Schweitzer projects and Huckleberry picking

Landon's arm seems to be fine. He doesn't have to wear his splint or sling anymore and you would never know anything ever happened to him.

Josie made honor roll last year for the 5th grade. We were really proud of her.

 The cats have been doing their best at trying to get inside. We let them in every once in a while as long as the kids are holding them and they are not roaming free.

 Saturday we headed up to our condo at Schweitzer to do a little remodeling.

 The 1 and only bedroom had a queen sized bunk bed. It was really practical, but it took up the entire room and was really creaky.

Luke, being the handy man that he is, built a whole new bed with bunk beds on the sides for the kids. Day one, Luke built the main queen bed.

 He set up shop out front.

 Schweitzer's annual fall fest was going on this weekend. It is a huge beer festival with bands and all sorts of activities for kids. Luke and I really wanted to work on the condo, so we sent the kids up to the village with rudy and carli. They had a blast and went hiking and played in the village with all their friends.

Our condo quickly became a disaster zone. Lila stayed with us saturday and sunday night so we had 3 kids and no beds:) we had mattresses so we made beds on the floor during the construction.

 Sunday I took the kids up to the villaige. We hiked up through the woods.

 The kids wanted to pick Huckleberries.

 we hiked on a nature trail for a while looking for huckleberries, but most of the berries are up high, so we got on the chair lift and decided to hike down.

 Our chairlift shadow's are usually in the snow, so it looked strange to see our shadow's in the dirt.

It got pretty chilly at the top.

 A couple of years ago we took the chairlift up with my parents and decided to walk down the mountain. At the time, we didn't realize there was an actual hiking trail to get down the mountain and it took us a really long time, hiking over creeks and rocks. Turns out there is a marked trail you can just walk down:)

We started to follow the trail down and started picking huckleberries....

It was quiet, beautiful and we were all having a great time....until all of a sudden I heard the kids bickering....then I heard Landon say 'Josie, stop being a Pussy'....The whole world stopped for just a second....It was like a record all of a sudden scratched and my jaw dropped. He got a swift spanking and then we moved on. Landon was very upset from the discipline and became even more angry when I took a picture of his fit.

 He got so angry he looked at me and took his bag of huckleberries that I helped him pick over the previous 2 hours and dumped them out! Every. Last. One. I think I was more pissed about him dumping out his bag of hard picked huckleberries than I was about what he called his sister. We had a chat and he quickly realized he was not getting anymore huckleberries or, TV, or treats for a week. He shaped up after a bit and we continued on our picturesque hike of huckleberry picking. The kids fingers were all stained.

We ended up loosing track of the marked trail and had to figure out how to get down off the mountain. We ended up on a mountain biking trail, which is not safe....so we quickly ended up traversing through the forest and bushes. After 5 hours we made in back to the village with 2 bags of huckleberries...not 3. After making it down we decided to ride the chairlift again...but this time stay on and ride it back down.

We all ride chairlifts a lot in the winter, but it's always going up. The kids don't remember ever riding it down. You would have thought they had never been on a chairlift before. It was pretty funny. The lift came to a bouncing stop and Lila declared it the 'worst day of her life'.

We made it back to the condo...After we called Luke and had him come pick us up because I wasn't capable of walking any longer:) He made great progress on the bunk beds while we were gone.

The girls slept in the kitchen that night:)

We got up monday and stained the bunk beds and headed home. Luke is going to do shiplap on the headboard of the main bed, but other than that it is done.

It really opened the room up and the kids are excited to not have to share a bed:)