A New Boy Scout

Levi is just begining his trail to An Eagle Scout.
Here he is all decked out for his first night of scouts.
He has gotten a good start all ready. We just completed the cycling merit badge this week and he is working on his personal fittness.
Here We Go!



Kate can hardly wait for her turn to be a scout.
She just needs her uniform.
Two more months and she will be able to go to Faith In God. She can hardly wait.

Family Vacation 2010

Logan & Spencer got home from Idaho Sunday afternoon and Monday morning the 9th we packed up and headed to South Dakota. We had a great time and got to see a ton of sights on the way. Our fist stop was Custer's Last Stand that is only about an hour from Laurel and we spent close to two hours there. It was the first stop of the trip and I forgot to take some pictures.



Here is the gang all packed up to go. We loaded the van with all our sleeping gear and food and drink to last for next 3 days. We were packed to the hilt.



We arrived at the first tourist sight just before closing. The park ranger was very helpful and got us lined out for the next few days. We got loaded up on all the brochures and information. We were able to book an 8:30am tour to go through Jewel Cave, the next morning. So we set out to find us a place to camp for the night we ended up being only 7 miles outside of Custer.




Here are the boys trying to make us some roasting sticks to roast mellows.



Here we are packing up camp after a good night sleep.



Kate & Levi trying to get out of cleaning up camp.



Here we are having breakfast before we head out on our tour. Hopefully you can't see the Mountain Dew box in the background.
We did have something a little more healthier.
Costco poppy seed muffins. Yum! Our favorite!



We had about an hour to kill before our tour so we drove into Custer and bought some ice and took advantage of the Flinstone sign. It was a little amusement park but it was so early in the morning the town was all asleep.





Jewel Cave is the second longest cave in the world and it is still growing they are still discovering it. We enjoyed the tour and got to see many formation. Mike took lots of photos of them but I don't want to bore you with them all.







Our next stop was at Crazy Horse Monument. I had never heard of it until my parents went there last year. It was amazing!
It is the world's largest carving in progress.









Mt. Rushmore was a little disappointing after seeing Crazy Horse. It is only a 1/4 of the size. But it was still beautiful and we can say that we have been.



We have never seen so many motorcylces EVER! We would have to pick the week the bikers come from all over the United States to go to Sturgis South Dakota.
Here are some of the bikers stacked up in the parking lot at Mt. Rushmore.
As we were leaving Mt. Rushmore and heading for Mammoth Hot Springs we decided just for fun to count how many bikers we saw. In a 30 minute time period we counted over 630 motorcycles and only 16 cars. These were just the ones on the road. Crazy!



It was a little drive to the Hot Springs and this is what happened to the group.








The Mammoth site of Hot Springs is an indoor working paleiontological site/museum more than 58 Columbian and Wooly mammoths have been unearthed.



After leaving the Hot Springs and heading towards Devils Tower we came across a buffalo jump site. The boys had fun exloring this area and stretching there legs.



We never made it to Devils Tower we ran out of day light. So we found this campground and built a big fire and the kids got to roast hot dogs and we cut up the watermelon we had been paking for 2 days. Everything always tastes better camping. It was the best watermelon yet this season.



Here a few photos of us camping.






There was so much to see and do but we were ready to come home so we got up the next morning and headed for home. We had a great trip and it was so fun to see some more of this beautiful and unique world that we live in.

The boys new "Toy"

We suprized Logan & Spencer with a new truck when they returned back to Montana. I came across this truck when riding my bike home from the library. The guy was asking 1,000 or best offer we walked away with it for $600. It is the perfect truck for them to get to and from school. They are loving it and look pretty good in it.



We can't decide on a name for it yet. Zippy or Yoda are what seem to be sticking so far. We shall see and hope that it at least gets us through the year.

Yellostone River Fun!

Spencer came back to Montana for a week for football camp. So he wouldn't be bored we packed a lunch and took our poles down to the Yellowstone River. There is a fishing access less than 2 miles from our apartment so we took off.

Spencer had a few bites and the two littliest ones got bored and thought that playing in the water looked more fun. So they abandoned fishing and went to swimming.


Levi found a log that had been washed a shore and some old rope. They had fun pulling each other up and down stream.



They had so much fun the first day that we went back again.
This time Kate brought her gold fish net. Her and Levi were going to catch some minnows. They did and brought about 20 of them home and put them in our fish bowl we got at a garage sale. Suprisinly it has been over a week and they are still alive.

Beartooth Mountain Pass

Saturday July 31 in the afternoon we decided to go for a drive we had heard about this Beartooth Mountain Highway out of Red Lodge so we jumped in the van a took off. It was beautiful! The road has a lot of switch backs and we got up there in elevation. Over 11,000 feet! We saw snow! We were trying to get to a patch of it. They have what they call watermelon snow. It is purplish pink snow that is suppose to be sweat to the taste but we never found any that looked good enough to eat.
Here are some pictures of our afternoon. I hope you enjoy the pictures. We sure enjoyed our day.

Floating the Dry Bed

Mikes parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary July 22. The only thing they wanted was to have their family together and attend a temple session. It was a beautiful day and they had the majority of their family with them over 30 of us was there. Following temple we had our traditional Foster chicken fry. Later that evening the boys decided they wanted to go floating. It was late by the time I dropped them off it was 8pm as you will be able to tell from the photos the water was cold!!!!