Spring Break Mini Vacation

With Zack going to school his spring break and my spring break have never fallen at the same time, except when we were both students and I worked at the bank, but then he was working for the school district and we both had to take time off work to hang out anyway. But I digress.....  Our spring breaks once again did not line up but we each took the Friday of the other person's spring break off to hang out together and have family time. For the last weekend of my spring break which was the first weekend in April, which  also happens to be General Conference for my church and this year happened to include my birthday, we rented a cabin with Zack's parents and a few siblings in Star Valley Wyoming. The setting was gorgeous and we had a nice time relaxing and doing whatever we wanted. We left after Zack got out of class Friday and took our time making our way to Star Valley, Wyoming. The drive is so relaxing and beautiful. We were the first to get to the cabin and explored the area, set up our stuff and then played some card games on the wrap around porch while Warren played with a cat that was outside.

Friday evening was spent talking, playing games and just hanging out. Saturday we drove into Jackson Hole and wandered around  window shopping, shopping, more window shopping and then had lunch at a pizza place. We then decided we were going to go check out a park I had seen online while everyone else drove into Teton National Park. Warren loved the climbing park we went to, Phil Baux Park. He had a blast climbing, playing, and running around. Zack and I loved watching him climb and watching other people climb as well. Saturday night the adults went out and we celebrated by birthday which was the next day. We went to Dad's Bar and Steakhouse, it has awesome reviews online, and it was yummy. A hole in the wall place but so good. If we go back we will know that there is a separate entrance for the restaurant. I had a steak marinated in hot sauce, for someone who loves spice, it was a good marinade. After dinner Zack had his mom try and find somewhere that was still open that had ice cream, we forget stores close early in small towns,  but she found some ice cream at the gas station and we came back and had ice cream with the kids. Sunday morning we packed up said goodbye and all went our separate ways. We choose to drive though Soda Springs and show Warren some geysers, the carbonated water, and park I played at when I was young. My dad would often drive to or  home from Yellowstone through Soda Springs and we would stop and take a break, play on the playground, watch the geyser and maybe drink carbonated water. It was fun to pass on some of my memories from my childhood to my own child.

My boys at the antler arch in Jackson Hole.

My little family at the arch.

These cousins are so cute together and they are so good to Warren. He loves them and so do we.

Mommy and Warren having lunch at the pizza place. 

Rocking climbing at Phil Baux Park

Almost to the top.

Climbing with Daddy.  Oh and the lady in the back was there with her husband who was practicing. He would climb along the bottom, all around the base without touching the ground.

We made it to the top!

This was the view from the cabin we rented. GORGEOUS! The sunsets were amazing. We took a few walks in the evenings to soak in all the beauty. I even went running on my birthday and thought I could run if this was my view. It  was exhilarating to run in the crisp mountain air with no one around and to run on dirt roads was awesome.

Me and my eternal sweetheart enjoying the sunset. The view of the stars was describable. With little or no light pollution you could see so many stars! AHHH to live there!

 Soda Spings

We couldn't have timed arriving to see the geyser any better. We arrived started walking up and it started to go off. The information about the geyser is very fascinating. From what Zack read this geyser was messing up Old Faithful somehow so now it is regulated to only go off once every hour. There is much more to the history but too much to write here. I love seeing Warren so intrigued!

The geyser was actually really impressive and you aren't that far from it and can walk all the way around it.

Hooper Springs, it has carbonated water. We had Warren try some without telling him what it was, he did not like it. I tried it again because I had forgotten how much I disliked it (the last time I drank it I was a kid) and quickly remembered why Warren was spitting it out. There is a video I just can't upload it.

March 2016

I am going to try and remember the fun things we did in March of this year. Luckily I have some pictures to help me but I obviously will not remember everything three to four months out.

The beginning of March I hosted a evening, well it was an all day event, to make freezer meals. I think we cooked for 7 or 8 hours and ended up with a ton of food.  I can't remember the specifics but it was a lot, and I wrote how much we made on Facebook. My stepmom and stepsister came and we cooked and chatted and the kids played with my dad and their dads, then they disappeared to pick up a truck and look at another one, I don't know exactly but I do know that by the end of the day my house smelled super yummy... oh those meatballs, and I was exhausted.

Most of the loot, some bags were already put away because we had over 90 burritos and a few other things.

In March my grandma also hosted her annual Easter Egg Hunt. These hunts are not for the faint of heart or for who you might think they are for. She still puts on an Easter Egg hunt for her grandkids so me and my siblings. My mom does the Easter Egg hunt for her grandkids. This year was more laid back but we still had to complete a word search before the hunt could begin and the winner got prizes. We then went out to find the eggs that Warren and his cousins hid for us. They would take the eggs back out of our baskets to hid them again. I think we found the same 30 eggs (big difference from most years with 120 plus eggs) about 3 or 4 times, but they had a great time.

Squishy finding an egg.

Yes that is a plastic bag, he had been painting with his cousins earlier and I didn't want him to get paint on his clothes. 

The adult Easter egg hunt!

Jessie can be ruthless!

Later that month Warren had had his first friend from school come over to play. I thought it would  be fun to have STEM activities planned for them, (that's the teacher in me, I had just completed a STEM course) but they just wanted to play, so we played with what I brought however they wanted, then played  with the trains.

Instead of building a tower, Warren just wanted to put the as many marshmallows on a piece of spaghetti as he could.

Mom was trying  to help guide and direct him to build some sort of tower to hold Oreo's.

But that didn't happen, so I built my own.

Tada!

Coloring Easter Eggs with Koolaid, it really worked.

 Warren with some of his projects that he worked on at school. He had an amazing preschool teacher and teacher's aide. We loved his preschool experience and so did he.

A bean plant and grass he grew at school. The grass got so long he cut it with scissors a couple times before it was time to get rid of it.

His bean plant he grew from a seed in a  2 liter bottle with water in it and the seed placed in the wet paper towel.

The last week in March was my Spring Break so Warren and I got to hang out all day. One day we made play dough and had some fun with it and cookie cutters. This picture was for me to send to Daddy and all the hearts were because we love him.

Warren's big ball of play dough.

It also snowed during Spring Break, actually several times. We didn't see much sunshine until midweek.