Grandpa Mike's fathers day present to himself and the grandkids!

Not sure what Everett was doing but it was pretty cute uh err ferocious.


Cade and Carter splashing around

Climbing the ladder

Everyone of course loved the water cannon that could be adjusted by turning the flow of the water to the slide up or down.


Clint supervising the kids climbing, it can be soo hard to take turns!

The group picture no one wants to sit still for and look at a camera all and all though they did pretty good and I think it was unanimous they loved the fathers day present!

"We went riding on the range" said Avery Gerdes

Avery and her Daddy!
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This was taken at the end of the ride. Cade was very serious and his thumbs were sore from gripping the saddle horn so tightly, not to mention his legs were getting sore from Polka's wide back. When he got off Polka Dot he was walking a little bowlegged!

Riding up in Broken Leg above my parents house. The views were great and Avery thought it was neat we were riding on the range. Cade kept talking about how we could see forever. Thank God for big beautiful wide open spaces!



Big grins from the little cowboy. And the little bowlegged walk at the end of the ride to go play in the waterslide and pool! Although he wouldn't get in until I come back with his swimming trunks!

Hailstorms and rainbows

Crunching and kicking the hailstones.

Avery trying to show me a piece of hail.

We were outside playing with the kids when it started hailing, luckily we were close to the house and were safely inside before it started coming down really hard. After we saw and heard the first couple of hailstones plink down in the gravel Rance and I grabbed the kids and hightailed it back to the house. It scared the kids a little bit, they weren't too sure what was going on, but were happy to be inside!

The day after the METRA was destroyed we got a hailstorm at our house that dropped quite a bit of hail but mostly just marble sized pieces, so no major damage to anything. Afterwards we were treated to a large double rainbow and the kids had a great time crunching around in all the hailstones. The second lighter rainbow didn't show up well in the pictures :(

Thunderstorms

We've been having some pretty good thunderstorms lately. This one is from earlier in the week. Last night there was a pretty good one in Billings that ripped the roof off of the METRA, and destroyed a few other building in the Heights. Sounds like Billings got some pretty good flooding also. We got off pretty easy out here.


a big puddle in front of the house.

My little girl. The light was right behind her but I thought it was a neat picture.

Fingerpainting the propane tank

I had five kids today so i thought what better to do than get out the fingerpaints and use the propane tank as a canvas. The kids had a great time and in the end the tank rinsed off clean. So did Everett's hair after Cade put his very blue hands in it.



Hard at work.

Going to the Zoo

Playing around at the zoo.

Cade, Avery, and Keenan's favorite part of the zoo was the kids play area.

Jess and I took the kids to the zoo. All Cade really wanted to see was a giraffe. Needless to say ZooMontana lacks a giraffe. We did get to see the tiger and bear, and the wolverine was out playing around. Turned out to be a really nice day at the zoo.

All together saying "cheese"


Anyone seen a goat around here?