Visit to the Carson Family in Montana

Since I was on that side of the country, after my weekend in Utah I flew up to Great Falls, Montana, and spent a week with the Carson family there. I hadn't seen them since summer time, so my visit was overdue. 

I was pretty pleased when Alexa let me hold her and was even smiling! She's a real mommy's girl and doesn't give her smiles away very easily.

The weather was pretty nice and we went out to one of the nearby playgrounds almost every day.

I love this picture of Krystal with all the kids; she's such a good mother.

Alexa watching big sister Makayla color.

She also likes to play the piano, and not always with her toes!

I wanted to get some updated pictures of the kids. This is the one I ended up making a print of, even though Alexa wasn't smiling.

I didn't get too many pictures before Alexa was done and wanted her mommy.
Here are Daniel and Adam in their photo shoot.

Here's a cute picture of Daniel and Adam in their photo shoot.

With two boys it naturally didn't take long before their pose looked like this:

One place we went to as a family while I was there was the "First People's Buffalo Jump" state park.

Here's Adam inside a tipi at the visitor's center.

 Alexa checking out the fossils in the sand in the drawer.

This site outside of Great Falls is where they've found thousands of buffalo bones, so they know it's a place where the native tribes stampeded the buffalo to the cliff so they'd fall off. The buffalo would then be harvested for food and their skins.

The information at the visitor's center said that archaeologists believe the native population used this buffalo jump for a thousand years before Lewis and Clark passed through the area.

The Carson family at a reconstructed tipi. If the background you can see the bluff that was used to drive the buffalo over.

Me inside the tipi with the kids.

I liked this sweet picture of Daniel and Makayla. They're getting so big!

I don't have too many pictures of Garrett so I thought I'd add this picture of him.

Daniel is in kindergarten and we would walk to the school to pick him up every day.

Here's stylish Makayla on our way to pick up Daniel.

Another good reason for going to Montana was to be there to celebrate Alexa's first birthday.

The siblings were at the party but didn't make it into the photos!

I wanted to have photographic evidence that I was there.

Krystal made a gorgeous and yummy cake, which can be seen in the photos above before it was sliced. I wanted to show the inside of the cake, too, which had chocolate and pink cherry chip layers.

Alexa (and the rest of us) gave it the stamp of approval!!

One day while I was in Great Falls I went out to lunch with my old friends, Katrina and Maridee Swensen, though of course they have different married last names. It was fun to see them. I've known them since 1972, when our fathers were assigned to Grand Forks Air Force base in North Dakota. I wanted to put in some old photos from the 1970's of these two ladies, but I couldn't find any.

It was really neat to see so many of my old friends in May, both in Provo and in Great Falls.

As usual, I had a fun time visiting the grandchildren and the time went by much too quickly! May was a good month to visit since the weather was nice and sunny, as you can see from the photos.