Fall Open House

Nettie from Singing a Verse of My Song is hosting a fall open house. I thought it would be fun to participate, so here are a few shots of my home decorated for fall. If you want to see more fall decor click on Nettie's link on my side bar to visit her blog.

Yellowstone: Good & Bad

We just spent last week in West Yellowstone for my husbands work conference. I thought I would share a little good and bad from our trip.
Work Conference
Good: Because we went for my husband's work conference his work paid for everything...free family vacation! They also give him so much money for food and travel that we always end up with leftover $$$.
Bad: Since it is a work related conference we go with my husband's fellow employees which means there is a certain level of expectation of having to hang out with them (or their wives). This isn't too bad, but it is annoying if you just want to do your own thing.

Hotel
Good: My husband's work always puts us in nice hotels, and the very best thing is that I don't have to clean it or do the laundry after we leave!
Bad: Sleeping in the same room with our 3 kids. They would not go to sleep unless it was dark and quiet, so I spent a lot of time reading in the bathroom, and sewing in the hallway while they went to sleep.

Sight Seeing
Good: Yellowstone National Park is amazing. I love all the geothermal attractions...the geysers, the hot pots, the boiling mud. It is fantastic!!

Bad: Our kids were often more impressed by the non-attractions. Like this leftover stump on an old statue that they insisted on having their picture taken on.


Smells
Good: I must admit that I kind of like that rotten-egg sulfur smell of Yellowstone (I know, call me weird!).
Bad: There was so much chlorine in our hotel pool that it burnt our mucous membranes.

Wild Animals
Good: We got to see a lot of wild animals like bears, wolves, elk, and buffalo. They kids loved watching them.
Bad: The most ferocious animals I saw were the 8 year old boys fighting with each other at the park.

Eating Out
Good: I love eating out. To save some money we only eat out once a day when we are on a trip, but I always look forward to it.
Bad: Unknown restaurants. Eating out is fun if you know that food is good at a place. We went to a Chinese Food restaurant that was down-right disgusting, dirty, sticky, and just plain filthy. I will not make you gag by telling the whole story.

Long Drive
Good: Getting to see all the scenery along the l-o-n-g drive there was fun. The fall leaves were beautiful.
Bad: Tired, cranky children with way too much energy strapped into hard carseats for 6 hours....use your imagination on that one.

Shopping
Good: I love little tourist town shops. They always have fun interesting things.
Bad: The prices of those little tourist town shops. Luckily we had a lot of time to go shopping and compare prices. We found a hooded Yellowstone sweatshirt in one store for $17.95. We found the exact same sweatshirt in another shop for $30.00. I guess you can figure out which one we bought.

So there is a quick recap of our good and bad vacation. I would do it all again!

Weekend of Exes

Those of you who read my last post know that I ran into one of my ex-boyfriends a couple days ago. It was fun to get to see him and catch up on what he has been doing for the last 13 years. It was also a little strange. After the initial conversation about what you have been doing, where you work, what your family life is like now, and if you see any of your old friends from high school, what is left to talk about? It was strange that I ran into my ex-boyfriend the same weekend that my husband ran into one of his. Actually, he didn't really run into her. She had seen my husband on t.v. and knew he would be at his work on Saturday, so she took her husband and family to see him. (Do you think that is a little odd?)She was the one that gave my husband the "Dear John" letter on his mission, and he hadn't seen her for about 14 years. It was really weird for him to see her. So it was a little bit of a weird weekend for both of us reliving old memories and thinking about how lucky we are that we married each other. My husband was so cute about the whole thing, he came home after seeing his ex and told me that he was so grateful he was married to me. I had the same feeling after seeing my ex. I would much rather be where I am than being married to someone still going to college and working at Wal-Mart. So even though it was stange to see our exes we are even more grateful for the life we have together.

Home Again....

I just returned home from a scrapbooking trip to my mom's house. It is always fun to go and get some scrapbooking done, but it is the most fun to get to visit with my mom. I also got to see Stephanie from For Better or For Worse, and (oddly enough) my very first boyfriend from 13 years ago. I managed to get 15 pages and 12 cards made this trip (despite taking care of all my girls). It is a good thing that I go to my mom's house to do some scrapbooking, because I never seem to get any done at home. Here are a few of my favorite layouts I did this trip. These are pictures of my family sledding last winter:

These are pictures of my girls at a local dinosaur museum:

Mostly Happy Campers...

We just got back from our camping trip. I had been sick the night before we left, so I was worried that this wouldn't be a fun trip, but it turned out to be really nice. We found a beautiful spot up Hobble Creek canyon. The creek was only yards away from our campsite, and there was a bridge that went over it that the girls had tons of fun on (and luckily none of them fell off of it...actually, Dad was the only one who fell in the river the whole trip!) It was so nice and quiet there (especially for the first night since we were the only campers in the whole camp ground). Shortly after setting up our tent we got rained on, so we sat in the tent with the girls and played card games and read stories. It was fun just to spend time together doing quiet activities while we listened to the rain on the tent. The rain let up long enough for us to roast some hot dogs and some marshmellows before we all went to bed at 8:00p.m. I don't remember the last time I went to bed that early. It was so nice! The next morning we woke up and started cooking up some pancakes on the camp chef. We had just finished cooking when it started raining again, so we hurried and hauled our breakfast into the tent and had a picnic on our sleeping bags. It rained for a couple hours, but then the rain let up and it was beautiful outside. We decided to go for a little hike. This was not a highlight of the trip. The trail was narrow and bordered by lots of shrubbery. Since it had just finished raining all the shrubbery was wet, and we got soaked. My 3 year old (who should have gotten the award for the grouchiest camper) was throwing fits, so my DH ended up carrying her on his shoulders. This normally wouldn't have phased him, but he was also carrying our 1 year old in a backpack. So he was hiking with half of our family on his back (luckily it was the lighter half!). I tried to help carry the girls, but I still was not feeling very well. We traveled up the mountain for awhile, but decided to turn back before we reached the trails destination. I think the dog had a good time hiking, and my 5 year old was having a good time, but they were the only ones! My 5 year old kept saying that we were going "bush whacking" because the bushes would hit us as we walked by them. After our descent down the mountain (much more enjoyable than the ascent I assure you) we had some lunch and awaited the arrival of my husband's family. His sister and brother and their families joined us for that night, and also his parents decided to come up. We had fun cooking up dinner, making smores, and staying up late around the campfire. It was a lot of fun to get together with them. Sometime in the early hours of the next morning I got hit by the flu bug and was horribly sick....campsite bathrooms are not the best place to be ill!! Just the smell in there makes you feel worse. We managed to get packed up (thanks to my husband who did all the work while I sat and looked green) and home safely. I am feeling a little bit better today, but still not myself. They baby was also sick while we were camping. We also picked up some colds along the way. It was still a fun camping trip, even if we are all sick now. I forgot to take the digital camera with us, or I would have shared a few pictures.

Bloggy Thoughts...

Something hates me!!! I don't know if it is my turtle speed computer, my dial-up connection, blogger, or picasa. I have been trying to post all day, but it hasn't been working, so here is the picture-less version of what I really wanted to post.

Since I started blogging my way of thinking has changed. I now see everything as a blog to be posted. I often think things like..."This would make a great post!"..."That recipe would be good to blog about."..."I wonder if I should post that question and see what everyone else thinks." I will also take lots of pictures of weird things that I think would be good to put on my blog (I was going to post a few of those pictures here, but alas, something hates me). I seem to always have this blogalog (kind of like dialog for the blogger) going through my head. I have even had weird dreams about blogging. Do you experience this too?