Check out this icicle!!!

It snowed here last Wednesday and we had a temperature that has not gotten up above 10 degrees since then. (It is Sunday!) So this icicle Seth broke down today and we took a picture! It is amazing he got it off in one piece!

Mt. Rushmore, the wind cave, and the mashed potato mountain (Devils Tower)

We took a fun two day trip to Mt. Rushmore and the wind cave, as well as Devils Tower. It was a fast but fun trip! The cave was amazingly huge! A 16 year old boy discovered and mapped a lot of it and it is still being mapped because of how many tunnels there are in the cave. It had the largest amount of box work. We took a picture but I am not sure how much justice the pictures shows. It was beautiful! When we got to the cave we saw lots of buffalo roaming around. We stopped because there were a few hanging out right next to the road! By the time we got to Mt. Rushmore we were all starving and it was getting dark, so we ate at Mt. Rushmore. Maggie calls it Mt. Russia. It was great food. We had buffalo stew, and Seth had that and a buffalo burger. He is always hungry! That night we stayed in a hotel and the next morning on the way home we went to the mashed potato mountain I call it (from Close Encounters of the Third Kind) really called Devils Tower. It was fascinating! Back in the early days, the people around the tower built a wooden ladder to climb up to the top! Crazy people!

Maggie and Charlotte birthday party!

Happy Birthday Maggie number 5! Charlotte number 4!

butterfly's

This picture says it all!

Halloween pictures

I need to upload a picture of Seth dressed as a Nyan cat from you tube. He made the costume himself minus the pants, and he had the music downloaded on his ipod for unlimited listening! I will post that picture soon. Spencer was a variety of people. Maggie was a witch for preschool and then Cinderella for Halloween night. Charlotte was Minnie mouse for a church party, and snow white for her preschool party and Halloween. They went trick or treating with a friend.

Back from Tikal

On the way back from Tikal we stopped at the island city of Flores (some of us got an ice cream). Then flew home on a small 22 seater airplane. The picture inside the plane invited everyone to say "turbulence!" The plane had a few bumps and the engines were noisy! The pilot and steward re-closed the latch on the door about 5 times, which made me a little nervous. Does the latch not work sometimes or were they worried about it? It was neat to see the jungle in the evening and the sprinkled city lights on the way back to Guatemala City.

Guatemala tour to Tikal

We woke up super early to get a ride to the airport to ride a small plane to Tikal. That plane held about 28 passengers. (around that much)

We rode about 45 min to the next airport where a bus/tourist van picked us up with all the others going to their too and rode on that for a while. It was considerably more humid there than even Guatemala city I thought. Maybe it was also because I wasn't feeling well too...when we got there we saw some leaf cutting ants on the sidewalk by the bus.

They have a tree that is termed "the Tree of life" it starts out as a sapling with thorns or spikes on it. When it grows up it looses the spikes and has lots of branches. it is a beautiful tree that is very large as well. I will let Derek get on and write more about it like I said I wasn't feeling well so I have lots of missing information from this part of our trip. I will load pictures for this part and let him explain I do remember that Spencer was running up and down some of the temples and pyramids. The stairs were steep and tall. We all really liked Tikal even though I left my dna there.