Papa's photos

My dad got around to posting his photos so I stole some to share with you for the last installment of our vacation with my parents.

Being goofy with Mimi

Playground fun.

Fun at the market.

My dad let Madeleine pick off his plate almost every meal! It's almost inevitable that she doesn't sit and eat with us, at least not for the whole meal. I'm usually happy that she eats anything at all as long as it doesn't come from my plate.

Showing off the Christmas stocking my grandma made for her. We called my Grandma on her birthday and wished her a happy 86th! She's working on another stocking for my cousin's 1-year old and then Parker's is next. What a great gift for my kids to have! It was a little tough convincing Madeleine that the stocking didn't go on her foot though :)

At the park with the infamous blue slide. Sorry for all the pictures of me...I usually take a lot and don't have as many of them showing me with the kids so I really like these.

After the hike up Pattee Canyon.

At Fort Missoula on Friday. As you can tell, our visit there overlapped with Parker's nap time. He squished into the sling (he looks ridiculous!) and snoozed while we finished our short tour around the grounds avoiding sprinklers and elementary school kids from a summer program. My dad's the history buff and would have enjoyed reading more of the details of the history of the Fort but with two little ones he had to read the cliff notes versions.

After picking Justin up from the airport Friday we all met up at Bayern Brewery for beer, brats, potato salad and sauerkraut. The kids behaved pretty well and were especially excited to see Justin!

Madeleine's new favorite book is Amelia Bedelia and she insists on reading it like this. Oh to be 2!

The deal of the week: I got a free swing set off Freecycle and the people giving it away even delivered it to our house! Of course it was disassembled so my dad wanted to take a before shot of Justin and me working on it assuming we'd have fire coming out of our ears by the time we finished. Unfortunately for him, he forgot that I'm a procrastinator so he hasn't gotten to see the final expressions on our faces because most of it is still in pieces in the backyard. With my dad's help, however, we did get the basic frame set up and Justin installed the slide so Madeleine can now enjoy going on a slide without us taking a walk to the "blue slide" park or the "yellow slide" park. Now she just wants to go on her own swing set! I'm hoping we'll get around to finishing putting it together this weekend.

Madeleine on the slide. She's officially in the grimace stage of smiling. Where did she learn that?!?