Idaho trip

Here are some more pictures from our trip to Idaho. I edited them and never got around to posting them because things have been so crazy, in a good way. After July being my worst month ever at the new office, August was my best month by far. I had a full schedule all month. Then to top it off, there were a couple of local festivals in which I had a booth for the office. Then, last weekend there was a scout jamboree that went over a Sunday. In other words, many days of leaving before the kids woke up, getting home right before bed, and then being gone all weekend. So, tomorrow I don't work and can get caught back up on things.

So, I tend to put my explanations on the top of the photo. Weird, I know, everyone else puts them below. This is Bex climbing a rock wall at the North Bend festival. The first of the two I had a booth at.

The following 3 pictures are from Yellowstone (we drove through on our way back home).

Mammoth Hot Springs:
A bison on the side of the road:
Old Faithful:
The Grand Tetons:
The following are from Jackson Hole:

While we were in the middle of nowhere, we shot some pop cans to break in Carson's new 22 pistol.
A woman with a gun. Beware!
The beginnings of a pregnant belly:

Calderwood road in my home town with the four coolest Calderwood boys!
The old Calderwood barn.
Inside ye olde Calderwood barn.
Some sweet old school grease.
Bex thinking, "You want me to do what with this metal in this place that stinks like horse poop!?"
My new favorite cousin who gave me tickets to the BYU/Fl State game!
Carrying my handicapped mom to the creek for pictures at the reunion.
The sweet slide that is faster than crap!
The huge swing. Its so big you feel like a little kid again with how high you can go.

Calderwood Family Reunion

At the end of July we drove to Eastern Idaho for the Calderwood family reunion. On the way there we visited my Aunt Cindy and some of her kids in Boise and took our kids to a water park there, but we don't have any pictures of that. (What was I thinking?) The reunion was held at a huge lodge in the mountains in a very remote area across the Idaho/Wyoming border from Jackson Hole. It is so beautiful and we all had a good time, but the 28-hour round trip drive just for 1 1/2 days of reunion was... a little intense!

At the reunion they celebrated the birthdays of all kids under 12:
The Mickey Calderwood family was in charge of the food, which was actually not as bad as I thought it might be, especially considering that Carson's mom had a broken foot and was in a wheelchair! Thanks Mickey for doing most of the work! Here's Carson and his brother and sister serving food:

They held their annual auction to make money for next year's reunion, and Mickey was the MC as always:

Dozens of Calderwoods during the auction:

The Mickey Calderwood family picture:

Point Defiance Zoo

About a month ago we went to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma with some of our friends. We had never been there before, except for Beckham, who went last year with Aunt Hillary. It was a beautiful day but HOT and all the pregnant moms pushing strollers were so tired by the end of it! There was a splash pad:

Playground:

Including a spinning toy that made me sick just to look at:

Of course there were animals:

And a beautiful view!

At the end we discovered a free carousel and Caeden was thrilled:

Beckham was super happy to find a wolf:

And Trey... thought it was a little young for him

This is how Caeden looked by the time we got to the car:

The only scary thing was that we lost Caeden for a couple of minutes... he had been sitting with his brothers watching a demonstration on frogs while I finished up lunch and then I took the stroller on the path to where they were, and while I was out of sight for just a few seconds he decided to come up the stairs to find me... and we missed each other. When I saw Beckham and Trey sitting alone I asked where Caeden was and they said he just went to get me but when we ran back to the grass where we'd been eating lunch he wasn't there. We quickly spread out and ran around the area looking for him, and my friend Lynette went to talk to a security guard and overheard on his radio that someone had dropped off a little boy at the gift shop. She waved me over and I ran up to the gift shop to find a happy Caeden with another mom and some zoo employees. The other mom said he was walking around saying "Mommy, where are you?" in his cute little voice. The gift shop people gave him a little toy shark, although he didn't really need it because he wasn't even crying. Later I tried to tell him how important it was to stay right by us so he didn't get lost again. He thought about it for a second and said "I get another shark?" I always say it takes my kids much more than once to learn a lesson!

Baby #4

Here are the first pictures of our new little peanut - I'm 12 1/2 weeks and these were taken about 3 weeks ago so hopefully the baby now looks a little less like an alien! Sorry they're upside down, but I've been meaning to post this for a while now and I don't want to wait until Carson gets home to do it, especially since I'm not feeling too sick right now which doesn't happen very often lately! So if I look a little tired or fat in any of the upcoming pictures, now you know why. That's also my excuse for not blogging, calling people back, or generally being on top of things lately, but I have read a few good books if you need any recommendations! I think the kids are getting tired of me being sick, it's been about 2 1/2 months now, since I was sick RIGHT from the beginning. Ugh. Hopefully I'll feel better soon, but last time I was sick until 19 weeks so we'll see. So far the best things I've found to manage the morning sickness are protein shakes and Mtn. Dew. I also have some Zofran which works for a few hours but has such horrible side effects that it's not often worth it. The baby's due February 20th and we'll probably find out in October whether it's a girl or boy. The kids are super excited and convinced it's a girl (hopefully they won't be disappointed!) and Caeden says he has a baby in his belly too. One really fun thing is that no fewer than FOUR of my friends in my ward are due within a month on either side of me, so I have plenty of girls to complain and compare remedies with and meet at the park in our sweats with no makeup to let our other kids get their energy out.

oowwwwwaaahh

After taking over 400 pictures on our trip to Idaho/Wyoming/Oregon/Montana last week, I tried to copy them over tonight to start editing/deleting. Somehow they got deleted during the copy and I stupidly did cut/paste instead of copy/paste when doing the transfer from the camera. After some creative file recover trials I was able to get them back (if you are in need, try out http://www.pandorarecovery.com/).

Now, its too late to go through all the files so I'll do that later. I just needed to vent my frustrations somewhere and happiness that they are all back!