Pioneer Weekend

I absolutely love three-day weekends.

The only thing I love more than three-day weekends

is when a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday.

Because then we can take Friday or Monday off to make it a four day weekend. 

(Who is going to get anything done on a non-holiday day, anyway?)

And the best part about this kind of holiday is we only had a three-day work week!

It was really pretty awesome.

I am totally a fan of Pioneer day--I think it should be made a national Holiday. 

Since I will be covering all our many adventures over the last week, I'll just warn you...

This will be a really long post....as in LOTS of pictures and blow-by-blow accounts of everything we did.

Just to let you know. You can run away screaming at any time.

We got a lot of pictures of large animals (yours truly included) and smoke coming out of the ground.

I don't know which part was better:
seeing all the cool stuff in Yellowstone

Or listening to Levi repeat over and over again

"Dude...this is so awesome!"

 (*He's never seen geysers or anything like them before*) 

So beware... You've been warned!

I wanted to put pictures from the Pioneer parade in this post

But I forgot my camera

And Henry left his phone at home, so he can't send me the pictures he took either.

I'll just tell you it was cool.

Levi and another 2,055 young men ages 14-18 marched in the parade as a reenactment of the Stripling Warriors.

They all wore little tunic/dress things and carried staffs. (Staves?)

It was pretty dang impressive.

But I did laugh when Levi tried his tunic on

The Relief Society president sewed them for all the boys in our ward, and she used the largest pattern she had for Levi-

But it still ended up like a mini-skirt.

No matter- he was a good little trooper and marched anyway.

The young men came at the very end of the parade and it took almost five minutes for all of them to pass by on a four lane road-

There were that many of them. 

It was pretty awesome to see just how big a group of 2,056 young men look like.

So that was Friday night.

Saturday Morning, we got up early, loaded all our stuff in the car and made it out of the driveway....!

And then we realized that we needed some more stuff

so we went to wal-mart to pick up those last-minute necessities that somehow always pop up before a road trip.

And then we got gas.

And then we met up with Janela and Jared so we could drive up to Idaho caravan style.

True to Coppersmith form- we planned on leaving by 8:00 in the morning

But by the time we actually got on the road it was closer to 9:15.

Am I my parents child, or what?

We also planned on it taking a lot longer for us to get to Idaho than it usually does

it's about a 3.5 to 4 hour drive.

We had to plan for frequent potty breaks - which slowed us down a little bit.

But it wasn't too painful, and we made it up to where we needed to be in time for Emma's baby shower.

Hopefully Miss Emma won't mind me sticking her picture on here.

We had a great time. Its always fun to be with Emma because she has such a sense of humor.

And she gave me some good ideas for some things I might want to get sooner rather than later.

After the shower Me, Emma and Janel did some fun girl stuff.
All the boys went and saw the Dark Knight--which none of us were even mildly interested in sitting through.

We went to the most amazing craft store in the history of craft stores

It's called Porter's.

You've never heard of it?

Well....It's incredible.

It's like Michael's on sterioids...times a million.

They have everything you could ever possible imagine

so I spent a little bit of moolah on some project supplies.

I did warn Henry that our bank account might not be so....padded...after a trip there.

I bought fabric to make my first baby quilt, and I can't wait to get started!

I thought of making it for someone else,

but after all the time, effort and money that goes into a project like this....

Are you kidding me?

I'm keeping it for myself.

I mean....kisbaba....it's for him. 

I also bought some beautiful blue yarn for another baby blanket.

I think this must be that nesting thing I keep hearing about.

It's made me want to be even more craftier than usual.

I already started on the crocheted blanket--and it doesn't look too terrible yet, so there's still hope that I won't botch it. (It has a really cool sea-shell pattern!)

Moving on!

We went out to dinner at this not-so-healthy-but-terribly-delicious Chinese restaurant in Rexburg.

It did terrible things to my stomach

for which I apologized to all whom we shared a hotel room with that night

but it was so good....

What's better than fried chicken coated in  sweet n' sour sauce?
After my first helping I gave up being polite and serving myself from our little plater-
I pulled that serving dish up in place of my plate and ate off it instead of wasting all that time transferring it to another plate.

Sunday we went to church with Emma and Joe and then left in the afternoon for Montana-

The least populated state in the union!

...and believe me, we saw a lot more sagebrush than humanoid figures. 

It was very pretty though, and much cooler than Salt Lake (which has been in the 100's every day)

Henry and Levi got excited every time they saw something that looked remotely like deer.

"Oh! Look over there! It's!...oh....never-mind...it's just a bush."

(Don't feel too bad for them yet, I was large-animal-ed out by the time the weekend was over)

We stayed at a fun hotel and ate dinner at a really good restaurant.

The place we ate at was really interesting.

Levi didn't know what half of the menu meant. 

 He kept asking questions like...

 "What's pate?"

and

"What part of the animal is that supposed to be?"

and

"How is this even pronounced?"

But my favorite question was the one he asked the waitress as she took our drink orders:

"Do you have anything that's all-you-can-eat?"

Turns out they didn't.

He ended up eating the only thing on the menu that was recognizable.

a Burger.

I don't think I've ever seen Henry eat as slowly as he did.

I usually have to remind him that no one is going to take his plate away from him.

But he ordered Lamb burgers

and my Henry loves lamb more than he loves....well...almost any other food.

He ate it a lot when he was in Hungary.

He kept telling me that he didn't want to swallow it, he just wanted the flavor to stay in his mouth forever.

I was thinking that it that's the case--I might not ever kiss him again.

Needless to say, it was really fun and we all enjoyed it.

On Monday morning we got up and trooped down to the continental breakfast

where everyone else grumbled about the six of us all using the waffle iron consequtivly.

And then we jumped in the car again-

This time is was off to Wyoming-

The second least populated state in the Union!

This is where I remembered my camera.

I'm not sure how I forgot it was in purse the first half of our trip since it's so bulky,

but I suppose anything is possible when your pregnant.

We went in through the west entrance to Yellowstone and had been driving for an hour or so when Henry and Levi mentioned that it would be really cool to see something....at least some geese if nothing else.

And then we saw this guy off the road

He was just hanging out, minding his own business.

But he still scared the crap out of me.

This is Henry and Levi.

They were really excited to something other than geese.

After we saw the bison and we got back in the car, both the boys started talking about how awesome it was to see a buffalo so close.

And then Henry said,

"Man, that was awesome. But now I want to see a whole herd of Buffalo!"

and about twenty miles down the road....

Guess what?

We saw a herd of Buffalo.

The lighter colored ones are babies--there were about five of them out of a group of maybe ten adults.

Henry and Levi were psyched.

This is Henry's psyched face.

We kept driving along the highway and seeing crazy cool stuff.

We stopped at one of the smaller geyser sites so Levi could see it firsthand 

(before Old faithful where it's always super crowded.)

 Am I un-photogenic, or what?

After this we got back on the road for another...five miles...tops...when this happened.

 Yeah...that's another buffalo.

And he is walking toward our car.

Our *brand new* car.

and it was a two lane highway with nowhere to pull off. 

It was awesome.

That's the big boy walking past our car as we tried to sidle past him.

Opposing traffic stopped long enough for us to pull out of his way.

I was terrified someone was going to honk their horn to scare him off the road

because I'm pretty sure if someone did that, he would have gone berserk and run into someone's car. 

not that he would really be hurt by it, but I don't think any car would come out of that fight looking the same.

He didn't seem like an angry buffalo though-

He was just going about his business.

I think we were the first ones to see him on road

he looked like he'd just run out of the forest- he had all these sticks plastered to his head. 

Another ten miles or so down the road we stopped at the black sand pits.

I didn't walk around this one, but Henry took some cool pictures.

(Side note for Callie--This was where we stopped when I had enough phone reception to call and wish you a happy birthday)

Henry said it was really cool looking, but the smell was awful.

The smoke is everywhere, and it smells like rotton eggs.

It's like the whole world farted at once.

And then we hit up Old Faithful!

I was around two or three in the afternoon at this point

and quite frankly, I was a little pissy.

Mostly because it was warm

and a little bit because my feet were starting to hurt.

But mostly because it was warm.
(I have no tolerance for heat anymore, it makes me cranky)

So these pictures were taken from inside the vistor's center.

Which wasn't any cooler.

For some reason, hot air was coming out of all the vents in the floor.

Which made me even more...not happy. 

It was still pretty cool though.

I think it had been 96 minutes since the last "eruption" when I got pictures of this

(I couldn't zoom out far enough to catch the whole thing--but it shoots upwards of 180 feet, I think)

At this point I was wanting to be in the car with the air turned up all the way blowing straight up the sleeves of my shirt.

But Henry knows my needs all too well

(and he knows exactly how to make me a happy camper when I'm....not a happy camper) 

he bought me a super over-priced but amazingly delicious ice cream cone at one of the shops by the Visitor's Center

It wasn't so much an ice cream cone as a half gallon of ice cream in a Styrofoam bowl with a cone perched on top.

It was amazing.

Even if it did cost six dollars.

Then it was back into the car!

(can you see a pattern here?)

Before we saw something else....

I'm not sure how Henry and Levi kept seeing all these animals.

They were hidden behind trees and bushes and rocks

and we were driving on the highway going at least 50 MPH.

I didn't catch any of it until they showed me where everything was with the camera zoomed in.

This time it was a female Elk

I sat this one out as well because I'd already taken off my hiking boots in the car.

But Levi took some pretty cool pictures for me.

At one point along the highway, everything opened up and we could see this amazing lake with the Tetons in the background. 

And as usual...Henry and Levi wanted to explore....

And you remember how Henry wanted to see a whole herd of Buffalo?

Well...he got what he wanted...

It doesn't look like there are that many, but Henry counted 259 before he lost count and that wasn't all of them, they were spread out across this whole field.

 We saw these two bulls head-butting each other. 

Not too different from their human counterparts, eh?

Levi wants to use this as one of his senior pictures....

This was the last big group of animals we saw-

but we had one last scare before we drove out of the park boundaries.

At this point I was frightened, because we  kept seeing what Henry would  mention he wanted to see only minutes before.

I'm normally a little superstitious....even on a good day...

So when he started talking about how cool it would be if an elk jumped across the road....

Well...one did.

I obviously didn't get a picture of it

because I was busy peeing my pants-

but they are huge. 

It jumped right on the road and jumped right off again,

but for a moment, I thought we were going to die.

My reaction compared to both the boys' was completely different.

They were all,

"THAT WAS SO AWESOME!"

"I CAN'T BELIEVE WE JUST SAW THAT!"

and I was all,

*hyperventilating*

*heart Palpitating*

"...I think I may need a new pair of pants..."

We survived.
And now we have some cool stories to tell.
We made it to Jackson Hole, where we met up with Janel, Jared, and Emma again.
And we ate dinner at this place called "The Merry Piglets"
It was Mexican.
And I ate my way through three bowls of salsa and three baskets of chips before they brought my meal out.
In hindsight, I probably should have just ordered chips for dinner-they were so good.

and we took pictures under this arch.
I kind of felt weird.
Like it was the site of a deer massacre or something. 

The crazy part is that there is another arch just like this around the block.

We had a great time.
Henry and I already agreed that the next three-day weekend we have we are going to do something like this again-there are too many cool things to see nearby to just stay at home.

But it was definetly one of those trips where you need another weekend just to recuperate from this trip.
This afternoon will be full of laundry and cleaning to catch up from being gone.

Just to give an update on our baby Babushka
He's as active as ever
judging from how squirmy he is, he loves when I eat apples and bananas.
And Cheese.
I'm up about ten pounds or so from my pre-pregnancy weight
and I still love eating! Food has never appealed to me as much as it does now.

Being pregnant has been amazing.
Even though puking was not so fun
and my feet and back hurt once in a while
it has been a great experience, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I feel like I have had a very comfortable pregnancy compared to some.
I haven't lost any sleep from back pain or discomfort
in fact, I'd say I sleep deeper and better than I did before.

I love feeling my little peanut move.
He's pretty active, and (usually) I can feel him every hour or so
but especially at night.

I think this is because he has more blood flow when I lay down to go to sleep.
He kicked me so hard last night it felt like my ribs were vibrating for a few minutes after.

Henry and I also talked a lot about names on our way back home.
I don't know if we will cement anything in stone before we see his little face;
but we've picked out something we really like.

I'm terrible at keeping secrets though,
so I'm sure we'll end up mentioning this name before too long
(If we decide we still like it after a while)

This is the end of my 23rd week- On to the 24th!
Supposedly he should be about a foot long
(But he isn't available at subway for five dollars)
 and pretty soon you should be able to see him moving on the surface of my skin!

I need to take some real belly shots--I can feel and tell that the sides of my stomach are like a balloon right now--it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

We are happy, healthy, and in all other ways--terrific. 
Thanks for enduring the pictures and stories--you made it to the end!