September 2009

Well, here it is again; another month has passed and it's time to post the things that didn't get posted.

While still in Billings:

We did our best to make a few last trips to the parks near the house when we had some spare time. Here's Nell pushing Izzie on the swing at the park near our house.


Here's my beautiful girls on our walk home from the park.



Some time in late June I received a random email from someone I didn't know. She said that she was with something called the Aha Moment Tour and that she had found my blog on the internet. She kindly extended an invitation for me to come do an interview with them to create my Aha Moment video in September when the tour came through Billings. As much as I didn't want to make a fool of myself, I reluctantly conceded to Lynnell's urgings to go do the interview in September. Here's a couple of pictures of me filing out my paper work.



I did the interview, and soon enough my agony was over. Fortunately I only had to do it once. Here's a photo of my snapper-thing just for the fun of it.


And for those of you who want to see the video, here it is.

Just before we moved to Helena Lynnell had one last visit to her doctor in Billings. Here's Izzie hanging out and waiting for mommy to finish with her appointment.


That appointment was the day we loaded the Uhaul and the day before we moved, and you've already seen that post, so we'll skip over that and go straight to our new adventures in Helena.

Welcome to Helena!

I was really bad about taking pictures the first week we were in Helena. All you need to know is that we were busy unpacking and settling into our new house. It was a lot of work, and I was so glad that it was over. I got my office setup in the basement, and started working the Tuesday after we moved in my new home office. The weekend after we moved in Grandma Shirley came over to visit from Idaho. She was lucky visitor #1 at our new house. Here she is with Izzie painting toenails.



Here's a good picture of Lynnell and her mom in the kitchen of our new house while Lynnell shows of the awesomeness of her pregnant stomach.


I found myself taking more naps than usual during those two weeks after moving. Lynnell snuck this picture while Izzie and I took an afternoon nap on the couch together.


To finish off the month of September we ventured out to explore our neighborhood and found the park just two blocks from the house.


The great part of living in a new city is discovering the new parks with the Iz and watching her play on all the new stuff that makes up a park.



And that was it. September was a busy month. Selling a house, packing, moving, unpacking, buying a new house and then settling in can take it out of you. Of course it was even more taxing on Lynnell because being nearly nine months pregnant and having to deal with all of that is definitely worse. She's a trooper though, and we made it.

The Cotes Move to Helena

Some time in early 2008 we learned of a new church that was going to be started in Helena by our then current church, Harvest, in Billings. After much consideration we decided that moving to Helena to help with the church plant is what we should be doing. So sometime around July I informed my company that we were making plans to move to Helena in the summer of 2009, and I was fortunate enough that they were willing to let me work from home after we moved. Fast forward one year, and we finally got our house in Billings put on the real estate market (this is the reason we were rushing to finish the basement). Two weeks later it was sold, and two weeks after that we found a house in Helena that we really like. After much negotiations on the house in Helena we finally landed a deal, and a few weeks later it was time to pack up our house, load it into a Uhaul and set off for Helena.

Lucky for us we haven't amassed a ridiculous amount of stuff having lived in Billings for four years, so packing went smoothly. Here we are hanging in our bare kitchen with some friends that came over to help us load the Uhaul.


The kids playing on the Uhaul ramp while we drank beer and ate pizza.



Here's our empty house with our sleeping provisions for the night.


Poor Iz. We packed all of her stuff except her monkey. Then she managed to find a small basket somewhere in the cleaning supplies that she converted to a car or something. I'm not really sure where her mind goes sometimes, but she's creative for sure.


We slept on the floor for our last night. The next morning (September 18, 2009)we got up first thing in the morning and drove to the title company in Billings to sign papers for selling the house. After we signed the papers we drove back to the house where I climbed into the Uhaul and embarked on the voyage from Billings to Helena. Before we left I snapped a few pictures of the house. Here's a couple.



And with that our adventures in Billings, Montana ended. We lived there just over four years, made a ton of great friends and had a lot of fun along the way. We'll miss our friends in Billings, but I don't think we'll miss Billings. We never really fell in love with it, but that's only because it wasn't anything like North Idaho.

Good bye Billings. Hello Helena.

Grannie Visits Us for a Few Days

Grannie Ali came to visit us in Billings one last time during the second week of September. I stayed home on Tuesday so that we could go find ourselves an adventure. Here's what we did.

We all slept in for as long as we couldn't, but that doesn't mean much. I think we were all up and about by 8am. Here's Izzie and Grannie sitting on the back porch enjoying some coffee.


Soon we were getting ready for the day. We had plans to take Grannie to the Painted Caves park and Pompey's Pillar. We made it out of the house and headed to the Painted Caves first. This also happens to be the second week that we had our new GPS unit, and by this time we were geocaching novices. So, we brought the GPS along so that we could find some caches at our destinations. Here's Grannie and Izzie posing for a picture before we hiked up to the caves.


We found a mouse in a pipe while looking for our first cache. Turns out the cache we were looking for was under the big sign in the middle behind Grannie and Izzie in the first picture. Izzie refused to come close enough to the pipe to look down into it to see the mouse. I'm not sure why she's afraid of things like this, but she is.


I don't know why, but we posed for a lot of pictures, so to prove it here's another one.


Here's the girls looking at the paintings in the first cave.


Here's a cute shot of Izzie wandering around patiently.


Here's Izzie and Grannie checking them out. I like this picture because it shows how Izzie always imitates what other people do. Grannie squatted down to be at Izzie's height while they were talking, but because Grannie squatted down Izzie squatted down. It's funny.


Here's the four of us posing for a picture in front of a painted cave.


Here's Izzie being as cute as can be.



Since the last time that we went to the Painted Caves they've added a visitor center, so we had to check that out while we were there. Here's Nell and Izzie checking out the interactive stuff.


After the visitor center we headed for Pompey's Pillar, and once we got there we promptly climbed to the top. Here's Grannie and Izzie posing for another shot at the top of the pillar.


And here's my beautiful wife showing off her squinty face for the sun.


After our pictures at the top we hunted for the geocache at the top, but couldn't find it. As we headed down we stopped by Clark's signature that he carved into the rock so that Grannie could check it out. After all, that's what makes Pompey's Pillar so cool to see. Then we went for a walk around the park to look for some more caches and to see the sights. Here we are throwing rocks into the Yellowstone River for a few minutes.


While searching for a geocache in the Pompey's Pillar area we happened to find some molting cicada bugs. I've never seen this process happen, and I found it quite amazing. Here's a couple of during and one after shot of the process.




Here's Izzie and Grannie looking at one that they picked up with a stick.


As we headed back to the visitor center we paused for a break in the shade just outside. Izzie found something to jump off of, and I managed to catch the action. Check out the concentration face. Either that or she's determined in her mind that she can fly.


And another just for the fun of it.


Remember this photo from our original visit to Pompey's Pillar? Well, we took another one with Grannie this time for the fun of it.


And that was the end of our daily adventure. We hung out, relaxed and went to the park with Grannie for the remainder of her stay, and just generally had fun.

Thanks for visiting us Grannie! We love you.

August 2009 Wrap Up

Well, August passed a while ago, but we've been pretty busy. Now that I've finally gotten around to it I'll catch you up on August.

Nell's doctors visits started going to every week since we're getting close to the due date. Here's Izzie hanging out with Mommy before the doctor got there.


Lynnell and I's anniversary was August 26th, and since I'm such a thoughtful guy I figured it was due time that we upgraded our camera. I bought us nice new Canon SD970. The pictures are much better, and it takes HD video. Pretty soon I'll figure out a convenient way to use the HD video on the blog, but for now you can enjoy the beautiful pictures with our new camera from here on out. Happy Anniversary Nell!


Here's a random dinner picture since we haven't had one in a while.


After dinner I loaded Izzie up in the bike trailer and we peddled to North Park in Billings for some fun and to try out the new camera.





After about an hour and a half of fun at the park we loaded back up and called it a day.


Here's Nell and Izzie playing on the couch one day. Izzie learned how to flip backwards with someone holding her hands, and it's lots of fun.


Here's Izzie one evening as we walked to a park near the house to enjoy it for one last time. We kind of made a point to hit all of our favorite parks in Billings one last time, but didn't quite make it to all of them.


Izzie's gotten much braver lately at the parks, and she's started venturing onto the more difficult obstacles at the parks. She does quite well. The only ones that she has trouble with are the ones that she can't quite span with her arms and legs comfortably. That's where dad and mom come in to save the day. Not bad for only being two though.


Here's Izzie sporting my hard hat one Sunday afternoon as I prepared for a trip to Harlingen, Texas and some fun in the sun on South Padre Island.


Here's Izzie and I showing our green tongues after we had an apple Air Head.


Here's a quick picture of Lynnell and Izzie ordering coffee at the farmers market in Billings one fine Saturday morning.


Way back in a post from April 2008 I posted a picture of Izzie with our friends' dog. We saw them at the farmers market that morning and they had Sammie with them, so we stopped for a quick picture for old times sake.


Izzie's taken quite a liking to "baby brother" as she calls him. Here she is talking to him and kissing him. It's pretty dang cute, and I can't wait to see how she responds once the little guy is here.


One day Izzie picked up a sliver playing, so after a bath I tried to dig it out for her. She couldn't stand the knowledge and anticipation of the supposed pain that may have been a result of pulling the sliver out, so after some crying and zero tries at removing the sliver we just quit. Here she is during the "it's ok" discussion and then proudly showing her sliver still in the side of her thumb.



The last weekend in August we made another trip to Helena. Here we are on that last Saturday in August playing on what is possibly the most epic park I've ever been to. It's huge, and the labyrinth of castles, forts and other climbable structures is pretty awesome.


Then Sunday afternoon we were at some friends' house in Helena, and Izzie wore herself out on their playground.


And that wraps up the random stuff that happened in August. We had a lot of fun enjoying another month of summer in Billings.