Victory Tacos for Obama!

Okay, so blogger is for some reason loading these photos backwards and I can't move them around  -- so here (in reverse order) are photos from the party:

Elad shakes up the O-bombers, the last photo I took before spilling my drink all over Elisabetta's shoes...

Sammy and E at the DJ booth... Hello, Glencoe Avenue 2008!

A trio of O-bombers...

Eden tries a sip of Prosecco -- so sour!

Richard makes O-bombers...

A group photo before festivities get underway and I forget the camera exists

We had a reason to pull out the stops and seriously celebrate, so we did. Here's to the next president!

Annual Hike To Schweitzer Falls

Okay, so by "annual" I mean "we've done this hike twice in the fall." And by "hike to Schweitzer Falls" I mean "meander a half mile in the direction of Schweitzer Falls and back over the course of several hours." But regardless, we always have the best time -- kids, parents, dogs. There's a creek that becomes Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, there are big leaf maples that shed their leaves for a autumal feel, and there are boulders to climb galore. And seriously, the kids were super troopers hiking up the cardio hill back to where the car was parked. In fact, they were super troopers the whole way.

Jed (World's Finest Canine) 1995-2008

Tennis balls -- for me?!?

Fearless rescuer of the maiden captured by Mexican wrestlers...

Jed was the life of the party.

and was always ready for a hug

He loved going on adventures like traipsing around Yellowstone

Jed loved playing in the snow

but not as much as he loved playing in the water!

Jed's backpacking grand finale...

In the High Sierras, September 2006: Elad, Ophir, Keegan and Jed hiked up to 11,000 feet for Jed's last wilderness adventure.

The Hiiiiiiiills Are Aliiiiiive...

...with hikers singing Rogers and Hammerstein at top volume to scare any grizzlies out of the way.

Animal Jamming

What's that? Oh, just a baby grizzly cub. You know, an everyday GYE (Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem) sight. Watching the mama (off camera) and her two cubs knocked our socks off. We got lucky -- we saw loads of grizzlies while in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, all from a safe distance (roadside, not trailside).
Mama fox brought a squirrel for her kits's upper, but they were waaaay more interested in playing with each other than their food. 
More mama and baby cuteness! These ducklings hitched a ride on mama's back in the Firehole River, just downstream from Old Faithful.
Bison in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley -- needs no further embellishment.

Grand Tetons + Yellowstone Family Vacation

Elad, Lila, Keegan, Eden, Jonathan, (invisible) Leland, Kelsi, Grandpa and Miette in front of the log cabin in Coulter Bay where we homesteaded for about a week. We did not prove our claim but did retrieve a frisbee from the roof.
Heron Pond, Grand Teton National Park. We hiked and and sang and rowed and splashed and hiked and animal-jammed and hung out and hiked some more all over the northwest corner of Wyoming!

Why is this child smiling?

Because it's the last day of fourth grade, that's why! Hellooooo summer!

Lila Longstockings

She sleeps with her feet on the pillow and her head under the covers, just like Pippi!

Eden's Tenth Birthday Campout

Eden chose custom ice cream sundaes over cake and a campout over a party. Lila wants you to know that they played "Hobbles" there, which was a way of reserving a camp chair for future use once you vacated that seat. The tiger-striped twin plush chairs were the choicest spots. Eden wants you to know that the kids "smoked" the grownups in the adults vs. kids kickball game.

Lila's Self Portrait

At McState Beach this past weekend -- she was photographer during the kickball game.