Shrooms in the burn and String Lake

We went hunting morels up North in the burn along Jackson Lake this morning with the Hoovers and Mike W. What a beautiful blue sky day! We got filthy dirty from all of the soot, as you can see on Madelyn (!), but had loads of fun looking for a few mushrooms. We went to String Lake afterwards for a quick wash-off. Mike and Madelyn make it look easy in the video clip, but that water was probably 55 degrees!

MIke W and Madelyn

A few pictures of MIke W and Madelyn having fun before bed time the other night...and to think, Madelyn used to be terrified of Mike! My best theory was that he looked too similar to her Papa Mike and it used to confuse her...?



And, some beautiful lilacs from our neighbor's yard. Smells like heaven!!

Summer!

Hooray, summer has finally arrived! Lisa had her first day of no-more-school today!
Madelyn has been into the swing of summer a little longer than Lisa - here she is playing at the sink. The sink is someone's aged play sink that they put out behind their fence for other neighborhood children to use- filthy dirty with a few loose nails, and loads of fun! Many a cup of strawberry and blueberry tea has been poured in the last week or so! Madelyn has also been busy "making" scrambled eggs, corn muffins, and cookies.


Also a clip of Madelyn eating breakfast this morning. She was admiring her tulips before I started filming, but then lost interest in talking about it...

Busy day!

Whew, what busy day! We started out the day with an early morel hunt. We found the first and only mushroom of the day within 1 minute of the car. But, we did find some amazing sandy benches from the latest Snake River flood zone - Madelyn had loads of fun playing in the sand (OK, so did I!).







I spent the afternoon at Jackson's newest "festival" - the Yellowstone Heritage Fest, celebrating local produce, wares, etc. I was representing the community garden idea. Lots of "out-of-towners," so it wasn't that productive, but was a good time.

We ended the day at my co-worker Laura's wedding. Madelyn thought it was a fantastic birthday party (cake, presents, etc) and actually sang happy birthday to the bride:). After lots of dancing, 2 ups of lemonade, 2 cups of bubbly cider, 1 piece of cake, and some watermelon, Madelyn was in a sugar coma and ready to go home! A good day had by all!

Hermit Crabs

My classroom hermit crabs spent a night with us, in transit to their "summer home." Madelyn was so excited to have them visit, and a tad on the sad side to see them go... I think it might be time for a small critter in the house! Goldfish? A few of my classroom hissing cockroaches?

Dog Bones

Over the past week, whilst dealing with the last week of school, MK working evenings/weekends, and Miss Croup, we also had to figure out and set up a new insurance account (school district changing over). After an hour of rounding Madelyn up at home, I finally got her in the car and made it to the bank to open our insurance account - and Madelyn, most likely with fever, spotted the jar of dog bones on the bank counter. She went manic about them! And, like any sleep deprived mother, I caved immediately to keep her from melting down at the bank, even though we don't HAVE a dog!? We walked out of the bank 30 minutes later with a bright green dog bone and Madelyn carried that bone around like treasure for hours!! She gave it to the neighbor's dog the next morning, and was hooked on the new sport! We ended up getting a box of bones at the grocery store a few days later to satisfy her cravings:)

Back...with a few pics.

We have all been really busy these last few weeks. Lisa has been finishing up the last bit of school, Michael has been going in non-stop at work and even in there a bit on the weekends, Maddie enjoyed her new pre-school and then came down with croup! Which compounded all the above. Alas, we are on the other side of it for the most part now, Lis is done with the kids and has some in-service to do, maddie is on the mend and Michael see's some light at the end of the tunnel this week! All are well, we have had one of the wettest springs, with record rains, and the snake river was close to going over the banks and flooding the river bottom, I mean within a foot, and there is some serious volume moving from Jackson lake south in the snake. They have the dam opened up to it's highest level, and with downstream tributaries surging it got pretty close.

Today, Lisa had a baby shower to attend (not her own) and Michael and some other Dads got the kids together for a little adventure in Grand Teton NP. Anyway, that is the latest excitement from this end. Some pics from last week of Maddie, cause that is really what you want to see, right?