Birdhouses

Jake thought it would be fun to build some birdhouses for the girls to paint and hang on our fence. Of course the girls had tons of fun painting.

Here they are hanging on our fence. We don't have any birds living in them. I think by the time we did them, the birds already had established their nests. Hopefully next year we will have some birds move in.

Big Birthday Weekend!

In honor of Maddies Birthday, we decided to take a little weekend family trip to Billings. We thought it would be fun to take the girls to the zoo. They are young enough that the Montana zoo is cool. I think Sierras favorite part were the reptiles, and Maddies favorite part was picking the random flowers along the path. It was still fun though. One major part of our trip was SWIMMING! Sierra has been dying to go swimming, so we made sure to get a hotel with a nice swimming pool. After the zoo we all got in our swimming gear and went swimming. Of course we all had fun. Maddie liked hanging out in the hot tub with papa. Sierra and I stuck to the big pool. After swimming, we showered and got ready for a nice dinner. The next day we headed home to get ready for Maddies Birthday celebration! Maddie has been talking about her birthday for months. She couldn't wait to turn 3, have a ladybug cake, and invite Aunt Megan over to celebrate. All of her birthday wishes came true! We had a fun weekend. It was nice to have a family fun getaway, and I'm sure there will be many more to come!

At the zoo

Sierra was kind of scared of the tiger.


Checking out the wolverine

Animals from the zoo gift store. Sierra chose a baby deer, and if you know Maddie, you wouldn't be surprised that she chose the snake.

SWIMMING!!!

Sierra loved jumping off the side of the pool.

The big pool was too cold for Maddie.

Maddies birthday celebration. Showing her Happy Birthday card Grandma Neela made for her.

It was so fun to watch her excitement!

The ladybug cake.

She almost got them all out in one blow.

The Shed That Jake Built!!

One day Jake and I were going for a walk... I asked him what he thought about building a shed. We walked around the property, talked it over, mapped it out and that was that, Jake was going to build us a shed! He got right on it and ordered all the lumber. As soon as the weekend rolled around, he got right to it!

He built the whole thing by himself.... well, I stained... but he did everything else. It's a 12x12 shed.

All framed up within a few hours!

Jake putting the siding up.

Getting ready to stain.

Jake cutting the tails off of the facia.

Getting started shingling

Time out for a few pics of the girls.

They were very good at entertaining themselves most of the time. They made their own see-saw.

A little too high for my comfort.




Back to the shed! Almost done!

I love this picture. You can see the big storm clouds all around. If you look closely, you can see the rain pouring down on Jake as he was finishing shingling the roof.

TA-DA! Finished! It took Jake about 2 days to build! It's nice having a carpenter around! :)

Visitors!!!

(Sariah, Sierra, and Maddie)

My mom, Lena and Sariah came for a visit this last weekend. I had such a good time, and I know the little girls did too! It is ALWAYS nice to be around family. Lena took probably about 800 pictures (literally) and loaded about 400 of them on to my computer. But instead of going through the pictures and then writing a big blog about all the things we did, and how cute the girls were... I thought I would just link you to Lena's blog. She did a great job at blogging about the things we did while they were here. Click the links below to read about our visit. ;)
Miscellaneous
Madison River
Photoshoot

Congrats to the Grad!

Congrats to Sierra! Her first year of preschool has come and gone. She really enjoyed school.... I'm sure most kids her age do. She has really learned a lot this year in school. She made lots of friends and made lots of cute crafty projects. :) She has one more year of preschool before she is off to the big school and full days. I'm glad that I have one more year with her at home.

This is a little video of one of the songs the kids sang for their graduation. (the boy next to Sierra is AJ)

OH boy!

Sierra and Maddie had been begging me for days to make cards. Finally we had some spare time for the kids to get their hands sticky (Literally. They use WAY too much glue!). Anyway.... so I got their paper out and let them be. Sierra was so excited to show me what she had been making. She made this specail card for her friend in her class, AJ. She told me that AJ said 'hi' to her in school. Now, when I was in preschool, I remember liking a specific boy. Yes, it is way too young to like boys, but I guess I just couldn't help it. Not sure if Sierra is the same way... So on the inside of the card she drew a dragon and a snowman and lots and lots of hearts! Um... Right away I thought, 'Jake isn't going to like this AJ kid'. Then she wrote AJ's name (she spelled it JA) and her name at the top. I love her drawings. Her dragon and snowman are cute. I think I am going to snatch this card up and keep it before she gets a chance to give it to AJ. She only has 3 more days of school left. She will be going to preschool again next year. I'm not sure if AJ will be moving on to kindergarten or stay in preschool. I guess we will see...

close up

Here is a cute butterfly she made the same day. She is really proud of her butterfly. We hung it up on her magnectic board in her room. Super cute!

Lots of Horses

Today was the annual horse drive that comes through Three Forks every year. Every spring they round up their horses (not sure how many... a couple hundred?) to move them from their winter pasture to their summer home, the Mantle Ranch. They bring the horses right down Three Forks main street. This was the first year we were able to make it. We have talked about going every year, but never made it out. We were running really behind today, but luckily got there about 4 mintues before the horses came through. It was really pretty to see all of those horses. There were so many different kinds, sizes and colors. It made me want to hop on a horse and ride off into the sunset.

Spring Time Fun

This is what my girls have been doing during these HOT spring days.

Two Weekends

I meant to post this last week, but the week got away from me before I posted. Last weekend we went Geocaching! We haven't been in a long time. I'm not even sure if we went at all last year, so it may have been two years since we have been. If you don't know what Geocaching is... I will explain a little. Basically, it is a treasure hunt. Fellow Geocachers hide a box full of 'treasures'. Then they log the GPS coordinates of where they hid the box on a Geocache website. We (or other Geocachers) get the coordinates from the website and begin our hunt. Pretty much you follow your GPS until you get to the exact coordinates. Once you are there you look around until you find the hidden box. We usually bring a treasure to trade with a different treasure in the box. The girls LOVE hunting for treasures. It is a fun and free family activity. One thing I love about Geocaching is that it usually takes us to places we have never been before.

Found the first treasure!

Headwaters, Three Forks

Poor girl needs a real camera.

Maddie showing us her telescope.

Found another one!
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Today we went fishing. I finally (how many years have I lived here now?) got my fishing license! We bought Maddie a new fishing pole (Sierra already had one) and went fishing. The fish weren't biting, and this spot was super crowded. Not really a peaceful fishing trip. But just as we were getting ready to head out Jake caught a fish! Yay! The girls were pretty excited to see it. Now that we are all legal to fish and have all the gear for the whole family, I'm sure we will be going fishing a lot more often.

Sierra caught a big stick.

Pics by Sierra

Sierra got a hold of my camera today. Here are the two pictures that I kept out of about fifty. Most of the pictures she took were of her My Little Ponys and the carpet. I thought these were cute, so I decided to show them to you.