Last day of school and hanging out with Methodists

Reder's last day of Kindergarten was June 7.  To celebrate I figured we'd better take a picture of him in front of Chief Morning Star, much like we did the first day of school.  Oddly enough he was sad this day too, just like when we started school in the fall.  He was mopey and wouldn't talk much.  I think he was sad school was done!

I raced around while he was at school in the morning, finishing up some last-minute stuff before we went to Billings (see below).  Ruby, Jason, and I went back to his school for an all-school picnic.  After that he was dismissed so we hopped in the car and hit the road.

We were headed to Billings for the Yellowstone Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.  Our conference (which includes MT, ID, and WY) gets together once a year to discuss church issues, pass the budget, learn from each other, etc.  This year our church encouraged younger families to go and see what it's all about, so us and another family went.  Jason and I had meetings everyday, and the kids went to the childcare provided at the church down the street.  It was maybe a touch boring sitting in meetings and speakers all day, but it was great to learn about our church in a broader sense, meet new people, spend time with friends from our church, and get ideas on how to do stuff once we get back home.  We'd go back!

The kids were pretty excited to spend so much time with Kay, the Director of Christian Education at our church.  She's great.

One evening we went out to eat with everyone:

One afternoon we decided the kids could use a break from childcare so Jason took them to Pictograph Cave State Park just down the road while I went to some sessions on my own.

On Saturday was the Strawberry Festival in downtown Billings.  For lunch we had some food from there, as well as painted some pictures.  You might think this would be washable paint but whoever set up this booth is not a mother because it was not!

The conference was at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  It's some 24 stories tall.  Our room was on the 15th floor and pretty fancy.  The kids thought it was great!

The conference pretty much wrapped up Saturday night so after a quick dinner we packed up and headed home.  Fun weekend!