Yellowstone July 2007

We went to Yellowstone with Todd's family.  We had so much fun.  Todd has two sisters.  It is always fun to get together with his family.  They are great.  The cousins get along really well too.  We spent 4 days there.  We saw alot of different animals but mainly buffalo.  Carlee and Spencer had car trouble on the way so we had to have their car towed and crammed 1o people into our car.  Normally that wouldn't have been too bad but we had all of our suitcases, car seats, and coolers full of food.  We pretty much laughed for about two hours and then a one of us got a little grouchy. I won't say who but her name starts with a W.  We went on a really long hike and ended up on top of a mountain and looked down to Yellowstone Lake.  It was beautiful.  The weather was perfect.  It even snowed one afternoon.  Bailee always wanted to get in the car and look for animals.  It was fun just to watch her experience things for the first time.  The guys got up early a few times to fish but didn't really have much luck.  It had been about 10 years since we had been there last.  I hope we can go alot more often now that we live here.  One of my favorite pictures is of Todd's mom trying to look down into the canyon.  She is really afraid of heights and was nervous to get too close.

June Dinasaur Museum with Blake, Dawson, Dylan, Madi, Abbi, and Grandma Olson

Blake and Dawson stayed for a little bit longer after the reunion.  We took a trip to the dinasaur museum and then went swimming after.  It was a fun day.

June Bear Lake Bischoff Family Reunion

We had a great time at the Bischoff family reunion.  It was nice to catch up with everyone and find out what's new in their lives.  We went boating, ate rasperry shakes, played at the beach, played alot of games and stayed up late talking.  It seemed like there were 200 kids but not really that many.  The kids were having so much fun.  We were also able to have a surprise party for my dad.  He doesn't get surprised too often.  My grandma is 89 and she looks great.  The house was nice and had a swimming pool.  I would love to go back there again sometime.

June 2007

Whitney and Amylia play on a club basketball team sponsored by a charity called Friends of the Americas. Every year the charity sponsors a trip to Hermisillo, Mexico. The boys and girls teams go there to help in orphanges and help in the community. At the end of the day they play in a basketball tournament against other teams from Mexico. Todd volunteered to coach the girls varsity team. Todd, Whitney, Amylia and I were able to go this year. This was the second year that Whitney and I have gone. Parker was able to go last year as well. It is such an amazing experience and it is hard not to want to take 25 kids from the orphanges home with us. Todd and Whitney's team won the tournament, which made it even more fun. It was 122 degrees some of the days which made it a little hard to play basketball but they still did it and had fun. We stayed up until 12 or 1 a.m. every night and had to get up between 6 and 6:30 a.m. Because of the heat and all of the different service things that we did, we were pretty much exhausted all of the time. I was incharge of keeping track of 10 teenage girls every night. That was not an easy job, especially because there were around 20 teenage boys. I hope that we will be able to continue to do this over the next few years. I am on the board of Friends of the Americas and have found it very rewarding. It has been great to be able to help our kids realize that there are people in the world who aren't as fortunate and it is important to help. I want them to realize the amazing feelings you can have when you are helping others.

Spring 2007

Todd and I bought a cabin up in the mountains. It's pretty old and needs some updating. Todd has done alot of work on it and will probably be working on it for the rest of our lives. It is close to thousands of miles of fourwheeling and hiking trails. Todd loves it there and has been fourwheeling and then hiking up to some streams and then fishing. I can honestly say that I have seen some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. The streams look like someone has taken a chisel and chiseled out steps to make these beautiful waterfalls. The sky is so blue and at night you can see thousands of stars. We have had so many fun family moments there. I hope the kids will have alot of fun memories spending time with their family and friends at the cabin.