A few weeks ago we were able to spend a few days with my family from North Dakota. They made the long two day drive with 10 people which included two one year olds.

We rented a fabulous cabin in Island Park for the first part of their trip. It was seriously amazing! We were living it up in style and luxury.

There was a fun swing on the porch for the little darlings to enjoy. It was well used.

We saw this baby buffalo every morning in the same spot when we were driving into West Yellowstone.

Poor little guy was all alone.

We spent one day touring Yellowstone National Park.

We saw lots of buffalo and deer, one coyote and a few cranes.

While my family was driving through the park on the way from North Dakota they saw quite a few bears. Including a mom with two cubs but they were no where to be found when we went the next day.

This is the only picture I got of our group.

It was Uncle Scott and Aunt Jackie

Shari and Greg with Bristol

RaeAnn and Addi

Kelly and Brennan plus their baby bump

and last but not least

Lisa
....and Sam of course.

The stink pots...they are stinky!

Random...

I've always wanted to take a pic like that.

I found these fun shirts that the boys could color when my fam and I went shopping in West Yellowstone.

That was so much fun!

I think we bought every hucklberry flavored item there was.

Including all the huckleberry bark at the candy store....whoops.

We also had to check out all the fly shops in town so we could get in on the rage.

A girls always gotta be on top of the latest and greatest.

Karter's big ole happy face in this pic pretty much sums up how Karl, I and the kiddos felt about our mini vacation with our family.

We LoVeD it.
Karter and Hudson adored the "two purdy little girdles(girls)".

The first night we were there I was laying Karter and Hudson down for bed and Hudson said

"Mom, can we go get a baby tomorrow?"

(I so wish you could all hear how Hudson says tomorrow)

Seriously...it was so cute!
My brothers and I have made lots of trips to North Dakota over the years so that we could spend the summers with our family.

It was so fun for us to be able to show them where we live and to spend some one on one time with them.

It's also nice for them to understand how looooooooong that drive really is.

I do believe I have the best grandparents on the planet for being willing to make that trip multiple times a year for us.

Thanks Grams and Grandpa!

Spamburger is graduating!

I am super happy and super sad about that. Sam is eleven years younger than me and has always spent a lot of time with me. He is the baby of our family and it is hard for me to believe we are all grown up now.

When my mom was prego with him I wanted a sister so bad! I already had three brothers and that was plenty! I remember being in computer lab when my principal came in and told me my mom had had her baby and that it was a boy. I looked at her and said "Another one!"

It didn't take me long to figure out that a baby was fabulous whether it was a boy or a girl. And I've loved him tons ever since.

When Karl and I moved away he would spend his summers with us and since moving back to Idaho our house is his second home....maybe his third since he is a teenager and would rather be with his friends than his awesome family.

If Karl and I take a family vacation more often than not we have our third child riding along in the third row. Hence the reason I insisted on having a car with the third row.

Sam is a huge help to me with my kiddos and I love him to pieces for that. I call him quite often just to see if he wants to brave the grocery store and whatever other errands I might have with us.

He is super quiet, the silent observer type. In fact none of us really knew he could talk until he was in the school play last year. Hehe.... He was amazing in it! We were all blown away.

I definitely have mixed emotions about this kid growing up. I know I will have a few tears of my own when we drop him off at college in the fall.

I'm going to miss him tons!

Thanks for being such a fabulous little brother Stinky!

I love ya tons!!

Did I mention I'm going to miss you.

I may possibly be crying right now.

Graduation will be Thursday May 26th at good ole Firth High School.

7:00pm

We are going to do dinner at my house before graduation if any of you are so inclined you are welcome.

I will warn you though. This kid picked an odd combination of things he wanted to have for dinner.

Tater tot casserole and lasagna!

PS-thanks for doing his pics Mindy! They turned out super fab!!

I try and have the kiddos help out with chores around the house. They are usually pretty good about it for the first few minutes and then they seem to get preoccupied.

However both of them love to vacuum.

One day I was vacuuming the floor boards in my bedroom and Hudson decided that he needed to take a stab at it.

I left him to it and went into the kitchen to get started on the dishes. I went back maybe two minutes later and found Hudson playing with the hose instead of vacuuming with it.

He kept pointing at something inside the bag less compartment and talking away about it. He was smiling and laughing and so proud of himself.

It took me a second to figure out what he was pointing at but once I saw his sock less foot I knew what had gone on.
But really what two and a half year old could resist seeing what would happen if he stuck his sock in the hose.

Our Easter festivities started out the weekend before Easter. A home health and hospice clinic we work with hosted an Easter egg hunt at a local high school.

We had to RSVP and they wanted every bodies ages which I thought was odd. But when we got there we figured out why.

We had an extra munchkin that day. Shane's baby Shaylee.

(Super bad pic but I wasn't in the editing mood.)


They had enough eggs for every kid to have 15-20! It was great! There was no fighting or crying.

They did a hunt for all ages up to 18. I so wish I would of taken Sam with us because they gave every 17 and 18 year old kid there a $500 scholarship! It was amazing!

They also did an adult hunt. It was hilarious. Our neighbors where there with us so I took one for the team and stayed with our children (which consists of 6 boys!) while the others searched for eggs.



I took this pic right as David put a chocolate in his mouth. Sorry for the one chipmunk cheek David.
We made out like bandits. Karl found eggs with $50 to Texas Roadhouse and $10 to Orange Leaf(heaven in a cup) plus an egg with $5 cash.
Jenni and Dave found eggs with 4 movie tickets that included soda and popcorn and $10 to Orange Leaf.
They gave away a weekend to Jackson Hole but we didn't find the lucky egg with that in it. Darn! We will definitely be attending next year! What a good time.



The next weekend our neighbor hosted her annual Easter egg hunt for the neighborhood kids. She is so great to do this! The hunt is for kids 12 and under but the kids that are over 12 get to come and help her hide the eggs.




Hudson lost his privilege to go to the hunt since he decided it would be a good idea to throw some large rocks in the air which inevitably came down and hit Karter and his buddy Arly smack on the head leaving them both with huge goose eggs.
That little kid LOVES to throw things. He wasn't being naughty or mean just not putting a lot of thought into the fact that what goes up must come down.

We finished out the day dyeing Easter eggs. The boys loved it. This was the first time we had done it. Mean mom...huh.

Hudson was so proud of his eggs!

Karter dislikes having his picture taken so I couldn't get him to give me a smile. He had dyed eggs at preschool a few days before so he was feeling quite smart that he knew what to do .

The Easter bunny left the kiddos their baskets with a note that said he was going to come back and hide their eggs while we were at church and leave them a big surprise.

Since we have nine o'clock church this was exceptionally nice of him so we didn't have to pry the darlings away from all the fun ;).

We bought the kiddos new church clothes. Aren't they so darn cute all dressed up. Never mind the shovel. I definitely have boys.
Hudson was in the mood to take pics of everything.
We bought Karter these fun shoes because Karl has a pair just like them. Karter loves them! He thinks he's pretty neat that he can wear shoes like his dads.
Hudson had to have a pic of his shoes taken because Karter did. We would of gotten Hud a pair of the same shoes but they didn't have any small enough. Darn.

When we were picking out the boys outfits Karl wanted to by Hud some white pants with a little jacket. He said "It's fun to dress him in weird clothes because he's so short and he looks like a clown when you dress him."

Poor cute little Bubby.

This was the Easter bunnies big surprise!

We...I mean the Easter bunny didn't actually have to use much of his money for this. My dad and step mom had sent the kiddos gift cards to Toys R Us for Christmas and I had gotten a Visa gift card from work. Since everyone usually gets more than necessary at Christmas I decided I'd save the gift cards for Easter.
I was browsing the ads one day and saw this jeep on sale plus it had a coupon. So the Easter bunny was able to get a smokin' deal on it.

Thanks Grandpa and Grandma Patty!!

Of course the kiddos love it and of course there has been quite the fights over who gets to drive.

We started our Easter festivities out the weekend before Easter. A Home health and Hospice clinic we work with at the clinic I work hosted an Easter egg hunt which turned out to be fabulous!!

Shane's baby Shaylee tagged along with us that day.

We had to RSVP and when we did they asked the ages of all the people. I thought that was wierd but once we got there we understood why.