Our Fun Mini Vacation

FRIDAY
Well, this last weekend was a lot of fun. We started off leaving Friday morning and met Randy's brother Steve and his family in Park City and we followed him to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons. We went to Jenny lake and ate a picnic lunch. It was really fun. Micah and I were laughing at Jacob because he was running around so happy to be out of the car and in the dirt. He ran a little too fast and tripped and fell onto his back and then when he got up again, he tripped and fell right on his face; covering it with dirt. It was hillarious.
After the picnic, we drove around the other side of the lake and decided to skip some rocks and then Jake went in the water and got wet. Soon everyone else was in the water having a good time. Tyler was pretty dry the whole time, and then when we decided to leave, he tripped and fell all the way in the water. nuts!
Then we went back to Jackson and checked into our condo, watched the gun show, went to dinner and then we went to the play "Cat Ballou" at the playhouse that Steve used to work at. It was fun, but the play started at 8:00 and since Jake goes to bed at 7:00 normally, it was kinda hard to deal with him during the production. We did have an interesting expirience though after the play. We got out of the play and it was pretty dark. We had taken the shuttle into town not thinking that we would probably miss the last run back to the condo. So we decided (not that we had much choice) to walk back to the condo from downtown Jackson. It was really dark and there weren't very many street lights by us. Tyler was running in the dark and tripped and fell right into a wall where he split his lip and cut his nose. He had blood dripping onto his shirt, but it was hard to tell how bad it was because it was so dark (that's why he looks beat up in the pictures; because he is). We walked for a really long time and I think we went a couple of blocks too far before we were supposed to turn, so it took us a lot longer than it should have. We made it home around 11:00pm and put the kids to bed. then we stayed up with Steve and Micah and played scrabble. Micah and Randy also had a very heated discussion about guns. It made me laugh. I can see both sides, but there is no way either of them could convince the other of their point of view. ah well. We still love both Randy and Micah.
SATURDAY
On Saturday, we got up pretty late because we stayed up so late on Friday night. We ate breakfast, got ready for the day, packed up and headed out for Yellowstone. We made it to Old Faithful around 2:15 pm. and it erupted right as we walked up to it. Talk about timing! It was really fun. We then walked down to see some geysers and had our first encounter with a Bison. I guess he is a regular at old Faithful and they call him Buffalo Bill. There was a park ranger there on a bike telling people when they were getting to close to him and it really freaked me out. (As you drive into the park, they give you a flyer saying stay away from the buffalo because people are being gored and cars are being rammed by them and a lot of people have been hurt.) I went back to the visitors center with Jacob and Connett because i was so very tired and was not up for the long walk around that part of the park. Connett came because he was sick (he had been throwing up the night before. at least I knew how he felt). Anyway, then we bought some chocolate ice cream and believe it or not that was a really big highlight of the trip for me. It was sooooo good. Then, we saw Old faithful erupt again and headed out for the next group of geysers to stop at. As we were driving to the next site, a Bison walked out into the road in front of our car. Randy slammed on the breaks and we just stared at the beast. He just looked at us with those freaky eyes and I thought for sure he was going to ram our car. Randy got up and took a picture from the sunroof of the car and the Bison walked right toward our car, turned and walked past the driver's side. We could have reached out and pet him. He was seriously inches away. He just suantered down the oncoming side of the road past our car and then past Steve's van. When we got to the next stop, Steve told us that the last time a car was rammed, it moved about five feet, so he had backed up to give us the space we needed. How nice of him. They got some really good pictures of the encounter, but I think Randy and I were too freaked out to take more than that one. After that, we made a few stops and it was really fun. then we said goodbye to Steve and micah when they needed to head east and we were going west. We had a lot of fun and Ty was sure sad to see his cousins go. Especially Gideon who became his best friend really fast.They held hands for a lot of the stops. It was so cute. Well, so Randy and I headed west and made a couple of more stops to see some sites. We started heading out of the park and it was gettin late like around 6:00pm. Randy wanted to just drive straight home, which would put us home at about 2:00am. I didn't think I could handle that, so I suggested we just find a hotel on the way home. Then we decided it would be fun to find a place to stay in West Yellowstone and then spend sunday in Yellowstone as well and see some things that we haven't been able to see before in our one day trips. So when we found a hotel for under $100 I was so excited I almost cried. We bought McDonald's for dinner and let the boys eat and play in the hotel room. I think I fell asleep around 9:00pm before both of the boys. I was so very tired. I always forget how tired you get when you are pregnant!
SUNDAY
We woke up Sunday morning and ate the continental breakfast at the hotel and then headed to Yellowstone once more. on the way in, we spotted five deer by the river. (the picture of the one mooning me) that was cool. Then we drove and saw some more geysers and whatnot. We saw so many neat things like waterfalls, animals and geysers that I can't remember the names of the places we went and saw. My favorite stop was the artists paradise which is the "grand canyon" of Yellowstone. It was gorgeous! We took a road up north and then came down in a loop to the south and left the park heading out the west enterence once agian. I didn't go on all the little hikes with Tyler and Randy because I was tired, but I sure saw a lot and was really happy with my expirience. Tyler was so sad to leave. He said he wants to live at Yellowstone even though it "stinks" sometimes. We had such a good time. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Our animal count:
6 Bison
10 1/2 Deer (we saw a mangled dead one by the road)
4 moose
countless birds and chipmunks and squirrels