A day at the park

On Monday I had a conference so Aunt Trina came to spend the day playing with Mia.  They went to the park and had a blast!  Apparently Mia screamed the whole way home in protest.  Trina sent me some fun pics and videos of their adventures so I figured I'd post a few.

 Gotta love that smile

 The swing wasn't her favorite now that she's a girl on the go.

We took her to the park a couple times last summer and even once this spring, but this was the first time she got to just cruise and play on her own.  (Last time there were too many big kids everywhere that were trying to run her over).  We'll have to go play again in the middle of the day when everyone else is at school. 
She loved being able to play on the slide all by herself.

It's crazy how fast she's grown.  She is no longer a baby but my little girl on the run.

Thanks Aunt Trina for a great day!

West Yellowstone

Last weekend Monty and I decided to take a little get away.  We took Mia to Grandma's for her first official sleepover without mom and dad (Grandma was SOOO excited) and headed up to West Yellowstone for the weekend.  We have had it planned for a couple months and figured we'd go up and spend the day snowmobiling and just enjoy the outdoors, but unfortunately no one told the weather.  We stayed at a great resort in a nice little condo.  It was only a studio so I wouldn't have wanted to stay there for a week but it was great for the weekend.  It had a nice rustic feel and fit in great with the area. 

The drive up on Friday was great, but Saturday morning the snow started.  When we left to go snowmobiling it wasn't too bad yet.

 We just rented clothes and gear there.  We got all bundled up and ready to go.



 Monty looks excited don't ya think?

Well, after we were out about 2 hours, we ended up in a total white out with wind whipping everywhere so we had to head back in.
We got a couple pictures before we headed back in.  Seeing as we were by ourselves, we had to take turns taking pictures.

 You can kind of see the snow storm whirling behind us.

When we pulled into town, we couldn't even figure out where we were in order to make our way back to the condo.  It took a long time to navigate the 7 whole streets they even have in West Yellowstone.  We took very few pictures because it was just too cold and windy to take gloves off to take the camera out of a pocket to take pictures.
This is the snow built up along the river.

Once we finally made it back to the condo we had lunch and hung out for about two hours before we ventured back out.  It was still snowing a little bit and the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard.  Our afternoon ride we were able to see better but was more adventurous.  We rolled the snowmobile once when we ended up in some unpacked powder.  Luckily right as we rolled it a group showed up and helped us get it upright (snowmobiles are heavier than I thought).  A short time after that we tried turning around on a trail and ended up off the groomed trail and buried the front end of the snowmobile in the snow.  The snow we were in was up to my thighs and it was only by divine intervention that we managed to get the snowmobile back out.

Just before we turned the snowmobile back in we got someone to take a picture of us together.

Monty did most the driving, I drove a little bit out on the trails and then as we came back into town the second time I drove it.  I preferred driving on the flat non-winding areas.

They ended up getting about a foot and a half of snow while we were there.  We were just amazed by just how much snow there was everywhere.  On Sunday we went to church.  The church did not have a very big parking lot but this was just one of about 4 massive mounds of snow that had been plowed from the little lot.

On Sunday when we left, this was the view from our 2nd floor balcony.  Some places looked like you could step right off into the snow.

It was a fun little get away and Mia had a blast at Grandma's.  My brother took some pictures while Mia was there so if I can get some from him I'll post them.