Sunny Days, and a correction

We have been lucky enough to have an early start on summer here (well, by Montana standards - we usually don't get warm sunshine until June!).

We've been taking full advantage of that sun and having lots of fun outside.  For Mother's Day the girls and Steve took me to Benson's, our local gardening store, and let me pick out beautiful flowers.

Elena gave Christina a flower she found all by herself (they just love finding those dandelions!).

And they indulged us in posing by the bear-who-looks-less-like-a-bear-every-year to show us how much they've grown.  They are really starting to look like big kids to us!

This week Christina started her new program to become a family counselor.  It will mean sacrifice from all of us, since going back to grad school is no small matter, but the sacrifice Steve and the girls made this week was to do without Christina from 8-5 every day from Monday to Friday.  Always one to seize an opportunity, Steve decided that if he was going to be solo with the girls he'd be solo somewhere fun, so the three of them took off camping!

They had so very much fun - Christina really missed out on a great time.

They were almost the only ones at the lake, and had a great time cooking on our new camp stove, making s'mores, and cuddling up together.

Camping pros!

The lake they went to was Salmon lake - they enjoyed getting to play in the water and with all the rocks on the shore.

Sisters, off on an adventure together.

This weekend Christina was thrilled to be back in the family fold, and took the girls to an equestrian expedition in town.  The girls got to practice their steer roping, their course work (on a course with hobby horses), and go on a ride in a horse-drawn carriage.  They even met Miss Rodeo Montana (who is a previous student of Christina's and Steve's).  There was a drawing for Breyer horse toys, and Elena and Clara both won!  They took them home and immediately we set up a horse-washing station with the toys Grandpa and Grandma Mary got them for Christmas.

It was some hard work!

But on a day like this:

 

How can you help but look like this?

So, we're having a great time.  And now, for our correction.  Two posts ago we got all excited because Blogger and alerted us that we had reached our 1000th post.  It turns out, however, that Blogger counts a lot of things other than the published posts, and that we're really closer to 500 posts.  So, don't get too excited about how prolific we are - we are just bad at counting!