and chip the tip of the ice berg in this park. For anyone who hasn't been to Yellowstone, I really encourage you to get yourself there! The animals were amazing too and the kids loved learning about all the natural wonders there were to see.

Some of the hot pots.

The yellow color is from natural bacteria, they call it the bacteria fields.


This amazing fall was just a quick hike to the side of one of the hot pot sights. There was no special marking to indicate the amazing view that was ahead, we simply decided to take the kids up the 1 mile trail thinking it wouldn't be too bad of a walk. This is why we want to take much more time to explore, there are countless hikes like this. It truly is amazing there!

click on to the collages to see the pictures closer