Spencer Cousins Come to Lewistown!

After a great few days in Yellowstone, we still had another week together in Lewistown.  We had fun just being together around the house and town, as well as lots of fun out doing some ranch things. 

Some pretty cute cargo in the back of the Ranger

Monday they were preg testing, so Clay was helping and we took the kids out to watch.  It makes for some interesting questions from the kids, but we all got a kick out of it and they got to see the guys working with the cows.  And play with sorting sticks.  It was a good day! 

Lots of apples were falling off the tree, so everyone was snacking on an apple when the work was done. 

We went for a ride in the Ranger.

Tuesday Kory worked and Clay stayed in town with us and we went on the walking trails and played at the park.  I'll probably say this over and over but the weather was PERFECT! I went ahead and sent klp to school his 3 days so he missed a little fun, but he still got in on plenty of it when he got home. 

Jaylie LOVED her some Aunt Mo all week! She talked about her everyday for at least a week after they left! 

klp had show and tell at school one day, so he took his cousins! He also took his bike to ride for his class so it was lots of fun! Here's the show and tell crew ready to show off for Kan's class! In the chaos of it all, I got no pictures, but it was fun for klp and all of us! 

Wednesday, KLP and Clay were moving cows and trying to find a lost bull and get him in and doing a few other things, so we went out there to visit.  We ended up counting hay bales which, of course, led to all sorts of fun running around on top of the bales. 

On Friday we took the whole crew up to the mountain pasture thats up in the Snowies.  The cows needed salt/mineral so it was a good excuse to take everyone up there and see that.  It was such a fun trip. We saw elk, deer, and of course lots of cows! 

We went to see the old cabins that are up there. I think these were built by/for sheep herders back in the day. This particular piece of land was acquired by Kory's grandad so he didn't put these cabins up, but they were used for the sheep herders to stay in while they had their sheep up there.  

Carved on the inside of one of the cabins it said "May 24, 1939"

Inside the other cabin it said "Donald made is cabin in 1941" We are thinking Donald made a type-0 (carve-O???) and meant to say "this" cabin.  Either way, Donald built a cool cabin.  

The kids found a stump that was obviously a drum.  

Sweet Mallory looking at the cows.

If you look closely you can see black dots that are cows.  Otherwise its just a nice shot of the side of the hill and a beautiful sky! 

Saturday we spent most of the day out at the ranch.  The kids had fun with the kittens.  Not sure the kittens can say the same. Please look at Ellie's face!!!!!! Sweet thang. 

Mallory, Ellie, and their Daddy.  

Each kid got a turn to ride Cash around the corals.  Kids on a fence is always picture-worthy! 

Avery!

Kan Man! 

Mal Mal!

Lou Lou!

And last but not least "Wanna ride 2 girls??!" They said No, but were outvoted by the adults so we got them on for a quick second.  

After the horse rides, we headed up to The Butte at sunset.  Awesome. 

The big kids.  (and me holding on to klp hiding behind the rock.)

Mostly when I see this picture I just feel so full of everything good.  Joy, love, happiness, thankful for family, and especially family that travels to see us.  But there is also a part of me that looks at these next 2 pictures and wonders why everything is a weapon in Quinn's hands and why he has to look like he's in a battle with someone when he's holding a "weapon" in a picture.  There's no such thing as "just a stick" and there's for sure no such thing as holding one in a picture and SMILING! sheesh.  

Awesome kids-awesome view. 

My peeps

This picture doesn't come close to capturing the sunset, but they're just unreal.  The colors in the sky were incredible. 

We came down from The Butte and rode over to The Clearing for a cookout.  This is what we did with pretty much everyone this summer, but our days are much shorter now, so it was dark and a little chilly.  But we had a blast.  It really was the perfect way to spend our last night together. 

It was a perfect evening until it was over.  We had tired kids that had played hard all day, so we finished up the cook out and headed down the mountain in the Ranger/Rhino.  Then there was a tree fallen on the road.  Clay and Kory tried several different things but we ended up having to hold the tree up to drive the Ranger under it.  By "we" I mean Me and Clay.  By "me" I mean this out of shape mom who doesn't lift anything but kids all day.  Turns out they needed someone responsible (Kory) to drive the Ranger so that left me and pregnant Mo.  So I was the mountain woman for the job.  Despite a few close calls, I didn't break my back, Clay's chest wasn't crushed by the tree, and the Ranger wasn't even scratched.  

Here's Aunt Mo and all the kids watching the show.  

By the time we got past the tree, it was SUPER late and the already tired kids cashed it in.  This was them when we got back down to where our cars were.  They were all snuggled up and all sawing logs. 

Sunday we had matching little cousins at church.  They were constantly yelling "MINE!" at each other all week, but other than that I think they really do love each other.  See, jjp is probably eyeing some toy off to the side making sure Ellie doesn't get it before she does.  

THEY SHARED THE CAR!!! 

 Mallory and Jaylie having a little snuggle time. 

Just helping each other through the tall grass.  

Aunt Mo, mother of 4 girls, fixed hair every morning and one morning we finally got June to agree to let her put pigtails in (I may or may not have bribed her with candy). It was an excellent use of candy because LOOK!!!!! 

jjp was so proud and I think I kinda teared up a little.  She looked so big and girly! 

We drove about 45 min. away to an elk viewing place.  There are HUNDREDS of elk that come adn you can hear them bugle and watch the bulls fight. Its so awesome.  We were very excited about this trip but it was almost ruined by MOSQUITOS! They were swarming like nothing I've ever seen before.  We couldn't even get out of the car! You couldn't see, your whole body was covered! It was AWFUL! This was Kory's attempt at getting out of the car....We were disappointed that the mosquitoes put a damper on things, but we still saw the elk, heard them, and watched a few fight. It just means we will have to bring this bunch back to redeem the trip and get the full experience!  

Is there anything better than this??????????

I'll never stop saying how much I love my family and I'll never stop saying how thankful we are that people are willing to come see us. There is no easy way to make the trip, but the fact that people do it means so much to us! We had a blast with the Clay Spencer crew! Love Love Love! 

Yellowstone with Spencer Cousins!

Our saving grace when we left texas in August was that we had cousins coming to see us very soon! Clay, Maurine, Avery, Landry, Mallory, and Ellie flew to Bozeman so we met them there to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone with them.  

We came to Bozeman the night before so we could spend the night with our Phillips cousins! As usual, it was a blast for everyone.  We sure love getting to be with Sayler and Hayven (and their parents...heee heee). Here they are snuggled up before bedtime.  We spent the night and left the next morning to meet up with the Spencer crew. 

We met at a grocery store, stocked up on snacks and lunch stuff, and hit the road to Yellowstone! The drive was beautiful and the weather was perfect!  Our first stop was the Grizzly Bear and Wolf viewing place.  Avery decided Montana was a good place to loose another tooth! 

There was a cool TeePee inside the Bear thing (thats what I'm going to call this place since I don't know the official name of it.) 

We watched the bears find their snacks....

...one was shaking the snack out of a tree! It was pretty neat to watch.  

Little wolf pups inside the wolf den. 

We left there and drove on in to the entrance of Yellowstone and almost immediately saw buffalo. 

First stop: Old Faithful.  We timed it pretty good so we didn't have to wait very long.  We did not have very good placement because that dude with the stripped sweater on is in every single picture. Every. Single. One.  It was fun to watch and pretty amazing that it really is so timely....and....well.....faithful. 

The rest of the evening we spent driving to the different prismatic pools along the road.  The different colors were really neat! I was pretty clueless to what Yellowstone was really all about, so it was fun to see all the bubbling water everywhere.  It's crazy that all of that is there! 

This might've been one of our favorites.  I think it was called the Artists Paint Pots. We got there right as the sun was going down, so it was beautiful and no one else was there so we had the whole boardwalk to ourselves.  That translated to the kids being able to run wild and free through there.  It was really neat.  

Ellie WAS in this picture. She was just on Clay's back. 

 Props to Uncle Clay for doing double duty with the little girls in pink. While on this trip, Jaylie June learned the phrase "2 girls".  If she and Ellie were doing something together it was "2 girls".   

Why does it just seem like the peak of perfection to see your brothers loving your kids?!

We stayed in the park til after dark and drove out to the town of Gardener where we had a little cabin on the Yellowstone River.  By the time we got in to town, most kids were asleep and starving.  There weren't many options that late but we found a restaurant and got a nice late dinner (Landry slept through most of it) and made it to our cabin around 11pm.  The kids were pumped to be there and the loft upstairs had enough beds for them to all sleep together so that was so much fun.  Kanyon woke up early the next morning which wasn't awesome, but seeing these elk out our balcony window across the river WAS AWESOME! 

They walked right up the street like they were headed to school! Crazy! 

We enjoyed seeing the town in the daylight the next morning.  This entrance to the park was super cool and a great place to line up the munchkins! 

We spent most of this day in the Mammoth Hot Springs area.  

Here was Mammoth Hot Springs, and according to June, Quinn, and Mallory, it must've been one of the saddest places on earth.  

Now it seems klp was a little sad.  

Just a huge bull elk chillin' in the yard.  No biggie.  

These 4 sure had fun running around together.  klp rode in the stroller some and walked along with them some if there were handrails.  It was fun watching them take it all in together. The kid version of "take it in" of course.  Much different than the adult version. Ha! 

This is a huge group of Asian tourist that were obsessed with our kids.  They were taking their pictures and asking us questions.  Except we don't speak whatever language they were speaking and they didn't speak English. But it sure was entertaining to hear Kory try to answer the guy's questions. 

We made a fun stop at the Boiling River.  We didn't get in because all we had was the clothes we were in, but it was a neat spot.  

After a fun stop at the boiling river, the Phillips crew had to head out.  We had cows to move that evening, so we left around 1 or 2 that afternoon.  Clay's crew stayed the rest of the day and saw a little more of the park.  I hated we couldn't stay, but such is life with cows. 

My only regret is that we didn't get a group picture in front of the park sign.  Oh well. It was a great "vacation". We look forward to going back and seeing more of the park.  

Finally Back to School

 Kanyon's mystery virus bought him another week of summer, but after the Labor Day weekend he was all set to go to his first day of school.  We worked on his little sign the night before.  He's done really well with his name lately....even though this time he tried to make his "n" look like a "k".

It will forever bother me that his hair was all messed up in the front for these pictures.  It looks like I fluffed his bangs...which I did not.  His hair was long and out of control at the time, but he had not grown 80's bangs.  Oh well.

As usual it was a "journey" to get a picture where he was looking and smiling.

The sign was a little tricky.  "Hold it up!" "No, not that high" "Higher" "Not in front of your face".......

SUCCESS!!!!! (props to Daddy for acting the fool behind me to get him to smile and look)

Here is the school boy at his new 1st grade desk!  The teacher on the left is the aid that they hired for him last year when we moved here. She stays with him all day.  She's his sidekick...or is he her sidekick??? Either way, she gets him through his day and we love her.  She truly loves Kanyon and wants him to do well. She is diligent and works so hard to get the most out of his days.  He loves "Mrs. Shelley" and we count her as one of our greatest blessings right now.  The school experience would be a totally different story without her.  Kanyon's classroom teacher is Ms. Armstrong on the right.  She is great and once we knew who his teacher was and would tell people around town, we heard so many wonderful things about her.  She was prepared and excited to have Kanyon in her class and does a great job including him and also pushing him to learn more and more.  He also has a recourse teacher where he goes a couple of times a day. She is young, energetic, and focused so we think she's going to be really good too.  She's new to the school this year but some of his therapists at school had worked with her before and had lots of wonderful things to say about her.  We feel like his school takes great care of him with nothing but the best in mind for him. I know a lot of people have to fight for their kids in school and thankfully that has not been our experience in Longview or here in Lewistown. I am so grateful for the people we have working with him and for their willingness to make it work for everyone.  

And y'all, the boy is LEARNING! 

His first week (he only goes to school Tuesday Wednesday and Thursdays) was a little rough. He was super tired and spending a lot of time walking back and forth to all of the different places.  But by the end of those first 3 days, they had made his schedule more efficient and he was rocking and rolling! A lot of his struggle is how much he cries and gets upset.  He is not anywhere near the developmental level of his classmates, so he has a much harder time coping with things throughout the day that most of the other kids just move right on through without a thought.  Not to mention his physical disabilities that make lots of things more challenging.  Even something as simple as holding his paper in place while he writes can be challenging when you've only got one "good hand" and you're using it to write! Shelley is there to navigate through the ups and downs of his emotions as well as provide physical support and assistance when he needs it.  There is NO WAY he could make it through a day without her. And anyone around him would have a hard time making it through the day if Shelley wasn't there with Kanyon!  I hear very little from him about his days, but Mrs. Shelley write a recap of his days every day for me.  It gives me things to ask him about and gives me a glimpse into his day that I can't get from him.  I LOVE that she does that for me! They knew he loved to swing and the school didn't have any swings that worked for him so the school ordered a new swing for the playground just for him so he is loving his recess time.  He loves his new green swing! 

He continues to learn new things little by little. He can recognize almost the whole alphabet and is learning more and more letters that he can write on his own.  Letter sounds mean nothing to him, so at this point in the game, sounding things out and learning phonics isn't going to be his thing.  We think he will be able to learn sight words, so that is where we are going to start.  Numbers are a mystery and he has a hard time counting to 10.... usually he gets stuck at 6.  He's totally in to patterns now which is funny because EVERYTHING is a pattern to him! As with most things, the unfolding of his learning and how he can show us what he knows is a bit of a mystery so we are all learning and adjusting as we go.  But the bottom line is we know that he is learning and getting new things! He is taking it all in and we are just trying to figure out the most efficient way for him to be able to express what he knows.  A lot of times, just the act of having to say something out loud causes his wires to get crossed so that he isn't able to express what he knows even when its things we know he knows.  When everything is overwhelming and so hard for him, there has to be a way to streamline and simplify his assessment or "proof" that he knows something. It is and might always be a constant search for the best way to do that, but I am confident in his teachers and I look forward to seeing what this boy is gonna do.  And equally excited to see HOW he's gonna do it! He finds a way!