Boulder Hot Springs

On Addi's 3rd Birthday we surprised her with a trip to Boulder Hot Springs and Bed & Breakfast. Her most favorite thing to do is to swim. Staying the night in hotels is up there on her list also! We had a wonderful time. The hot springs grounds is gorgeous. It is tucked in the beautiful Boulder Valley. The building is ancient and they are in the process of remodeling it. The outside architecture is amazing and has so much detail. We called it Addi's Castle! The outdoor pool is a comfortable swimming temperature of 100 degrees and inside is a little pool that is 109 degrees and a super hot steam room. Too hot for Addi, but I enjoyed it.

We had dinner in Boulder at the Elkhorn Cafe. Dylan met some nice old timers. They talked elk hunting and one of the guys tried selling us a house!

Breakfast was delicious. The women chef cooked pancakes, sausage and eggs and served yummy fruit, yogurt and granola bowl. They set up special times for each guest so you get very special treatment. They serve organic and local food, which makes it even more yummy.

Visit this link for bed & breakfast and hot springs reservations.

Life's A Changin...Again

Well, here we go again. We are going to shake things up big time. I am going back to work full-time on the 8th and Addison will be going to a preschool 3 or 4 times a week. I got a job working at the Department of Labor & Industry. Today I enrolled Addi in a wonderful "school". We spent a hour there today meeting her new friends and getting to know her teacher, Miss Jessi. The people who take care of the children are very sweet, open and transparent. I feel really good about it. The first few days are going to be super hard on Addi and I, but I think she will thrive, once she gets used to the idea of me leaving her.

Happy 2nd Birthday Mowgli

"Only an Aunt can give hugs like a mother, keep secrets like a sister and love like a friend." -- Anonymous

My favorite niece Ellie celebrated her 2nd Birthday this past week. I can't help reminiscing about the first time I saw her squishy, slimly, little face. I won't go into details about the exact first moments, but it was like watching an angel be born. Watching her take her very first breath and blinking open her eyes for the first time is a moment I will never forget.



My dad, Addi and I drove to Colorado Springs to celebrate her birthday. In four days we traveled 32 hours, drove over 2,000 miles, trick and treated at Boo in the Zoo, fed crackers to giraffes and partied with Ellie and her friends at her Dora and Boots costume birthday party. It was a quick trip and a long time in the car, but seeing Ellie's smile made it all worth it.

We pulled into Sara's house around 10:30 p.m on Thursday. Ellie was groggy and cuddly for a little bit. Once Auntie mentioned we had her birthday presents she said, "Open my present, please, Auntie." Of course!! She opened a couple presents and then we played a bit before going to bed.

Papa gave Ellie a baby accessory set. She LOVED it. She was very sleepy!



The next morning Ellie came into Addi and I's room and literally ran to me, threw her arms around my neck, and said, "Hi, Auntie. Wake cousin up?" Seriously, her voice is so sweet and I love it so much when she says "Auntie". The second sentence out of her mouth was, "Open more presents?!!" We spent the day playing with her toys, hot tubing and getting ready for trick and treating at Boo at the Zoo.

Addison played hard all day without a nap and the 20 minute drive to the Zoo put her to sleep. She was not into trick or treating and was very tired. She was afraid of the giraffe's long tongues and wouldn't feed them. Ellie, on the other hand, was totally into all of it. She was so adorable! She would say, "trick or treat" and hold up her pumpkin bucket and go back to the same table 2 or 3 times. She ended up getting 3 times the amount of candy as Addi!

Ellie chose a Dora and Boots birthday party. The main party attraction was the Dora bouncy house that Sara rented. They dropped it off at noon and picked it up at seven at night. We got several hours with the bouncy house all to ourselves, which means, Sara and I got to bounce!! We had a great time.

Happy Birthday Dear Ellie!

Sara got the girls a four-wheeler for their birthdays. They had so much fun racing each other!

Addi loved Ellie's roller skates!

Over the past couple years Ellie has earned several nicknames from me. She almost immediately seemed to earn the nickname "Mowgli". After she crawled and before she walked, she used to "walk" around on her hands and feet, both flat to the ground, sort of like a bear cub and completely like Mowgli, from 'Jungle Book'. Though now she walks around less like a man-cub and more like a human she will always be "Mowgli" to me. I also call her "Ellie-Belly", "Boo" (she reminds Sara and I of Boo from 'Monsters, Inc.')and "Crash-2". Addison is "Crash" and Ellie, because of her crazy legs (tibial-torsion), was crowned "Crash-2".

I got Ellie a bug vacuum for her birthday. She might be my linguist/biologist! The girls and I searched for bugs and then gently sucked them into a viewing container and then looked at them. It was very fun!

Elkhorn, MT Family Connection

So that "feeling" I had when Em, Addi and I went to the Elkhorn ghost town and cemetery, that feeling that I wanted to know more about what happened in this town and learn more about the people who lived there, somehow made sense when my Aunt Moni emailed me after reading my blog and told me that my mother's mother, my great-grandmother, Wilma Charlotte Wood, was born there on August 13, 1913. My mom said the cabin she was born in was still there. I had no idea. I want to do some further investigating to find out if any of my relatives were buried at that cemetery.

Rock Creek Wildlife

On our way to Missoula, Addi and I took a quick drive up Rock Creek. I was looking for something I am pretty sure I left there a few weeks ago. I am so upset at myself. I really don't want to talk about it. The trip was worth it for the beautiful fall wildlife we observed.



There was a herd of 40 or so ewes and 5 massive Big Horn Sheep Rams. It was so interesting watching the rams interact. I could immediately identity the dominate ram. The "smaller" rams would approach him with their bodies stiff and their heads held low. They would stop about 10 feet from the dominant ram and hold this subordinate position until the dominant ram acknowledged them. After slight eye contact or a slight forward moment from the dominant ram the subordinate ram would give the dominant ram a ram embrace, rubbing their horns against each other and rubbing their faces on each other. It was very interesting.

Camp fire, Cemetery, Chicken Chilly & Cranium

We had a great end of the week, full of visitors. First Granny and Aunt Sandy came over for the day on Thursday, Jeff & Deaette came over for the day on Friday and our Dave and Em came over this past weekend to visit us. Addi was thrilled! Addi and Em had so much to catch up on! Friday night we had a fire in our outside fireplace.



On Saturday the boys went fishing and us girls went up past Boulder, MT to visit the Elkhorn Ghost Town and Cemetery. The few buildings that are left are remnants of a once bustling mining town. At it's peak the town was home to over 900 miners, their wives and children. It was a rare mining town in that many families came to live where the miners worked. They mined gold and silver. The ghost town was so weird. There were original buildings, boarded up and abandoned and next door is a newer home that had someone living there. One man was chopping wood outside his home telling us the building across the "road", the old fraternity club, was open and we could go on in. His beautiful wolf dog came up to us to say hello and the man's three-legged wolf hybrid lay in the road. It was not creepy in the way you expect a old, mining town to be. It was interesting how the possible ancestors of this mining town were still living there. I would really like to know more about the people still there and why they are still there.










The cemetery on the other hand was creepy the way I expected it to be. Creepy and devastating. About every other headstone belonged to a child, someone's baby. Several belonged to siblings, some dying on the same day. A sign explained the 1888 diphtheria epidemic which took the lives of many Elkhorn children. One family buried seven family members in one week. I can't imagine the degree of grief that was apart of everyday life in the 1800s. There were modern headstones placed next to very old headstones. People had recently placed flowers and flags at some headstones. Some headstones had elaborate writing and statues of lambs. Bible verses, nicknames and birth dates let us know who was buried there. Others were a simple, faded, nearly rotten, slabs of wood held erect by piles of rocks. No name, no birth date, just a pile of rocks.





On the way home we stopped and had lunch at a little cafe in Boulder. We also discovered that this area of Montana is also somewhat famous for Health Mines. People voluntarily go into old gold mines to soak up the healing powers of deadly levels of radon gas. Apparently hundreds of people come to this area in the summer to spend a week (3 -4 times a day) playing boards games and reading in the gas. Some say it has the ability to heal arthritis and other ailments.

The boys came home after a slow day of fishing, we had dinner and Dylan and I won a game of Cranium! The boys got up early on Sunday and tried to find the famous Helena elk. They did get within 40 yards of a few cow elk, but no bulls were with them.

Grandpa & Grandma Powell Visit

Grandpa and Grandma Powell came over to Helena to visit us for the day! They brought Addi a treat bag, full of treats and craft projects. Addi and Grandma had fun painting, making a necklace and putting monkey stickers on EVERYTHING! We went on a walk around town. We visited the Parrot Candy Store, visited Dylan at work, played at the carousel and went out to eat at the Brewhouse.

Something Sweet from Addi

I knelt down to Addison's level this morning, got all emotional, and said to her, "I can't believe you are almost three years old. Where did my baby go? I don't want you to grow up. You will grow up and leave me." (I know pathetic, but she is growing up too fast and it makes me sad.) She got all serious and said, "But mom, I want to grow up. It's ok, I will still hug and kiss you when I am big." And then she gave me a big hug and kiss!


My beautiful girl...all grown up -- October 2010, 2 years, 11 months