Ice Blocking and Baseball

Porter's 8th birthday party consisted of lots of baseball playing and lots of ice blocking. Now I've never ice blocked before, and I have to say that it was so much fun! The fun was had by all ages. I highly recommend it if you haven't tried it yet. It was a great party! It rained the whole day of the party, and then about 5:30, just before the party was to start, the skies started to clear. It turned out to be cloudy and a little cool, but at least it stopped raining for the party.

Porter sure does love his Colorado Rockies!

Porter's Big Day

I really can't believe that my little Porter turned 8. Where did the time go? I'm so proud of this guy! He is such an amazing boy. Handsome, smart, kind, thoughtful, are just a few of the words that describe him. His baptism day was a great day! He was the only one being baptized, so we enjoyed the program to ourselves. We then went back to our house for a great luncheon with all our friends and family. The weather was beautiful and the whole day was wonderful.

Yellowstone Part 2

Love the Daniel Boone hats.
This day was freezing! We weren't quite prepared for it to be this cold. Brrrrrrrr!

You can't leave Yellowstone without this picture.

I think I have an obsession with waterfalls. This one is Hidden Falls which is by Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons. It's amazing! I could hike and look for waterfalls all day long!

Allen pondering the meaning of life. I wonder if he figured it out.

Yellowstone/Island Park/Grand Tetons 2010

My friend Kady updated her blog today with pictures of her Yellowstone trip and it inspired me to finally post pictures of our trip and finally catch up on our blog. We took a much-needed vacation to Island Park and Yellowstone in August. We rented a cabin with some good friends of ours in Island Park. I used to go to Island Park as a kid, and I had such fond memories of my trips there. In fact, the minute we opened the front door to our cabin, Allen and I promised each other that someday we would have property in Island Park and a place where we could take our family and spend long, lazy summer days, wasting away by the water watching for moose. It's such a fantasy, but it doesn't hurt to dream, does it? This is taken at one of the falls (upper or lower?). What a beautiful, yet terrifying place. I was trying to enjoy the beauty, but I was so fearful that one of my children would take a spill over the edge, never to be seen again. This was one of our absolute favorite parts of the trip. I remember swimming Firehole Canyon as a teenager, but I couldn't quite remember all the details, so we decided to give it a try. Up the river from this point is a little pocket of rapids that you jump in and then let it float you down to this calm area. Hannah and Porter both tried it with Allen and I. Again, it was so fun, but terrifying as well. (I think I'm starting to see a pattern forming. My mom warned me of all the dangers of Yellowstone with kids, and I'm only starting to see that now.) We jumped in the rapids, popped up, and floated, but there were a few moments where it felt like the water might suck us back in. We probably didn't use the best judgement as parents, but we all survived!

This is was taken by Mack's Inn on Henry's Fork river. The kids had a ball wading in the water and throwing rocks. We also rented canoes and tried to canoe the river going upstream. I'm a terrible canoer and I think Allen was ready to toss me in. I think we canoed at least nine miles, but only went about a mile upstream. We just went back and forth from one bank to the other. It was fun though, and actually not terrifying.

We took our bikes and were able to bike some of the trails and roads around our cabin in Island Park.

Here we are at Mesa Falls somewhere south of Island Park. We stopped there on the way to the cabin and I highly recommend this little hike to anyone headed to Island Park or Yellowstone. It was one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen. It was so lush and green, I felt like I was in a rain forest.

And now I was going to add more pictures, but I can't seem to get it to work, so I'll include a few more photos on the next post with far less commentary this time.