Almost ready for Halloween

Halloween came fast this year. We didn't even go to so many pumpkin patches and corn mazes that I got tired of going. 


 

Steph's mom and cousin went back to Costa Rica. Sean and Gordo liked playing together. Gordo got to see snow which was fun for him.

Ethan spent the day with us on Saturday and the boys carved pumpkins.



Busy boys. We sure miss having Ethan as our next door neighbor.

AJ and Steph finally announced they are having a baby. They are not announcing the flavor yet. Apparently it's "traditional." I have to admit I am pretty excited about being a Grandma. I've been sewing blankets since she found out she was pregnant.

Steph's mom and cousin

Steph's mom and cousin are here visiting. They went to Disney Land while we were in Yellowstone so we didn't see them until we got back. Saturday was warm. It was a great day to pick pumpkins. They don't have pumpkins or Halloween in Costa Rica so it was fun for Gordo.

On Friday night when we got back from our road trip I told Sean Gordo was coming over and he got so excited. He said "we have to wait a long time for the airplane from Costa Rica." I told him no he is already here he's at Steph and AJ's house. He was so excited he could hardly stand it. He said "I will hug him." He then sat by the front door and waited for him to arrive. They play so cute even though they don't speak the same language. Sean said "I don't care if he only speaks Spanish we can still play and he will follow me to my room."

We are hoping for some snow before they go home as Gordo has never seen snow.

At Pack's pumpkin patch. Yes, I know you can buy a pumpkin at the grocery store, but it's just not the same.

Gordo and Steph

Gordo, Steph and Fanny

AJ pulling a couple of kids and pumpkins

Just sitting in the pumpkin patch

Don thought it might be easier to pull the cart like this, he was wrong.

So many to choose from.

After the pumpkin patch we went to lunch and then to "got air" the trampoline place.

Fanny and Steph looking bored.

I think they spent more time in the foam than jumping.

Yellowstone Bear World

When we were having our family dinner before our trip Wendy said "oh, you have to stop at Bear World my kids loved it!" I called and Bear World was closed for the winter but low and behold they were going to be open Friday, Saturday and Sunday for UEA weekend. I guess they told the bears that too so they wouldn't hibernate before we got there. When we drove out of Yellowstone we came out the West entrance and stopped at Bear World in the wonderful town of Rigby Idaho right outside of Rexburg. Yep, I lived in Rexburg two years and never went to Bear World. How can that be?

Bear World is kind of like a bear safari. You drive around in your car (with your windows rolled up) and there are bears everywhere. Wandering around in front of your car, lounging about. Kind of cool.

They also had a petting zoo. There were no bears in the petting zoo;(

Bambi! The deer kept licking us. I guess we are salty. They also tried to eat our clothes.

Sean really wanted to hold that chicken.

They had some silly little rides. Thank goodness for Alika.

And the highlight! Feeding baby bears! It took Sean awhile to get brave enough to hold the bottle. Those baby bears are nine months old and they out weigh him. They are kind of like huge over grown puppies and they want to climb on you, chew on you. When the bottle is empty and it gets empty fast they just toss their heads and throw the bottles to the ground. They got to feed six different bears.

Alika took no warming up. She would have rolled around on the ground with that bear if they let her. Heck she would have let it sleep with her. She fell in love.

Glad we didn't run into in Grizzly's in Yellowstone.

A beary happy family.

Yellowstone

Tons of pictures but Yellowstone is just so beautiful!

We stayed at a cabin next to the Old Faithful lodge. It was the last weekend that anything in Yellowstone is open for the fall. Somethings open in the winter but you can only get to them by snow mobile. I had a little anxiety as we were driving up, what if NONE of the restaurants are open because I only brought snacks. There was one restaurant open in the lodge. They were open for breakfast and dinner and you could buy box lunches. There was a gas station where you could pay with credit card and that was it. Everything else was closed! On Sunday the Old Faithful Lodge and cabins closed too.

It was freezing at night, in the teens. Our cabin was nice and toasty. It was so quiet I had to turn the bathroom fan on so Alika could sleep. The days were pretty nice, warm (upper 40's) for about two hours then it dipped back in the 30's. We did a lot of hiking.

Old Faithful gets all the credit yet she is one of three to five hundred geysers in Yellowstone and she's not even faithful. The sign said her decreasing eruptions may be due to people throwing stuff in her crater or changes in the earth from earthquakes. She erupts about every 90 minutes give or take ten. There are about 1000 geysers in the world and half of those are in Yellowstone. It looks like the mountains are on fire because steam is coming up everywhere. Sean learned a lot about steam and clouds. There are gyesers and then lots of hot springs in Yellowstone.

Waiting for Old Faithful. It was cold!

There she blows!



For dinner Alika ate buffalo ribs. Taste like chicken. No, not really. It taste more like roast beef. It didn't taste like the ribs we are used to.

Not a great picture of Sean because the sun was in his eyes. We were at Biscuit Basin. I thought it was cute because I've always called Sean my little Biscuit.

Alika worked in Yellowstone a couple of summers ago so she knows the area well. She took us to some her favorite "color pots." Depending on the algae make up the pots are different colors. There is an entire ecosystem living in just an inch or two of algae. The algae on the top photosynthesize and provide energy to the ones on the bottom. The ones on the bottom decay and provide energy to the ones on the top. You could earn a Master's degree just on what goes on in the environment in Yellowstone. I learned lots just reading the signs. I wonder what the Indians thought when they first saw Yellowstone.

Again, the pictures don't do justice. This pot was emerald green.

We hiked up to a water fall, I don't remember what it was called it was a two mile hike and Sean and Alika would run ahead of us and hide. We kept looking for bears but didn't see any, just buffalo.

Cute little poser.

Cute big poser.

We are standing at the Excelsior Geyser in front of a HUGE crater that last erupted in 1985. When it did erupt it went off for 47 hours. Hmm, glad it didn't decide to erupt while we were standing in front of it.  The Internet says it's impossible to predict when it will erupt again. I would think they'd have someway to measure the pressure and activity inside of the crater. They say when it goes it pumps out 4000 gallons of boiling water a minute that then flows into the Fire hole river. (Unless you are standing next to it then I speculate some of that 4000 gallons flows over you.)

These pictures of Alika and Sean are all as they walk towards the Grand Prismatic Spring. It's a slick area that water covers across thermophiles. It's red, brown and orange but you can't really see that in the picture. It looks and feels like you would think another planet feels.

Just sitting on the dock of a thermal bacterial mat watching all the steam go by.

Just so awesome. Standing on one side of the walkway taking a picture of Alika and Sean sitting on the other side.

Every few minutes a breeze would blow the steam across and it was so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

Hey there's a mother and baby buffalo blocking the road! They were everywhere!

Gibbon Falls

Checking out the falls.

Jackson Hole Wyoming

Jackson Hole, the Park City of Wyoming.

Jackson was a bust for Sean. It took us over two hours to get there once we left Lava. Sean kept asking where we were going and we would say "Jackson." We got there and it was pretty cold. We went to the Ripley Believe it or not museum which scared Sean. He did not like it one bit!

We then went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. When I took Sean to the bathroom he asked "where are my cousins?" I asked "what cousins?" He said, "Jackson, Tyson and Jameson." I said "they are in Hawaii." Sean was annoyed. When we went out to the table I told Don Sean thought we were meeting up with his cousins. Don figured it out. We kept telling him we were going to Jackson! He thought we were going to see Jackson, Harrison, Tyson and Jameson! He was pretty bummed when we told him the Jackson we were seeing was a town and not a cousin.

After that disappointment he choked on a chip. Alika stuck her finger in his mouth. (No blind sweeps Alika!) He could breath but the chip was stuck in his throat and only came out when he threw up. I was able to catch most of it in a napkin and Don and the waitress reacted quickly with more towels. Sean got his shirt dirty and was traumatized and said he will never eat chips again. 



A bunch of antlers.

The worlds largest ball of barbed wire. What the heck?

No way Alika, I'm not sitting on that scary looking thing. Sean kept asking if everything was real. Alika told him this couch was real once. I can certainly see why he found the entire museum scary.

Road Trip!!!

Our road trip started with a night at Lava Hot Springs. There was lots of rain on the drive. We saw this double rainbow on the drive. All the bad weather was during our drive and it was nice (cold but nice) the rest of our trip.

We saw this really cool double rainbow. I don't think I've ever seen a rainbow so low to the ground.

Lava Hot Springs is a summer resort town. There is next to nothing open. The Wagon Wheel restaurant was our only choice for dinner and breakfast. Fortunately the food was good. Alex and Loreal came with us to Lava and spent the night but left in the morning for home. They both had to work the next day. Neither of them had been to Lava before.

We spent some time in the hot pots before bed.

Alex and Loreal were COLD when they got out of the pool. It was windy too.

Don and Sean rode in the back of the car the half mile to the springs. Sean thought that was very awesome.

We stayed at my friend Charity's vacation home in Lava. She had just had an addition added. Totally cool. It was confusing because it was so different than when we stayed there before. The construction was almost done but not complete. There was so much mud around the house it made me nervous trying to keep her brand new house clean with so much mud to be tracked. We just cleaned are way out in the morning. We watched the last Indiana Jones. Sean had never watched any Indiana Jones movies and really enjoyed it.

Alex watching the show.