Kaleb Kapers

This was our third year hosting my awesome nephew Kaleb in the summertime. He is extremely helpful in wrangling in our five guys. He always seems to be here for his birthday (poor kid) so he has to settle for a cake that I can actually make. Angelfood cake with strawberries? Check.

Kaleb can pull faces with the best of them. No wonder he is my boys' hero.

We spent a ton of time at Dickinson's new outdoor pool while he was here. I have pictures of all the boys enjoying the fun, but Kaleb was off on the water slides most of the time so I don't have any swimsuit footage of this cute 12-year-old. He'd probably be embarrassed anyway. As his Aunt, I am a pro at embarrassing him.

Someone is very proud of his swimsuit body.

David John took great glee in getting his brothers with splash guns.

Gabe took to wearing his life jacket and hanging out in the deep end. Oh yeah, he is big stuff.

Elijah is a water bug as long as he has his goggles.

Jami couldn't get enough of the kiddie water slides.

He also loves the great outdoors so we spent a whole day hiking in the badlands. We checked out some binoculars from the ranger's station and brought a picnic lunch. Every time we go to Teddy Roosevelt National Park I can't believe how beautiful it is and the wildlife is awesome.

Gotta love the view.

I love how the binocular strap is blowing in the wind. Kaleb couldn't get enough of them. There may have been a few scuffles over use of those binoculars. Next time, we may have to bring one for everybody.

Benjamin loved pretending to get stuck in cracks. Unfortunately, there were some middle-aged women hiking behind us. Every time we stopped to play, they would catch up and I would get "the look" when my children pulled stunts like this.

"Mom, can I roll down that hill?" Nope. Sorry kiddo. 

Gabe is getting ready to go "rock climbing".

I love this picture of Tobias, but the lady hikers informed me it was very irresponsible of me to be far enough away from him to take this picture.

Elijah likes balancing on the rock formations or following a seam.

I don't usually do selfies, but every once in a while I figure I should provide hard evidence that I exist, that I'm not some third-person omniscient narrator for my children's lives.

The boys were all interested in this field which had a tree, flowers, grasses and an assortment of cacti.

It was the middle of the day in summer, so we didn't see a lot of large wildlife during our hike. On our drive out however, we found the herd.

The buffalo calves were still pretty little and they were walking right past our windows.

This guy is taking a dust bath. It was super cool to watch!

I didn't get a good shot of the fight that occurred between two bulls because I was too frightened they were going to run straight into our car, but here is one of the guys skidding to a stop after running at his nemesis. The whole experience was pretty incredible.

As always, his visit ended far too soon for my boys so after we took Kaleb to the airport in Bismarck we hit the charming little Bismarck Zoo. Oddly enough, the animal my boys were most fascinated by during our trip was a little bird eating crumbs in the picnic and play area. Go figure. At their request I have at least ten pictures of the little sparrow and almost none of anything else in the zoo. At least I got a shot of four of my monkeys on the zoo train.

We enjoyed the train ride, but we had to wait a while before the train actually left the station. Tobias didn't even want to stick around for the photo. He jumped off the bench (notice the space in the middle) and took off running while I was trying to take the picture. I had to chase him down several times before the train finally started moving.