Heise, Funland, Soccer, Montana

A couple of weeks ago we went out to Heise for the day.  We started out the day with a round of mini golf.  We actually kept track of the score and the kids had a lot of fun playing.  

 After golf we had a picnic lunch and then went swimming.  There is a hot springs there, and they have multiple pools.  The summer pool is fairly big and has a diving board.  Elliott bobbed around in his baby tube and loved it.  Emmett went of the diving board a few times and that was a first for him.  There is also a big slide and Emmett did it 4 times by himself and Ezra rode it once on Jim's lap and twice on mine.  After spending some time at the summer pool area we moved over to the year round area which includes a warm pool and a hot pool.  The warm pool was around 97 degrees and the hot pool was around 103 degrees.  The kids really liked that.  We had to evacuate twice due to lightening in the area.  After swimming we went out for pizza at the local restaurant.  After dinner we decided we still had more energy so we went on a short hike.  We ended up not doing the whole loop because of storms closing in on us, but it was still fun and Emmett wanted me to read all the signs to him.

 The other night the city was out delivering new garbage cans and Jim got a picture of their huge trailer full of cans.  Jim came in from the backyard with Elliott and said he thought they were delivering them because of the sound he heard, and when he made the sound Elliott thought it was the funniest thing.  Our city still uses 2 garbage men with one guy having to dump the cans into the truck and there is no limit on amount of garbage, so many of our neighbors will have multiple cans (like up to 6).  We are excited to be going to an automated system to hopefully save the poor garbage men from work related injuries.  It will be interesting to see if our neighbors can get all their garbage into one can (the can we got is huge!).

Jim took the boys to Funland to use their coupons from the library.  They each got to pick one ride to go on.  Ezra chose the train and proceeded to cover his ears the whole time and be mad about how boring it was.  Emmett chose the "octopus" and hunkered way down in his car but had a good time.

This is how they felt after their rides

The volcano Emmett won at VBS earlier in the summer

 Ezra has been playing YMCA soccer.  It has been pretty disorganized and he has been feeling kind of shy, but the last two weeks he has gotten more into it and this week he scored two goals!  We have one more week to go.  Both boys also started AYSO soccer.  Ezra missed his first game because we were out of town,but we are hoping that it will be better organized and a good experience.  From past experience we are betting it will be.  Emmett is on a U8 team which is so much more organized than U6.  They are actually playing positions and have a goalie.  It will be more of a challenge for him and I think it will be so good for him.  His games are on a weeknight and for the first 3 weeks they are practicing 2 nights a week.  So for a couple of weeks we have soccer 5 out of 7 days.  Soon we will be down to 3 soccer activities a week, which sounds much better.

 Last weekend we went up to Montana for one last trip before school started.  We met Jim's parents at a sapphire mine in Phillipsburg.  You buy a buck of "gravel" and go through it for sapphires.  Emmett has been so excited to do it.

washing the "gravel"

Picking out the sapphires

Emmett was pretty serious about it and it held his interest for quite a while

Emmett's findings...he required his own bag

 After our mining adventure we went into town. They have a cute main street with some touristy shops, but the main attraction is the candy store.

 After we picked out our candy we had the sapphires evaluated to see if there were any "cuttable" stones.  Most of our better sized ones had fractures in them that the jewelers could see, so we decided not to have any heat treated or cut.  Then we went on to Missoula for dinner and then up to Jim's Aunt and Uncles house.  We stayed with them for 3 nights along with Jim's parents.  Unfortunately it was smokey the whole time and not very pleasant to be outside.  They were very hospitable to us and have 2 dogs that kept us pretty entertained.  Ezra was completely freaked out by the dogs at first and had a pose he would do that you are supposed to do if a dog is bothering you.  You cross your arms on your chest and look up to avoid eye contact.  Ezra was pretty much walking around the house like that all the time in the beginning.  By the end he liked the dogs, so that was good to have enough time for him to warm up.  Elliott got to have a little birthday party too.

crazy hair in the wind

Of course his brothers were happy to help with the presents

We saw lots of birds, this one was thinking of snatching a yellowjacket flying by

 Sunday morning after breakfast we got on the road.  We stopped in Deer Lodge to see their "museum complex."  The old Montana State Prison is there and it is really interesting.

 After the prison museum we went through the car museum.  They start you out with the earliest car models.  The collection is impressive...they are owned by lots of different people that allow them to be displayed.

Emmett preaching

There is also a toy museum that has a mega collection of Raggedy Ann and Andy, an old west museum, and a ghost town.  So there was a ton to see and we needed to get home for Emmett's first day of school the next day.  We spent the most time at the prison because it was huge and so interesting.  The car museum took quite a while too, but we wished we had more time to read about each car.  The other museums we did pretty fast so we could get home.  We stopped in Dillon for dinner and got home just in time for the kids to go to bed.