Salem Sue

Well-we've made the trek to Minnesota for our winter life. We left Driggs and drove up to Cooke City, MT where there was enough snow to ride. Garth and some of his teammates rode for a couple days to break in their sleds (and their bodies!). On our way out of Cooke City, you go through Yellowstone Park. We saw all these animals:
Coyote-

Big Horned Sheep-
Elk-
Bison-
A trip to the hot tub with the boys!-
And in North Dakota, Salem Sue! The biggest Holstein cow in the US?

We coped with the long hours in the car with the IPod. It was a huge change from traveling with Palmer before. Evening is the toughest when it gets dark at 5:00 and Palmer isn't ready to close his eyes-but he can't see to play with toys...so out comes the IPod. We got free podcasts of Sesame Street from ITunes and and AUX cable to plug the sound right into the truck's speakers. Entertainment for hours. And Palmer has a SHORT attention span. It totally does the trick! I highly recommend it.

No trip through ND would be complete without a trip to Space Aliens. It's a restaurant/arcade/extra terrestrial museum of sorts full of artifacts and souvenirs. We played Deal or No Deal and won the max amount of tickets (I didn't take any of the banker's deals and ended up opening my own case!) and bought a bunch of crap w/the tickets. So much fun...

She's Crafty

I've decided this year to decorate for Christmas so I made our stockings and a tree skirt. It was a LOT of work. Way more than I thought it would be. It took me 12 hours with help from my mom for the last 8. My little sister Rachel helped by keeping the machines threaded and feeding us (among other things).
Garth even stopped by and helped trim and iron...but mostly kept Palmer happy and occupied. It was a family effort for sure. Here is the finished tree skirt:
The bigger stockings are for me and Garth (mine is the stocking on the right with the beaded trim), the elf stockings are for Palmer and his baby brother on the way and the smallest one was a sample my mom made up first to make sure no step was left out...we're using it for Duke (our dog).

The pictures don't do them justice. They turned out so pretty!

Hunting season is finally over!

I get my husband back. This past season Garth was hunting any chance he got. Morning and night. Before work and after. It paid off for him though. Here is a picture of his big 6x7 bull elk.

The Doctor Said...

It's going to be a...BOY! I haven't blogged much about my pregnancy-so here's a little update. I am due April 28th (Palmer will have just turned 2!). I had my level 2 ultrasound today, at only 15 weeks rather than the typical 20 weeks (because of my previous pregnancy turning high risk in the last few days and early delivery), and the doctor reassured me that my chances of getting preeclampsia again are low. A 1 in 5 chance. Which sounds a lot better when said-4 out of 5 chances are-I'll have a 'normal' pregnancy. I love getting an ultrasound. They looked so closely at every little detail and can even see arteries and the way the blood is flowing! How fun for my son to have a brother! ...and soon I will have 2 wild boys running around!!

Halloween

Halloween was so much fun this year. We didn't do too much-just my mom's house and Garth's grandma's to show off Palmer's cute costume. Then trick-or-treating at one friend's house then our night was over. Seeing Palmer in his dinosaur costume was the best part though. He never complained or wanted it off. He got all the candy he could ever need and got to eat all he asked for. He was definately buzzing off all the sugar. It WAS Halloween after all...

Here's Palmer in his car seat with a blue mouth already from a dum-dum.

Here is Garth with his Grandma Phyllis (and Palmer of course). Her house is always decorated for the holidays. Palmer loves his great grandma!