Missoula Trip, Day Four

After a breakfast of vanilla malted waffles (I don't know what that means, but that's what they advertised we were eating...just tasted like regular waffles to me), the girls swam some more and we hit the road for home. We went through Leadore, a small town where we bought some pressed meat product (ham) for $3.99 so we could have a picnic lunch when we got to Birch Creek. We set up the shade, the chairs and put together some bagels, cream cheese, fake ham, chips, cookies, licorice and diet Pepsi. Lauren is in heaven when we let her drink diet Pepsi with actual caffeine in it. This only happens on vacation or when she's having a meltdown and I think she needs to be medicated.

After lunch Landon and Emma did some fishing in Birch Creek. The water was cold, but Lauren and I enjoyed sitting by the side, soaking our feet, and heckling the fishermen. After a couple hours, we left Birch Creek and walked in the door to our house around 4:00pm.

We had such a fun trip! The girls got along more than they argued, I think we bonded as a family even more, we ate good food, did and saw new things, and had great conversations. Definitely a positive experience.

Missoula Trip, Day Three

After a terrible night's sleep, we got up and ate sausage, bagels and cream cheese and some raspberries. Emma had been talking about wanting raspberries so bad the whole trip that I started calling her "Aspergers" as a nickname. We bought some at Walmart.

We had had so much fun in Missoula that I just didn't want to go! It was sad when we took down the tent and packed up. After the truck was packed, Landon went to take a shower before we left, while the girls played mini-golf. I sat in the shade, cheered them on, and put on some make-up, just in case I had to be seen in a gas station or something on the way south.

The girls wanted to ride the carousel again, so Landon dropped us off and met us 45 minutes later. There was nowhere to park the big truck downtown, so he went to a sporting goods store and browsed while we rode the carousel a couple more times. There's a carved dragon in a tree that hangs over the carousel, and it has these little rings in its teeth that kids try to grab while the carousel is going around. If you end up grabbing the golden ring, you get a free ride. Emma got 7 rings on one ride and ended up with the golden ring! It was fun. (You can see the dragon hanging over the girls' heads as they wait for their turn on the carousel.)

On our drive home, we went a different way. We never choose to go home the same way if there's an alternate route, a very LeFevre trait. The drive home goes through Salmon, Idaho, which is where we stayed the third night of our trip. We stayed at the Stagecoach Inn, the best motel in Salmon. The best motel in Salmon was within our budget, so that kind of gives you an idea of how nice it was. But it had a pool and a free breakfast, which was all we cared about.

I made a little system of "stepping stones" with the undersides of the bedspreads and our used swimming towels, so we didn't have to let our bare feet touch the motel room floor, and we didn't have to physically touch the tops of the bedspreads with our hands. My germ phobia kicks into full gear at older motels in small towns.

Last Chance Pizza in Salmon is a great find that Landon made when he went on a week long rafting trip 3 years ago. We made the mistake of going to the restaurant instead of getting it to go. There was one waitress for the whole place, and it was busy. We ordered and didn't get our food for close to an hour. The picture above shows how Lauren felt about the whole thing. It was late, we were hungry, and Lauren was not happy about waiting. The pizza was worth the wait, but next time we'll order it to go.

Missoula Trip, Day Two

Tuesday morning I got up and made bacon, eggs and sourdough toast on our camp stove. Landon is usually the camp chef, but it bothers me that the girls don't think I know how to cook outdoors. Landon actually doesn't like to cook every single meal when we camp, so it worked out well for both of us.

After breakfast and showers, the kids played at the camp playground. We were there in the middle of the week, so the campground wasn't completely full each night. There were only 3 tent campers, and we were one of them. The rest of the campground was full of RVers, and not a lot of kids, so the girls had the pool and playground to themselves most of the time.
We left our camp site and went looking for Wheat Montana, one of our favorite memories from the Fairmont Hotsprings trip 2 years ago. Back then we went to the original store in Three Forks, MT, but later realized that they have several other locations. We found the one in Missoula and shared a carmel roll and an iced cinnamon roll. Yummy!After Wheat Montana, we went to Splash Montana, the Missoula Parks and Recreation outdoor aquatic facility. It only cost us a total of $18.50 for the 4 of us to spend the day swimming at this super fun pool! The weather was pretty cool and there were dark clouds the whole day, and it actually started raining by the time the girls were done swimming. We got there at 11:30am and left at 3:00pm. Landon was done after about an hour, but I'm a sucker for a lazy river, so I stayed in until 2:30pm.

This is a picture I found online, but this gives you a good idea of the whole layout. We loved the lazy river! It was pretty big, and they provide tubes to ride on, so I spent hours holding onto a tube, being pulled around the river, while the girls rode on top. (I'm not sure why it looks like I have a hump on my back in the following pictures, but I'm pretty sure that I don't in real life.) The other thing the girls loved was the orange slide. The orange slide is the one that you can ride down on a tube. I went down once and thought it was fun, but the girls went over and over in a 2 person tube. They loved it!I love this picture because we coached them to smile when they got to the bottom because Dad was going to take a picture. We also told them to make sure their heads were going opposite directions so we could see both of them smiling. They're trying so hard!
After Splash Montana we were starving! We drove to the Double Front Cafe for their famous fried chicken. My friend Jenny used to live in Missoula and highly recommended this place, so we had to try it out. It was amazing! The best part was watching Lauren dig into her chicken. She loves meat anyway, but she especially loves to gnaw meat off bones. She was almost moaning as she ate.

Next we went to the mall. We are mall-deprived here in Rexburg, so the girls and I love the opportunity to walk around a mall if we get a chance. Montana doesn't have sales tax, so we did spend some money on school clothes at JC Penney, Emma's current favorite clothing store. We also bought some candy at a fun candy store in the mall, and found the coolest oil and vinegar store. You go and mix your choice of flavored oil and flavored vinegar to concoct your own bread dipping oil, salad dressing, marinade, or whatever. We didn't buy anything, but I loved the concept, and the free samples.

Next, we stopped at The Big Dipper, which is a homemade ice cream place. We saw a lot of recommendations online for this place and it didn't disappoint. The ice cream was really creamy and a fun place to stop on our way back to the campground.

Vanilla Reeses:White Mint Oreo:Lemon Sorbet:When we got back to the camp, Emma got into bed and read and played Nintendo DS:

Lauren wanted more water time, so she swam and I read a magazine:When Lauren got out of the water, she ran into Yogi Bear in the campground gift shop:
We were pretty pooped after a long day, so we went to bed pretty early. Unfortunately, our air bed popped around midnight! I'm blaming Landon for the hole. He tosses and turns every 30 second or so, and you just can't do that in an air bed with 2 large people on it who like the bed really firm with air. I think his elbow went through it. So we tried to just sleep on the hard ground, but about an hour later, I realized that those days are over for me. We yanked the full-sized air bed out from under the girls and made them sleep on the ground. While we were moving the girls, Lauren kept saying, "you said you wouldn't do this to us!" It was kind of funny.

Missoula Trip, Day One

At some point along the way to earning my degree in Recreation, I learned that a certain percentage of the enjoyment of a truly fulfilling, "re-creational" experience is in anticipating and planning the experience. Landon and I tend to plan and anticipate our family's recreational experiences and just fill the girls in as we go. Well, when it occurred to me that they might have more fun and be more pleasant to be around if we included them in the planning stage of a family outing. Landon and I narrowed the destination down to Missoula, Montana and told the kids the amount of money we had to spend for gas, lodging, food, fun, etc. We got on the internet and did a lot of searching to see what we wanted to do and how we wanted to spend the money. We spent 3 days making lists, phone calls, reservations, etc. so we could have the kind of trip we all wanted to have. It turned out to be one of the best family experiences we've ever had. It ranks up there with our camping trip to Arches, Disneyland trips, camping at the Oregon Coast, and our 3 day trip to Fairmont Hot Springs 2 years ago. We got along, we had fun, and we kept really close to our budget!
Here's how it all went down:
First, we stopped in Dillon, MT to look at the Patagonia outlet, and a used bookstore. Nobody bought anything! A miracle.
Next, we stopped in Butte, MT at Joe's Pasties, a treat we missed last time we were in Butte. We decided to get 2 pasties, and split them between the 4 of us so we could also get at pork chop sandwich at Pork Chop John's, a treat we did enjoy last time we were in Butte. The pasties were OK. We got them to go, so they might have tasted better if we had time to sit and enjoy them in the restaurant. They had beef and potatoes inside and we poured brown gravy over the top of them.
That's Lauren sitting in the back of the truck while Dad ordered our pork chop sandwiches. We packed an ice chest full of a lot of different beverages so we didn't have to buy any on the road. The pork chop sandwiches were yummy! We ate them at a little park and had time to run around before we hit the road for Missoula. Our first stop in Missoula was the carousel at Caras Park in downtown Missoula. It has an interesting history that you can look up online if you want. It was only $.50 per ride for kids, $1.50 for adults. It is one of the fastest carousels in the country, so I had to give it a try. I didn't want to test the maximum weight limit on the handcarved horses, so I opted to ride a chariot while the girls road Prairie Rose and Bogie.There is a really cool playground right next to the carousel, but unfortunately it was closed for maintenance the whole time we were in town. It was built by like 4000 volunteers a few years ago. Maybe next time.
Lauren is powerless against gift shops, so she ended up buying this dumb little squishy toy at the carousel gift shop, that she named AfroMan.
Next, we found our campground, which is a Jellystone campground franchise. It had a pool, mini-golf, award-winning bathhouse, etc. We set up our tent, blew up a queen size air mattress for us, a full-size air mattress for the girls, and made our little 14 X 14 foot home. We went swimming for an hour or two, then got hungry for dinner around 9:00pm.
We had planned to cook some beef stew for dinner, but when push came to shove, Landon just couldn't force himself to eat it. He refused. So we went into Missoula and searched for some cheap fast food that we don't have in Rexburg. We made the biggest mistake of the trip and went to Hoagieville. It's a fast food restaurant built on fake, processed cheese. Landon had a Philly-cheesesteak type sandwich, I had a turkey sandwich that I assumed would be safe from the fake cheese, and Lauren had a kid's meal with seasoned cheese fries. Emma felt sick and couldn't eat anyway. I took a bite of my turkey hoagie and it had white fake cheese sauce that was camouflaged in the turkey and lettuce. I only had that one bite and tossed the rest. Landon ate most of his, but not all. Lauren was the only one who loved this place. She couldn't get enough of the disgusting fake cheesy fries. I felt like we took our money and dumped it in the fast food garbage can. Big mistake.

Shooting

We spent the evening out in the desert shooting stuff. It was too hot for me, so I sat in my chair, watching and holding the umbrella close (the ground was too hard to get the umbrella to stay up). I did shoot a round with the .22, but mainly I was content to just watch Landon and Emma.Lauren stayed close to me and watched, but opted not to shoot. She was fascinated by the "ear muffs."Emma had fun and eventually figured out how to line up the little red dot with the target she wanted to shoot. She did great after that all clicked in her head.

Pioneer Day Parade

We went to the Pioneer Day parade in St. Anthony again this year! It is such an awesome parade! They have actual floats instead of just dozens of dance groups and trucks with signs on the sides driving by.

Lauren was the main candy collector. Emma got up once in a while when they threw candy that she could actually eat with braces. This was one of the first parade entries: twin baby mules were born to a mare about 2 weeks ago. I guess it's really rare that a horse gives birth to twins because usually one of the babies dies or the mother dies in the process. Vets usually terminate one of the babies as soon as they can see via ultrasound that there are two babies. This time they didn't know there were 2 mules in there, and they were born healthy and the mom is healthy. Mules are a combination of a donkey and a horse. As I'm writing this, I'm amazing myself with how much I know about the breeding process of donkeys and horses.

OK, raise your hand if the following float makes you a little uncomfortable: One of the local wards made a float with a temple on it and a couple was standing by the temple IN THEIR TEMPLE CLOTHES waving to everyone. The theme for the parade was "our mountain home so dear," so I get the temple, but not the couple waving in their temple whites.

We were really excited about the BYU-Idaho float. They had student volunteers handing out potted plants to people in the crowd. Emma was thrilled.

Another interesting item: Governor Butch Otter and his wife rode horses in the parade. He's Idaho's governor. Landon had to keep his hand over his mouth not to yell something derogatory about the education budgets. Tom Luna, the state superintendent of education was also in the parade. Landon told the girls (really loudly so everyone could hear him) to not take any candy or papers from him because he doesn't support the teachers in the state. I had to look the other way until Landon was done making his point.

Rocket Launcher

Landon made a homemade rocket launcher last week! As a Webelos Scout leader and 3rd grade teacher, he's had many opportunities to launch 2-liter bottle rockets. He decided it was time to make his own.

Unfortunately for us, as soon as we wanted to test the launcher outside, a creepy neighbor guy felt compelled to "help." He was in Landon's face trying to "coach" him and being a little too friendly for comfort. As soon as we all went inside Landon and I simultaneously told the girls to stay away from that guy and never ever "help him find his lost puppy," or anything like unto it. The rockets went at least 100 feet into the air and it was really cool to watch. All the neighborhood kids seemed pretty excited about it. (Too bad it also happens to be a freak magnet...next time we'll go to a park or something.)

More Good Food

Landon made homemade lasagna (with Emma's help) on Thursday evening. He used a recipe from Everyday Foods, on PBS. He even bought, peeled, and pureed fresh tomatoes for the sauce. It was amazing!
Friday night, Landon made Pork Carnitas from a recipe on America's Test Kitchen, also on PBS. This pork was better than any authentic Mexican pork we've had around here. Incredible! How lucky am I?