Wild, Wild West

(Disclaimer: This's really long so if you have something better to do, you might want to do it:)

Okay, so at the last minute we decided to take our vacation out to Montana. We decided on Sunday, the girls left for Girls' Camp Monday morning and Steve went to the Thursday night campfire to bring the girls home. We left Friday morning (July 3rd), drove straight through to Montana, stayed until the 12th and were home on the 15th, just in time for the girls to go to Harrisburg for Youth Conference. Whew!! It was a little wild, but we had a great time and it went by too fast. I know Steve and I are a little crazy, but we love the drive out west. I would hop in the suburban and do it again right now if I could. What a beautiful country we live in!! I love America!

Steve and I have a pretty good routine down for driving out there. We've done it so many times now. We usually get on the road by about 9a.m. and Steve drives until midnight. We stop and have picnics along the way out of the packed cooler. Then I drive from 12 to about 6a.m. That gets us to Wall, South Dakota where we stop at Wall Drug (google it, it's awesome) and have their yummy breakfast buffet. The next stop we look forward to is in Sheridan, Wyoming where we stop and have a picnic at a great little park there. This first picture is of us looking (and smelling) pretty rough and almost to Sheridan. Yay.
Then when we finally get to Montana we are in the home stretch and we can't wait to get there. Here we're almost there and we're belting out Taylor Swift songs. Woo Hoo!!

My sister, Tennille and her adorable family were in Dillon for the Fourth of July. We loved seeing them.

The tradition of taking Senior pictures in Montana began with Seth and hopefully all the kids will have that opportunity. It's so beautiful in the summer around my dad's golf course. This is one of Brooke's pictures. I'll post some more next. They turned out really nice.

Steve and Jake spent the entire week up at the golf course mowing, golfing, helping out, etc. Jacob did not want to leave. He absolutely loved it and wanted to stay there. The golf course looks so beautiful this year. If you're ever in the area try out Sleepy Hollow Golf Course. You'll love it!

Grandpa Phil is giving Gideon a lesson and Savanna is listening in, too

The kids love to go up to one of the ponds at the golf course to swim every time we're there. Savanna has found a great way to relax in the water

Grandma Rebich came up to visit us at the pond.
We loved visiting with Grandpa and Grandma Taylor. We feel so blessed that the kids have had the chance to know such wonderful great-grandparents.

Too soon our visit was over and we were back in the suburban on our way home. Here we are driving down through beautiful Star Valley, Wyoming and we had just pulled over to take pictures of a moose.

We drove all night and made it to Omaha, NE the next morning to the Winter Quarters visitor's center and temple. What a neat experience to see what the pioneers went through on their way out west.

We were so happy to finally reach the motel in Keokuk, Iowa. The kids were able to unwind in the pool and we finished off the contents of the cooler and had a great night's sleep. We were headed to Nauvoo, Illinois the next morning to spend the whole day and see the pageant.

The next morning we started at Carthage, Illinois at the jail and we stood at the window where Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were murdered by an angry mob.

Then we spent the day in Nauvoo. We took a wagon ride around the city, rode behind oxen, dressed like pioneers, toured original shops and homes of the pioneers and saw the Historic Nauvoo pageant. It was a wonderful day!

After the pageant we headed for home. Steve and I took turns driving throught the night. We're always VERY glad to get to the PA border - only and hour left. We had such a nice trip and we missed Seth, although there was a lot of extra room in the the suburban this time around. And it was a little quieter. What a blessing modern-day travel is, though, and what freedoms we enjoy!

This is our awesome trip to NYC. This is the second year Brooke and I were able to share this trip. We really enjoy going to New York. There is so much to see and do. First, we were dropped off at Bryant Park in the middle of Manhattan. We found a street vendor selling shish kebob pita sandwiches. De-lish! Then the kids went to a Broadway workshop where they perfected one of the numbers from "Guys and Dolls" taught by a Broadway actor. While they were doing that, a group of us mothers just walked around the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

After the Broadway workshop, we walked to Times Square and ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. We love that place. It's delicious and not too expensive and the restaurant has a really fun feel.
After that we walked to the Nederlander Theatre and saw "Guys and Dolls". It was wonderful! Lauren Graham from the TV show, Gilmore Girls, was the headliner. I love Broadway!!

The next day, we had a wonderful time walking around NYC and taking the subway where we wanted to go. We started out at Grand Central Terminal and we took it to the Brooklyn Bridge. We walked all the way across the Bridge into Brooklyn. From there we took the subway to Chinatown and walked through Chinatown to Little Italy. We ate at a quaint italian restaurant and then walked back to the subway.

We then took the subway up to Central Park where some took a carriage ride, but most of us walked through the park and over to the Lincoln Center and we got a glimpse of the LDS Temple. By that time, we were getting pretty worn out so we took the subway back to Times Square and walked to Bryant Park to meet the bus. We figure we walked about 15 miles those two days. It's a great trip, though. So many things to see and do.

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't been able to think about blogging. Brooke and I went to New York City last week with a group of chorus kids. We went last year, too. It's a fun trip. I'll be posting about that with pictures soon. Then, Brooke has been running her youth basketball camp all this week. It's her Senior Project. She's been using my camera, so I never have it when I think about getting the pictures off of it to blog. Excuses, excuses, I know.

But, we did get some great pictures from Seth on his P-day this week. He looks great and it made me feel so good. He's studying long hours and struggling with the language, but it'll come. I'll include his email with these pictures as well. He has 45 minutes of email time. He had decided to split up his email time and he had alreadly emailed us in the morning and said he'd be back on with pictures at 4pm Brazil time. It was fun to be on the computer when he was.

"So these are some good pics I have so far. We also got two Brazilians in our dorm room. That pic has them in it. We are learning some more portuguese with them and they are way nice. Bye and talk to ya next week. We are going to drink some really good juice smoothies at the shop on the corner. Soo fresh! and 50 cents a glass. Love you."

Take me out to the ball game...

Gideon is having an awesome year in little league, especially for it being his first year playing at all. He loves it!It's machine pitch and Gideon plays shortshop. They are such a cute little team and we just love watching them. We have won 5 and lost 1.

This was a great game on Saturday. We were down 1-6 and then our team rallied and started hitting and, with this almost home run by Gid, the score was 7-7. This league has a rule that if the outfield gets it back to the pitcher before the runner gets halfway to the next base, then the runner has to go back. Well, they barely got it back to the pitcher when Gideon was almost home and so he had to go back to third. He had to do this twice off of two great hits. And then the other team made one more run, and thus, our first loss. Gotta learn to lose, too.

Smack....

Rounding second....

Almost home......

He's really having a great year.

That is, when he's not getting in trouble for climbing the backstop or dugout or whatever else is around:

For the first time in years, Steve is getting a chance to coach because we are not doing spring planting. It's been so nice not to be a farming widow and Steve is having a great time coaching Gideon's little league team.

The Best Two Years

Yesterday was the long awaited day for Seth. Luckily, his flight out of Pittsburgh didn't leave until afternoon, so we had a nice, relaxed morning. The kids stayed home from school to be with Seth and say their goodbyes. We took Gideon and Savanna with us to the airport and were pleasantly surprised when we found out we could have passes to go to the gate with Seth. And, as simple as that, he was off!

In this age of cell phones and instant communication, it was tough to not know where he was along the way. But, no news is good news and by this morning, he would have made it to Brazil.
We can't wait to hear from him by email as soon as he's able!

Give us a call if you would like his address. One of the last things he said was, "Give everyone my address!" We are so proud of him and know he's going to have The Best Two Years!

A Memorable Weekend

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. It began with a farewell program at church for Seth. There were many family and friends there and it was a very uplifting sacrament meeting. After church Seth was set apart as a missionary and we ran home to take some pictures and get lunch ready. Everyone came over and we had lunch and then sat around visiting all afternoon. It was a wonderful day.

Seth and cousin, Logan Snyder. Logan and Gideon look like twins and we all get them mixed up, even we moms:

This picture is significant because Kelsey has a cell phone. An hour previous to this picture she did not have a cell phone. We had an elaborate "handing over of the cell phone" ceremony in the car on the way home from church and Kelsey inherited Seth's much coveted hand-me-down:

The Lemons and Tom and Jen Snyder:

Grandpa Art, Grandma Marion, Sam, Steve, and Aunt Jen:

Seth and the cousins:

Dave and Patsy Lemons, who became like family to us when they served a mission out here a couple of years ago, surprised us and flew out from Idaho Falls:

Then on Monday, we went to a picnic planned by Grandma Snyder at the community grove. The food was great, the kids and some of the adults played a softball game and we took lots of pictures. Then, we went home to pack Seth up for Brazil.

The whole Snyder crew:

Seth with Grandma and Grandpa Snyder:

Kayla, Kelsey, Sadie, Brooke, Carly and Savanna:

Luke, Jake, Sam, Seth, Logan and Gideon:

The only cousins missing from the Snyder side were Sara, who lives in Utah with her husband Jonathan, and Jenna who goes to Southern Virginia University and stayed down there for the summer to work.

We also missed having Grandpa Phil and Grandma Adele here, but it just didn't work out for them to come this time. Fortunately, they got to have Seth live with them while he was out west for college and they got to see him a lot and really get to know him.

First soccer game!

Savanna was so excited to play soccer this year for the first time. She kept begging to go and her practices kept getting cancelled due to bad weather. So her little team ended up having one practice before their first game. Talk about on the job training! So, here she is with her team, the Blue Jays.

She kept telling us she was nervous, so I guess the fingers in the mouth are a sign of the nerves: She turned out to be a pretty awesome defender, so she was put in front of the goal for two quarters. Then she ended up scoring 2 of their 3 goals. Go Vannie!! Hopefully she'll take after Brooke on the soccer field.

This is once of Vannie's best friends from school.