Waterton

*Sorry about the epic length post*

Wow, today is the first day of October!  I guess I should start trying to recap our summer adventures.  We had a busy, but way too short summer.  We packed in a lot of fun in our little 2 month summer break.  When I last posted we were getting ready for our trip to Waterton.  We had a blast!  With travel days (it took about 12 hours to drive there and about 15 hours to drive back) we only had 5 days in the park.  We didn't waste any time, it turns out the Jessee's like to play hard.  Who knew?  We hiked about 20 miles while we were there.  I'm going to break it down into days for you. But before I begin I have to give a shout out to the Goates' family for being our hosts and guides, it was a blast!!!

Joyce, Annie, Scott, and Elaine Goates

Day 1

Day 1 started out with a tour of Waterton (the village) for Billy, Niko, Lucy and Noah.  Later that day, Annie took us on our first hike.  It's called Bear's Hump. Annie said it was a good test hike to see how we did and how the kids would do.  Well, we passed with flying colors as Lucy and Noah led us to the top in record-breaking time.  After we came back down we decided to put on our swim suits and go check out the Lake.  Just FYI, all of the lakes in Waterton are glacier fed lakes, so they are cold.  But who would want to let a little thing like that stop us right?  (Well, I would, I'm not crazy!)

Kids at a waterfall in town.

Lake Waterton

View of Waterton from Bear's Hump

First Bear Sighting.  Apparently, in a normal year this is pretty rare, but for us it happened a lot! We are bear Magnets

Nicholas on top of Bear's Hump.

Niko diving into the glacier water

Lucy's turn

Go Billy!!

Even Noah, I would've but someone had to take the pictures.  (And I should mention that Scott jumped in too.)


Day 2
On Day 2 Billy and I drove to Cardston to go to the temple. While we were there Scott took the kids on a hike but I don't have any pictures of it.  When we got back, we went on a hike up to Lake Crandell.  We packed hot dogs and s'mores makings and had a campfire.  It was really fun.  On the way back down the trail, Lucy saw a bear just sitting right on the trail.  To quote her, "I was just walking and then I saw a bear and I thought, 'I don't remember seeing a statue of a bear on the way up.' Then I realized that it was a real bear."  Luckily Scott was right behind her and knows all about bears and how to avoid being attacked so we backed up a bit and then made a lot of noise to scare it off.  Pretty crazy!

Cardston, Alberta Temple

The Whole Family

YUM!!!

Lucy really loved learning about all the wild flowers along the trails and I think Scott really like having someone to share some of his knowledge with.

This isn't the bear that Lucy saw on the trail, this is one that we saw on the drive back to town.

Day 3

On day 3 we finally got some sun so we decided to play at the lake in the morning.  Scott's Dad has a boat so we did a tour of Lake Waterton.  It was so beautiful.  I have about 300 pictures of just mountains and scenery from the week.  Anyways, the lake is right on the border between the US and Canada so you can actually cross into the US via boat.  It's cool because they cut the trees at the border line so you can actually see where Canada ends and the US begins.  After the tour and playing in the water for a while, we went home for lunch and then Annie took us on a hike up a creek to find a natural water-slide. I'm so sad because our camera died so we didn't get very many pictures.  It was so cool because we were literally walking up the creek, crossing back and forth to the banks, and climbing rocks and branches to get to the next crossing spot.  It was so fun.   The kids loved it!  Unfortunately, when finally got to where the slide had been, there was a tree and a lot of rocks that had fallen across the slide.  But we still had a ton of fun! It's all about the climb right?

Right on the Border.

A momma bear and 2 cubs.  

This is a Grizzly.  Most of the bears we saw were black bears (even if they were brown).  Grizzlies are more rare and more likely to attack.

One of the 2 pictures we got of hiking up the creek

The other picture from the creek.

 Day 4

Day 4 was Sunday so we went to church, which was surprisingly full.  Literally standing room only.  Then we mostly relaxed.  I wanted to try and get a nice family picture so we took a lot of pictures.  Between the sun and the wind and trying to convince 4 kids to all smile at the same time we didn't get too many good ones but there were a couple.  

One of my favorites, totally us!

I haven't mentioned much about the deer, they are literally everywhere! there would be easily 15-20 in one group and they aren't scared of people. We got caught in the middle of what Billy called "deer gang violence" We were walking down the street one night and the deer just started running back and forth right in front of us, I thought they were going to run us over.  It was crazy, poor Lucy jumped and dropped her huge ice cream scoop. She wasn't quite so excited about the deer after that.

*insert evil laugh here*

Family bike ride.

Canadian Mountees

 Day 5

On day 5 we did our longest hike.  It was up to Rowe Lakes. I'm not gonna lie, it was hard!!! and the bugs were really bad.  But it was totally worth it.  It was so beautiful! But more than that I was so proud of my kids.  They did so good on ALL the hikes.  They hardly ever complained.  Both Niko and Lucy carried back packs on this hike and I'm pretty sure not very many 6 year olds would have been able hang with the rest of us but Noah was a Rock-Star!  Brooklyn was in the back pack most of the time but she did good too, I can't imagine having to sit in that thing for 6+ hours. 

It was AMAZING!! Thanks again to Annie and Scott for the great time.

Pictures really don't do these mountains justice, they are massive!!!

This butterfly really liked my shirt.  I think it fits right in and Brooklyn loved it!

Lower Rowe Lake.
We thought about stopping here but decided we could make it all the way to upper Rowe Lake which was another 2-3 miles up a really steep trail.

This is the meadow before the steepest part of the hike,
the big mountain in the background.

My boys! (well 2 of them anyways)

We made it to Upper Rowe Lake.
(Don't mind Noah he was mad at niko for taking something.)

We were up so high, we found snow.  How often to you get to play in the snow in your swim suit? I love it!!

"And I think to myself,
What a Wonderful World"

Happy Birthday Niko!!!

Well the day arrived.  My Baby is 12 years old!!! As you can see we got him a cell phone and he was SOOOOOOO excited!! He couldn't even finish his breakfast.  It was pretty funny the way we gave it too him.  I put it in a gift bag and then just put it out of sight in the dining room.  We sat down for breakfast, (Crepes-his choice) and I had told Billy to start calling and texting in about ten minutes.  We are enjoying our breakfast and we start hearing some weird sounds.  I asked what it was and he thought it was my phone but my phone was sitting on the table so that couldn't be it.  So, he starts trying to locate the sound which leads him to the bag and he starts to clue in.  He had this huge grin on his face and was practically hyper-ventilating.  He opened it and was so excited that he said he felt like he was gonna be sick and couldn't finish his breakfast.  It was pretty funny! 

Niko is a great kid who is funny, caring, a good friend, and a great helper.  I'm so happy to have him in my life.  Of course, I might change my mind, as the teenage years are approaching fast! We'll just have to wait and see.

Love Ya Buddy!!!

Wow!!! We've been busy!!!!

It's hard to believe the kids have only been out of school for 3 weeks!  We have been so busy!!! I have 2 days before we leave on a road trip to Canada so I thought I better get a post in.  Let me just list a few of the things we have done.

Last day of school

A week of basketball camp (Niko and Lucy)

My Birthday

4th of July

Scout Camp (Niko and Billy)

Lucy's Birthday (slumber party with 7 friends)

Trip over to Bremerton to visit with family

Balloon Release for sweet Paris (check the side bar)

and a

Trip to Moses Lake for some fun and sun!!

It has been crazy but fun. Here are just a few pictures of the 300 I've taken over the last 3 weeks.

Lucy and Ms. Feguson- I love Ms. Ferguson! She has been Lucy's teacher for 2 years now. (Plus she worked with her in 1st grade for art I think) Lucy has blossomed so much in the past few years and I know Ms. Ferguson had a big part in that.  Lucy could have had her next year too but she was accepted into the STEP (gifted) program for our school district and decided to go. (just to show what a great teacher Ms. Ferguson is, out of the entire Auburn School District, 26 third graders get picked to go into the STEP program, based on test scores, and 6 were accepted from her class! I think that is pretty good!) It was a really hard decision for us to leave Hazelwood and Ms. Ferguson but I hope that Lucy will continue to grow and learn thanks to all the love and support she has gotten from Ms. Ferguson in the last 2 years.

Lucy's Birthday Party- We played in the pool and ate pizza and pizookies and just had a jolly-good time.  Because Billy and Niko were at scout camp and Noah went to spend the night at a friends, it was a girls only party!  Brooklyn loved feeling like one of the big girls, she was hilarious.  We did get an unexpected guest though.....

You should have seen these girls, they were actually fighting about who got to hold the frog.  I guess these aren't your typical girly girls!  All the girls were good and they only stayed up 'til 4:30am! We had homemade cinnamon rolls in the morning and sent them home.  It was a lot of fun!

I can't believe my little girl is 9, she is growing up so fast!  I want to just stop time and keep my kids the ages they are now but I know I can't, so I will just try to cherish every moment I can.

And speaking of kids growing up too fast. . . my little boy went to scout camp for the first time!  He turns 12 in ten days and I can't stand it!!! I don't have many pictures from scout camp but I do have this one...

... of the day he got home from camp. He slept for about 5 hours and even walked downstairs in the middle of his nap to get a drink and he doesn't remember it at all.  CRAZY that my baby will be 12!!!

This last weekend, we went over to Moses Lake to get in some fun in the sun and boy did we!! Noah shocked us all by not only getting in the lake, (last year he refused because he was sure there were sharks or alligators) but he was also the first one of my kids to want a "crazy" ride on the tube.  I went with him and we had a lot of fun, he was yelling the whole time and having a blast! AND THEN to top it off, he decided he would try wake-boarding too!  

He did so good!!! He actually got up for a good 10 seconds or so.  Which is good in my book! I have video but it is on my other camera so I will try to post that later.

After Noah was so brave, Lucy decided to go for it too, so her and I went on a crazy tube ride and then she wake boarded too.  She tried to back out at the last moment but we "encouraged" her to try and she did great! She got up on her first try and rode for a long time, now we just need to get her to turn her board.

She rides the whole time like this and just goes back and forth like she's plowing on a snow board.  I'm so proud of both of them and i hope they keep trying.  

Well, like I said it's been a busy 3 weeks, hopefully we will be able to slow down a bit when we get back from Canada.