Montana Take 1

Here is the long awaited post of our Montana trip. Okay, so I am sure people aren't sitting around waiting for me to post about Montana and how great it is, so please humor me. I happily take any opportunity to talk about my beautiful state! Here is Maddox looking out the plane window on our way to Kalispell, MT, where I grew up.

Needless to say, it was a long day on the plane, with two layovers. Maddox did absolutely wonderful. I couldn't have asked for a better baby. I seem to complicate matters, though. I claim to Jeff that I just make life exciting. He says he will never fly with me again. It all started when I set the alarm clock for pm instead of am and so we woke up at 5:05 a.m. and our flight left at 5:50 a.m. Great. Thanks to Maddox for waking us up. For once I am soooo thankful he sometimes wakes up in the early morning hours for an early bird breakfast. Oh, and our luggage was also lost along the way. We didn't get it for 4-5 days (I can't remember) and we got no apology or compensation! It didn't really bother Maddox or me because I had my sister's clothes to wear and Maddox had Jett's clothes to wear, but poor Jeff was left with nothing. He did end up wearing some of his old shorts he gave to my brother about a year ago. While I didn't miss my clothes, I had left a friendship bread yeast starter in my suitcase. It exploded all over my clothes. So fun to clean up!

However, the way there wasn't nearly as exciting as the way back. We made our flight on time and had two more layovers. This time they were LONG ones. We left MT at 7:00 a.m. and arrived in Lexington, Kentucky at 10:30 p.m. With the two hour time change, we were in the airport for over 12 hours! Ahhh! Some of it was my fault. Our first layover was nearly four hours long. We took our time wandering around and finally found our gate. There wasn't any room for us to sit down, so we spent our time in the gate next to ours. Big mistake. It was my job to watch to see the flight status of our connection. Well, it was delayed over an hour and they changed the gate several times and then they did an express board, with no announcements or anything. One minute they were all there and then the next there was no one sitting at our gate anymore, the doors were closed and there wasn't anyone at the "post." We missed our flight. I don't think I have ever seen Jeff so angry. He even gave our $10 Walmart stroller a kick (Don't worry...Maddox wasn't in it.).

Anyway, we were put on another connecting flight through a different city that was at the other end of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport and it left in just 30 minutes or so. We booked it over there and barely made it on that flight, which ended up being delayed after we were all on board, so we had to book it to our next connecting flight and seriously walked right up to the gate and were the last people to walk on before they shut the doors. It was nuts! Many thanks to Amber and Evan for picking us up and putting up with all our changing flight plans and destinations. Jeff claims he is either never travelling with me again or he is taking his going to just meet me there and I can't say that I blame him! :)

On to more important things, one of Jeff's classmates, Renee, and her husband, Joel, came to MT for about a week. It was fun to show them around. Here we are canoeing at Whitefish Lake. This is one of the many local beaches and my favorite. They have the best 4th of July celebrations here. Swimming all day, bands and bbqs in the evening and fireworks on the lake at night.

The mountains in the background are the skiing resort, Big Mountain. The whole backside is also skiing...and snowboarding, which I prefer. Sorry for the bum shot. It was the most scenic, in multiple ways. :)
It's not the best picture of us, but there is me in the middle! What a gorgeous morning it was!
We had a contest to see who could paddle better-the boys or girls. The girls definitely won! Jeff and Joel were all over the place. Sure, they were fast, but they were often just going in circles really fast and then they were tired because they were paddling so quickly and going nowhere. I shouldn't say nowhere because they did paddle most of the way, but it was silly watching them. So Renee and I took over and did a much better job. We went slow and took our time and went in a much straighter line.