Belle Helena

We took advantage of a nice sunny Saturday yesterday and drove to see Helena, Montana's Capital. It just under 2 hours to get there through amazing mountain scenery. There are also many Black Angus cows and, you guessed it!, mini-storage units. I think the storage unit should be on the Montana crest.

This was the first time, since I arrived in Montana, that I got an actual vista. It's hard to explain, but I've felt like I'm in a bowl ever since arriving. Missoula is surrounded by mountains, and sits in the bottom of a valley. It's like you never see a long stretch because there's a damn mountain-side in your way.

And whenever we've driven somewhere it's been a completely flat trip through different valleys. Until yesterday.

Behold! A long view!

Yes, I was quite excited.

Winter has arrived here, at least on the mountain tops. It was 22 degrees (celcius) yesterday but there was snow all over the mountain tops. I have discovered that mountains are 102% more mountain-ey when adorned with a snowy top. Facts.

Once we arrived in Helena we had a walk-around, grabbed some lunch and hit the annual Fall-fest in the park. Cultural-shmultural, I say! Why not just get free cotton candy and hit the bouncy castle when accompanied by a 3 and 1 year old?

You've gotta love Montana. Cruise into town. Hit kids festival. Bounce, run, eat, play, laugh for free and then leave again. (Oh, the parking was 50 cents an hour... I forgot).

This one just cracks me up. It looks like Sammy's running in a touchdown. This is what I have to look forward to very soon:

An unexplored climber you say? Let us scamper: (p.s. Did you know that Chris calls a play structure "a creative"? As in, 'let's go play on the creative!'. That's weird, right?)

So, there was free candy floss at this lovely event and Chris and I argued over whether to give the boys some. (I was all 'of couuuurse we should' and he was horrified and claimed child abuse.) Anyway, it was a moot point because my clever boys looked at me as if I was crazy and declared that it was clearly not food.
Charley managed this tentative lick. He was eating a cookie at the time, so it might have been a bit much. Sam just cried and turned his head when I offered the spun sugar to him. It went into the garbage looking just like this.

We did see some beautiful buildings on our walk around. Well, beautiful in my eyes. I love, love, love old advertisement paintings on the side of buildings and took many photos to remember them by.

That was about it. We did a drive-by of the Capital building:

And then headed home to Missoula.

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Of course, now it's Monday and it's taken me two days to get this posted. It's rainy today and Charley's due to be picked up at pre-school soon. Sam's sleeping away and I'm hovering by the door awaiting the sounds of waking-up. He's had a cold for a week, or so, and is catching up on the sleep lost in the night. I keep thinking "is it swine flu?" because the media has turned me into a flu-worrier. Last year I would have said "fever and snotty nose? Welcome to toddler-hood".

Now, to flu-vaccine or not? That's the next question.