First Day of School and a Concert

The boys started out the school year strong, heading into 6th and 9th grade! Ike moved up to the high school which was an adjustment but it didn't take too long-plus he likes the lunches more there. :) 

So far they like their classes (minus one here or there) and are settling in to the rhythm of the school year.

One of Dave's favorite bands (Cage the Elephant) had a concert down in Noblesville on that first day of school. It was not my best idea, but we made it work! We were all very tired for the second day ha!

I was still getting a lot of produce from the garden-my carrots did great this year!

 

End of the Summer

As summer was winding down, we had a couple more sporting things going on and I started back to work for the school year.

The kids and I got a couple more walks around campus in. One of my very favorite activities!

Ike's soccer season with Metro Rage officially started.

Dave competed in the club championship at Etna.

He didn't end up doing as well as he'd hoped but it was a great day for golf!

 

July

We spent the first couple of days in July on the road, then settled down after that for the rest of the month!

Josh's sister came up with the kids to visit at his Aunt Gayle's house so we went over for some cousin fun right after we got home.

I came home to lots of flowers in my garden.

Josh and Dave did a lot of golfing so Ike and I had ample opportunities to hang out. We spent a lot of time in downtown Wabash walking around and trying fun new drinks at the coffee shop and other drink places!

Dave had trash duty at the golf course every Friday evening and I tagged along a couple of times to hang out with him.

Grandma and Grandpa took Dave on a long bike ride one day. 

Josh and I taught two weeks of summer classes on campus. We spent the first three days each week helping out around campus outside and the final day on a hike.

The Smith kids and my mom came to visit and we all took a trip to the demolition derby at the county fair. 

My mom headed home and the Smiths stayed another couple of days.  We went to the Splash House in Marion and then had a cookout at the Valley.

Here's a good harvest from the garden. Tomatoes did awesome this year!

I took the boys to watch the new Despicable Me movie and we ran into Bennett so he joined us!

Wild West Trip II: Yellowstone Final Days

SATURDAY JUNE 29th

This was day four for us in the park, but day one for Barry, Divana and Em. So we did a little of everything today!

First up was to see if we could spot that grizzly bear and cub again-and we did! We drove down to the Fishing Bridge area and over by Crested Butte they were out running around again. Here's a video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkcF2BYBkrI

We sat and watched them for probably 20 minutes or so before they ran up over the hill.

Spotted a bald eagle by the lake. 

Then we stopped at the canyon area to walk around and check out those beautiful views. 

We went back to hotel to relax for a while. Our days had been absolutely jam packed up to this point so it was nice to relax for an hour or so. We went to have lunch at the cafeteria type place that we could walk to and looked around in the gift shops a bit.

After our relaxation time we decided to go ahead and do the upper loop with them since they hadn't been able to see everything yet. We stopped at the places we'd been to before and saw a bunch of animals so that was awesome!

If you squint you can see two bears in this photo :)

Here's a zoomed in picture taken with my good camera. 

We went along the loop counter-clockwise, stopping in Mammoth for some ice cream. 

 After we ate dinner our family went out to go see Hayden Valley one last time at night. On the way Ike spotted a cinnamon brown bear and ended up causing quite a traffic jam because of it! He was the first to notice and after we stopped so did everyone else.

The skies were incredibly beautiful.

 

Sad to leave Yellowstone behind the next day but we were very excited to spend a couple days in the Tetons!

Wild West Trip II: Yellowstone Lower Loop

FRIDAY JUNE 28th

After spending a quick early morning at Old Faithful we packed up and went to the West Thumb Geyser Basin. 

Along the way we saw a herd of elk and stopped at Kepler Cascades.

West Thumb is neat because it's right on Lake Yellowstone. It was super chilly this morning so we didn't stay very long but it was a nice stop!

I made Dave recreate this picture from 2011 :)

On our last trip we stayed at Lake Yellowstone cabins, so we stopped there to show the kids and Ike got a huckleberry soda and a root beer that he was very excited about. 

We drove around the lake then up to Lake Butte Overlook, which we would be back to many times later!

We had hiked the Storm Point Trail before but I lost all of my pictures from it. So we decided to go again since we remembered liking it so much. It's a fairly easy hike out to Storm Point and the views were beautiful. 

On our way back to the van we got stopped by a buffalo in the path. We did a little off-trail walking to get around this big guy!

We weren't able to check into Canyon Lodge yet but we were able to get our laundry started!

Did a quick trip back into Hayden Valley before meeting up with Josh's parents and sister at the hotel.

Em was up for an adventure so we once again headed down to the Crested Butte area and we got to see our first grizzly! We were beyond excited. Some lovely people helped us figure out where she was on the hill and we were able to get it in our scope. 

Then on our way back we saw another coyote. They were everywhere this time!