First Day of School

Marcus entered 4th grade this year and Emma and Olivia entered 6th...Middle School! 

I dropped the kids off at Chattaroy so the girls could catch a shuttle bus to Riverside Middle School.  We ran into the kids' favorite person...Mrs. Sweeney!  

Weekend Visitors

Bella and Toffee came for a visit this weekend!

Amber and Aaron came too!  We had a fun and relaxing weekend hanging out.  

Thanks for coming all this way to visit us!

Silverwood 2017

We made it to Silverwood this summer!  Emma, Olivia and Lexie had a blast.

Michelle, Michael and Marc had a pretty good time too.

Javin and Marcus got to go on a tube by themselves!

Such big boys!

The girls loved this ride.

Allison came to join us too!

Our whole group for the day.   

Devon, Marc, Me, Michael

Abby and her friend and Michelle

Javin, Olivia, Lexie, Allison, Emma, Marcus

We even went on the roller coasters this time.  Can you spot some of our crew?

Marcus and Javin went on this several times.

Emma braved the ride with Marc.

Marcus and Javin are right up front!

The kids went on Thunder Canyon too...they got wet!

So fun!

Here they go...ready to get wet some more.

Michael, Michelle and Marc also went...they got equally wet!

Good friends!

We all had another great time at Silverwood!

Our Solar Eclipse Experience

We made viewing boxes over the weekend and went outside around 9:15am for our eclipse experience.  It was really bright and sunny and fairly warm.

We took a couple of group photos to show off our boxes.  

Emma looking for the sun in her box.

The kids got into position early.

View from in the box...this is the start of the show...see the full sun?  We used shoe boxes and cut a hole at one end.  Taped foil over that hole and poked a small pin through it.  On the other side of the box we put white paper and then another hole on the side.  We got the idea from the Boy Scouts site.  It worked well.

Marcus is looking for the sun.

Olivia found it.

The eclipse is starting...looks like a bite out of the sun.

Getting dimmer...also the temperature definitely dropped.

My camera did not work...I should have used my filters.

If you click and zoom in you can see the eclipse at work.

It did get darker and cooler for sure.

We used the flash to get this photo.  When we started no flash was needed it was so bright.

Funny faces...

Girls selfie.

Sliver of the sun...we only got 90% of the eclipse here but it was still very cool.

Emma took a photo of the news broadcast.  This was the total eclipse that some of the country got to see.

The news showed us we could see the eclipse using a colander...see the shadow how it shows slivers of the sun?  Pretty cool.  We had a fun time experiencing this eclipse.  We might need to travel to the East Coast for the next one in 7 years!

The Avista Network Crew

We had the Avista end of the summer party yesterday...group photo of the crew!  Thanks for coming everyone!

Helena MT

After Gates of the Mountains, we headed to Helena.  We started with a tour of the Capital Building.  We found lots of paintings by Charles M Russel.  

The building was beautiful.

We even got to go into the Senate Meeting Rooms.  Marcus found a portrait of the Gates of the Mountains...see it above Riley and Marcus?

They even had a Liberty Bell.

The kids had a blast.

Pretty amazing.

We had to get photos of the building and the 2017 Montana Flowers.

I even got to join in for the photo fun.

What a fun adventure we had!

We walked across the street to a museum.  How cool is this!

We noticed there was a spot on the street just for selfies...

So we tried it out...not too bad!  This was with my camera not my phone.

We did not have time to go in the museum but had a fun photo op outside.

Then we headed to the Cathedral.  The kids thought this was so beautiful.  They read all of the stain glass windows and spent a lot of time in here.  They were very good little Catholics, they even said a little prayer.

Isn't this beautiful!

Then we headed to the Carousel.

The kids got to ride twice.  Marcus chose a bear both times.

Emma's first ride was on a horse.

Olivia stuck to the Ram for "Riverside Rams".

Dad and I attempted another selfie with my camera...dad was amazed that you could take selfies with actual cameras.

Emma chose a wolf for her second ride.

Then Papa treated the kids to ice cream...cookie dough for Marcus.

Cookie dough for Emma.

Huckleberry for Olivia.

Such a fun day and week!  

Thanks Nana and Papa!  We'll be back soon!