While I Was Away

I was out of the office last week.

As a matter of fact, I was out of the state. 

And now I am out of my mind trying to catch up with everything.

But it is a small price to pay for a nice family vacation before the new school year starts. 

We went north this year.

There was a family get together in Northern Idaho  then we headed east to Seeley Lake, MT for a wedding and then we made our way to Hungry Horse, MT for Glacier National Park adventures. 

Here are a few observations while I was away: 

• Montana is not too shabby on the eye balls. This is a view of Whitefish Lake on the way up to Whitefish Mountain Resort, one of the many cool places we got to explore. 

• Ice cream is awesome and tastes so much better when you are on vacation. If my math is correct, I think we each had 17 servings per day. 
• We cleaned up pretty good for the wedding. The Montana background doesn't hurt. 

• Speaking of weddings, Catholic ones are still long. Even longer when the priest has a heavy accent. Not as bad as the guy from "The Princess Bride" but that is what came to mind during the ceremony.

• This might be the last summer I am the tallest person in my family. This isn't saying much as I am only 5"7" as my side of the family descended from garden gnomes but Kyle is now 5'4". I look more than 3 inches taller than him in that picture because I am wearing shoes and he's barefoot.

• Mrs. Shife found a childhood favorite of mine at a convenience store on our way to Montana so the the candy bar streak ended at 145 days. I absolutely loved Chocolatey Paydays when I was much younger but they got discontinued. I guess they heard about my streak and decided it must end.  
• Another streak ended on the trip as well. I hadn't had a beer since New Year's Eve 2021 but decided to celebrate at the wedding and had a few barley pops. The end of those two streaks probably contributed greatly to the 5 pounds I gained. 
• Don't believe everything you see. We decided to hike to alpine lake at Glacier because the sign said only 1.9 miles. Well, 60 minutes later and two kids who were ready to throw themselves off the mountain, we finally made it. It was worth it. We learned later that it was more like a 6-mile hike.

• We left Ms. Frizzle with my in-laws while we were gone. She worked on her dock diving skills to keep herself busy.

• The kids went back to school. We now have an 8th-grader and a 5th-grader living with us. 

I know it's hard to tell but Kyle really likes blue.

And Hayden is fond of black.

Thanks for stopping by, hope your week is going well and I will talk to you soon.


I will persevere.
I will keep moving forward.
I will be the stream.