Random Cuteness

I downloaded a month's worth of accumulated photos from my camera today and I just can't decide which ones to include on my blog. So for Grandmas and Grandpas sake - here are ALL my favorites!

Hudson loves to open and close things: drawers, doors... anything that can pinch his fingers. He seems to have good depth perception and doesn't try to crawl out onto the deck when SOMEONE leaves the sliding door open (Kaylee!).

He likes to mimic my facial expressions and if somebody coughs, he copies it. It always takes me a while to figure out who is really coughing and who is faking. Now that Kaylee knows Hudson will copy her, I think most often they're both faking!

Hudson is still a sweetie pie, but has been more fussy and clingy lately. I think it's probrably teething. He's always sucking on his hands. He also loves food. He wants anything and everything we're having, and he's pretty good at asserting himself! He gets the biggest laughs when he takes the bowl and shoves his face into it.

G&G K were here for a week or so. The kids really took to them.

Kaylee cracks me up on a daily basis.

I recently had to go in and give her bangs a trim. I wanted to let them go naturally, but she'd never let me clip her hair. Or if she did, it wouldn't stay in long before she'd pull them out. I got tired of her looking down her nose at me because of the hair in her eyes.

Kaylee surprised me the other day with drawing faces for the first time. I think that's some sort of developmental stage. She also recognizes letters in some of her scribbles. The other day she showed me a "C" she had drawn. I don't think she intended to, but it was neat that she saw it afterward.

If Kaylee "asks" for something and we say no to her, she'll either say "I say yes!" or "Mommy, you be naughty!" Like I said, she cracks me up every day.

It's nice to be able to spend a lot of time outside these days.

Love them g-diapers!See ya later...

That's all the random cuteness I have for today.

Our Trip to Yellowstone - Day 5

Our second day in Yellowstone park was greeted with sunny blue skies. The temperature started out cool but then grew to a sweltering, nearly 70 degrees! For me, that's warm enough. I'm a cold weather girl!

Here's the Madison river with some elk and bison in the background.

This day we drove up to Mammoth, with a couple stops on the way, and then back down again with a stop at Norris. It was lucky that we did the loop around Canyon the day before because the snowfall was enough to close the road the next day.

A little stop at a spring whose name I don't recall brought us face to face with some buffalo. The kids stayed in the car this time. Hudson was napping and Kaylee was way into her Blues Clues. Also, I didn't want my kids so near these big guys with nothing between them and us!

See? This is the boardwalk. Nothing to stop them if they get upset at you.

I did not edit the picture below. I snapped this picture real quick and got back to the car. I didn't like the way he was lookin at me!

Gibbon Falls:

Roaring Mountain:

In Mammoth:

It was very cold and windy here. In about a half hour it starts to get really warm. The weather there is CRAZY!

At Norris:

This is Emerald Spring... so beautiful.

Steamboat Geyser

I love this sign too.Look really closely at the picture. See the man on the left running for his life? I don't expect too many people look closely enough to notice it. I thought it was hilarious!

Steamboat Geyser erupts infrequently, but it's a lot bigger than Old Faithful. Wouldn't it be neat to be there when it erupted? I'm guessing that picture above may have been taken on the date below:

Kaylee was wiped out by the time we got to Norris. As soon as we put her in the stroller she curled up on her side (with George of course) and went to sleep.

When I see the picture below I can smell the sulfur.

It was hard to get a picture of those guys. One second it'd be clear and the next moment we'd be enveloped by steam. I used to gag at that smell, but now I LOVE IT! It reminds me of my favorite getaway that has relaxing geothermal heated pools. There was a crisp wind blowing here at Norris. One moment it'd be cold and the next moment it'd be all warm and sulfury. That mineral mist is so good for your skin!

One of my biggest questions that I still have to research is how in the world did they lay down all the infrastructure throughout the park? How many people were injured or killed in this land with such a thin crust everywhere? Looking out over this valley of geysers and hotsprings I have to wonder - who had to go out and lay down this boardwalk? How did they figure out the best and safest way to go? Anyone know?? It'd be interesting to read up on that.

On the way back "home" I spotted two of these guys along the roadside. After much confusion and debate we have concluded that they are not wolves, but coyotes. I happened to catch a special on PBS about Yellowstone the other night. They showed the coyotes and then the wolves and that cleared it up really easily for me.

Basically after this we went back and used the pool facilities again. We packed up in the morning and took a wrong turn in Ennis, MT. We passed through an authentic old west town called Virginia City and went a very back way into Butte. It probrably put an extra hour on our time, but it was a neat drive. I really like the rocks around Butte and we got to see them up close and personal!

Back in Coeur d'Alene we stayed one more night at our timeshare and then drove home the next day. Hudson woke us up early that morning and we just decided to get up and get it over with. We got home around 1 pm safe and sound, thankful to have all the rest of that day to relax before life started up again the next day.

Pool Time in West Yellowstone

I thought I would share a few cute pictures of our kids enjoying the kid pool at the condo.

It's nice that it has a fenced in area with only one gate. There's a much larger pool for older kids and adults as well as two hot tubs.

I snapped a few pictures of the common room - just because I liked it so much.

I wish I had time to sit by the fire and read a book. Maybe next time.

Our Trip to Yellowstone - Day 4

Sorry it's taken so long. Now I'll finally share some of our pictures from the park! We woke the morning of our first day in Yellowstone to see snow coming down. Snow doesn't happen much in the NW, so we get excited whenever it snows.

We got into the park and were almost immediately in a bison traffic jam. We were able to get through it rather quickly because they were blocking the opposing traffic more than our lane. (The bison were traveling towards and past us, whereas the opposing traffic was trying to weave around them as best they could). As we drove by, I felt sorry for the people in the long line of cars - many of whom couldn't even see ahead to where the bison were. I think we caught up with that herd on the way home because we got into the same sort of traffic jam. It took forever to get through!
I like to take pictures of funny signs. This one is a common one around the park. I thought the mom pointing and screaming was funny, but I couldn't believe the dad would just walk away. According to Jeff, the dad was walking away because he TOLD the boy not to go out there! Men! :)

This day we drove south to Old Faithful then made a big loop around to West Thumb, Canyon, Norris, then back to Madison where we turned back to West Yellowstone. The Old Faithful area has a lot of construction going on. There are lots more shops and eating places here than I remember as a kid. We walked the long way around and eventually found the lodge - came in through the back door - said "ooh" and "ahh" then left the front door and found the temporary visitors center to find out when she was scheduled to go off. Luckily we only had to wait about 30 minutes. So we watched a little movie about Yellowstone and then went out to the geyser.

It was a pretty cold day. We had snow, rain, sunshine, and clouds... a little bit of everything.

Kaylee can hardly contain her excitement as the steam starts to build and the "fountain" is about to start.

There she is! I learned they have a web cam and you can go online to watch it live from anywhere! If I had known - and if we had our cell phone with us - I'd have called our family and friends and had them look it up so we could wave to them from there.

On the way to West Thumb it started to snow pretty hard. I snapped this picture of some pelicans out the car window. They had just opened the road from West Thumb to Canyon.

Now our kids were tired and napping. When we got to Canyon (our favorite place I think), we took turns walking down to the vistas. It's just what you gotta do when you have little ones. It was snowing pretty hard at the time I took this picture:

Jeff took this gorgeous picture of the canyon:

One of the many elk we saw. We never saw any bulls though... that was strange. Maybe they only come along during rutting season.

Our kids had enough of the car by then, so we headed back to the condo so we could have dinner and spend some time in the pool. Sure enough we got stuck on the way back. Those bison are such road hogs.

Oh, look at the little babies!

Happy Mother's Day you beautiful buffalo, you!