Summer birthdays

Summer is such a busy time, and add to that our two kids with summer birthdays, Abby and Jim, and you'll find out why this post is weeks late. We did have a lot of fun celebrating their birthdays. This is a year for "friend" birthdays, so we had parties planned and invited friends along.

Abby had four friends join her at Blast-off, a local indoor gym/arcade place. She had a good time playing tag around the playground and playing games and drinking lots of pop. She chose a hula theme and every girl got a lei, necklace, and had cupcakes.

Abby's cake at home turned out really cute. We had a barbie doll inside a dome cake, and the cake was her hula skirt. However, I had the bright idea to use sparklers instead of candles on her cake. After I lit them, the house started filling with smoke, sparks were landing on my arms and feet and in the carpet, and we were all choking so badly on the smoke we could hardly sing! It was a memorable birthday song for her!

Abby with her hula cake. :)

Took all day to make the cake, but it turned out great. 

This bouquet of flowers from Grammy had hidden dollar bill blossoms in  the arrangement.

 Abby was a smart shopper and took her birthday money and bought a bike for $20 and a bike seat cover for it. She now has a newer, good-working bike she can ride around the neighborhood.

Abby got some wonderful gifts, including these jeans, books, games, clothes, a gift card, and a chalk tool for writing on the sidewalk.

Jimmy's birthday was a little harder to plan... when you're turning 14 your friends are important and it's important to be "cool." So he invited two friends and his brother to go to Riot Zone for mini golfing. When they got there, they actually didn't golf... they rode go karts, bumper boats, and played on huge inflatable bounce houses doused in water. They had a great time being teenage crazy boys. ;)

For Jim's "family" party he wanted a Star Wars theme. He showed me this small model space ship, and asked me to create a star cruiser cake. Now, that was tough! And the fact that it's all frosted in shades of gray makes it look less appetizing, but hey, it's a ship. We had cake, root beers floats, and pizza and breadsticks. All the stuff a teenage boy enjoys.

He loves Green Lantern and enjoyed wearing this hat after he opened it.

His favorite thing, Legos, and a Star Wars lego ship at that!

A Harry Potter lego set.

I have included a little video singing Happy Birthday to Jim. The candles were "rockets" on his cake. 

Overall it was a fun summer with fun birthdays and lots of cake and ice cream!

16th Anniversary Trip

James and I took a spontaneous anniversary trip--it was actually a couple of days after our anniversary--and we were so lucky to find these cabins available in Yellowstone National Park. We'd looked for months, trying to decide where to go, and there was this one cabin open on the weekend we wanted to visit! Woo hoo!

Cabin comes complete with a buffalo that lays outside your front door!

The cabins were older, but quaint, comfortable, and had all the basics you need. They were located at Lake Lodge, right off the shore of the beautiful Lake Yellowstone.

Lake Lodge was beautiful! Amazing wood beams and pillars, huge front porch with rocking chairs, surrounded by lodgepole pines... it was gorgeous!

This is the cafeteria where we ate the first night.

A shot of me in the lobby of the lodge. 

Looking back toward the lodge at dusk, from the shore of the lake. What a sight!

A picturesque view from the shore of the lake... across the blue waters you can see Mt. Sheridan still capped in snow.

 The next day we drove around seeing the sights in the Lake area. We drove up to a lookout point where we could see for, literally, a hundred miles. We could see the Tetons across the lake.

Self-portrait from lookout point. 

 That afternoon we visited West Thumb Geyser Basin. There were pristine hot pools, bubbly, muddy ones, and an elk that just casually meandered through the boardwalks and crowds. The hot pools even bubble along the edge of the lake. One is called the "hook and cook" because in ages past fishermen supposedly hooked a fish in the lake the dropped them in the geyser to cook. :)

Abyss hot spring at West Thumb Geyser Basin

Other highlights of our trip include seeing two grizzlies, a mom and cub, wandering down a draw about a half mile from the road, and a black bear which crossed the road RIGHT in front of us! We had just pulled off to the shoulder to switch drivers and the bear walked casually across the road and into the woods. Before we could get out the camera, it was gone. But it was so cool to see!

We even had a chance to attend the LDS branch conference of the Old Faithful branch of Ashton, Idaho stake... it was held right off the foyer at Lake Lodge. It was a one-hour meeting with 15 total people in attendance... but it was so neat to have something in common with perfect strangers. We met people from Alaska, Utah, and Idaho. James passed the sacrament in his red t-shirt and jeans.

We also walked the trail of the north rim of the canyon. We were there at about 7:30 in the morning, and it was cool and crisp. James called it the Canyon Death March because it's 600 feet of switchbacks down... then 600 grueling vertical feet back up! It certainly cleared out our lungs.

Then we took a scenic boat ride around the lake. It was fun, and we learned interesting facts such as moose can swim a mile and will sometimes visit Stevenson Island; an early concessioner of Yellowstone had a zoo on one of the lake islands, but he treated the animals poorly and fed them trash; a wrecked boat on Stevenson Island served as a bootleg bar during Prohibition.

Lake Hotel is beautiful!

Mud volcano... you can see the bubbles pop in the mud.

At the brink of the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Feeling and hearing the water thunder over the brink is breathtaking!

On the boat ride around the lake. It was very scenic and pleasant, and the  ranger gave us wonderful color commentary about the history and the features of the area.

We saw this ship wreck skeleton on Stevenson Island in the middle of Lake Yellowstone.

On the way out of the park we visited a few sights around Old Faithful, including Grand Prismatic Spring and Firehole Lake. We then stopped in West Yellowstone and ate at a cute restaurant where their tables were set up under the canvas of a covered wagon. We did some souvenir shopping then headed home. It was a quick two-day visit, but so beautiful! Yellowstone is my favorite destination in the world. 

Geyser at Firehole Lake

Our covered wagon dining table, and another one in the background.