Memorial Day Weekend

So just like last year for Memorial Day we went up to Idaho Falls to visit my brother Jeff and his family. We drove up on Friday evening but on Saturday the weather decided not to cooperate with us. It rained pretty much all day and at times was just pouring. So we decided to go bowling. I love to bowl even though I stink at it...but it's still a good time. For Austin this was his first time to try bowling. Of course we had to help him but he would clap every time the ball would hit the pins.

Carson couldn't understand why this was different from Wii bowling. He had a hard time with that ball. He would throw it and we thought he was going to dent the floor. He couldn't grasp the concept of rolling the ball but he still had fun, that is after he got over the fact that he didn't beat the girls' scores.

Kaylee did pretty well right from the beginning. She won the first game between the kids and really did well. She had a great time doing.

Shelby did not have that much fun during the first game. She had a hard time getting the ball to go straight. She kept throwing it a little to the side and was not thrilled that she was in last place. But after trying and trying and listening to our advice about keeping her thumb straight up she finally got it and did much better the second game. She won that game and even beat all of the adults except for Curt and Uncle Jeff. She was thrilled about that!



On Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting and then came home. It was still a little cloudy and windy so we decided to take a drive up to Mesa Falls. We had never been there before and it was so pretty. This is our group at the Lower Falls.




Here are my boys with the falls in the background. It's hard to really see the definition in the falls but they were so pretty.

Here is the best picture of them that we took. You can kind of see that the falls are kind of jagged and not just a straight line which I thought was kind of cool. I've never seen falls like this...but I don't have that much experience with falls either. So that's not saying a whole lot.

This is the Upper Falls. These falls were more of a straight line but still gorgeous. In some of our pictures you could see mist rising from the water and on the other side of the water the cliffs were all mossy and green. My sister-in-law Julie said that it reminded her of Ireland or in fantasy books where the fairies would live. She cracks me up but once she said that I could totally see that as well.

Here's the mist.

I loved how green it was there and the smell of the forest combined with the smell of smoke from a log fire burning at the Inn was great. I love those smells. It makes me feel happy!

This is what they called The Big Inn. I read about this place and it said that it was never intended to be a place for sleeping guests but more so like an office building because they wanted to build a power plant by the falls to supply power to the surrounding areas. That never happened but it was a nice idea. In the Inn they had a room full of "Skins and Skulls". That was the name of the room. You could go in and it said, "Please touch." When you have children those are words that you very seldom hear. So my kids enjoyed that room. You could feel all the animal fur and their claws. You couldn't touch the skulls but it was neat to see how small some of them were. They also had castings of footprints from bears and wolves and other things to see.

On our way up to Idaho Falls Shelby asked, "Why do they call it Idaho Falls?" I told her, "Because of the water falls there." She said, "They have water falls?" I looked at her kind of crazy and said, "Yeah. Haven't you seen them before?" Her reply was no, that she had never seen them. So in all our trips to Idaho Falls we had neglected to let our kids see the actual falls. So on our way back from Mesa Falls we made a stop at the Idaho Falls so that the kids could look at them as well.

It's kind of hard to see but you can see the Idaho Falls Temple in the background here. I love this temple. It's beautiful. I've never been inside it but I'm sure it's just as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside.

So for our final day we decided to go to Bear World which is about 20 minutes outside of Idaho Falls. I had heard about this place but had never been here. We saw these little things and still have no idea what they are. There were quite of few of them around. The first time we saw one it was laying on a log that made a railing for a bridge then we saw them in holes all around in the grass. We were wondering if they were Prairie Dogs or something like that.

At Bear World you drive through an area that has all kinds of animals. At first it's elk and mountain goats and deer and then you go through a gate where the bears are. It was amazing to us that you are driving and the bears are right next to your car. The guard at the gate said, "Just keep moving about 1 or 2 miles an hour because if you stop the bears might get up on your car." Some times the bears were right in front of our car and we couldn't keep driving...unless we went in reverse. There was one time when a bear was right in front of us and the girls were screaming because they thought it was going to climb on the car. It was hilarious.

This is my brother's car in front of us. Julie wanted the bear to put it's paws on the car but my brother had other ideas about that.

Of course they had a gift shop so the whole time we were in there we had to keep saying, "No, we're not buying anything." This picture cracks me up because I think Austin looks funny.

These were the bear cubs. There were six of them.

Some lucky people even got to bottle feed the cubs and it was so funny because once the caretakers walked inside the fence the babies went running. They knew exactly what was about to happen. They sat those pallets down and the babies got right up top of them so they could eat. They were so cute!!!

There was a petting zoo there. The kids had fun with this part. We have a video of Carson running around trying to get the chickens. Kaylee too. Curt would say, "Ready? Get 'em!!!" They would just take off after the chickens. While Kaylee was chasing some a lady that worked there told her that she needed to stop. I didn't blame her because Kaylee was probably running the poor chickens to death! Austin did pet the baby goat but he mostly just wanted to watch the chickens. He LOVES birds and airplanes. So it was no real surprise to me that he wanted to just stay and watch the chickens but for me that got a little boring. So we had to go see other stuff as well...but he didn't like that so much.

This is Carson trying to feed the Nanny Goat. She didn't really want to eat out of his hand...but he tried.

From our last post you know I love peacocks. So this is a great picture. We loved it when he would put his tail feathers up and everybody around was just snapping pictures. Notice Kaylee and Carson in the background chasing chickens again?

After we washed our hands they had this little Kodak moment. I loved it because Austin did it too. Aren't they funny?

They had little kiddie rides and Carson was so worried that we would leave without letting him go on the carnival rides. So we took some time to let them ride the rides. This was Austin's first time at anything like this and he loved it.

His favorite ride was by far the roller coaster. I took him on it for the first time and he WOULD NOT let go of the bar that sits over your lap. So I had to ask the guy that ran the ride if we could ride it again. Thank goodness there wasn't a line of people. So we got to go twice in a row. My niece Michelle took him on it for his last time. She just graduated from high school and is so cute.

After Bear World we went and had lunch and said goodbye to Jeff, Julie, Michelle and Colton. Then we headed off to the Craters of the Moon National Monument. That is a place full of volcanic rock and caves. I didn't know what to expect and was a little nervous because I HATE tight spaces so I wasn't so sure I wanted to go in the caves. But I thought I would give it a try. It took us about an hour and a half to get there and by the time we got there a storm decided to hang out over the monument. So we couldn't really do much hiking in the rain. So we drove around a bit to see what we could see. Then as we got to the Spatter Cones it decided to clear up but it looked like another cloud was heading our way. So we took a short, easy hike up to this spatter cone. It's a small volcano that you can look down into.

This is the inside of it. You can see snow still in there.

Then since the weather had cleared up a bit and the kids were begging to do something else we decided to go check out the caves. There was only one that we could go in because it had open areas or "skylights" as we liked to call them. The other ones required a flashlight and we didn't have one. This is the trail leading to all the caves.

This was the first cave. It's called Dewdrop Cave. It's not very big. Curt climbed down in and took a few pictures. This is what he saw.

This was the cave that we went in. It's called Indian Cave. It was huge! I had no idea it would be this big. I had no problem going through this cave! See the little people down on the cave floor? That would soon be us.

My silly kids...Carson being the silliest of them all!

This is looking back into the cave. There is a little spot of snow still there. I thought it was a cool picture.

As you go to leave the cave there's a little alcove that you have to climb through. So we decided to have a picture moment there. Thanks to the flash you can see what's there but without the flash it was pretty dark in there.

This was on top of the cave as we're heading back to the trail.

Since it was getting late we decided that we should be heading back home since the kids had school the next morning but we decided to do one last mini-hike. This was the North Crater Flow trail. It used to be a crater and here are some of the tall structures that are still left. I thought they looked neat against the sky.

Another cool picture...well not as cool as the real thing but the rock around here had this kind of purpley-blue outside and then it was red on the inside. You can't really tell in the pictures but I had never seen that kind of color before. I liked it.

So that was our Memorial Day Vacation. We headed home after that and eventually got home around 10:20pm. It was a long drive but we had a good time. Thanks Jeff and Julie for hosting us and putting up with Austin's screaming and throwing up (another story for another day perhaps) and everything that includes having a family of 6 come stay with you for a few days. You're the best!!!