Party of Five: July 2012

Monday, July 30, 2012

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is God's country - - simply amazing! It's hard for pictures to capture what we saw each and everyday...but this one is pretty spectacular!

All 49 of us made the trek to Glacier Nat'l Park - what an amazing place! Washington, California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, & Costa Rica were represented!! Pretty cool to see everyone make the journey each year!

The Post clan! Too bad we are all looking straight into the sun!! But still a great picture, nonetheless!! Wish Mom was still alive to see her family growing! :)

And yet another cool shot!

At Logan Pass - hiked 3+ miles round trip to view hidden lake. Beautiful!

Cousin time!

What a fun place to explore with our cousins! It's so neat to see that they pick up right where they left off the last time they saw each other - friendships flourished while in Glacier - - so cool to see!

Aidan, Jaelyn & Ben posing at Logan's Pass

Jaelyn & Aidan full of smiles

Throwing rocks into the river with Jack

Enjoying twizzlers on a hike together

Being goofy after eating huckleberry frozen yogurt together

Benjamin (3 yrs), Jaelyn (5 yrs), Aidan (6 yrs), Jackson (2 yrs), Brennan (3.5 yrs), Allie (1 yr)

Jack & Ben partaking in the family tradition of pizza pies over the fire

And the littlest cousins - Jaelyn & Cooper

Goofing off in the Van Beek tent trailer - - how many can you fit on one lid?

Trying to jump and hit Ryan's hand. He's so tall, mom!

Jaelyn LOVES hanging out with Jill - - she hiked right along side her every time. Jaelyn was super proud of herself that she hiked all the hikes by herself - never needing to be carried or complaining! :)

Animals!!

With binoculars in hand, Ben's trying to spot the mountain goats!

This was an everyday occurrence - - trying to see what other people were seeing on the mountain! So fun!

This was the grizzly bear that stopped us in our tracks while on a hike. He didn't seem to mind all 48 of us on the trail - - he took his merry old time and finally crossed the trail so that we could continue with our hike! Surprisingly it wasn't nerve wracking to be so close to a grizzly - - the power of numbers, I guess!

On our hike at Logans Pass, we saw lots of mountain goats right along the trail - - so fun!

Animal sightings during our trip:

Bear: 8

Mountain Goats: 23

Moose: 2

Deer: 4

How we saw the animals: 5 bear were spotted along the road including when Ben spotted a mommy bear with 2 cubs - he yelled, "Bear"! I came across another bear in our campground while I was walking Brooke back to our campsite, Jaelyn saw one looking through binoculars with Uncle Ken, and then of course the one we saw on our hike. Both Moose were in the water - one was swimming across a lake! The deer were in our campground and all the mountain goats were on our hike at Logan's Pass or spotted in binoculars from the campground. Jaelyn says she counted that many on the trail, but she doesn't realize that they were duplicates (counting them going up & down the trail!)

just because

Brooke did amazingly well on the trip! She was pretty much all smiles the entire trip. She did great on the hikes - - didn't mind being carried in the ergo baby carrier up and down the mountain.

Can you be any more beautiful?!

Having a conversation with daddy - so precious!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

3 months

A snapshot of Brooke at 3 months old:

smiling & cooing all the time, with the beginnings of a giggle

sleeping 10-12 hours straight through the night while also taking naps throughout the day

loves her big sister & big brother - they can always get a smile out of her!

is my first spitter--upper! (not all the time - you never know when she'll spit up)
drools a ton

has already been on a camping trip!

Of course Jaelyn was getting Brooke to smile for these pictures

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Lincoln Rock State Park

We had another great time camping over the 4th - - this year 7 families camped together! The kids played hard the moment they woke up until the moment we drug them in the trailer to go to sleep. This trip we were roughin' it in Oma & Opa's 5th wheeler! I was not going to be in a tent with a 2 month old. Gotta love all the amenities it provided...mainly A/C for this nursing momma! Running through the sprinkler, playing baseball, bike rides & scooter rides around tcamp or to the park/beach made up each day. Oh, and you can't forget about the smores at night! It was loads of fun & many great memories...the kids are already looking forward to next year!