Hill Air Force Base

On the way to Montana, Ethan noticed an airplane museum. We told him that we would have time on the way home to stop, so we did. It was the Hill Air Force Base Aerospace Museum. I had no idea it was so large or so cool.

Inside they had a lot of airplanes, helicopters, photos and items from all the different wars where planes have been used. It was neat to see everything and learn some new things. Ethan loved sitting in a real pilot's seat.

Courtney loved the planes but the helicopters were her favorites. She also is fascinated right now with fires so she searched out a fire engine that was in the building which showed how fires are put out on airplanes.


We stayed at the museum for a little over an hour and then we were homeward bound. Bryan doesn't like driving on trips because he gets so tired and I have a hard time sleeping because I'm nervous that Bryan will fall asleep. The solution we have found is to just have me drive. Bryan fell asleep at Bountiful and woke up in Fillmore. Yeah, he was asleep a long time! But I was fine driving and the kids were sleeping or watching movies. We were very happy to get home but now the chore is to unpack everything.

We had a blast at the reunion!

Saying "Goodbye" and Yellowstone and Dairy Queen

Monday morning was time to say Goodbye. Before leaving Bozeman, we went to the cemetary to pay our respects at Bryan's Grandma Pack's grave. Then we drove to Livingston, MT to have Pizza Hut (Lisa's pregnant and Pizza Hut sounded good so we had to get some in her quick before the food urge left!). Then we all left.

Lisa and Mike were going into Yellowstone and so were we, but we didn't want to hold them up, so they left Livingston before we did. When we got to Mammoth in Yellowstone, we noticed their car and mentioned it. Courtney threw a fit and wanted "Cute Uncle Mike." So we turned around and went back to Mammoth.

We followed Lisa and Mike to the Paint Pots. They stunk but we got out and walked around to give the kids a stretch. In the next picture, Ethan was posing nicely and Courtney was dancing.

We then followed them to Old Faithful. We figured from the amount of cars leaving Old Faithful that we had just missed the eruption. We were right. Lisa and Mike decided to wait the hour until the next eruption but we decided to leave. The kids didn't know the difference and we took pictures with the sign.

We then drove to a KOA in Pocatello and stayed in a Kabin. It was nice and we only had to unpack our sleeping bags, which is a plus!

After we unpacked our stuff, we decided to get some dinner. After eating Sonic, we went to Dairy Queen for some Blizzards (this was a reward to Ethan and Courtney for being so good on the drive). We couldn't see a sticker in the window telling us that they accept Visa, so when the girl came on the drive thru speaker here is the conversation:

Bryan: "Do you accept Visa?"
Dairy Queen: "What?"
B: "Do you accept Visa?"
DQ: "No, we don't have pizza."

At this point, I was about to pee my pants from laughing.

B: "No, not pizza, do you accept credit cards?"
DQ: "Oh, yeah. What do you want?"

Then we ordered Blizzards and the woman making them was soooooo slow...and she got one wrong. But after waiting for them for 15 minutes, we figured we should just take what we got. We went back to the KOA, ate our ice cream and slept.

Butte, MT

Bryan's family lived in Butte, Montana, for a while when he was a kid. They wanted to go back there and look around. After Church in Bozeman, we loaded in cars and drove to Butte. The house they lived in is still there. We stopped at the Berkeley Pit to look around. Ethan loved looking through the binoculars to see the waterfalls at the end of the Pit.

When we were finished at the Pit, Bryan's parents wanted to visit someone and so they dropped us off a the park to play for a while. It was a nice day and Lisa napped in the shade while Mike, Bryan, Ethan, Courtney, Andrew and I played on these swings and walked around.

Floating!

Saturday morning Bryan, Andrew, Ethan, Kevin (Bryan's cousin), Mike and John went golfing. They had a 6:50 a.m. tee time and they made it easily! They had a great time and Ethan was able to get out of the golf cart at this course (usually they make him stay in the cart because of liability issues).

When the guys returned from golfing, the girls went to the Farmer's Market. There wasn't too much there, but I found a few things to buy the kids.

Then we all ate lunch, loaded into vans and drove to the Madison River. We had been told earlier that the Madison was too dangerous to float. But on our way back from Ennis Lake we could see the river and it was slow and there were a lot of people on it. So we decided we wanted to go. Courtney, Ethan and Bryan were with Grandma and Grandpa in their row boat along with Ruston, Brooke, Josh and Shelby (Bryan's cousin's daughter). Mike and Lisa were in their kayaks, Julie, Andrew, Monica and I were on tubes. The water was really cold at first, but it wasn't too bad and we got used to it. Floating was slow and relaxing. I will post pictures when we get our water-proof camera developed. The water wasn't very deep and Courtney tried floating with me. She was really impatient because she wanted to swim in the river and couldn't figure out why we wouldn't let her.

After floating, we drove back to camp and played games until it was time for bed.

4th of July

We just returned from a Hodgson Family reunion in Bozeman, Montana. I am going to post photos and commentary day by day so you can see what we were up to.

Bryan had a court hearing at 1:30 on July 3rd, so we left after his hearing was over. We drove to Pocatello, ID and spent the night. Friday morning (the 4th of July) we drove to Ennis Lake in Montana to meet up with Bryan's family. The lake was cold and it was windy, but Courtney went right in. Ethan thought better of it and stayed on the shore, although he attempted to get in the water a few times. Courtney and I played in the cold water while Bryan took a turn on Lisa and Mike's kayak. It was a fun time.



After we ate lunch, everyone packed up and we drove to Bozeman to the KOA we were staying in. Our kids love the water so much, we had to get back in our swimming suits and get into the pool at the KOA. It was a lot of fun to play around with everyone.

That night, Ethan and I went with everyone to the fairgrounds to watch the fireworks. Courtney and Bryan stayed at the KOA and slept. After a wait of a couple of hours, the fireworks began. Ethan was exhausted by that point (10:30 p.m.) so we only made it through about 10 minutes of fireworks before Ethan wanted to go back to the tent. But we got to see a bunch of them going off on our way back to the KOA.

Fun Facts

Here are some fun facts that I have learned today:

1. And adult cleaning a toilet takes the same amount of time as a 2-year-old to color the white faux wood blinds in the living room with a bright blue crayon.
2. A heart attack is something brought on by entering the living room to see a 2-year-old coloring your white faux wood blinds a bright blue color with her crayon while standing on a chair so she could "reach up high."
3. A 2-year-old caught coloring the white faux wood blinds in the living room with a bright blue crayon throws a temper tantrum for approximately 5 minutes because she is upset she got caught, not because she feels bad about it because "Mom, they're pretty now."
4. It takes a mom and a 2-year-old approximately 2 minutes to wipe all the bright blue crayon off the white faux wood blinds in the living room.
5. A smart 6-year-old stays in his room until the storm has passed. ;)

Luckily for Courtney the blinds are kid-proof and the crayon came right off.

Feeling Loved

Courtney and I were playing around with the digital camera. Bryan was going to take it to Youth Conference so they could play a photo scavenger hunt and I wanted to make sure it plugged into the TV easily. Courtney loved seeing herself on the TV so I aimed it at the two of us and, watching the TV to get us in the middle of the shot, took some photos. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that we had been swimming earlier and I hadn't put on makeup or done my hair. But that's okay. I still loved being hugged by my little girl.

It wasn't long until Ethan had to get in on the action. I got a couple of cute photos but this one is just so like Ethan and Courtney. Ethan is making a goofy face and...yes...Courtney is picking her nose.