Backpacking to Mosquito Paradise

For our Fourth of July Celebrations, we did what any good Wyoming family would do... We headed straight for the mountains!! We went on a hefty backpacking excursion with our other brave relatives... Joni, Clay and Macy, as well as Ben's parents, Paul, Peter, Hannah and Mary, oh and Libby the dog. It was such a great time! None of us escaped without an injury of some sort, but we all are better because of it. What a great bonding experience. The boys and Mary caught some excellent trout and we all enjoyed some "gourmet backpacking meals!"

We found a spot in the Bridger Wilderness of the Wind River Mountains surrounded by mountains where there were no other people within miles and miles of us! In fact, we were the only people on this entire lake... some people, I won't mention names... took the opportunity to skinny dip in the 45 degree water too!

The babies loved every minute of it! You can see Macy loves to attack their new puppy, but mostly Ikey and Macy just love to love each other! Pretty cute, though, it can turn violent at times, but only one lasting bite mark, so not too bad! Isaac thought it was pretty funny to walk around with the kettle on his elbow and tell everyone bye bye and then ask for a kiss.



I'm really glad he had a chance to bond with his grandparents, b/c he doesn't see them often, but he sure loves them. He has affectionately nicknamed all his grandparents "Monga" for grandma and "Poppa" for grandpa, though he can say grandma and grandpa just fine! He is turning into a little comedian for sure!

This is a picture of Peter about to cross the river in my tevas... quite the fashion statement:)

One more quick story... Isaac has a story called Oh David! in which the little boy, David, has a stinky diaper on one page and it says P.U. David! Well, Ike took this page to heart, so now whenever he has a stinky diaper he says "PoooWeee Davey!" and then he laughs and says "ah funny!" He kept us all laughing this weekend, that's for sure:)

Hope all of you had a happy weekend. We found ourselves very grateful on Sunday as we sang our National Anthem in Sacrament meeting in Pinedale. It was really touching and reminded us just how awesome our country is. Here's to remembering more often what we really have...

Mines and Ghost Towns and Bus Rides OH MY!

I guess one posting a month is going to have to do for now! As you can tell, we are really willing to sleep anywhere at this point, we are so worn out!! We have certainly had a busy time of travels and crazy visits this month! We started with a Mother's Day weekend here in Laramie, and have since taken a trip almost every weekend from Salt Lake to meet up with all of Ben's family to Pinedale to check out Joni and Clay's new "digs." It has been quite the adventure and we are happy to say that little Ike is still a great traveler! Last weekend we also took some time to go up to Vedawoo and hike the Turtle Rock trail. It was great weather and just perfect! Thank goodness Ike takes after us and not some of his anti traveling aunts and uncles!


This weekend we went to Denver to hang out with our friend, Jamie (or as Isaac calls her, Aunt Damie-- he just came up with that one on his own-- probably because he has so many aunts!) Anyway, we headed out on Saturday morning to Idaho Springs, CO to tour a gold mine and mill. It was really awesome! Ike's favorite part had to be riding the bus though. He's a huge fan of transportation, especially involving wheels of any kind!
Do you remember when you thought buses were this cool? It was a highlight for Ikey!

After the totally awesome mine tour, we panned for gold and struck it rich!! We each found about 4 pieces of gold (worth a cumulative 25 cents-- a penny saved is a penny earned!) Then we took off on a road called "Oh My Goodness Road" (the edited version). It goes up a steep mountain from Idaho Springs to Central City, CO. We found a few ghosttowns and got to do a little exploring of the ruins... when we weren't afraid of being shot by locals! We are thinking about buying one of the towns to make a luxury getaway:)
Jamie, Jamie, Ike and Ben inside an old gold mine- hoping to "Strike it rich!"At the top of "Oh my Goodness Road" Right behind us is a huge dropoff... Pretty cool! Of course, Isaac slept through this part!

In one of our little ghost towns, we also found our new family vehicle! It is so awesome, only a picture could do it any justice!



Anyway, the adventure continues... In between weekends, I am trying to enjoy getting into better shape. I finally can jog about 5 days a week (the weather is finally good enough!) and Ikey loves to be pushed in the jogger with me! When I'm not swallowing mosquitos or being chased by crazy dogs, we have a good time and Ikey points to every old beater truck and says "Cleey!" He associates old trucks with Clay... He also loves to point out animals, trees, and most importantly, buses and trucks! He is definitely a boy!
This week promises to be just as busy as ever, but we promise to try and keep up! Hope you all are enjoying summer too!

Bye Bye "Mae Mae", "Dough-nee", and "Kay!"

This is Clay's german chocolate graduation cake... Isaac decided it'd be a good idea to climb on the table while we were in the other room and start eating it... That's my boy!!

Joni and Clay took one last trip to Fort Collins before they moved, so we got to have "twins" for the night:) We took Ikey and Macy out for dinner where one of the servers was vaccuuming (the kids' favorite thing in the world)! I thought we were going to have to get her autograph, they were cheering for her and Isaac was saying "Baa-cuuum! It was pretty cute! Then we came home, gave baths and while I was rocking Macy, Ikey decided he needed a piece of the action, so he climbed in my lap... They both fell asleep this way! It was pretty fun:)

Our family has a crazy couple of weeks since I last posted! We have been juggling many "acts" as the school year is coming to a close. We have had the privilege of having my sister, Joni with her husband, Clay, and their 15 month old daughter Macy living in Laramie with us. Joni, being the doll she is, has been watching Ike for me in the mornings while I work at the Open School. It has been a great experience all the way around! Clay graduated from college this past week, and with that came a great big move to Pinedale, Wyoming... sniffle... sniffle... So, Ikey is going through serious Mae Mae, Doughnee and Kay withdrawls. He keeps carrying a pair of Macy's socks around looking for her! He also has a couple of pictures of them that he carries around religously everyday. It's pretty cute, but still heartbreaking! Anyway, we sure miss them, but are so excited for them... wow, what's it like to purchase a home and have real jobs? We may never know!



Other than that, Ben and I are trying our best to keep our heads up and keep relying on the Lord to lead us down the right paths. We are going to be in Laramie this summer with Ben working in the Pharmacy and I will be working at the Open School in the mornings again, while Isaac goes to Grandma's. I love Laramie in the summer... the weather is typically great and it's a really neat, close-knit atmosphere that forms when the weather is good enough to go outside! I've already started jogging and am training for a couple of races this summer... Isaac will run with me (in the jogger) and we're trying to convince Ben to join us!

Rie-roe and Pahblo

We had Ben's sister, Rebecca (Rie-roe-- as Ikey puts it) and his brother Paul (Pahblo) cx come to visit us this week during a semester break from school. We had such a good time! They are so fun and we felt really lucky that they got to know Isaac so well! Isaac is now going through Pablo withdrawls going around the house looking for him:)

This week it seemed like we did lots of really great eating, playing, and staying up really late! It was so great, but I'm definitely ready for a nap! Beck and I had to continue our Jane Austen obsession too, and ended up educating Paul about Jane Austen and romance in general:) I don't think he was nearly excited about Jane as we were! We also played disc golf, taught Paul to rollerblade, and on and on...

Anyway, I have added some photos and videos from our weekend. We took Beck and Paul and went to Denver to the temple and the zoo. What a fun time! Ikey also had the opportunity to touch an python (what a brave one! certainly a trait from his daddy!) This is a little graphic, but worth the detail... We were watching these little monkey things up in the trees and I heard one of them tooting. It just so happened that the monkey had its toosh up in the air facing us. I saw the potential of the situation, so I told Paul to watch out and I moved back... Well, right then the monkey had some squirty tooting and Paul ended up with a little squirt of monkey poo on his forehead!! Eeewww (as Ikey put it!) You will notice in the elephant video, if you listen really closely, you can hear Isaac say elephant! Yep, he's a "smart cookie!" We really are enjoying everyday with him, as I'm sure Beck and Paul can attest!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk.. Go KU!!

Ben, Jamie and Isaac with Bill Self in the Background on TV after the championship
Isaac with his "High Pibe" as he calls it... are we true fans or what???
Today was a once-every-20-years sort of day! Our favorite team for life, the Kansas Jayhawks won the NCAA Basketball Championship! To digress for a second, last night my dad brought out my old Kansas Basketball jersey that I got in middle school for Christmas and told me that if I didn't wear it, the Jayhawks might lose... With that kind of pressure on my shoulders, I had no choice but to wear it today as I taught and went around town! Of course, Ben also did the same thing to Ikey, dressing him in all KU garb down to his socks! All day Ben and I took the scoffs of others telling us our team was going to lose and choke, but we held our heads up high and "kept the faith!" We also taught Isaac to say "Jayhawk" and "Go KU"... They sounded like "hawk!" and "Go too doo," not too bad!!
Ben, Ikey and I watched the game with Joni, Clay and Macy. It was quite the evening! We made a great meal out of it with soups and breadsticks and some great lemonade cake (Joni made).
I think the funnest part was the end when the Hawks had 2 minutes left to make up 9 points and by no small miracle, they pulled it off! We were all so happy that we were screaming and yelling and jumping around... Being the smooth one, I hit the light fixture with my fist and gave myself a nice bruise, but it was worth it!! There isn't a whole lot in sports worth getting so worked up over, but this, my friends, was it!
All in all, it was a great day and one for the record books:) We will remain true blue and suggest you do the same too!!

Our first blog-a-lishous day...

Well, seeing as we are total copy kats, we thought we would be the last ones on the blog scene! I feel like we are seeing so many blessings each day, I don't want them to be missed by our friends and family far away... So, we apologize in advance, if this turns out to be boring, but hey, we promise to read your blogs too!!

Today was a pretty great day. Conference was awesome and I especially loved Elder Ballard's talk about Young Mothers... Even with just Isaac, it sometimes seems like we get caught up in the little things and it was a great reminder to enjoy these precious times while they last!

After conference, we went for a walk at the greenbelt (brrr-- as Isaac so eloquently put it!) Then came back and made a very delicious dinner that I made up:) We also found out that Isaac's favorite food has to be roasted red peppers... Too bad he can't like cheap things a little more... We're raising a gourmet food connoisseur! We'll take him though, I guess it's better than the opposite... a chicken nugget, cheese, ketchup hound!

Other than that, here's to a great week and the start of a new "adventure in blogging!"