Boys will be boys.

This evening, I caught this little guy having a grand ole' time playing in the one mud puddle we had outside. He played in until I made him come in for dinner. How is it that kids can seem to always find the mud puddles? I'm just happy that he was in a diaper and not his clothes!

Because we love it so much...

...we spent our weekend on the lake boating. We are trying to get in as much lake as we possibly can before it turns cold! We had chicken for lunch and let the kids play in the water for quite a while. Because kind of had some grumpy kids, so Carson was the only one that skied, but we enjoyed a nice ride up the canyon and some cliff jumping while Landon napped. We got off the water just as it started to rain...good timing I would say!

One happy boy in the water.

The Sea gulls were really quite brave yesterday and would come and pick up any pieces of chicken that we had thrown in the water. It was actually kind of fun to watch them pick the pieces up and fly away and fight over it.

Travis enjoyed the chicken just as much as the sea gulls did.

Ready to ski

Travis showing off!

Carson is getting to be quite the ski master. We need to figure out how to get him a longer rope so he doesn't have to be bent over the whole time. I can't imagine that feels very good to be in that position for too long!

Carson had fun jumping off this ledge.

Travis was too scared to jump off the higher spot, but we eventually got him talked into jumping off a lower ledge.

Landon was asleep under this blue towel on my lap the whole time they were cliff jumping. It's probably a good thing because he would have wanted to go and jump with his bigger brothers.

Back to school

Today was the first day of school for Carson. Hard to believe that he's in 2nd grade and that our summer is over! He was really excited to get back to school. He is looking forward to seeing his friends again and really likes having "stuff" to do every day. From the time he was old enough to talk, he has always asked me what we were going to be doing that day, or when I would tuck him in at night he would ask what we were going to do the next day. We are sure going to miss having him around during the day. He's always such a good helper and is really good about playing with his brothers. Travis has already asked if he can invite a friend over today because he isn't going to have Carson to play with.

First day of 2nd grade.

It was sure hard to get a natural smile from this guy this morning. I think he had other things on his mind...! :)

Here he is waiting for the bus with some of the other kids in the neighborhood.

Blurry, but loading up!

 After school today, the kids were invited to a neighborhood back to school party. Carson came right home off the bus and grabbed our goodies to take over. Landon and Travis were still napping so we joined the party a little later. The kids snacked, first, and then played in the pool with their friends. They had a great time. We love this neighborhood!

Our treat was a meat and cheese tray.

Having fun in the water.

The kids took a time out from the water to draw with some chalk.

 Last night we had a back to school dinner. They requested spaghetti, so that's what we had.

Everyone had a fun place setting.

Ready for dinner.

On Monday, the Elementary school had their registration day. We got school lunches bought and found his room where he dropped off his school supplies for the year and officially met his teacher.

Ready to head to 2nd grade!

Carson and his teacher Jody Strom.

They got to make a minion while the moms were filling out some paper work. Carson wanted to get a picture with his.

And Landon wanted his picture by one too!

Rodeo

Last night for family home evening, we ran to Cody to go to the Cody Nite Rodeo. We got there a little early so that we could eat some dinner first and we had hoped that we would have enough time to run and get Carson a new pair of cowboy boots since his are too small now. We didn't end up having time to do that, so we had ice cream instead. The rodeo was actually pretty good. We weren't sure how it was going to be since it was a Monday night and the end of the season, but we were all entertained. The two older boys really  had a good time and Landon did pretty good for the first half, but was getting more and more tired towards the end and getting a little whiny. He LOVED all the cows and horses there were though! Attending the rodeo was one of our last three things to cross off our summer bucket list...I'm not sure if we are going to get the other two done or not, but we will sure try our hardest! It's hard to believe that our summer freedom will be over in two days!

The last weekend of summer

We spent our last weekend before school starts out on the lake with my parents enjoying the warm weather and beautiful water. It was perfect! Carson skied like 20 times...no lie! He would get up go for a while, fall and want to go again. We had to make him stop so that others could go. He's getting quite good and is getting pretty confident. The last couple of times he went, he was started to move himself a little from side to side. Hopefully we will get out a couple more times before fall comes!

Red Lodge Retreat

This weekend, the Big Horn Co-op had a Manager's retreat in Red Lodge, MT for their managers and a guest. It was a way to say thank you for all the work that they do for the Co-op. We left our kids with grandpa and grandma Asay Friday afternoon and then headed to Red Lodge for the rest of the weekend. Friday there was a "meeting" followed by a taco bar for dinner. At dinner, they gave us instructions for anyone that wanted to participate in an Amazing race competition. After we were done eating, we had a few hours before we were going to bowl with the group, so we decided to walk around down town and start on our Amazing race stuff. Around 9:30, we headed to the bowling alley to bowl. We ended up bowling until around 11:30...way too late for us (and I beat Christian every game)!

One of our prizes in the Amazing race were two free root beer floats. The gift certificate was really cute and said that we got to have as much free root beer as we wanted as long as we had ice cream in our mugs. The old man that owned it showed us how to pull the lever on the old root beer dispenser so we could get as much as we wanted when we wanted. We definitely got our fill of root beer and ice cream!

Christian enjoying his float.

Saturday morning, I decided to join Christian and three of his co-workers in a fishing trip. We drove from Red Lodge about an hour and a half to fish on the Clark's Fork River somewhere before you get to Cooke City. I was actually quite nervous about going because the guy that was taking us was telling us how he had only not seen grizzly bears in this area only twice his whole life and that the river had like class five water rapids! Luckily, we didn't see any bears and the river was nothing like what he was describing! I didn't fish, but it was enjoyable to watch and be out in nature and soak up some sunshine. Christian probably caught the most fish that morning and was the only one not fly fishing. After a few hours of fishing the river, we headed back. 

We were stopped in construction for a bit, but had this view while we were stopped.

Christian's first catch of the day.

Christian and the other three guys fishing the river.

The scenery was beautiful up there!

Christian braving the river to get to the other side to see if there were more fish to catch.

This must have been Christian's biggest of the day because he's the one that wanted the picture taken.

We got back to town around one and grabbed some lunch. A friend of mine had told me once that there was a bus there that served the best Mexican food she had ever had. The bus was actually close to our hotel so we decided to try it out. It looked a little sketchy from the outside, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the inside wasn't that bad. The food was quite good too!

Christian inside the bus.

Eating our yummy lunch outside under an umbrella.

After lunch, we got cleaned up, had a short nap and then finished up our Amazing Race stuff. Luckily in this race, the winner wasn't the first one to be done. After finishing our stuff, it was time to head to dinner up at some Bible camp. They cooked us huge steaks for dinner along with potatoes, corn, rolls and salad. After dinner, they announced the winners of the Amazing Race. They had 7 couples complete it and five of those couples got the entire thing right, so they decided to put the names in a hat and draw them out to place them first, second and third. We ended up getting second place and winning $30! Go us. We ended the night with a camp fire and visiting with the other couples that went. It was a really nice weekend away and a good way to meet some of the people that Christian works with. He really does work with some great people!

Our $30 winnings!

Down by the river where we had dinner.

Some of the group enjoying the camp fire.

There was a moose enjoying some dinner also while we were there. At first they thought it was a yearling bull elk, until it decided to relieve itself revealing that it was in fact a female. We were all really glad that there was no baby around!

The sunset was really pretty that night.

It only took a couple of months...

...For our first major accident to occur on the new play set. Thursday night, the boys were out playing with a couple of the neighbor kids on the play set. I was watching Carson do the monkey bars, like he does almost every day, where he tries to jump to the third bar and then continue with the rest when he slipped. I heard a whack as he hit his face on a piece of wood on the bottom of the play set. He started to cry and scream so I ran to him to see him holding his nose with blood rushing out between his fingers. I had a look at his nose and saw that it was what caught the force of his fall. It didn't look quite right, so I ran to get him a towel for the blood and grabbed Christian to come and see if he thought it looked like he broke his nose like it did. We both agreed that it didn't look quite right so Christian ran him to the ER while I stayed with the other boys. I have to admit that as they were gone, the song, Chicks Dig it by Chris Cagle (a song about doing stupid things to try and impress girls)kept coming to my mind. I have a feeling he might have been showing off for the little neighbor girl that was over playing!
As soon as the Dr. saw him he agreed that it looked broken so they sent him in for x-rays of his face and neck (to make sure there wasn't any damage to it too). After a look at the x-rays, the dr was surprised to find that it actually wasn't broken! So, they sent him home with a big ice pack, some major swelling and some scratches here and there. Grandpa and Grandma Asay dropped by about the same time that they got back from the ER to make sure he was ok. The next day, grandpa and grandma Foulger came from Powell to see him and brought him some yummy treats and a couple of activity books to do while he was chilling. We are so glad that it wasn't broken and that he can finally breath through his nose again!

This was right as he was going out the door to the ER. He had fat lips and  scratches all over!

After he returned. They got him all cleaned up and put a band aid on the scrap he got on his knee.

This is my smiling happy boy today. The swelling has gone way down and has some pretty good bruises!