Chico Hot Springs

 

This is the Paradise Valley.  It is the home of Chico Hot Springs, and we took Clara and Elena here for the first time last fall.  They have been talking about it ever since.  When we decided (three months ago) to go back for our spring break they stepped up the talk and referenced it at least several times a week discussing what we'd do, who would share a bed with whom, how we'd drive there, etc.

As we drove down to Chico the girls asked over and over if we could get in the hot spring pool as soon as we got there, and we had to tell them over and over that it would be the first thing we did after check-in.

Clara has been practicing dunking underwater (she says for six minutes, which isn't entirely accurate, but she does stay under a few seconds!).  Unfortunately, it was hard to do while wearing swimmies!

Elena, ready to go.

Each time we went in the pool we stayed in until the girls' fingers were so pruney they looked like they were turning inside out - it was a good cue to get out of the water!

We went to the little library in the lodge for the first time, and all picked out books to read.  We liked them so much that when we got home we ordered them online or bought them in a bookstore so we could have them for our own!  Clara especially fell in love with One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue fish, which she could recite partially from memory already from having read it in school.

Instead of staying in the main lodge this time we stayed in the Fisherman's Lodge, just up a little hill.  Our rooms overlooked the stable and pasture, which was perfect placement for our little horse-loving girls.

We walked down as the moon was rising to visit the horses before they went to bed.

In the Granato family we have a family myth that if you sprinkle salt on a bird's tail it will stay as your pet and not fly away. Although Christina has not yet shared this myth with the girls it seems Clara would be a good candidate - she was so anxious to get to this bird and get it to perch on her finger!
 (Needless to say, this did not happen).

Night falling in Paradise Valley - and we all fell into an early and deep sleep.

First thing in the morning we hiked down to the hot spring again, grabbed our coffees, and were in the pool by 7am.

Happiness!

After we got dressed we went to visit the horses again and both girls got a ride around the property on Tarzan (a very generous 21 year old horse).

Then we headed out to breakfast at the nearby saloon.

 

Other than an old gentleman at the bar we were the only ones there, and it was a very cozy (very filling!) breakfast.  But what was even more enticing than the food was the decor.

We try to get the girls to avoid potty talk and jokes about body parts (though using the names for any body part is fair game if you are TALKING about that body part, we aren't fans of calling people names or shouting out the body part names just for effect).  Still, when we saw this picture of the "Butt Sisters" we had to take a picture to remember it - the girls thought it was just absolutely hilarious (and "scandalous," a new word Grammie Ellen taught them).

The rest of the saloon was pretty fun to look at, too.

After breakfast we headed to Yellowstone National Park.  It's such a treasure of a spot - there is always something new to see or notice.  Please just scroll past if scenery and animals isn't your thing.

It was Grammie Ellen's first time at the park, so she needed the obligatory picture at the arch as you enter.

 

Soon after we entered the park we were greeted by a herd of antelope.

The Yoshimura family at the 45th parallel.

Elena and Clara working on their park maps - they needed to cross off various animals and birds as they saw them, and were so enthusiastic to do so!  It's a good day if you cross off at least 7, and we crossed off 9 (including a coyote devouring some prey, a bald eagle (or "bog eagle" as the girls called it), and a strikingly blue mountain bluebird).

Mammoth Hot Springs - always a fun sight.

This was the first of many herds of bison we saw.

Christina was taking a picture of the scenery here and spotted a rare green and blond animal that wasn't on the map!  She was quickly making her getaway out of the left side of the picture.

This buffalo was so close to the road that Clara was afraid it was going to come into the car.  Luckily, it chose not to.

New growth after the fire in 1988.

We headed back to Chico to soak, have an amazing dinner in the lodge, and sleep.  When we awoke the next morning it was to Clara and Elena shouting about snow!  Sure enough, there was a fine blanket of snow on the ground and more coming down.

The girls thought it would be very fun to walk down to the hot springs in the snow, so Christina did that with them while Steve and Ellen drove down.  After one last soak we were back on the road to head back home - but it was such a lovely, restorative vacation!

The Running of the Lambs

We tried something new last night - we had heard that March is lambing season here in Montana and just this year we heard there was a ranch in town that opens up to the community for these few weeks so you can feed the sheep and visit the new little babies (and learn about sheep ranching overall).

We decided to try going out there, despite Clara's sometimes-worry about larger animals in her face.  It was a good sign that one of the sheepdogs came right up to greet Elena and Clara and was so sweet - it really started us off on the right foot.

Also while we were waiting for the sheep we met this one-horned goat (or unicorn goat, as Christina liked to call it.  Possibly this angered the goat population, as the next thing she knew a goat was eating her hair and trying to pull her backwards, but that might have had nothing to do with the nickname).

The first step in learning about sheep was to feed them - everyone got buckets of these protein pellets and put them in cut-up tires.

You can see some of the older lambs in the background here, becoming interested in what's going on.

Why is Clara covering her ears?  Well, the lambs can get through the fence to this food, but the mother sheep can't.  They bleat for their babies (and probably are telling them to lay off the food and get back in the pen!) at an astoundingly loud level!

Then we all put our kids on our shoulders as they commenced the running of the sheep:

And they're approaching:

Food!

While the mother sheep are out eating one of the rancher picked up the baby lamb that had been born just in the fifteen minutes we'd been waiting to feed the sheep, and took him to the warming huts.

We put out more food for the sheep.

And gazed at the ones who had finished eating.  It's funny to see how they eat this hay (there is a better picture later).

Clara loved petting some of these older lambs who were wandering about.

Then, while the mothers were finishing their food it was time for the running of the lambs!  The lambs are not running for food - they just open the gate (that they could get through anyway) and the lambs practice running around - apparently they get good endorphins from running in a herd like this, and they like to play at it!

Then we started our tour of the lamb barns - here is one of the warming huts where the tiny lambs go.

And here is the way they mark the mother sheep and their babies, to keep straight who goes with who.  Apparently they only really want to be in their own mother/baby pairs, but sometimes get separated from one another.

Here's the funny way they eat the hay!  The bigger sheep tunnel these holes as they munch, and then sometimes the baby lambs crawl in and sleep in them!

Elena, future rancher, and the warming hut.  While Clara liked this expedition, Elena LOVED it and was confident and excited and invested and told us she was going to start taking care of the sheep (ranching) when she turns six.  And, she told us she likes getting her boots muddy - a good quality in a rancher!

Look at this girl's pride.

And look at Clara beam! She found it a little tougher to hold the lambs, and liked directing them around a bit more (and playing with the other kids) but when she got ahold of this lamb she was just in heaven!

Steve, instructing Elena on how to support this lamb.

And Elena letting the lamb nibble her boots.  Christina told Elena she could move the lamb away, but Elena replied: "No, don't.  That little lamb can do anything she likes."

Who's that little lamb in the warming hut now?  Oh, it's Clara!

One last cuddle for the night for Elena:

And one last one for Clara.  When the rancher picked this one up from Clara he made a point of telling her that this was a particularly heavy lamb and she had done a great job holding him.  That definitely made her night.

We love living in Montana!

Messy Business

Forget the mud and rain we've been having in profusion around here - even inside the house things are messy lately!  This week we baked a cake for our new neighbors (a zebra cake, black and white striped, which you can find here) and when the girls got to the batter bowl after the cake went in the oven it ended up something like this:

Why do we always need baths after we bake in this house?

Then, today we decided to dye Easter eggs.  How big do these girls look?  I can't believe it is their third year dying their own eggs!

We went with dyes we made this year, out of blueberries (for blue), tumeric (for yellow) beet juice (for pink) and mixes of these for green, purple, and orange.

It takes quite a bit longer to get color with these dyes, but the girls really had a fun time (especially squishing the blueberries in our blue dye!).

While we were soaking the eggs in their dye we attended to the greens we've planted to go on sandwiches.  We planted mesculen greens, and it has been so fun having them come up nice and green while it's looked so yucky outside.

We water them with a little medicine dropper - Clara and Elena think this is hysterical and entertaining for a good 30 minutes.

When we got the greens watered we took the eggs out of the dye, and ended up with this:

We think they are pretty, if a bit, um, interesting.  We now have the eggs all ready in their baskets for the Easter bunny. We did the same thing we did last year - we saved up our eggs for the last week or so, blowing them out instead of cracking them so that we could cook with them.  Now the Easter bunny can fill them with tiny things, glue tissue paper over the hole in the bottom, and hide them outside.

Only a week until the big day!