Busy Life

I feel like we have been all over the place in the last week, and I am SO very excited to sleep in our own bed tonight. But, we have had a lot of adventures! In one day we were in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, after coming from Utah. We went to a museum in Rigby, ID where the inventor of television is from. We went to West Yellowstone and watched Old Faithful erupt (I've never seen that before!) we went to an air show at a base in Idaho Falls and that was pretty neat, but hot, and ridiculous because they wouldn't let you bring food and drinks in and the lines were horrendous and prices outrageous! I met Sterling's real mom for the first time in my life. And her husband Arthur, who is hilarious. We saw a buffalo in West Yellowstone on the road walking right beside us!!! We also went to a cabin right off Trapper's Loop (right outside of Ogden) and walked to an incredibly beautiful reservoir. So. Here's the pictures. And they are opposite chronological order because I always load the pictures wrong and I'm too lazy to fix them. So starting with our lovely hike at the cabin.
This is the Rexburg temple, isn't the sun just absolutely PERFECT behind that spire?
This is pictures of the air show...much cooler in real life than seeing pictures of it.

This is Karen, Sterling's real mom, and her husband Arthur.

This is the buffalo that walked RIGHT BY US on the road!!!! It was crazy.
This is us waiting for Old Faithful to erupt.
Old Faithful.
Some weird pools. That is some REALLY hot water right there. Bacteria can't live in it.
This was the mud pots. I liked them.
This was some geysers along the way.


Sterling enjoying his huckleberry ice cream. I got buffalo chip. It was AMAZING! So incredibly creamy. Buffalo chip had chocolate ice cream with swirls of caramel and big chunks of chocolate covered nuts. It was the best ice cream I think I have ever had.
This was a fresh-water spring that they built a little platform around so its just like a drinking fountain. There's no faucet but the water just continually squirts out!
The end. Maybe I'll post some more pictures later, when our internet connection isn't acting up.

Jingles

Sterling and I went around Walmart singing. He started it. Everything we saw he put into a song that went like this:

Piii-----neapple! It's the apple of the pine!
or
Hu----ggies! It's the gies of the hug!
or
Stra----wberries! It's the berries of the straw!!!
or
Ni----ssan! It's the sann of the Ni!!!!

It was REALLY hilarious. And catching. I sang it for a word. Sterling just looked at me all mischeviously and sang another little diddy, but then came back to it. It was absolutely hilarious.

Amazing Outdoor Adventures

This is the story of a couple who started a hike too late in the morning(because they had to wait for Sterling to get out of training) and so managed a 16.4 mile hike in the blistering heat of a mid-July Utah summer.

This is the trail. It was so incredibly beautiful. Pictures do NOT do it justice. Not at all. It took us six hours to do the first 8.2 miles. Granted, it was uphill, but I think our pace was fast, I think it took us a long time because we stopped an hour for lunch and we stopped often for pictures. The return trip took three hours. And that was with tired muscles!

This is Sterling demonstrating the extreme beauty of our little packs that we invested it. Eleven bucks each. Not quite a camelback quality, but very, very useful and comfortable. We love them.

This is our first little peak that I am standing on. It was amazing. You could see all of Eden valley.

This was a very happy, very shady part of the trail. The best part of this hike, besides the incredible mountains, was how green everything was. We couldn't decide if it was because it is so high up or because its been such a wet year.

This was my favorite part of the trail. It was just great glens forever and ever and ever. I suggested hermitizing ourselves several times, and just staying there forever. We'd have to do something about all the bugs.

We have no idea what kind of flowers these incredible flowers were, but we LOVED them!

There were amazing wildflowers the ENTIRE hike. Never just plain green, always LOTS of color across the entire hillside. Amazing. You just have to see it. The colors were so rich and bright.

Ummm...this was parked as we hiked there and as we hiked back. Didn't really fit the scenery. But pretty sweet nonetheless.

This is a moose and a calf!!!! You can't really tell because I was REALLY zoomed in on my camera but we watched them move around for quite awhile, it was amazing!!!!!
this is snow. We saw quite a bit of it at the top.
The following are lots of pictures of the herd of mountain goats that we saw. All of them looked like they owned the world. We walked within twenty feet of four of them and they didn't even blink an eye. It was AMAZING!

Do you see that mountain goat on the tip of that peak? He's overlooking the entire SLC valley!
This is our exhausted faces, very happily at the 8.2 mile halfway point. Elevation 9750. Tallest peak on the Wasatch Front. Ben Lomond. We ran out of water shortly thereafter. 4 liters doesn't last 16.4 miles apparently. We had thought it seemed like a lot. Sterling rationed us celery the rest of the way. And cherries. He grew quite concerned about me the last two miles of the trip. He offered to carry me. I walked the entire way though. It was an adventure. Next time, we'll bring more water, but it was still the best hike EVER!

This is our faces at the midway point of the hike. Its my favorite face Sterling can make. Maybe it was the elevation. Haahaa I meant to take pictures of us at the very end, but I felt a little more need to get water out of our trunk than take pictures.

july 4th festivities

We started our day out by riding horses around dad's corral. Marlowe, Sterling's brother, came with us, and that is him on the horse between me and dad.
And that is him riding like a cowboy! Haahaa
This is Ethan entertaining us before the parade started, because we were all very bored. We happened to be at the very end of the parade. Almost everyone apologized that they were out of candy. Somewhat disappointing, but we got enough as it was.

This is Anders holding up the dead blow snake that Uncle Ethan killed. All the little kids were quite fascinated.
This is Dad making homemade root beer. This epitomizes July 4th for me.
This is some sweet red/white/blue jello that mom made. It was delicious.
This is Myles, me, Sterling, and Marlowe waiting for the parade to start!
And everyone else waiting for the parade to start....Lynaea, Hailey, mom, Kourtney, Ethan, Lindsay Ann, dad, Andrea, Eli, Myles....
After the parade and after a barbecue, everyone was quite hot. Instead of doing the slip 'n slide, all the kids just went out to the field that dad was irrigating, and played in a mud hole instead!
Hailey, Cassidy, Anders, Wyatt, Kiersten, Lynnaea, Cowen, Sterling, Danica, and Myles inside the BIGGEST mud hole.
This is my hot husband. I know, he has a farmers tan. It's all right. I like it.
Anders, Hailey, Miriam, and Lynnaea trying to catch some sun to warm up.
This is Koob. Sterling and Marlowe played it with us. I love it. But I am not good at it. Sterling wasn't particularly good at it either. So we lost. A lot.
This is the new game mom and dad got...I think it's called Ladder Ball. My husband and his brother Marlowe smoked everyone, and we all loved it. This is Lindsay Ann and Dad.
Me and a sparkler. And yes, it was cold enough for jeans and a jacket on July 5th.
Andrea, Wyatt, Sterling, and Marlowe with fireworks. Our fireworks this year consisted of much ingenuity, cardboard, duct tape, buckets, water, a shovel, and other fun things. It was a little scary, but VERY fun! I picked out the BEST firework, it went on FOREVER and it was amazing!
Sterling and his sparkler. A great end, to a fabulous day.