Homecoming in Missoula for the 4th year!

Since Dominic had his pre-op appointment in Missoula, we decided to make our yearly homecoming trek there to make an event out of it.  

Upon our arrival, Sophia said to me: "The great thing about Missoula, is that they speak English here!"  

While we were eating lunch, I realized that Dominic had a tooth!  It's his first one!  I love this picture of Greg and Dominic - enjoying watching downtown in the shade on their bench, singing a song that would become our theme song for this trip: "Dominic got a tooth, in Missoula!"  (Short, but sweet.)

After a delicious lunch, we walked over to the carousel and rode it several times.

When Dominic was napping, Sophia and I got some mommy-daughter time in the pool at our hotel.  She even got to practice with her new snorkel and flippers (gifted by Carol and Rich's grandson Avery)!  I think she is ready for snorkeling in Maui!!!

We were kind of upset at ourselves, because we've been to Missoula quite a few times now, and we didn't realize that we had been missing out on two great things at our hotel; 1) free Otis Spunkmeyer cookies in the lobby(!); and 2) FREE BEER at the Big Sky Brewing Brewery just across the street!  (We've been suckers all this time!)

After the free beer, we went to our favorite dinner place, Cafe Dolce where we enjoyed a luxurious 2.5 hour long, 4 course dinner -- with 2 kids!  We were pretty proud.

Then we went to "the castle" at Missoula for the pep rally and fire works!

The next day we enjoyed our bagel breakfast downtown and the Homecoming Parade,

followed by more carousel,

a visit to the Children's Museum, and (new to us!) the Insectarium!

Sophia is holding a blue Beetle here,

and here we are standing next to the tank of butterflies!  (They receive new chrysalides every Friday!)

We surprised Sophia with a cool t-shirt to commemorate the insectarium visit -- it's black and white until the colors come out in the sun!  We had her put on the shirt, but didn't tell her about the SURPRISE!    The look on her face was priceless.

We opted to save ourselves the pain of keeping the children from getting hot and sunburned at the football game (it was 80 and sunny), and instead stopped at the new Chipotle(!) before getting on the road home -- traffic free.

It was (yet another!) GREAT Missoula trip.