First Day of School 2014

Another summer has come and gone, but boy did we have fun!  We are now ready for school and schedules and timeframes!  Not really, but we have to!

Ethan is happy to be able to drive himself to and from school now.  He bought Austin out of his share of the car and now owns half of the car.  He's able to come and go as he pleases as long as he lets me know where he's at.  It's been a nice degree of freedom for him and he's very responsible to get himself to and from school and work.  It's a nice thing!

Evan leaves for school at 7am and so I wasn't up to snap a picture of him.  Hopefully this is our last year of 7am as he will be headed to SAHS next year and McKinley will go to the middle school next year as well.  That will be nice!

McKinley is top dog at the elementary school for her final year!  A big 5th grader this year.  She's a lot of fun and such a smart little thing!  She's going to have a great year too!

Good luck this year guys!  I'm always so proud of your hard work and kind hearts at school.  It's the combination that makes you super special!  Keep it up!

Homecoming....asking a date

In Utah, there is a tradition that asking for a date for dance has to be creative and fun.  Guys (or girls for girls choice) must come up with a creative way of asking their date to the dance.  Ethan decided he wanted to ask a girl to Homecoming and so he came up with his idea.  He covered the girls driveway with red Solo cups and made a cute poster that read, "I'd hate to go Solo, will you go to Homecoming with me?"  Now he wait for his date to come up with a fun and creative reply...

Taking Austin to Rensselaer!

 Somehow the time has come to take my first baby to college!  Yikes!  How fast time flies.  Such an exciting time.  We arrived on Saturday evening and made our way to Troy, NY to get settled in for a night before move in day.  We brought 5 suitcases between us and 4 of them (the big ones) were Austin's.  We then grabbed some dinner and headed to Walmart to buy all the things that didn't make sense to pack and bring from Utah.  School supplies, toiletries, hangers, pillows...etc.

 After church on Sunday it was time to get checked in and settled into the dorm.  The check in process was super easy and quick and then we were off to find his room.  He's in a room with two other young men and they are working on getting things organized the best way to fit them all.

After unpacking and "decorating" (boys don't decorate much), we had things pretty cozy in that room!

Then we had a few minutes to walk around the campus of Rensselaer.  After all, neither of us have ever been here before!

It is a beautiful New England campus.  So green..so lush, not too hot (it will be cold later!)  The buildings are older (mostly) and have that colonial feel to them.  Lots of red brick and dormers...beautiful!

We didn't want to tour the whole campus, since we have orientation tomorrow and that's probably a big part of that, but we did kill some time walking around the part of campus near the dorm.  The recreation and fitness building looks like a castle from the front and has a HUGE indoor field and gym!  It's cool.

So far it's been fun to explore together and spend this time together.  I try not to think about having to say goodbye and leave him here...but actually I'm so glad I got to come here and at least see where he's going to be.  He's going to be just fine...no...he's going to be great!

Bear Lake 2014

Another Bear Lake Smith family trip was a complete success!  We look forward to Bear Lake each year and it's always a great time.  This year was no exception!  It was a whole bunch of fun, lots of sun and water, good food, and great family times!  It was fun to have Ashlee back from her mission and there to share time with us all.

We enjoyed the waverunners and also had two stand up paddle boards this year to play on.  Everyone seemed to take a turn trying out their balance, or splashing around on them like kayaks.

 My favorite thing about Bear Lake is cousins.  All 35 cousins get along so well and there are just groups and groups of cousins everywhere.

 Our family was able to enjoy Monday thru Thursday night as we were busy getting Austin ready for college.  It was the perfect place to spend some family together time before things change.

There is something just so special about Bear Lake and the tradition that is over 30 years straight!  I hope it continues on to the next generation and as long as we all can go!  Such memories!

First place feels so good!!

2014 U14 Addidas Cup Champions!!

Evan's team was declared the champions of the Addidas Cup on Saturday!  They had 5 tough games to get all the way to the top...and they liked it!  We've had our share of 2nd places over the years and that just makes first place all the more sweet!  The boys really played together and had some great combination goals from the defense all the way up to the back of the net.  It was complete performances.  Evan was able to score a header goal and a clean up goal in two different games, as well as contribute to the over all hussle of the team each game!  Here's to a great start to the Fall season...Congratulations boys!

Yellowstone Bear World

Having lived in Rexburg and having visited Yellowstone a few times we've driven past Yellowstone Bear World a few times and have never been in...until this trip!

We decided it would be a fun thing to do on our drive home and made plans to stop there!  I think it is a place to go once.  It was really cool, but very expensive!  I guess bears aren't cheap and it's kind of an Animal Kingdom kind of adventure.  You drive in and are let into the Bear Area with instructions to keep your windows up and keep moving if the bears approach your car.  There were probably 50+ bears that we saw and more that were sleeping or in the brush that you couldn't see.  It was cool.

 
Several of the bears came near the car and many of them were playing or sleeping nearby.  We saw one bear climb up a tree!  It was really neat!

They also have a petting zoo, baby bear area, and a carnival for small kiddos, so it was an adventurous stop.  I'm glad we were able to go and see it!

Yellowstone...the grand loop in one day!

On our trip to Island Park we were excited to make our way to Yellowstone National Park and explore!  We took the whole day to do the Grand Loop of the park from the West Entrance clockwise all the way around.  We stopped at lots of amazing places along the way.

Our first stop was Gibbons Falls.  We were driving by and saw a beautiful waterfall that was just a short overlook away and so we piled out and went to see it.  We love waterfalls and this one was very pretty!

Our next stop was Artist's Paint Pots where there are numerous hot pots of different colors and textures.  We really like the "hot flinging mud" hot pot that reminded us of boiling Elmer's Glue flinging around the area!

After a very brief stop at the 1988 fire overlook (wow..things have grown back since I was there in 1998) we headed around further to Artist Point.  This was such a beautiful area of the park and hard to believe it was real.  It reminded me of the feeling I've had at the Grand Canyon when your eyes just can't seem to take in what you are seeing.  It was so picturesque with the huge waterfall and the enormous canyon and river at the bottem.  I loved this area and could see why it was named Artist's Point.

While continuing around the loop we came upon a traffic jam and realized that one of the resident buffalo was out for a stroll.  He was walking straight down the road as a snail's pace!  All the cars gave him plenty of room and time and just waited until he finally decided to veer to the left and off the road a bit so we could pass.  He didn't seem to be bothered by all the commotion and the kids thought it was cool to see the buffalo up close!

Our next stop was the Mud Volcano, which was more hot pots and mud pools.  We enjoyed the little bit longer hike here as a chance to stretch out legs.  We ended up going backwards on the trail and doing the bigger hill...but we are tough!  Denali was a soldier and managed to make her way down from the top with a sudden bloody nose experience!  Thanks to some Chinese tourists we got some tissues and were able to get things under control near the bottom!  We decided maybe she's allergic to the horrible sulfur smells that were really strong at this Mud Volcano area.  Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures in this area since the phone was dying and we wanted to be able to take some pictures at our next stop...Old Faithful!

The drive around from Mud Volcano to Old Faithful was a bit longer than the other drives and everyone fell asleep so I missed stopping at the West Thumb Geyser Basin (maybe next time?) and pushed on to Old Faithful.  Unfortunately as we rounded the hill overlooking Old Faithful I could see it was erupting, so I knew that we were going to be in for a long wait before it erupted again.  Oh well, the area is beautiful and we were able to explore the surrounding hot pots and visit the Visitors Center and get some Huckleberry Ice cream while we waited...and waited...and waited...until...the rain came!  It got really windy and started to sprinkle, but we waited it out bravely and were rewarded by seeing Old Faithful erupt right on schedule!

After our rainy and cold experience at Old Faithful (and 8 hours into our day) I couldn't get anyone interested in stopping at the Fountain Paint Pots (one of my favorite places, but I've already been there), so we drove on by and headed back to our home in Island Park.  All in all, it was a beautiful day in one of the most amazing places!  Yellowstone...we will be back!