New skiier in the family!

YEA! Conor got up on his first try tonight! WAY TO GO CONOR!! We went out to Long Lake with the Hamilton's for the evening and Conor was the star! For some reason he wouldn't stand straight up, but he just popped right out of the water and hung on. The pictures are awful since the sun was the wrong way, but you take what you can when the little one says he is ready to go! Next time I promise better pictures. I hope he will always love to ski as much as I do. Thanks to Kacey and Garth for providing all the equipment. We had so much fun. Nothing like getting out of the sweltering heat and on to the lake for some fun.

Camping

This little camping adventure started out a little rough and did not follow my meticulous planning, but does it ever? We started out with Taj tossing his cookies (doritos) in the car on the way. Well we got that taken care of then we realized that the planned destination wasn't exactly where we wanted to be so we decided to wing it. We ended up in a very commercial site by default, but we had a fire, which by the way will always make Conor blissfully happy, and we roasted marshmallows and hot dogs, slept in a tent, needed bug spray and we could see the stars like nothing else. So we met all camping criteria. Good times!

Riding the Haiwatha

We finally did it! Our weekend adventure on the Haiwatha trail was so much fun! We were going to go last year, but it never happened so we talked our friends the Willards into coming with us and we had a great time! The Trail of the Haiwatha is a great biking trail that follows an old rail road line. It is about 16 miles of a gentle slope down hill. It goes through several tunnels and a bunch of awesome bridges and trellis's. The Taft tunnel is just under 1 1/2 miles of pitch black darkness, that is why in the pictures you will notice that we have lights on our bikes and helmets. The scenery is absolutely beautiful. The trail is located about 1 1/2 hours outside of Spokane right on the Montana/Idaho boarder. Aside from the camping before hand not turning out exactly how we wanted, and a little sickness still lurking all went well.

Josie turns 2!

Happy Birthday Josie! Where does the time go? Josie was lucky enough to celebrate her 2nd Birthday in Yellowstone. She was thrilled to blow out the candles and open presents. She is pretty easy to please at this age. We are so lucky to have our happy Josie in our family. We love you!

Keeper Kid Conor

They have this great program at the wolf and bear center that the kids adored. They get to be keeper kids for an hour. Notice in the above pictures that Conor is standing in almost the exact same place as that bear? No worries. They take the bears out then allow the keeper kids to go in to the bear habitat and hide food for them. Once the food is hidden and the kids are out the bears return and look for the food the kids hid.

Yellowstone

We went to Yellowstone! We minus 1. Kevin had to work so the rest of us packed up the van and drove the 8 hours to meet Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen and the Roper's and Jen and Melissa in West Yellowstone. What a fun trip. We saw all the sights and a whole bunch of great animals. We even saw a bear! So cool. We were on our way out of the park and traffic was backed up, again (traffic in yellowstone...who knew??) The bear was right across the river not far from the road so we stopped and got out and everyone got to see it which made it really neat for the little ones. We stayed in this great house that Grandpa got for us and we had a blast. The cousins played and played together and the adults got to chat, eat and visit to our hearts content. We played Ticket to ride for hours every night. Besides a day of nasty stomach flu for a few we had a fabulous time. We are so grateful to Grandma and Grandpa for planning the get together and for allowing us to make some great memories together.

4th of July

Josie enjoying her 5th scone--oh wait, that might be my count
Kevin, Nicole, Danielle and Grandpa Kellogg
Josie, Grandpa, and Conor


4th of July and sparklers like PB & J



For the 4th of July we went to Grandma and Grandpa Kellogg's to celebrate Grandpa Kellogg's birthday and the birth of our country. We found a great small town parade to watch and Conor was happy because he got a ton of candy. What more could you want in a parade??? (I am spoiled from going to the parade in Provo all my life, I thought all parades were like that.) It was great to see Danielle and Nicole and Ezra. Josie and Ezra are only a few months apart so they played together really well. We ate yummy scones with maple frosting practically all weekend since the batch was so big, but I certainly didn't mind...yum yum yum! Happy Birthday Grandpa Kellogg and thanks for the fun weekend.