Boos, Zoos and BBQ!

No trip around town is complete without a stop at the dino park so we stopped by the other afternoon.  Catherine stopped for a quick picture with Uncle Matt before crawling off again and Matthew was ecstatic to have someone to play chase with him.  

 The next day we tried out our new jackets from Aunt Sharon.  They are pretty cool, both horizontal:

 And vertical:

 They were perfect for our trip.  Because it was unseasonably warm, I gave Uncle Matt the choice between a day in Yellowstone and a day in Billings at their zoo and Chuck E. Cheese.  Uncle Matt chose Yellowstone but after I called and was informed there was a snow tire requirement we opted to take the high and dry route.  We saw peacocks:

 And this scary bear:

 This guy was the star of the show:

 But this guy might have been the cutest:

 And the wildest:

 Underwhelmed doesn't even begin to describe my experience at the zoo.  It was a great layout for the kiddos and the playground was fantastic, but the zoo itself was a sad reminder of the plight of many non-profits (governments?) eager to build  and expand but not support the ongoing operation of something.

 The "Billings Double Feature" for Bozeman tots is generally the zoo followed by Chuck E Cheese, a rite of passage I've been flirting with trying to get done for a while.  Not surprisingly, Chuck E Cheese is every bit the overpriced-mediocre-hell-hole I expected it to be.  I was really hoping for a ball pit as I think it would have been fun but it appears that even in the wild west things we routinely survived as kids are no longer.  It was pretty empty so the kiddos had the run of the place which was nice because Matthew was a bit overwhelmed by it all.  Catherine was freaked out by the rides when they moved but liked to sit in the cars and pretend to drive (when she wasn't trying to climb up the skee ball lanes and steal our balls of course!):

 While Uncle Matt taught Matthew some important lessons in shooting,

 air hockey and skee ball.

Matthew probably could have spent all day putting tokens in the machines and retrieving the complimentary tickets.  

Of course when we got back there was chill out time with Uncle Matt:

 And the next day it was Halloween time.  We made some special snacks:

 As always, licking the spoon was a highlight:

 And enjoying the final treat of course:

 After naps we got dressed and ready to head downtown for some trick or treating.  While I set Catherine on the counter she decided to help herself to some candy before we left:

 Here we are hanging out at the park while we waited for some friends:

 I had to wake both kids up from their naps so the whole event was an odd mixture of being overwhelmed and excited and exhausted at the same time:

 We got there when it started while the crowds were minimal and gave Catherine her first lesson about taking candy from strangers:

 She got really good at freeing up an empty hand whenever candy was offered!  Matthew stomped down the streets as well:

A family shot with two sugar coma kiddos thanks to Uncle Matt.  As you can see James and I's ghostbuster costumes never materialized.  Uncle Matt's super awesome costume made up for it.

 After Matthew's bucket and all of Uncle Matt's pockets were full of candy, coca-cola, chocolate milk and everything else they were handing out we headed home.   It was a gorgeous near 70 degrees so we decided on one last night of grilling before we headed out for more fun.  Catherine enjoyed wandering around:

 Meanwhile, Matthew helped me light the jack-o-lanterns:

 I stayed home to hand out candy while Uncle Matt and James headed out down the street:

Many of the people on our street tell stories about how crazy trick-or-treating was 15 years ago, but as those kiddos have aged, there aren't many little kids on the block but there are still lots of people who want trick-or-treaters.  Judging by the weight of Matthew's candy bucket, it meant that everyone was extremely generous with their handfuls.  Matthew was so excited it would appear he was reluctant to stop for a picture with James:

 Trick or treating at the final house:

We were handing out some pencils with our candy.  When I put my handful in Matthew's bucket he grabbed the pencil and put it back in my bucket telling me "no thank you mom, I don't need that".   The boy learned quickly.  For better or worse we ended up with far more candy than we would ever want, need or should eat.  On Thursday, unfortunately, we had to take Uncle Matt to the airport.  Matthew was in preschool when we took him and when we got back in the car he was very concerned about Uncle Matt, but mostly he kept asking if Uncle Matt ate all his candy :-)

The next day I asked Matthew to sell his daddy a bag of candy and he was very eager to then head out and pick out a toy.

One of his new jokes this week (and boy are there many) was to blame Uncle Matt for the missing candy.  We sure do miss him around here!

Fall Fun!!

This weekend, we packed in a bunch of fall fun! On Saturday morning we headed out to Rocky Creek Farms for pumpkins and cider. First we checked out the pigs

Then we took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch.

Matthew took his turn at "driving"

Technically they were "out" of pumpkins but had set aside a few for a birthday party that never showed. They were little, but the perfect size for Matthew.

Later that afternoon in my quest for carving pumpkins the day before Halloween (FAIL) I saw a mom and her two kids at the grocery store picking out "pumpkins" (small gourds). The poor boy couldn't comprehend that he was going to have to paint his "pumpkin" and they wouldn't be carving any because there were no pumpkins left in town. Thank goodness this year Matthew won't remember and I've learned my lesson. Even though it seemed silly at the time, I should have picked up pumpkins in Worland last weekend :-)

Once we finished up our hay ride we picked out a box of apples, then watched as our cider was pressed






The cider turned out delicious.

Afterward, I couldn' resist a caramel apple. As I was dipping my apple I thought "wow, this caramel is so smooth and creamy for sitting in the crock pot all morning . . . I wonder what their secret is". Turned out the secret was the caramel never, ever set, so it was a drippy gooey disastrous mess. Matthew shared some of daddy's and didn't seem to mind:

Sunday we headed out to Bozeman's Hay Maze which was incredibly cool. It was just before nap so we didn't take on the big maze, but Matthew enjoyed the little maze

and though he was hesitant at first, eventually enjoyed the cornbox. As I pulled corn out of every crease in his overalls when we got home, I was less amused.
Before we headed out we found some big pumpkins to use for a photo op. Even though these next three pics are very similar, I just couldn't pick a favorite :-)


And finally some pics with Mommy and Daddy.

Signs our town is small enough

James was featured in the "People in Business" section of the local paper. I'm glad our paper publishes stuff like this

For more fun things found in our paper, check out the Bozeman Police report blog at http://bozemanpr.blogspot.com/. Fun stuff!

Montana Trip Part II

This weekend we headed up to Montana to semi-officially move in to our new apartment.
Packing for the trip was its own contradiction as we needed to pack what we would need for a 4 day weekend, but not pack what we might need for the next two weeks when we are at home packing the rest of our house. Friday night was spent in road construction/RV hell through most of WY. Then Saturday we woke up to this . . . not the best start to our weekend but it could have been worse:
Here's a sneak peek I took last time of the outside of James' new office. It looks like a condo building to me but its a very nice complex from the outside complete with pond and everything.
We then picked up the keys to our apartment. Here's the grand and boring tour. First, here's the pick I took last time we were there of the outside patio. The bulk of our apt. is to the left of it.

Because of its proximity to parking, we use this entrance more often than not. However, the apt's front door opens onto a very nice grassy courtyard which will be nice when little man starts toddling around. Speaking of that (let's take a break from the tour) so I can show you what Matthew did all weekend:


That's right, he's still refusing to crawl "normally" but he has picked up mad skills with his army crawling.

Which means he can scoot over to June to do this:

Or scoot over to me to steal this:

Okay, back to the tour. Inside here is our dining room and living room.


And here's the hallway. Sky thinks it is awesome for fetch!
Here's the master and master bath:
Matthew's new room:
His first nap went pretty well. James went to get him up and hollered for me to "come see this"

My first thought was that he was "real" crawling or had pulled himself up in the play pen . . . until James laughs and says "he looks like he got punched in the face!" The redness doesn't show up in the picture that well, but Matthew was asleep pretty soundly and woke with crazy blanket marks.
The guest room and theoretically where I want the dogs to sleep since we don't have enough sq. footage for Sky's bed in the living room anymore.
The guest bath.
And Matthew definitely approves of his new tub.



The laundry room with


that's right . . .
A DOOR! Maybe now all of Matthew's videos of the next year won't have loud laundry noises in the background!

And last but not least, our kitchen. It didn't really hit me until this weekend how much counter/cabinet space I am giving up. Holy moly. Thank goodness it has a dishwasher otherwise I might cry.

One HUGE benefit of our complex is the on-site storage garages. Here's a pic taken from the patio of our car and our storage unit. This will house some of our stuff until we decide if we want to settle down and buy a house (or if we are later able to find a cost-effective larger house to rent that allows our four beasts).

Another huge benefit of the area where our apartment is (and the town in general) is the plethora of walking paths and/or sidewalks. There is a great path around some wetlands across the street from us filled with lots of pretty Mallard pairs. The dogs are adjusting to being leash doggies again (or for June probably for the first time) pretty well. The prairie dogs are an added bit of excitement for them . . . and the giant ankle swallowing holes an bit of excitement for us. Our complex has a nice little playground right out our back door and if we follow the paths we can get to slightly bigger park with swings.
Oh yeah, and did we mention the views!
Most of the weekend we ran errands getting a feel for the town and picking up some amenities to make life work at the apartment. As we could only bring so many boxes with us to unpack, we spent a lot of time napping or playing with the dogs while Matthew napped. Sometimes we even napped with the dogs.

On Monday we headed to the Museum of the Rockies. We picked up a family membership so I'll wait another day to bore you with my analysis of their exhibits/interpretation (which were fabulous but unique compared to many other museums we've been to due to the MSU affiliation). However, I will say that if the DaVinci exhibit comes anywhere near you, GO. This trip was a short one to check it out and take Matthew someplace that wasn't the house where he could stretch his legs and explore. He definitely found that:


(A gratuitously long video for the grandparents)



The museum has some impressive sculptures with skin/feathers etc. on one half and the opposite side is the skeletal or muscular structures.
And with daddy in front of Big Mike.

As I type we are headed across the desolate lands between Lovell, WY and whatever the next dinky town is (Greybull?). I've taken to writing our blog posts and editing the video/photos in the car and posting when we get home. (haha mom and dad, you thought I was procrastinating packing didn't you? :-) Though much of the land is pretty, there are only so many desolate buttes one can admire before needing something else to do : )