Yellowstone Day #2, Thursday

We had decided to go in to the park again - there is just too much to see there.

 So. . . after the breakfast crew had eaten, we headed out.  Erin and team left by 7:15 and we were out by 7:45.  Not too shabby.

 We deemed her the epitome of fashion in Yellowstone Park.  The sweatshirt was a hand-me-down and was pretty much awesome and totally '90s.

 Two cute siblings walking the trail of the Artists' Paintpots.

 Two cute cousins.  We met up with them on their way down and our way up.  Fun!

 Lucy was determined to try and do everything by herself.  She loved walking down the steps.

 The gang, minus me.  This was a really cool stop.  I think it's a fairly new one seeing as Erin nor I had no recollection of it.  (Plus, the boardwalks were totally in better shape.)

 We had to get a picture of our very own Paint-splot by the Paintpots sign.

 Our next stop of the day was at the Norris area.  This was Geyser Basin, I think.  I can't remember the name of the loop-trail we took, but I think it started with a P.  It was a really cool site with lots of small geysers, hot-spots, etc.  The colors were also spectacular and were mainly due to the thermophile organisms that live there.  Jonas and Emmy were less-enthused about walking more, but they did okay.

Miles and I, with Lucy - who fell asleep, took a small trek out to the Steamboat Geyser.  Steamboat is the largest in the world, yet its' eruptions are sporadic and unpredictable.  We got there and it was going off - small spurts, yet very cool and still impressive.  It did a few more spurts every few minutes.  It was fun checking it out with Miles; he was pretty excited to have seen it erupt, even if just a little bit.

We next stopped at the Canyon Visitor Center.  We had the kids turn in their Junior Ranger activity sheets they had all worked on.  The Ranger was absolutely fantastic.  He took probably 10 minutes talking to the kids, going over their work, asking them questions, etc.  He focused solely on them and their stuff.  It was so perfect.  He then presented them each with their patches:

 Yay!  What adorable little Junior Rangers.

 We did our last hike of the day at Lower Falls.  It's insane.  You look right over that fence at a 308 foot waterfall.  It literally made me sick to my stomach and nerves.  Yes, it's impressive.  But in a terrifying way, too.

Yellowstone Canyon is truly beautiful.

We then drove through Hayden Valley which is known for bison-seeing.  We did see plenty of bison - not tons as in years past, but enough.  And they were pretty close, too, and so the kids were really excited about that.  Yellowstone Lake is huge and beautiful.

It was a long day - we got home around 6:30.  But everyone did okay.  Erin had prepared dinner and so that was nice.  Erin and Chuck went to West Yellowstone to the Playmill and had a fun time watching a play.  Ben went out with the boys on the tree-house and tried to look at the stars, but perhaps it wasn't dark enough?  He was out there from 9:15-9:45 with them (I was not out there with them because I had had enough of the little guys. . .).  Instead of stars, though, they did see lots of little bats.  Glad I wasn't out there!

Friday morning we packed our bags and cleaned up while the kids played outside.  There were lots of dirt-bombs and the such and so the kids were banned from coming back inside.  It worked out perfectly for them and us (potty-breaks apparently where taken from atop the tree-house, ahem).  We had a dandy of a drive back and only stopped for lunch - but not even getting out.  We made good time.  That evening our whole family went to the pool and had a great swimming time.

I hope we get back up to Yellowstone before another 6 years pass. . .

Macks Inn, Wednesday

We started early in the day working on our "Yellowstone Junior Ranger" packets.  Each of our kids, minus Lucy, had gotten one the day before.  There were a bunch of questions and activity pages that had to be done in order to earn a "Junior Ranger" patch.  I worked with Jonas inside the cabin and Miles and Ben worked in the cool tree-house.  Fun!

We had planned to stay closer to the cabin on Wednesday - so the kids wouldn't have to suffer long car-rides.  We had planned to do the Coffee Pot hike - which was super close (under 5 minutes) from the cabin.  Of course, from the previous day's experience, our kids weren't super excited about doing another hike.  But this one was going to be cool, I told them.  And it totally was.  But it also took a little longer than expected (hmmm, I'm noticing a pattern. . .) and, because I didn't think we'd be out for so long, we didn't bring any food with us.  So it was another really late lunch day.  But it was still a beautiful hike and worth it. . . to me, at least.  :)

 Lucy really wanted to hike by herself.  So she did get some down-time.  But she did greatly slow us down.  But she was just too cute that we couldn't stop her. . . yet.

 One of the coolest parts of the hike was finding a toad!  Miles spotted it and caught it.  Emmy was brave and held it (Jonas was being weird and wouldn't hold it - he wanted to, but just couldn't make his body actually do it!).

 Miles loved it and, of course, wanted to take it home for a pet.  And, as Uncle Chuck had predicted, it did pee on Miles as soon as he caught it.  Awesome.

 I told him to kiss it - he does love kissing fish, so I thought he should kiss this toad, too.  I love Jonas' face in this picture!  The toad didn't turn in to a princess, though.

 This was the cool end spot of the hike.  There were some "rapids" and just a fun spot to wade in a bit.

 There we are, with a fly-fisher behind us.  It's so pretty up there.

We got back and then Erin, Chuck, and Rhett headed out to float the river.  Ollie napped at the cabin and we tried to put Lucy down - but she had fallen asleep on the hike and so she wasn't going to nap again.  So Ben took all our kids down to the river again and they had a blast.  They caught a frog there and Jonas just played and played with it!  That was really exciting for him, and the rest, too.  I hung out with Ollie once he awoke and that was fun.  He's a cutie.  That nite Ben and I decided to go to West Yellowstone and do "something."  We're pretty great like that.  We walked around a bunch, went in some stores trying to find some little things to get the kids (we never found anything worthy of our money. . .except some fun pieces of candy), and went to get dessert.  We went to one place that Ben wanted to try - but the wait was pretty long.  So we tried another spot - and, though it didn't have quite what Ben wanted, it was definitely more quiet and quaint.  Ben got an apple pie ala mode and we both got huckleberry lemonade.  Delicious.  It was a fun evening.

Before we left we had gotten Emmy and Lucy to bed.  We let the boys watch a movie - since Erin and Chuck were going to watch a movie, too, we set up Ben's laptop and made a cozy spot for them to watch their show.  They had fun!

Yellowstone, Day 1, Tuesday

We had decided to go in to Yellowstone Park on Tuesday.  We planned to do a little hike (so we could be out of the car for a bit), a few stops, and then Old Faithful.

The hike.  It was pretty much "the worst hike" our family has done together.  I don't know what everyone's problems were, but it was pretty much a combination of a whole bunch of factors that equaled an ugly adventure.  Some factors included:  kids who didn't want to hike (ahem, okay, maybe that was a big red flag), a feverish Emmy, a totally hot and exposed trail, trail being at least 1-mile longer than expected, hike taking way longer than expected, etc.  But we all survived. . . barely.

 It started out promising:  we got a view of our first hot-spot in Yellowstone, smell and all.  It was pretty cool and fascinating for the kids.  We were all (almost all?) happy at this point.

 Lucy was a tropper and did good riding with her handsome dad.

 Yep, Emmy not looking too hot.  Poor gal.  I did feel bad for her.  But, yes, I did lose patience with her towards the very end because I had had enough frankly.  I do have a breaking point - sometimes it's long, other times, not so much so.

 Lucy fell asleep in a very unnatural position.  But she never complained.  :)

Jonas cooled his feet off on our way back.  He's almost cracking a smile now because he knows we are almost back to the car.

After the hike, and a super-late lunch eaten in our car, we drove to Old Faithful.

First things first. . .

 watching Old Faithful?  No way, getting ice cream!  We met up with my sister and her family (see Rhett in background) and grabbed some ice cream at the Old Faithful lodge.

 Yes, these faces are a little happier than those found on the hiking trail. . .

 Finally  we went to watch Old Faithful and finally it erupted.  I think it was almost 20 minutes later than "expected time."  But cool nonetheless.

 Here we are watching it - this was Rhett's second time that day, so perhaps he was less interested in Old Faithful and more interested in looking super cute in a picture?!

Miles.  That kid.  Yes, this is how he always looks after eating an ice cream cone.  Yes, messier than Lucy.  No, I don't know why.

It was already getting late (remember, longer than expected hike?) and so we decided to do just one stop on our way out.  We went to the fountain paint pots and Erin and fam joined us again - though, again, they had already done it.

 I love the cool mud pots - they are probably my most favorite feature of Yellowstone!  Here we are checking some out.  The kids really loved them, too.

 The boardwalk.

We really lucked out and a couple of geysers on the trail erupted while we were there - neither had erupted when Erin had been there earlier, so we were pretty lucky!  This geyser was cool as it shot out of a rock.  The kids were really excited about them!  We walked on further and got very sprayed from another geyser.  Some like it. . . others not so much.

Thank goodness for the fountain paint pots!  They helped end our Yellowstone adventure on a high note.

We then went to dinner at our family-traditional spot in West Yellowstone, The Gusher.  It was yummy and not too difficult considering we had 6 kids, 8 years of age and under.

Luckily, the horrible and very bad beginning of a day had a much better ending.

Macks Inn, Sunday and Monday

We went to sacrament meeting on Sunday in Midway and then drove to Macks Inn, Idaho - where my grandfather (who has passed on) has a cabin.  We haven't been in 6 years and so it was great to be back.  They (my grandfather's 4 sons, including my dad) had done a lot of "renovations" and such and so it was really nice to be there.  The drive went well - even with six kids (we took Rhett in our car).

 Lucy and Ben bonding on the swing outside.  Oh man I think they are so cute.

 Jonas and Emmy getting some swing-time in on the back porch.

 We took a short walk from the cabin down to the river.  They all had fun wading in the water and (ahem, Miles) playing with the mud/dirt/sand.

 No trip to Macks Inn would be complete without going to Big Springs.  It's a beautiful spot with enormous fish (though not as many as there once were).  There was an adorable muskrat there, too, that everyone loved.

 That Monday afternoon, after we put Lucy down for a nap, we took the older kids and went on a float down the river.  It's amazingly beautiful and we did have a really good time.  Well, Emmy enjoyed it at first, but then it was her turn to get sick (Miles had had some bad congestion; Jonas had about 2 days of feeling sick, including a fever; Rhett had woken up that morning not feeling good and running a fever; luckily the illness wasn't too bad and wasn't too long).  Luckily, we were able to dock our boat at that spot on the river by the cabin and Ben was able to run Emmy up to the cabin so she could nap/rest, and the rest of us continued on our journey.

Jonas loved, loved, loved rowing.  He probably rowed for at least 3/4 of the time.  We did have 3 oars and that was a good thing.  :)  Cute boy.

A good day and good start to our vacation.

Japan Day

 My parents sent these great outfits.  I adore them - I adore my kids in them!  I think we'll use them more for PJs, but they wore them the entire day.  In fact, Miles wants to wear his clothes for the 1st day of school.  Ben thinks they look too much like PJs, but we might let him wear his shirt with some "normal" shorts.  Funny kid.

 My beauties.

 We told them they had to make the peace sign in as many pictures as possible.  :)

 The whole gang of super cute Japanese-dressed kiddos.

 Ollie getting some lovin' by Lucy - not sure if he liked it or not.

We talked about the geography of Japan and showed them pictures.  We talked about the houses/apartments in Japan and how they are the same/different.  We learned the traditional Japanese odori dance (see above picture).

 We also made origami frogs.  The kids did so well with this!  It was fun.  We also practiced counting in Japanese and saying some familiar words in Japanese as well.  The kids totally responded great and were interested in all that we did.  It was really awesome.

 We ended the activities with a Japanese folk tale.  The kids were totally in to it.  Love these kids!

 Then it was time to open the goodie bags - one full of toys and one full of treats.  It was super exciting for them.  The moment they had been waiting for!

 A cool action figure.

 Lucy waiting no time in trying the weird treats.  She loved these marshmallow things - Rhett, on the other hand, hated it and made the greatest "this is the worst-tasting thing EVER face" and then spit it all in to his mother's hand.  Lovely.

 She's a beauty.

My parents had also given all the kids rice bowls and everyone (parents included) chopsticks.  These were all a hit, too.  Too bad the fried rice wasn't a hit with any of the kids (dang those peas!).  I, though, loved it and so did Erin and Chuck.  So there.

It was really a super fun day.

THANKS Mom and Dad!!!!  Errrr, Sister and Elder Galbraith.