Summer Vacation (part 1...of many)

We left for Utah on July 17th.  We met my parents in Yellowstone for a weekend of fun.  Ben brought the boys (Lisa had to work, poor thing) and my parents had Heather's girls with them.  We had a great time.  The kids were awesome in the car.  We spent the first night in Bismarck, North Dakota.  The second day felt like a ton of driving, but we eventually made it to Yellowstone and saw some amazing  things along the way.

Painted Canyon in North Dakota

At a rest area on the Montana/North Dakota border.

Huge piece of petrified wood at the rest area.

We came into Yellowstone through Bear Tooth Pass.  It was quite the drive....

We came up that road you can see, the elevation change was amazing.

walking along the path.

Anyone care for a nice refreshing swim?  

We saw a black bear on our way into the park.

And then we saw another one.  

And a moose too!  In fact we saw more different kinds of animals on this trip to the park than any other before.  

Firehole Road Drive

Best of friends...immediately!  It was so cute to watch how fast the cousins picked up where they left off.  It made me wish (again) that we lived closer.  

Paint pots. 

BFFs forever.

Bison out in the geysers. 

I thought Myles might be bored at Yellowstone, but he loved it.  He loved seeing all of the water and was super content to ride around in the stroller.  

Waiting for old faithful to go off.

Finally!!

All the kids at old faithful 

Playing in fire hole river.

The kids made that circle of rocks out in the middle of the river.

Even Myles got in on the fun.

And I put my feet in too!

On the morning of the second day, at our first stop I had these two adorable boys with me.... As I got them out of the car I told them they needed to hold hands, which they did.  

All the way down the trail.  How cute are they?!

We saw this big guy along the road.

Well Myles didn't he was sleeping!

We took this hike by accident.  We wanted to see the falls so we started walking, when we got there we realized we could have driven up from the other parking lot to the one that was much closer.  Oh well we had a good time on the hike.

After seeing the falls from the viewing area, these 5 convinced Grandpa to take them on another hike down to a closer spot to see the falls.  The rest of us waited for Jake and Ben to walk down and get the cars instead of all of us walking back to them. It was a long hike and a little hard but they said it was a good one too.  

Then we went to Mammoth and saw these elk and went to the arch for some pictures.

Man we had bad timing the sun was in everyone's eyes but we tried.

On our way back to out hotel we saw two HUGE elk

The next day was our last and we only spent a few hours in the park.  The first thing we did was finish up the junior ranger program and the kids earned their patches. We also spilt from the others and came home through the Tetons.

Here they are taking "the junior ranger oath"

With their patches.

West Thumb

Ashton photo bombed me!

We had a great start to our vacation in Yellowstone.  

More things we have been up to...

We went to the Minnesota Zoo with the Reid's (same friends we climbed the bluff with) and saw all the big bugs again.  Lexie was at girls camp so she missed out on the fun.

Ashton, Scott, Andrew (in the back) Abbie, Bella, and Nathan sitting on the ladybug and Monica standing on the leg.  Myles was by me I don't know why we didn't put him in the picture. 

Abbie and Bella

We also went to Jake's National Guard Family Day.  It was our last one.  Jake will have been in the guard for 20 years this month and can retire (are we really old enough for that?) The kids had fun playing on the blow up slide thing that they had there.    

Myles liked the duck game. (it was water can you blame him?) 

Playing in the rain

We have had more than our fair share of rain this summer.  From what I hear a record amount for the month of June.  The Mississippi had been flooded, which postponed the city fireworks show because were they launch the fireworks from was under water.

Here are a couple of pictures of the flooded river, it got even higher than this.

Anyway it started raining the other night and we had gone out on our front porch to watch it and they kids couldn't resist getting wet.  They had a lot of fun playing in the rain and then the gutter.

We were all drenched but happy when it was time to come in.  

Summer Fun

We've been busy having fun this summer.  We have been to the park quite a few times.

One day we pretended to be tourists downtown  and went in all the gift shops and stores downtown.  It was lots of fun, we got a doughnut from Hanish's bakery and ice cream from Halstrom's.  I didn't think to take the camera so I don't have any pictures of our fun day.  Darn,

We've done some fun stuff at home too.  The kids made a volcano.

Myles wanted to get up and help to so he found his our chair pushed it over and climbed up.

So proud of himself!

We also have driven up to Stillwater and eaten at one of our favorite restaurants up there.  We walked around and also got ice cream but once again we didn't take any pictures.  

We have also climbed Barns Bluff twice.  Once with a friend and once with our whole family.  

The view is amazing!

And the kids had a fun time together.

From this view you could see the city.

So far it has been a fun and busy summer so far.  We still have a lot of fun planned for the rest of the summer including a LONG trip to Utah in a few days.