A spontaneous trip to Montana

Last Tuesday Eric came home & asked if the girls & I wanted to go to Montana with him on Thursday. A friend of his bought an unfinished house over there & hired Eric & his brother to finish it. They have gone over three other times & it was time to go again. Jim, the owner of the house, pays for gas, lodging, & food. A free vacation???? YES!!!! So we got ready to go & headed out on Thursday night. We stayed at a really cool "resort" that had six rooms & was about 200 yards from a beautiful lake. It was a lot of fun. While we were there we went to the Kalispell Fair. It was exactly like I remember the fair being like when I was a kid growing up in Idaho. Old school rides, games, food, & animals. They even had the game that you tossed a ping pong ball into a jar of water & if you made it in you won a little gold fish. So we let the girls try, thinking that they would never make it, & on the first try Aubrey made it. She was so excited. She promptly named the thing Freckles. Great. Now what are we suppose to do with a fish...we are in Montana & live 9 hours away. Much to her dismay I made her give it away to another little girl. Aubrey cried. Kiersten was mad. I was glad. I didn't want to deal with the thing dyeing & having to deal with that. She still says every now & again she says that she misses him but has really gotten over it.

A family pic on the dock
Eric & I in the water
View from the dock

Our room

I Love our girls (when they get along)

Gorgeous sunset

Throwing rocks on the shore

On our last day there Eric got sick. He was up almost all night. So not much got done that day. The weather was really hot ( 90 - 103). We headed out around 5pm & I had to drive. It was going ok for the first few hours but kinda went down hill after that. Eric & the girls were passed out & I was just following Jim in front of me in his car & all of the sudden (it was around 11:30) this huge tan/white thing was in front of car and I hear a big thud & feel a thump, thump. So I quickly flash my lights for Jim to pull over & Kiersten shoots straight up & yells "What was that?" I smack Eric to wake up & tell him that I hit something. He wants to know what, I don't know, something big. He wants to know if it was a deer & I tell him no, it came out of the sky. It ended up that it was an OWL!!!!!! Yikes!!!! & sad. We got out & inspected the car, no damage, then back on our way. Then we ran into the thunder/lightening & rain storm that was over here the day before. Which I then discovered that the windshield wipers stink. The middle section didn't touch the windshield at all so I had a 2 inch section up top & a 2-3 inch section on the bottom of the windshield that I alternated looking though. It was really stressful but I made it through. We got in around 2:30am. It was tough but we all made it ok. Eric is finally feeling better today.

Glad that we are home.