Back to School 2015

Summer flew by this year and the kids were back in school! This was a special year for Chase as he started kindergarten! The Sunday before school starts we always have a Back to School dinner. I always make these pencil treats (Rolos covered in yellow paper with a Hershey's kiss glued on the end) and cover the table with paper. Our kids look forward to it! Especially because we leave the paper on for the first week of school so they get to color and draw at every meal!

 This year we had alphabet chicken nuggets, french fries, apples, root beer, and I can't remember what else. :) This is also the time where we talk about the upcoming year, goals, rules, and tell the kids about our family scripture motto for the year. This year Robert and I chose 3 Nephi 12:16.

 There she goes!

 Just for amusement. :)

 It was a little strange that first day of kindergarten when two kids were at school, one at tumbling class, and it was just me and this guy!!

 Our table paper at the end of the week.

Summertime 2015

Sometimes I think summer is just as busy as the rest of the year. The only difference is there's no break from the kids!! Haha. This year we had each of the kids (except Logan) do a special summer activity or camp. Emily took a 3 day dance intensive, a week-long tumbling camp, and a Chinese summer camp. Chase did a week-long summer camp at the aquarium. And Carly did the week-long tumbling camp as well. We also kept up on all the regular activities (dance, tumbling, piano, karate, swimming lessons, etc). It was full but fun!

The aquarium and the girls' tumbling is about half an hour away from our house so instead of driving back and forth we would try to entertain ourselves on the south end of the valley when those camps were happening. It got tough! We went to Scheels, the park, library, grocery store, aquarium, any other fun/free place I could think of!

 This cracks me up. I took this picture to show Robert that they were listening so intently to Abe Lincoln and then I noticed that they are standing the exact same way!

 Free books for completing the library's summer reading challenge. We go to the library a lot in the summer!

 Chase got his yellow belt!

Summer flew by in a flash!

Yellowstone and Island Park

In June we spent a few days in Island Park, ID and Yellowstone. It was such a blast!!! My dad's entire family stayed in a huge beautiful cabin in Island Park. We had a great time and it was so nice to see everyone!

The first thing we did was visit the Wolf and Bear Discovery Center just outside the gates in West Yellowstone.  It is no secret that our kids (especially Chase) are animal lovers so this was high on our MUST do list!

They had a small museum type thing but the kids were not interested! They just wanted to get outside and see the animals!

These two are brothers that apparently spend a lot of time fighting. So many similarities between us and the animal world!

 It was so cool to see these grizzlies so close up!

We were watching the wolves and one of them was kind of fighting with this black bird. My dad was commenting about how the wolf and crow were fighting. Chase said "That's not a crow. It's a raven." We all believed him because no one knows more about animals than Chase.

 I had done my research and found that there were a couple times during the day that kids could actually feed the bears. Of course this was a must! You had to be 5 years old so only Chase and Emily were able to participate.

This place has several bears and they switch them out of the enclosure several times per day. In between the switch the kids get to go in and hide food and snacks for the bears to find. First they lined up outside the enclosure and got their instructions. One of the kids asked "How do we keep the crows from eating the food before the bears get it?" The keeper said, "Actually, those aren't crows, they're ravens." Chase was right!! 

Here they are after hiding their food. (On the left by the girl in pink.)

After the Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center we headed into Yellowstone!

Our sad attempt at an Old Faithful selfie.

We took family photos....
My grandparents with all five of their kids!

We spent lots of time on (and in) the lake. I think for many of our kids it was their first time on a boat.

Pelicans! Every morning we would watch them fly by our cabin. We love animals.

Logan was absolutely obsessed with the lake. He had no fear, which is scary when he's barely 2 years old. He loved to jump off the dock.

We found a frog!

Tubing! Emily is a little hesitant in the water. She ended up getting flipped off the tube so that ended her fun! Up until she flew off she loved it though. I was proud of her for doing exactly what she should have done though. Thanks swimming lessons!

Painting rocks is a very important part of every Brady family reunion.

 One of the highlights of Yellowstone is the wildlife. Going into the trip Chase really wanted to see buffalo, Robert wanted to see bighorn sheep, and I was hoping to see a bear. We were lucky and got to see them all! We spent hours looking for buffalo for Chase. It was getting late at night one night and we had given ourselves a cut off time for when we HAD to turn around. It got to that time and we had only some herds in the distance, nothing very close up. We decided to drive for 4 more minutes! We turned the corner and there was this HUGE guy sitting right off the road. Hallelujah!

 It was so fun to just sit and visit with everyone!

 One night we all got together and shared stories and memories from our grandparents.

Love my family. Wish I could see them more often but everyone is all over the country! The kids loved Yellowstone, loved Island Park. We definitely need to go back soon!