Another trip to Montana part 2

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Christy

This is really late in coming, but I need to finish it. Part 2 of our last trip to Montana.

Lily continues draw her way across the country. She drew this for Becky.

We went by the Credit Union to say Hi to my friends and Lily decorated Waldo with their toys.

There was more Kinect Party at Anthony’s house.

We went and had dinner at our friends house. Anne and Dave. They have three very sweet girls, 14, 7 and 1. Lily had a great time playing with Allie their 4 year old and Waldo and I had a blast with Anne and Dave. Somehow I managed to not take any pictures of this event and I’m still kicking myself for it. Waldo even mentioned at one point to Dave he was sure I would be taking a complete ridiculous amount of pictures. Major fail.

On the way back to Gil’s from Anne and Dave’s we saw some wild turkeys. I took a fricking picture of the turkeys. Kids having fun – No, turkeys – Yes. I told you, fail.

In the tradition of last year we went to the park to feed ducks. Jack was suppose to go with us, but he ended up having something to do.

I took the opportunity to take some cute pictures of Lily.

That evening we went to a party with some old friends and some internet friends that we met for the first time. It was a little odd, but mostly fun.

We had to have breakfast at The Buffalo Cafe again.

The main reason we went to Montana was to go to our company picnic. Lily loved our boss’s dogs.

Lily lucked out when we visited our friend Jesse and Sheila. They gave Lily a few of their daughter’s old toys.

Saying goodbye to Becky sucked.

Don’t let her look fool you, she’s having a blast on that horse.

Driving home was uneventful, but so much fun because we always have fun on road trips together.

Another trip to Montana

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Christy

Right on the heals of coming home from our California trip we were offered the opportunity to visit Montana. Of course we jumped on the chance, we love to visit our friends there.

After our not so fun trip through the mountains in California that took way tooooooo long we decided to take the more or less straight highway route to Montana. Because of this we didn’t go through Missoula and missed visiting our friends there, which was a real bummer, but it saved us hours and twisty turny mountain roads.

We got to Montana and our friend Gil; who so graciously offered his spare room for us right when Google predicted we would, it was awesome. Something that wasn’t awesome, I was having such a good time with some of our friends I neglected to take pictures of some of the more fun times that we had, I guess having the fun is the best, but I miss the pictures. I only took 700some pictures during this trip and that may sound like a whole lot, but remember most of them are out of focus or bad in some other way. Anyway we had a wonderful time and even though as per usual this series of posts is late, it’s better than never.

On the drive to Montana we stopped in Kennewick, WA at a little park and had lunch and then played on the swings for a little bit.

Ah, the Flathead Valley in Montana. Beautiful, usually green, but still beautiful.

Our first view of Flathead Lake, which is ginormous and beautiful and always signals the last stretch of our journey.

Our first morning in Montana we went to the Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish. One of our favorite places to eat and not just because our friend (Waldo’s BFF and hetro-life-mate) Jack is the main cook there. The food is super delicious and it’s a piece of Whitefish history or at least a must see there.

After breakfast and a tiny bit of Whitefish sight seeing we went to visit our friend Becky. Becky is all about lego’s and so she and Lily built all afternoon.

That first day was jam packed. After leaving Becky’s we went to Anthony and Maggie’s and Lily was introduced to the love of the Xbox Kinect. Lily and Anthony and Maggie’s son Conrad played and played and had a blast.

The next day which I believe was Tuesday we went back to Becky’s and after hanging out and trying in vain to decided where to go for lunch for I’m not kidding you at least an hour we hopped in our car and finally decided to go eat where Becky works. We hadn’t been there before, but it’s well spoke of by Becky (of course) and has great reviews on Trip Advisor. We had fancy bacon and brie cheese burgers and they were the Yum. After lunch we went for ice cream at a local place that makes all their own ice cream and it was so good we went there again a few days later.

Lily kept talking about playing with Conrad and his video game, it was cute. We had planned to visit Anthony and Maggie again anyway so back we went.

Conrad liked the dog guitar that we bought Lily.

The next day was work day. Well since we work from home, everyday is a work day even on vacation. While on vacation is just usually a short day, but since we were in the town where our office is we had to make an appearance, which we would have done anyway to say Hi, but meetings were planned. For me this office time was only an hour or two, but for Waldo it was a full day event.

Lily and I spent the day with Becky while Waldo worked. I totally got the better gig. We had lunch together and checked out the thrift stores; which I was bummed to not find anything good, but Becky found an almost complete Lego Yoda for $5 so she was jazzed.

We left Becky and went to the park before picking Waldo up. I really wish I had thought that plan though a little because it was like 101 and that park had little to no shade so everything was HOT! We checked out a few of the pieced of play equipment, but left after less than 10 minutes.

It looks like she’s having fun, but only because this particular thing has the metal covered with cloth so it was only a little hot.

After picking up Waldo we went to dinner and they had this really cool moose outside.

This is the end of part 1 of the Montana trip. Stay tuned for some fun.

The DRIVE part 5

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Christy

One of the things that we were looking forward to doing most was taking Lily and Olivia to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Lily loves the aquarium in Boise and that’s super dinky especially compared to Monterey so we knew it’d be a big hit.

It’s about a 3 hour drive to Monterey from my Dad’s house so we loaded the girls up with tablets and hit the road earlyish.

This is what we saw for hours. I don’t know how many times the girls asked that infamous questions; “Are we there yet?”

In the middle of nowhere, about half way between Madera and Monterey is Casa de Fruta.

We checked out all the fun stuff that Casa de Fruta has to offer for a while to give the girls a chance to stretch their legs.

We rode the carousal and had a blast. The girls really wanted to ride their little train and we made the mistake of saying that we’d ride it on the way back because we were out of time. As you can imagine they were very upset when we got back to Casa de Fruta less than 5 minutes after they closed the train.

This was our first look at the ocean. We are on the top of the parking garage that we finally found to park at.

We had some lunch and then FINALLY headed to the aquarium.

I tried to plan this trip to the aquarium so that we’d be there on a day when they had no special events scheduled. I failed, big time. It was World Ocean Day and the place was packed.

Even packed we tried to have as much fun as possible.

Olivia succeed a little more than Lily at first.

Lily finally got into it. She still wasn’t thrilled about the crowd, but was so caught up in all the fish and fish stuff that she enjoyed herself.

I believe Lily’s trying to hug the lobster.

I managed to find a way to do crafts. I was so happy and so was Lil.

I became somewhat obsessed with the jelly fish.

Princess Olivia with the Jellies.

Hey a sea turtle.

And more jellies.

Some kind of upside down jelly.

Lily and Olivia in a jelly fish symmetry display.

Insy winsy jellies.

Then we found the sea horse room. These guys are pretty cool.

These are some kind of funky sea horse, I wish I could remember their name.

I became almost as obsessed with this guy as with the jellies. He’s a leafy sea dragon if memory serves.

We finally found the touch pools after looking for them all day, but they were so crowded that even Olivia didn’t want to play with the fish anymore. That was fine with us because we were all pooped.

I had really wanted to go down and play on the beach a little before we headed home, but it was very chilly and super windy so that was out and we headed home. We did stop at Casa de Fruta and like I said we got there right after the train closed. We grabbed sandwiches from the deli and headed home. Both girls fell asleep before we got home, which was really very late, but normally Lily doesn’t sleep in the car these days.

Random Mobile Shots

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Christy

We are in Montana right now having a blast with our chosen family. This is just a quick post with a few pictures of what we’ve been up to, a more detailed post will come on the heels of the California trip posts.

On our way through Kennewick, WA we stopped to have a picnic. We stayed and played on the swings for a few minutes.

Lily playing with Aunt Becky‘s legos.

Two heads are better than one.

Me and Lil at breakfast at The Buffalo Cafe.

My eyeshadow <3

Lily had a stinking blast playing xbox kinect with our friends Anthony and Maggie’s son Conrad.

The DRIVE part 4

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Christy

After we got done swimming we ate pizza while KK finished making dresses so we could take them with us. She made them for her Granddaughter and Olivia, but it fit Lil so we borrowed them for the day.

I got the girls dressed after their bath and we went outside to take some pictures.