Nana and Papa's, Philipsburg, Montana

The Last Best Place
Flint Creek
Our super sapphire find!
Riley with his 16in brown trout!
Josh having a great time!
Ethan's taking in the scenery

We spent last weekend down in Philipsburg, Montana. It was a beautiful trip. Such fun. We are book on cd travelers, this time we listened to The Giver, by Lois Lowery. It is an young adult fiction novel, easy to listen to, and a really interesting plot. We drove down Wednesday, and arrived around midnight. Mom found a great place to have a picnic and spend the day, Sand Basin on the West Fork. We blew up some tubes and sent the kids down the creek for a mild ride, Josh wondered off with his fly pole, happy to be back in his element. We made a fire to try and keep off the retched flies! While I was casting Ethan's rinky dink pole, he took one step too many and landed on his back under the water, he was only in for about 8 seconds, but it was scary enough. His little eyes were terrified, but thankfully he went into a mode where he stopped breathing and didn't inhale any water. The day ended with us back at house, cozied in.

Unfortunelty the following day was horrible, Don and I both woke up with some kind of a stomache bug. I was down for only about 7 hours, while it took Don all day and night. After my illness had cleared a bit, Mom took us down to Flint Creek, Josh did some fly fishing, at sunset we went into PBurg, and got an ice cream cone. The kids were worn out and ready for sleep.

I know that my prayers were answered that night, as I prayed that the Lord's hands would be around him, to help him fight his illness. I said this prayer at about 1:15 am, and decided to keep praying every time I awoke that night; Don said that the illness stopped at about 2 am. I am so thankful for the power of prayer.

Saturday was a blast! Josh and I ran off together, to the Gem Mountain. You pay $14 for a bucket of dirt, and are guaranteed a sapphire! 1/3 of the way through our bucket we found a flawless cutable sapphire. It was so fun! We spent the rest of the fishing on the East Fork. Josh's mom and dad came out for dinner, and Kim made dutch oven cherry chocolate cake! AWESOME! The next day we slept in, made a fire at lunch, roasted some smores, and packed up to head back to CDA. We took the Scalkaho Pass, it much like tremors at a slower speed. It was fun and great to see such beautiful scenery. A great trip that topped off my Mom's big event of turning 50!!!