Tooth #2

Yesterday, Zak had to go to the dentist to get his other tooth pulled. His permanent teeth were coming in way behind the baby ones and they weren't pushing them out. So now he has lost two teeth in two days.
Thank heaven he was very brave. He wasn't worried at all about what the dentist might do to him. He sat there and watched TV like nothing was going on.

And the tooth fairy brought two silver dollars for being brave and letting the dentist pull his tooth.

My Big Kid

Last night, after days and days of effort, Zak finally lost his 1st tooth. His permanent ones are coming in so far behind, that they weren't pushing out the baby ones. He is actually scheduled to have both bottom teeth pulled today. Now we just have to have one done!

Yesterday he said that he wasn't a big kid yet because he hadn't lost any teeth. Shortly after he pulled this one, He said "I'm finally a big kid!"

Big Springs & The Waterfall

Yellowstone closed for the winter on Sunday, so on Monday, my parents took us to a few places close to the cabin. The first place that we went to was called Big Spring. It is the spring that is the headwater for the Snake river.

Standing on the bridge, we saw a Muskrat.

The muskrats loved harassingthe ducks. The ducks were beautiful. If you look closely, you can see five fish in the water. The water was so clear that we could see everything in it all the way to the bottom. The spring comes out to the right of this playhouse sized cabin.
Then they took us to a waterfall on the snake river. It was simply breathtaking. Behind Brian you can see Amber and Mom right next to the fall. It gives some perspective to the size of the waterfall. Unfortunately as you can see from the photos, the weather was not real great. We really didn't dare spend too much time for fear our little 2 wheel drive cars wouldn't get us out of the areas we were in, but I'm still glad that we took the time to go see these places. Especially the waterfall.

After the falls, we went back to the cabin to play games by the fireplace and soak in the hot tub. thank heavens for places to get warm!

Yellowstone

We spent last weekend in Island Park and Yellowstone with my parents. We went to Yellowstone 10 years ago, and have tried many times to take the kids back there, but until now we haven't been able to work it out. It is such a beautiful place. The weather was beautiful the two days that we were in Yellowstone, and it snowed the other two days we were there.
Here are a few (quite a few) of my favorite pics.

This one was ruined by a car that pulled in just as I got ready to snap the photo.

This buffalo along with 2 others were only about 30 feet from us!

Riverside Geyser.

Brian has always wanted to see this one erupt and has never been able to until this time.

Morning Glory Pool

Firehole Falls

The kids walking through the steam.

Crater Geyser

These buffalo were only an arms reach out the window of the car.

They were in a large herd.

Science Fair

Amber won 3rd place at the school science fair this year! She ran tests and collected aquatic macroinvertebrates to determine the health of the Weber River. It was exhausting.

Good job Babe.

Halloween--Nearly Forgotten

I almost forgot to post Brian's Halloween costume.

Every year he has to dress up for Red Ribbon week.

This year he chose Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
His students are too young to know who Mr. Burns is...

But he had fun, and that is all that matters!

Happy Halloween

Halloween at our house was lots of fun this year. Costumes were EASY! thank heaven.
Zak recycled a magician costume that we already had!

Les recycled Amber's Hermione costume from last year and was Harry Potter!
Brian made him a pretty cool wand too.

and Amber wore lots of BLING and was movie star! They really were cute together!
this year Brian needed to work, so the kids had to take themselves around the neighborhood. They did a great job and I think they enjoyed not having an adult tell them what to do!

14 Years!

Happy 14th Anniversary Brian!!

Pumpkin Carving

Because my birthday is just 3 days before our anniversary, we usually go to dinner for my birthday and then end up at home carving pumpkins for our anniversary. I know, we're pathetic, what can I say?

This year, all the kids were able to carve their own pumpkins. I think that when they had to clean the ooey-gooey guts out, they wished that they hadn't chosen such large pumpkins. But they had fun creating and learning how to do it all over again.

I'm not sure I like a knife in Zak's hand!

And Les worked really hard and did everything himself! He was very proud of his jack-o-lantern!Carving 5 pumpkins the size of ours really makes a big mess!
Zak's skeleton...

Les's bat...
Brian's pirate....

My cyclops....

And Amber's ....uhh...jack-o-lantern!

Happy Halloween!

(a little late!)

Haunted Dinosaur Park

At our house, we don't really get into the scary part of Halloween. This year, we had an opportunity to go to the Haunted Dinosaur Park in Ogden. I wish that we hadn't gone until dark, but we didn't know what to expect. It wasn't scary at all, but we had fun scarring the kids. Brian and I were able to scare the kids two different times! Always entertaining...right? Really, who would fall for the same trick twice?

SOJH on fire

On Saturday, we got word that Brian's old school had burned down. We had to go take a look and get some pictures.

Brian was very discouraged, although grateful that it wasn't the brand new school.

It is suspected that the fire started because of arson, and he is really concerned that it could turn out to be students that did it.

The damage was almost entirely to the upper floor from what we witnessed and what the news reported.

From what we understand, the school was set to be demolished today, but still a sad way to see it go.

The Wiser Family

My friend Lisi is from Austria, and her parents are here for a visit so she asked me to do some family pictures for her. I was very hesitant. I don't think my picture taking ability is all that good, and I'm definitely not very artistic when I take pictures. But I figured that at least a few should turn out OK, and she claimed that she wasn't looking for perfection, so I agreed.

The first place we went, although very pretty, was not the best place in the evening because they were looking right into the sun and it made them squint.

We ended up at the park. These pictures turned out much better. I wish that I knew better how to pose people.

I think that their family picture turned out better than anything else.