Summer Holidays

Our big trip this summer was to drive down to Montana. I am slowly realizing the reasons and benefits of an actual holiday. It was so nice not to have any committments, no church callings, no work pressures and very lax schedules. It was nice to get away from it all even if just for a week. Megan wished to stay longer since it was such an enjoyable experience and fun time.

I was prepared for the drive this time with the portable DVD player, I downloaded some fun kids songs to listen to and packed a few new toys to keep the kids entertained not to mention the treats that they looked forward to. We made a few stops to break it up and drove as far as my parents house on day one to stay and stayed and slept there. The next day we drove the final few hours and took it at a bit of a slower pace. Logan's pass was still closed so we had to drive around, I had forgot how narrow the roads are and how twisty. I was starting to feel sick when we were finished with the worst of it.

We had such wonderful weather most days. It would rain at night for us, so we were able to get out during the day and do things. Grandma and Grandpa Ord did a great job of showing us around and spending time with us. There is really more things to do than we had time for, but this is what we spent our time doing....

Here we are out of the van and stretching our legs. Out on a walk around the complex (notice the book in Megan's hand!) that we were staying at. My BIL and SIL have a home away from home down in MT and let us use thier place. I know that they described to us what we could expect....but it was even better than we imagined. It had everything that we needed and there were awesome ammenities at the complex that we enjoyed.

We visited Whitefish City Beach. The day we went was really nice. We got there just in time as it kept filling up. We packed up a picnic lunch and headed off. The kids just love to play in the sand and swim in the water. We soon found out that some of our blow up toys had holes in them. Thank goodness that we had a few extra toys to play with. We all got some good sun that day.

After our day at the beach we went into Whitefish and found a little ice cream shop to enjoy a cool refreshing treat. We found a great deal $2 a cone, I remember Spencer being so impressed that MT doesn't have any sales tax so he quickly figured out our cost and was retreiving the money when the gal behind the counter said that will be $8.16? What? Afterwards we found out that in Whitefish they have a 2% resort fee on most things. Oh, well the ice cream was good.

Another day we headed up Whitefish Mountain...they have some hiking, gondola rides and an alpine slide going on during the summer months. We thought that would be great. The weather that day was nice and hot. We didn't do anything except go on the Alpine Slide. The kids loved it. You ride down on a little cart, which you can control the speed of and then you can ride up the ski lift to the top for free.

Here is Spencer and Aaron. Aaron loved the ride. Both boys weren't tall enough to ride by themselves. Megan loved the opportunity to ride by herself. She was a bit nervous at first but her and Evan wanted to go again. So they did. Aaron also wanted another ride but we ran out of tickets.

Here we are riding up the chair lift. Getting a bird's eye view of things on the ground. I was a bit nervous riding on the lift with the kids. We did fine, no injuries or deaths to report.

Spencer and I almost went Zip lining down the mountain. But it didn't work out for us that trip, maybe next time. That would have definately would have been one of those unique life time moments.

Another day we went to see the Hungry Horse Dam. The Best Dam town in the west (their town slogan). It was quite amazing to see and learn how they built the dam. It is quite an engineering wonder.

After visiting the dam, we stopped at a near by lake for a quick bite to eat and to throw rocks in the water. It was funny to see people actually swimming in the water and more people were coming to canoe. We are used to having water being so cold, but most of these lakes aren't fed by the mountains. So when we felt the water with our hands, it was actually quite a nice temperature for swimming.

Another day we went shopping at kalispell with Grandma and Grandpa Ord. I wasn't too impressed with the prices of some things, but we did find some pretty good deals on some clothes and we picked up school supplies while we were there. We almost bought a Dyson vacuum at costco but decided against it. We spent some wonderful time with Grandma and Grandpa. We saw a movie in their club house theatre and made it swimming there too. The kids loved to spend time with them.

Here are a few last pictures of our stay. We had a great time and next year we just might follow Megan's advice and stay for 2 weeks!

Here we are with the local wild life (and I'm not talking about my kids!). We'll miss the quite peaceful nights and mornings.

Grandma and Grandpa Ord came with us to Glacier National Park and took us on a hike. It was nice to be in the mountains and see everything. We love to be in the mountains.

Logan's Pass officially opened up 3 days before we left so we were lucky enough to be able to drive over the pass and have that experience. This was the first time for Spencer and the kids to see that, so I drove so they could enjoy the views and see all the great scenery. It was so beautiful, the waterfalls were flowing heavily. This is at the top of the pass. Slippery snow. It was fun to try and walk on it, but it was sure slippery as people were falling down all over the place. We wrote our names in the huge snow banks and threw a few snow balls. We had a great vacation but were glad to be back in our own country and finally home again.