Simon getting ready to dig for dinosaur bones at the Children's Museum in Missoula.

Dylan at the museum.

The Boy in the Bubble.

Simon on the carousel in Missoula. The sign said it was one of the fastest carousels in the world!

The front of the playground we found on accident.

As you may have surmised from the pictures, we went on a little road trip to Missoula over the weekend. Mom and Dad came up to see us, it was lots of fun. We all stayed at the hotel with the water slides. I didn't get any pictures of the boys on the waterslide because I was too busy using said waterslides. The trip actually started out pretty crappy. Faith wanted to leave in the morning, but her Valentines Day present was supposed to be delivered at noon on Friday, so I told her we couldn't leave until noon, and that we had to stop by my office on the way out of town. We get there at 1208, and of course, no present. Great. Someone has stuck a note to my computer saying it's very important that I call a contracting lady down in OR, so I call her really quick, get put on hold for 15 minutes while she tries to find out why it was so important that I call her, then she tells me she doesn't actually need to talk to me. So, no present in hand, I go get in the van and point it towards Missoula. Faith discovers that the cord to the DVD player is broken. Nobody in the van will be able to handle the trip to Missoula without a DVD player. Faith is trying to fix it, I'm offering unwanted advice, the boys are screaming that they want to watch a movie, and the nice State Trooper notices that I'm doing 63 in a 55 and pulls me over. That's the happy moment we discover that we forgot to put the new insurance cards in the van, and the one that is in there expired last April. The officer takes my license and registration back to his car, comes back and informs me I have racked up approximately $700 in tickets, but he gets off work shortly and doesn't want to do the paperwork, so he lets me go. Whoo hoo! We drive to Colville, get a new cord for the DVD player, drive to Spokane, where I have to stop again to pick up some more contact lenses. It is now approximately 5:30 pm. We've been on our trip for over 4 hours and we've made it 110 miles. We get out of Spokane, call Dad to let him know we're running late, and dad reminds that with the time change we won't get to Missoula until 930. Stupid time change. The rest of the trip to Missoula was fairly uneventful, as long as you don't count the creepy Motel/store we stopped at to use the bathroom. The owner lived in the back of the store, we got to listen to him scream at his kids and threaten to "pop that damn balloon if you don't help your brother" and then inform somebody how lucky he was that his brother quit crying. Then Simon discovered that the toilet wouldn't flush. So we bailed. Got to Missoula, saw mom and dad, went to sleep. We all went downtown the next day, and to the mall, and to a skate park because the kids wanted to show Mom and Dad their skateboard moves. We get tot he skatepark and the boys inform us they don't want to skateboard, they want to go to the water slide, so we ended just playing at the hotel most of the day. Mom and Dad left the next morning. Faith and the boys and I went out to lunch, then I mentioned I thought there was a children's museum somewhere, but being Sunday it was probably closed. Simon said he really wanted to go check, so we googled the address and headed over to it. We saw the museum, and turned into a parking lot down below it and found the huge playground shaped like a dragon and the carousel. We checked both of those out for a couple of hours, then went to the museum, which was pretty neat. More watersliding that night, then we left Monday at about noon. We were home by 530. We all went to sleep at about 10, and nobody woke up until about 745 this morning. So I called work and told them I needed a day off after my vacation, and Faith called the school to tell them the kids weren't coming to school. So we're just hanging out and relaxing today. Hope everybody's doing well. See ya.