Happy Mother's Day, Spelunking, Grins and Giggles

First, Happy Mother's Day to two great mothers and grandmothers!  We can't wait for our Skype fix this afternoon.  Catherine's napping and James took Matthew to the park so I can enjoy some quiet time with my new camera/photo organizing and boy do I have a lot of photo organizing to do!  The kids took me out for breakfast this morning:

and James is going to help me finish up a wish-list project this afternoon.  All in all a great day in our house.

Earlier this week we made a plan to go to Yellowstone.  Uncle Ed generously visits us a lot and we still haven't taken him.   We got about half way through the canyon and with increasing snow and decreasing visibility we turned around.  We warmed up with some awesome treats from one of my new favorite little coffee shops and then headed to the caramel factory for a tour and taste test.  The outlook was grim but we decided to head West leaving open the options of Lewis & Clark Caverns, Butte or turning around if the weather was really gross.  Luckily the sky's cleared and we headed to Lewis & Clark.

With this warning sign (and the reports from the last visit James and our visitors made):

Catherine and my gimpy foot sat out.  Meanwhile Uncle Ed and Georgina carried Matthew up to the cave:

 And carried Matthew in the cave:

 And carried Matthew out of the cave:

He didn't seem to mind and had a great trip:

Meanwhile, Catherine hung out with me and the nice ladies at the visitor center.  We hung out at the visitor's center for a bit, but while I wanted Catherine to play with cave recreation:

But she kept heading toward the fireplace.  So we headed to the car for a while to chill out and read, but she kept flipping around in her carseat and getting into precarious positions:

 So we headed outside to play in the grass where she crawled all over but kept heading toward the cliff:

So eventually we just cuddled until she conked out in the sunshine:

All in all an excellent trip with excellent people.  We eventually made it to Yellowstone (but unfortunately not to Lander due to my lack of foresight/planning for changing plans interferring with trailer pick-up).  I'm so excited to head down next week though as we'll have a little more time than this weekend AND we're *fingers crossed* going to be able to come back through Yellowstone which is not only gorgeous right now but not as crowded as the last few times we've been there.   It's actually much shorter distance-wise to come through the park but most of the year it would be much slower/annoying.