Zoo Day

Juliana, Maya and Natalia are back from their l-o-n-g trip to her family in Brazil, so we caught up with them at the zoo on Monday.

Our zoo family pass expires this month, and we've decided that, for now, we're not going to renew it. With Cora in school, we're just not going often enough as a family to make the yearly price pencil out.

Monday looked like the coolest day of the week - it's July, therefore we're facing upper-90s pretty often. But Monday was cloudy in the morning, and the high only reached 85.

We had a very nice day together, and enjoyed catching up on our respective summer trips.

We spent much of our time in the zoo's new Rainforest exhibit, which featured lots of flora and fauna from Brazil.
Here, the half-Brazilian (and half-English) girls hang out in the replica of a Harpy eagle nest. These massive raptors can reach 22 pounds and 42 inches long.

 After lunch at the playground, and well over an hour of playtime, we got ice creams and saw a few more animals on our way out.

 We made sure to see the zoo's new lions, after over a year of an empty enclosure after the older lions died.

Hubert and Kalisa, both 15 years old, joined the zoo this spring, and what a pretty pair they are. We even got to see them cuddle.

We had to have Cora-the-zebra pose in front of the real zebras.
Thanks, Juliana, for all these beautiful photos! We had a very enjoyable day.

The Lazy Days

Summertime.

Late nights, lazy mornings, lots of playtime, lots of relaxing.

I love how my girls can quickly slip into vacation mode and sleep well into the 8 o'clock hour. Of course, the other side of this means that Cora is awake until almost 10 most nights, even if she's in bed before 9.

Our summer has been interesting - a week home, two weeks away, a week home, a week away, and now we're home for a couple of weeks.



On those days with no real big plans, we're following this summer list of things to do. As much as I love a bit of laziness, too much of it leads to too much screen time, crankiness, and arguing.

I had Cora help formulate the list our first full day of summer break, and she loves checking off what we've done.













One of the items Cora put on the list was "cooking time." She found a recipe in her children's cookbook she wanted to try, and we went off to Sprouts to buy the ingredients.

While shopping, Violet had a good question: "How do you say, 'milky hilky' in Spanish?"








While Cora handled her coconut lemon balls, Violet and I made zucchini-chocolate-chip muffins. Well, Violet said she wanted to help, but quickly tired of grating the zucchini.

Legos won out.

The other morning, Cora remarked, "I really want a pet lizard."
Violet replied, "I want a pet horse, because our grass is really long. Our back yard could be his stable."

Another Violetism: "Mom, do you know why houses need to be bigger than us? So there's room inside."

While listening to the radio, we heard the phrase "master of subtlety." Cora said, "I'm not a master of subtlety. I'm a master of defendity."
I think she was referring to her soccer defense skills.

Montana wrapup

After our big Yellowstone trip, Sunday started out late, with several hours of Legos around breakfast.

Stace loves Legos. I think that having kids was his way of getting back into Legos.

On Monday, our flight was scheduled for 6 p.m., so we had quite a bit of playtime after we packed up.

The weather was a little cooler, perfect for playing at the school playground across the street.

Cora and Violet both loved walking Womack, and lately have been begging to get a dog of their own. I tell them to enjoy Jake and Pepper at Grandpa's house.

Thankfully, by midday Monday, Ave felt well enough to come out to play.  

Who doesn't love a game of "fill the slide with gravel"?

They don't call it Big Sky Country for nothing. This was the gorgeous sunset from Genia and John's front yard on our last evening.

Thanks again for a wonderful week! We so enjoyed our time together.

Wet and Wild

The weather in Billings during our trip was interesting - we had clouds, rain and thunder/lightening one day, sunny dry heat another, and muggy warmth another.

On the warm days, we cooled off with water play - we went to a water park a couple of days, and to the lake another.

Lake Elmo is just a few miles up the road from the Roberts, and it was the first time my girls have played in a lake. They had a great time swimming and digging in the muddy sand.

On Sunday, Stace and I took our girls and Johnny out, and hoped to go to Oasis, the local water park. It was closed for a private party, so instead, we went to a little splash park.

Violet and Johnny loved it, and so did Cora, once she dealt with her disappointment about Oasis being off limits.

Genia stayed home, because Ave was sick. She'd developed a fever on Saturday evening as we were bringing our Yellowstone adventure to a close.

Near the splash pad was a grassy hill, perfect for somersaulting down.

We had a lot of fun at Oasis on Tuesday, after the zoo. It was the perfect place to cool off after walking around seeing the animals. The small water park has a play structure, a wave pool, two big slides, a lazy river, and a pool for swimming, volleyball and basketball.

Violet and Cora both loved it. The kids were able to go back on Monday with Stacey and John, just before we flew back home.

Yellowstone, Part II

Around lunchtime, we pulled into the Old Faithful area to see the most famous geyser in the world. As we learned later at the ranger-led talk, Old Faithful isn't the biggest or most powerful geyser, but it is consistent, letting off pent-up steam about every 90 minutes.

We lucked out enough to see it blow twice - once within 10 minutes of our arrival, and again after we finished our lunch at the beautiful and historic Old Faithful Inn.

In the Old Faithful visitor's center, the children let the ranger inspect their junior ranger guides, and took their Junior Ranger oath, and received their badges.

Besides the steaminess associated with being atop a deep-underground Super Volcano, Yellowstone features some stunning vistas. With only one day to explore, we saw just a bit, but what we saw was beautiful.

Here, we have a meadow of wildflowers in front of green, forested hills and mountains.

Our last big stop of the day was at Tower Falls, where we took a short walk from the parking lot to see this steep waterfall.

Stace took Cora and Johnny down a short hiking path, where they got another look at the river. Cora was very excited about hiking.

Magnificent!

Yellowstone, Part I

 On Friday, John flew off to Chicago for a music gig, and Stace flew into Billings in the evening. Genia and I loaded the kids into the car, picked him up, and off we drove to Gardiner, MT, for a brief adventure in America's first national park. After all, we couldn't visit Montana in the summer and NOT go to Yellowstone.

Here was the view from our hotel room! Just gorgeous.

The children all had so much fun staying in a hotel together (in rooms next door to each other). Violet and Owen marveled that we had a microwave and mini-fridge, which Johnny painstakingly filled with our snacks for Saturday's adventure.

They happily played on the grass, and in the morning, we spotted a marmot in the rocks near the river. The kids were all sad to leave the hotel Saturday morning. But we had places to go, and wonders to see.

Soon after entering the park, near the Mammoth Hot Springs area, we saw a group of elk. Some were very young; there were about 30 altogether.

Here, we stopped at the ranger station to get Yellowstone Junior Ranger guides, so our five junior rangers-in-training could complete the learning activities and earn their badges.

Mammoth Hot Springs was an amazing place to see (and smell) - boiling pools, colored water, and sulfur. We warned the children about straying from the wooden walkways - people and animals actually die every year by falling through thin ground into scalding steamy pools of mud.

Our next stop was the Artist Paint Pots area, where you can see many pools of different colored water, with the various colors showing how hot the water is. The blue water is 198 (92 C) degrees!

On our daylong driving adventure, we spied several lone bison, like this one here. We also came across several groups of cars stopped on the roadside, with people out with cameras and binoculars, apparently looking at grizzly or black bears. At one point, Ave said she saw one, though she was the only one in our car to be so lucky.

It was a l-o-n-g day of driving for the children: we started at 8 and didn't get back to Billings until nearly 11 p.m. For the most part, they did well, and spent several hours in the beginning looking through their junior guidebooks.

They also entertained us all with singing. Enjoy this video - we sure enjoyed it while it was live. Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" is a big hit, thanks to the Wii Just Dance video game.

Playtime

With a week in the same house, the children enjoyed lots of playtime. Here, they are painting little suncatchers that Genia and I picked up at Hobby Lobby while John was nice enough to keep all five on Thursday.

They also pained plastic rings, that went along with their game of "Spy Kids" in the storage room in the basement.

In that storage area, Owen and Violet found Genia's box of Easter decorations. We found Violet like this, doing a puzzle shape activity. Later, wearing the bunny ears in the car, Violet said they helped her hear the music better.

On that same car trip, Owen explained to Violet how much he missed the snow, how he won an Olympic sledding competition on TV, and how snow and hail water the garden.

On Tuesday morning we had a bit of rain, and a little thunder and lightning. Cora and Ave ran out to make boats to float down the gutter stream.

Deer and antelope often wander the Roberts' neighborhood. We came across this antelope as we drove down their street, a block down from their house.

What's summer without a firepit and s'mores? Genia recently finished this nice firepit section of the back yard, staining the concrete and adding the river rock an adirondack chairs.

Their yard is big enough for a the firepit, lots of grass, a veggie patch and a play structure. Owen and Violet had fun making potions in the sand.

Billings Zoo

 On Wednesday, Genia and I took the kids to the Billings Zoo, where Owen entertained us by telling us all of his names for all the animals. This goat, for example, was Spotty. Or Goaty. The names changed pretty frequently.

 The highlight of the outing was seeing these tigers play the way cats love to play.

Their "real" names are Jasmine and Sophie, they are sisters, and they will be two in November. They acted just like Spencer and Sebastian act, and we all loved watching them.

 See the videos at the end for more...

 Not  great photo, but these cuties are river otters.

 After seeing all the animals, we ate our picnic lunch and spent a few minutes playing at the playground. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.