Yellowstone 2014: A breif outline of how we "bear-ly" survived

"We Bear-ly Survived" was our motto this vacation. Not because we saw very many bears, but because we put those words on the backs of our shirts in hopes of seeing lots of bears. We only saw one, and only a select few of us at that.

Because I already posted my journal on The Massner Tales in extensive detail, I will refrain from repeating myself. Instead, I will give a brief outline of our trip and share some photos with you (most photos on this blog are repeats of what was on the Massner blog).

I am almost exactly one month behind on this post. We left a month ago today around this time for Big Sky, Montana.

YELLOWSTONE 2014 - COUSINS VACATION

Friday, July 25:
-Left around 4pm
-Stopped in Carroll, IA at Charlie's Steakhouse for supper to use up Matt's gift card. Yummy food!
-Drove through the night

All ready for vacation! 

Saturday, July 26:
-Took our time after arriving in Wyoming
-Went grocery shopping in Boseman, met the Schmidgalls and Aschemans there
-Arrived at our vacation house in time to make supper
-Walked on streets around our cabin and saw our first (and last) bear!

Dad entertained us over the speakers with Matt's handy microphone. 

Wyoming, at last! (following a twenty-hour trip!)

MOOSE!!

Some wildlife we saw on the side of the highway. 

Billy gets settled into the cabin.

The first Supper on Saturday evening.

Happy birthday, Aunt Penny!

There's our bear!

Sunday, July 27:
-Small church service held at our cabin
-Afternoon hike at Ousal Falls

Ousal Falls

Monday, July 28:
-Left at 6am for Yellowstone-spent an eleven hour day on the road!
-Wore our bright yellow vacation shirts!
-Saw Grand Canyon, Yellostone Falls, hiked Uncle Tom's Trail (very strenuous), and Old Faithful
-Drove through Hayden Valley and got stuck in a bison jam!
-Took Jesse and Gage on a Bear Hunt after supper. No luck finding bears, but saw some moose and deer as well as a double rainbow! 

Day one in Yellowstone. Our first Geyser! :)

All twenty-one of us. The Massners, Schmidgalls, and Aschemans (and two Schulzes)

Buddies! Jesse and Gage 

Yellowstone Falls 

At the bottom of Uncle Tom's Trail 

Bison traffic jam! 

The girl cousins!!

Elk in Mammoth Hot Springs

We're going on a bear hunt (rainbow in background)!

We saw a double rainbow if you look close! 

Tuesday, July 29:
-WHITE WATER RAFTING!! Everyone loved it! Our guide kept dumping us out of our raft in the calm parts. 
-Johnny purchased a fitting shirt that said "I enjoy a good dump."
-Parents went out to eat while the kids stayed home and had a pizza party.

This is the only picture we took on Tuesday because we didn't take them on the white water. Travis was enjoying his pizza crusts. 

Wednesday, July 30:
-Left again at 6am for Yellowstone and another long day of sightseeing!
-Drove through Dunraven Pass, ate lunch at the top of Chittenden Road, stopped at Inspiration Peak, hiked Tower Falls trail, drove through Mammoth Hot Springs where there were elk all over, saw several geysers at Norris Geyser Basin.
-Dad's football moment in the traffic jam.
-Stopped in West Yellowstone for shopping and souvenirs.

Lots of photos! 

The view from Inspiration Point?

Matt was trying to be a daredevil.

Beautiful mountains!!

Norris Geyser Basin

The only bears most of us saw were stuffed. 

Thursday, July 31:
-A few boys got up early and hiked a mountain.
-The rest of us slept in, had an early lunch, and hiked Lone Peak trail.
-Only six boys made it to the top while the rest of us rode the ski lift a few times.
-Jesse lost his wallet.
-Kids played games with Matt after supper while Moms packed to go home.

Lone Peak: the mountain we climbed. 

The hike was steep and rocky! 

Matt's view from the top. I think you can see our cabin down there somewhere.

Snowball fight at the top!

Those who made it to the top got to sign the guest book!

The brave crew of hikers that made it all the way! 

The boys got a free tram ride down when they made it to the top of Lone Peak. 

Everyone shows how far they made it up Lone Peak.

My view down the mountain.

Jesse and Gage

Ryan and Justin enjoying a relaxing and scenic ride on the ski lift. 

Friday, August 1:
-Said our goodbyes to the cabin.
-Drove through Yellowstone again and through the Grand Tetons.
-Rode a ferry across Jenny Lake and hiked to a waterfall.
-Drove to Jackson Hole for the Bar-T-5 Chuckwagon Supper (Abby and Bruce had their performance debuts!)
-Said our final goodbyes to our cousins and headed home through the night.

The boys loved the entertainment in the basement.

There was a theater in our house! 

The kitchen

The view off our back porch.

Getting ready to leave! The kids...

...and the parents.

The Grand Tetons

Riding the ferry across Jenny Lake

We rode a covered wagon out to supper!

The Indians attacked us!

The Chuckwagon Dinner- Uncle Bruce and Gage are on stage! 

Saturday, August 2: 
-Drove some more and arrived home around suppertime.

This was our charging station in the van. Everyone has a different color of cord for their device, and the cooler worked well as a table. 

For more details, please visit the vacation post at The Massner Tales blog.

Confessions of a Teenage Housewife

As I prepare to depart from my teenage years and enter into the true adulthood of age twenty, I cannot help but look back on the eight months I spent as a teenage housewife and remind myself of just how far I have come in learning the intricate workings of the world of housekeeping. And so it begins...the confessions of a teenage housewife.

1. Learn to love the walls of your kitchen. This is the room in which I spend the majority of my indoor time, so I am thankful for a cheerfully red kitchen wall (left by the home's previous inhabitants) and plenty of space to move around.

For six months after we got married, I did not make the same meal twice for my husband, with the exception of homemade pizza that we are required to have every Friday evening. Everyone knows a family tradition from both sides cannot be broken. My goal was to learn how to cook, so I scoured the recipe books and planned my menu diligently every week until the spring breezes swept away my culinary interest. It gave me some good experience, but these days my motivation has instead been focused on outdoor activities.

The scale also told me that although I have made great progress in the culinary arts (or that I am forced to eat all of my own flops), I am not even close to mastering any kind of healthy cooking. So, help would be appreciated. We have been eating a lot of eggs and garden lettuce lately. I am sure Matt will be glad when the garden lettuce is gone!

2. Wash the dishes. NOW. Food is well worth the mess created by the cook, but all of this kitchen time means an overabundance of dirty dishes. As a newlywed, the dishes pretty much got done every night. However, habits changed and developed to the point of not even clearing the table after supper. That got old very fast, so we have stayed on top of the dishes for a couple weeks now. REMINDER: All of the dirty dishes on the counters could be done in a half hour. If you are really good and only have to do the supper dishes, they could be done in ten minutes. Just get to work, girl.

3. Do laundry from start to finish. When you find wet clothes still in the washing machine the following week, this is terribly sad because then all of those clothes smell awful. They smell even worse when you try to dry and wear them anyway. The other sad laundry day is finding clean clothes in the dryer or laundry basket a week later because then they are terribly wrinkled. Therefore, a person absolutely must remain focused on the laundry task at hand and complete the process before the end of laundry day.

4. A clean house is the easiest to clean. So keep it clean! Right. In the ideal world where I was a clean person with a clean house who kept it clean, umm...well, that would just be ideal. But I am not a clean person with a clean house who keeps it clean. In fact, the house only gets clean when company is coming. I think that is the case with at least 75% of homes. If not, let me assume the validity of the statistic to keep me obliviously content.

5. The garden won't weed itself. As if nobody already knew that. Another tip is to take a picture of your garden for the blog right after spending four days removing two months' worth of accumulated weeds. And then keep up with it. Speaking of the garden- the lettuce, spinach, and peas are done and I am now getting green beans! Tomatoes and potatoes are forming too. Everything else is pretending to grow or stay green. I still don't know what I am going to do when all of this stuff is ready to harvest.

6. Never turn down a husband's help. Especially this gal's husband because he is a good helper. If he didn't have to be at work all day, this house would be very clean and organized. And it would not be because I work harder when he is around. He washes dishes, does laundry, makes beds, and all sorts of other good things! (But is NOT for sale or rent.)

7. Get beauty rest (...and I fail). A little sleep goes a long way...toward making you tired. Plenty of sleep goes a better way. We are two night owls stuck in a morning bird's world and hence never get enough sleep. And that's all I have to say about that because I am too tired to think of anything else.

8. Company is motivating. I decided we need to have company more often. As I said, these are the only times the house gets clean. The first several months of taking care of a household were intimidating as a hostess because I did not know what was going on. I still don't know what I am doing, but it is exciting to host people in our home on occasion. Now that I am resigning from teenage housekeeping, I hope to be a big girl and not care what my food tastes like for guests (as long as we have a good time!).

9. Keep clear of unproductive activities. My biggest weakness is extensive naps and going back to sleep for an hour after Matt leaves at six in the morning. I do best when I make sure I am always doing something that will improve the lives of Matt, myself, or someone else. Sometimes a short nap does make me happier, though. :)

10. I resign from this teenage housekeeping business. Effective tomorrow. Thank you for your support.

Summer Days

With the passing of May and our grand entrance into the beautiful month of June, it would be far from the truth to say things have slowed down at all. In fact, we found that summer in the country brings along a lot of outdoor work and plenty of other activities that can hardly be labeled as work.

We ended the month of April with a trip up to Lester for Drew and Lanna's wedding. Two days later, our baby nephew was welcomed into the world - little Garret John (Tim and Laurie, Matt's sister). He was born twelve weeks early and remains in the hospital at Iowa City making slow but seemingly steady progress. The family could certainly use your prayers. He has a 18-month-old sister waiting for his safe arrival home. I forgot to take pictures both times I saw the tiny baby, but here is a picture we received from the parents. (I hope I am not infringing on anyone's copyrights...)

Little baby Garret - 5.5 weeks old, just over 4 lb.

The rest of the family shortly before Garret's arrival

The next weekend was Zach's (Matt's brother) baptism, along with a few others in Burlington. It was a blessing to be able to share in the weekend with him and be encouraged by new souls finding their salvation through Jesus Christ! Several friends and family came for the weekend, including Steve and Julie. We had the privilege to spend some time with them and the rest of the Schulz family on Sunday evening.

On the Saturday before Mother's Day, we had my family (Massner) over for a fish fry. The boys helped catch some of the fish and Dad fried them up. It was a nice evening and the weather even cooperated for us to eat out on the deck! On Sunday evening we went to the Schulz gathering at Brian and Lorna's and had a great time there as well. 

Here are a few of the fish. I can't find the picture of the fish Matt caught with Trevor at Troy and Joni's pond, but that was the main source of fish for our fish fry. 

These are the two biggest crappies he caught.

Jesse's first fish at our pond! 

Dad frying up dinner.

The next weekend was graduation, so we spent two days grazing on our meals. Congratulations to the Class of 2014! 

Another day in May, Kelli brought the boys over to go fishing while their dad was away! 

I fish.

They caught four fish that we could keep, so we had a mini fish fry afterward. Yummy! 

For Memorial Day weekend, we flew from Burlington down to St. Louis for the weekend. We spent some time downtown, went to the Arch, the City Museum, several places to eat, Historic St. Charles, and the Science Museum. We used the Metro to get almost everywhere, but got to ride with a local couple to the St. Louis church on Sunday morning. We enjoyed the get-away, also referred to as our first family vacation. :)

This picture would be way cooler if you could see the entire arch, but unfortunately then you would not be able to see Matt touching the arch. Therefore, I took multiple shots of the architecture. 

One of several "Selfies at the Arch"

As Matt's great luck would have it, there was a Rib Fest going on in downtown St. Louis that weekend. Of course, we had to stop and sample a few. This particular stand was from "Highway 61 Roadhouse," which obviously reminded us of the recently-closed restaurant in our hometown, so we had to get our ribs from them. Did I mention BBQ Ribs are my husband's favorite real food in the whole wide world? "Real" excludes ice cream and fruit. 

Outshine took this picture (who would have guessed?) at the Rib Fest. We got free popsicles out the deal and then they emailed us our picture. 

This tie collection at the City Museum made us think of my mom's Christmas gift to Matt. 

Only this guy would be capable of fitting through such tiny tunnels at age 25.999...

This was difficult. I apologize that you don't have a good enough view to perceive the difficulty of fitting down this skinny wiry contraption. 

After the City Museum, we walked down the street to Pi Pizzeria and learned how to recite to the umpteenth digit of pi. And for those who weren't learning, there was also some really good pizza.  Ok, we did NOT learn about pi, except that it is the first two letters in pizza. Our waiter didn't know pi past 3.14 anyway.

We went to the science museum on Monday (instead of the zoo because this place was air conditioned). This was one of the exhibits Matt analyzed much more than the average museum attendee. Clue to the unobserving: He designs power lines for a living... 

"Helping kids" learn about the building and structure of an arch. This exhibit was entirely relevant because we were in St. Louis and there is a really big arch there by the river. That we also visited. From which you already saw the pictures... ok, next picture. 

I would put the picture of Matt waiting for the trolley, but for the sake of being somewhat fair to him in the proportion of pictures of each of us on this blog, I am putting this one here. That black security vehicle behind me is getting ready to come over and tell me to get off the curb. So I really should have put the picture of Matt on here so I didn't look so silly. 

One of a hundred pictures of our flight on Air Choice One. It was a great flight- we were right behind the pilots on an eight-passenger plane and got to watch everything they did! This would not be at all cool enough to photograph unless I was married and my spouse had the camera. I am and he did.

Thus ended our lovely, exciting mini four-day trip to St. Louis.

The next weekend was Tim and Wendy's wedding in Mediapolis, and it was a very full Sunday in church for a beautiful wedding! We wish the new couple God's richest blessings and nearness in their new lives together.

On June 2nd, Matthew turned 26, so now we are 7 years apart until I turn 20 in a couple weeks. I tried to make his 26th birthday happy by making him supper. Yes - I actually MADE supper for him! Ever since the weather has been cooperative, we have been lazy about eating and making anything for supper, but this was a special day. To celebrate, we had Orrin and Christa and Travis and Kenna over for the evening and for root beer floats. Twas an enjoyable evening!

We finished celebrating on Friday at my family's house with a real birthday party with real presents and real cake and real candles and a real birthday song and a real birthday hat.

Happy Birthday, Matt!

YUMMY! 26 years!

Phil and Kelli's boys came over on Saturday for supper and the evening!

This is what happens when you tell four boys to smile and act like they like pizza... 

This is what happens when Brandon wants his picture taken.

The Burlington Sunday School Picnic was Sunday!

I thought this water balloon launcher was a pretty nifty contraption. They went high and far... 

Like so far that my highest zoom could only do this well in getting a picture of Matt catching one in a bucket. 

Other than all the excitement, our lives are pretty dull. ;) In the meantime, we do things less worthy of photos, such as working in the garden (namely, weeding the garden), watering plants, caring for fruit trees, working on projects, mowing, maintaining the place, and, of course, cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Ha, I make it sound like those last three things actually get done around here. Nope! Only right before company walks in the door. Speaking of company, have you been over lately? That's what I thought...it is (partially) your duty to keep our house clean by showing up once in awhile. ;) At least I think that's how it works...

El jardín. Lettuce, spinach, carrots, peas, green beans, onions, tomatoes, peppers, maybe some cantaloupe and cucumbers, potatoes, and strawberries. I have gotten several pickings of lettuce and spinach and it looks like the peas will be ready any day now! Not that I have any idea how to cook or preserve any of these veggies... 

One last picture of this handsome man working on his latest project...a floating dock for the pond!  

If previous trends continue, I will be giving another update come October...but please stay in tune, just in case I surprise the world and post in the next couple weeks! :)

We hope this month of June has and will continue to bring you and yours many blessings and memories with each passing day! Though it takes work to keep up the garden, landscaping, and yard, it sure is wonderful to see God's handiwork written everywhere in nature! Just as we are rewarded for our labors now, our reward will be so much greater on that Harvest Day when the Lord brings His laborers to their eternal rest. Let us labor now so He will reap a fruitful harvest!