Holy Bats, Batman...

We got up this morning and worked on some chores for Gramma Sharon.  We were taking the awning down from the back deck and mom ran into this!  She screamed bloody murder.  It was pretty funny!  We all took a good look and took a few pictures, then Keegan and I took it out to the tree's in the alley to let it go free.

Here's a quick (ok, not so quick) slide shoe of our trip to Edmonton.  We had a great visit with my brother, Jayme, and his family.  The kids had so much fun playing with the cousins.  We got up early the next morning and headed to the West Edmonton Mall.  After a few wrong turns we finally made it.  We had a very busy day and our poor legs were so tired by the time we left.  We drove all the way home.  Ashton is very sure that he's never spent this much time in a car EVER!!

Rockport Colony

We went out to the Rockport Hutterite Colony after General Conference this afternoon.

We had a lovely hutterite widow, named Linda, that was gracious enough to give us a tour of their community.  We also had a couple of darling little girls as well as Linda's grandson, Edward, accompany us.

This is their oven.  They make all their food and eat as one company.  Their homes don't have kitchens.  They produce all their own vegetables and grains as well as their meats, eggs and milk products.  They are a completely self sufficient society.

This is another section of kitchen.  The large rectangle things behind Ashton are their griddles!  The lids raise up and they are huge!  The thing by Kodies head that has a glass door is a steamer.  It's almost the size of a regular fridge!

 This is the dining hall.  They separate the men, women and children.  The overhead pegs are for the mens hats and jackets.  This colony has about 110 people living in it.  They all have their assigned duties and all work together to make their daily life possible.

Under the kitchens and dining area are large storage facilities.  This is just one of the numerous fridges that are packed with home bottled produce.

These boys were having a great time with their wagon.  They were a little shy about getting their picture taken, but let us anyway!

The kids start preschool at the age of two.  This is the bathroom in the preschool.  They had two little potties with the big one as well a urinal.  We thought it was funny that all those potties were in one room!

The preschool kids have naps each afternoon.  This little area is their nap room!

This is the little school room in the preschool.

The buildings on the left are the houses.  Each family has their own place.

There were a group of little boys playing in a huge sandbox made from an old tractor tire.

The colony produces milk that goes out to the community.  They hook these cows up to milking machines, the milk goes directly to a storage tank, which is picked up every other day.

This is our friend Allan Miller that took us out to the colony.  Linda and her grandson were a little bashful about a picture.

These cute kids followed us around on our tour.  We had a great time and learned alot!

Head Smashed In!

The kids and I are spending a week or so up in Canada with the family.  We have several little adventures planned while we are here.  I wanted to take them to Head Smashed In so they could learn about the Indian Heritage in our area.  We got online this morning to check hours and admission.  We were very excited to find out that today the admission was free and they were having several members of the Blood Tribe performing some of their dances!

They were just rolling this big guy out front when we pulled up.  The kids were so excited to pet him and get pictures.  We've got Bing, Brody, Blaze, Kodie, Paris and Ashton. 

Ashton giving the buffalo a nice hug!  Awww, so sweet.



Bing giving him a smoochie! Awww even sweeter!

Kodie helping him clean out his shnoz!

B giving him loves!

The buffalo getting ready to jump off the cliff.

This is one of the tribal leaders.

The drummers were fantastic!



This young man was a very energetic dancer.  He also is the main character in the film showing the history of the buffalo jump.

This beautiful couple was very willing to pose for a photo. Thanks!

Thought this sign was kind of funny.  I told the kids to run ahead very quietly ... hoping to have a quiet ride home!

Ahh, I love the openness of the prairies!

Overlooking the actual jump.  It was freezing out side!

There was a ceremony to bring in all the flags of the area.

There were a few live birds just hanging out behind a small rope fence.  We were up close to them.  They are amazing creatures!

Eww! What happened?

Kodie broke out with a yucky rash on her face!  It's now going away and we are so glad!

What do you say to a guy with ANOTHER black eye?!?

That's right, yet another black eye for Big Guy!  He came home from a church sponsored volleyball clinic with this doozie last night!  What can I say, the man loves his sports and a few black eye's just isn't going to stop him!

 Several ice packs later, he's still swelling and getting more purple! I hope his eye will still open tonight!

Crazy Vacation!

This is the Readers Digest version of the rest of our Seattle trip.

We stopped by the Rogers (Dave and Tami) and had a great visit.  Chandler and Carter were friends when they were little.  It was so fun to see them again!

My little Haylee-bug loved to snuggle with me!  It was great.  She's such a sweet niece.  I'm glad she came with us!

This was out at Deception Pass.  We spent the day out there with Joe and Gisela.  It's a beautiful place and was so nice to be outside!

 Self picture of me and Big-Guy!

Grandpa was very good at making Bing behave ...

Hey, my great neighbor made his mark out at Fort Casey!!  This one's for you, Jim!!

We drove to Vancouver for the day and had to check out Olympic Plaza!  It was really neat.

This whale looks like it's made out of Lego's. 

Gramma gave the kids each $2 for a souvenir.  Haylee couldn't be talked out of an ice-cream sandwich!  I had to snap a picture so she'd remember what she choose years from now!

And finally, the highlight of Bings holiday ... He actually got Ichiro's autograph!!  He'd bought his jersey and was wanting it signed so bad.  We got to the stadium early and there he was, out signing stuff for about 5 minutes.  He signed the back of Bings jersey and Kodie's ticket stub. 

We met up with out good friends, the Hoglunds on Saturday for Aquafest in Lake Stevens.  It was so good to see them.  What a great end to a fun trip!



Diving into the Seattle Experience!

We wanted  the kids to really experience Seattle while we are here.  The city had these great City Passes that admit you to several of the biggest adventures the city has to offer for a very reasonable price.  We decided to start the experience off at the Pacific Science Center. 

When Bing was little we spend many hours at the Science Center and he has fond memories of the place.  He really wanted to start there and Kodie had no objections to that.  We got parked and walked up to the science center and purchased out City Pass.  We entered the grounds of the science center and I suggested we stop for a group photo. 

As I was setting up the camera for the shot, I heard a splash and a funny sound.  I turned to see what was going on and there was Kodie sitting in the pool of water with the dinosaurs!  She had backed up for the picture and had hit the chain that surrounds the water and the chain snapped and she was in!

Being the wonderful mother that I am, I grabbed the camera and snapped a couple of pictures while Jason tried to calm her down and figure out what had happened. 

 Of course she didn't know what had happened and just wanted to go home.  I told her we weren't going home because we had just spent all this money on these tickets and, by George, we were going to use them and have a great time if it killed us.  She wasn't happy at all by this response and proceeded to cry harder and plead with me to go home.  We managed to get a towel from the manager of the center and into the bathroom we went to try and dry off. 

Luckily, we had done a little school shopping the day before this and had a new pair of pants, a pair of shoes and an old, but dry shirt in the trunk of the car.  While Jason hoofed it back to gather the needed apparel, Kodie locked herself into bathroom stall and stripped down.  I stood in front of the Dyson, super powered hand dryer for the next half hour and dried her socks and undies.  By the time Jason made it back with the dry clothes, we had the rest of her dry and she was able to leave the bathroom with a smile on her face.

 Chandler was under strict instruction that he wasn't to tease his sister about the "incident", and managed to refrain for about 45 minutes, then he proceeded to congratulate his sister on "diving right into the Science Center experience", and "way to make a splash here today", to which Kodie laughed and took the teasing rather well.

One of our favorite exhibits is the Butterflies.  They are amazingly beautiful.  As we enjoyed the time in this exhibit, our thoughts centered mainly on Auntie Jean and how she would just "love" this exhibit.  I don't think the kids realize that Auntie Jean really doesn't love butterflies that much, and that it's all a joke because of a pair of glasses that got sat on many years ago!

This one's for you Auntie Jean!

The Space Needle is always so impressive when you are standing right at the bottom looking up!

After the Science Center, we went to the Experience Music Project.  I have to admit it wasn't as great as I had anticipated, but it was fun!

The kids and I had a great time taking pictures of our reflections from the stainless steel ceiling!

Our last Seattle stop for the day was the Space Needle.  It was a rainy, cloudy day, (anyone surprised?) so the view wasn't as great as it could have been, but it was still amazing!