Montana Trip

Ben's Grandma, Jewell Steele, celebrated her 80th birthday on September 8th. She lives in Hamilton, Montana, which is in the Bitterroot Valley with the Rocky Mountains surrounding it. Ben and I flew up there 6 years ago before his Grandpa passed away so we were excited about going back.

We left on Aug 30th and the kids did great on the long plane ride. Thankfully we had Ben's laptop to play videos on. :) We stayed with Ben's Grandma for 9 days and had a blast. Ben's mom was there, too, and we enjoyed spending time with her. The boys loved the beautiful outdoors, meeting their aunts and uncles, and being together as a family. Since Ben's mom's family lives so far away we don't get the chance to see them often, so it was a real treat to spend some quality time with them all. Hudson loved playing football with his Uncle Shawn and cousin Brian, sword fighting with cousin Mick, playing with Aunt Esther, riding horses with Uncle Bruce and being silly with cousin Justin. Landon loved being held and charming all his girl cousins and aunts. :) We were able to do lots of fun outdoors stuff which of course made me think about Daddy. I had wanted to bring him and mom to Montana, but we just never did it. He would have loved the great hiking, the beautiful scenery, and the fly fishing.

Grandma's 80th bday party was incredible. They estimated about 200 people that came and it was a beautiful tribute to her. We were so glad that we were able to be there for her.

If you click on the link below it will take you to 2 albums with all of our trip pictures on it. There are a lot of pics, but they're worth it. :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/brothermclain

We survived Ike!!!

Well, the McLain family is safe and sound. We had intially thought that we would head to my mom's house in Tyler on Thursday, but then we decided to brave the storm. Ben and I were actually a little excited about seeing what a hurricane was like. Our plans quickly changed when the power went out at 6:30pm on Friday and the rains and winds hadn't even come yet. We began filling the bathtub with water in case we didn't have water and would need it to flush toilets. We figured that the power would go out once the weather got really bad, but the fact that it already went out was not a good sign and we were hearing that the power could be out for a week or two. We quickly made the decision that if we wanted to get out we had to do right then. We threw clothes in the suitcase,put blankets on the furniture and filled up the ice chest and made a run for it. Reality set in and the thought of being stuck in our house without power or water for days with 2 active boys didn't sound like fun plus if we had stayed and decided to leave after the storm (if the power was still out) traffic might have been bad. The winds started picking up and the sky was looking eery as we made our way out of Houston to head to my brother's house in San Antonio. Since Tyler was in the path of the storm we thought we would bunk up with Rick and Katie and Hudson was very excited about that. :) So we left at 7:50pm last night and made it to Rick's at 10:50pm. We'll keep everyone updated and let you know what the status is.