Epic Idaho Adventure- Take 2

Monday in Idaho was our Yellowstone day.

We loved going to Yellowstone while we lived in Idaho.  We bought a year pass more than once during that time, so of course we wanted to spend a day there.  We enjoy spotting wildlife, playing the license plate game (I think we got almost 40 this time!) and just spending some quality time together (how can you not when you spend most of the day in the car with each other!)

Just a word of warning this post contains a boatload of photos! Sorry in advance. :)

So here we go:
First animals spotted were these elk grazing in a meadow.

We headed north towards Mammoth and Tower/Roosevelt once we got into the park, instead of south towards Old Faithful. You're more likely to see bears if you go this way and that is always Kris' main objective when going to Yellowstone.

We took the Artists Paintpots hike. It's interesting to see how much it has changed over the years, it's much more dried up and crusty now, but still bubbling.

There are some gorgeous views from this hike.

We stopped and ate lunch at Sheepeater Cliff. This place is a little boy's dream, all the climbing and exploring your little heart can handle.

Matthew was the first to climb to the top. He made a little friend up there. We've seen rock chucks every time we've come to Sheepeater Cliff.

We saw deer lounging in the middle of the town at Mammoth.

Kris was excited to spot this deer.

We've been to Yellowstone and seen herds of literally hundreds of buffalo, this time we only saw one or two all by their lonesome.

After Mammoth we headed north to the Gardiner entrance because this is where you can spot the mountain goats, but all we saw was this skeleton. We surmised perhaps one of them fell from the sheer, rocky cliffs to his untimely death. 

Then we headed to Tower, but instead of taking the normal hikes there, a small one caught our eye off the side of the road. It turned out to be one of our best finds, it offered some of the most amazing views of the waterfalls and the river and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

I'm not sure why Owen's face looks so funny in the picture above but the view was beautiful!

Oh! My! Gosh! I just love, love, love the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, it's my favorite part of the park. It's where you see how the park got it's name.

And...we got super lucky on this little gem of a hike because we got to see a mountain goat and her baby. The first pic is the mom and the second one is the baby. These are my personal favorite animals to see in Yellowstone and this is only the second time we've seen them so I was pretty dang excited!

It's so incredible to watch them navigating these mountains, they are so stinkin' steep and rocky and they just hop around like it's nothing.

It's always nice when some kind soul stops and asks if we'd like them to take a picture of all of us together.

At the end of our day the kids were making friends with these little buggars or should I say beggars? I think these little guys are a little too used to the public. I think one of my kids could have picked one up if I'd let them, it kinda grossed me out. Like rats in New York City or something, although not quite that bad...

Leelee was cracking me up in the bathroom, she thought it was hilarious to see herself in the dryer.

We had a gorgeous almost full moon following us on our way home.

Unfortunately, Kris did not get to see a bear. We had a close call on that one. If we had only taken one of the little side drives we would've seen one. We could see all the cars stopped on the road after we decided not to do it, so Kris pulled over but we couldn't see anything from where we were. A little ways down the road we asked someone what everyone was looking at and they said there was a bear up there. Kris was pretty bummed, so close yet so far...

It was a pretty great day at the park though, in addition to all these animals we also saw a fox and a bald eagle. Not too bad, if you ask me. Just don't ask Kris... :)

It's Been a Busy Month...

It all began on July 17th when we fed the fish at Warm River

trying to take advantage of some of

our favorite scenery in Idaho

luckily the fish were happy to see us

and we're gonna miss them and the
beautiful drive through Ashton...

The next day we celebrated my (ahem) 33rd birthday(it's ok, I'm not sensitive about my age but sometimes I think, wow, it's kind of weird how old I am!)

and also my wonderful sis, Michelle's birthday (she's lucky- she's only 23!)

we miss these guys! (a whole bunch!)

On July 19th we took one last trip to Yellowstone for awhile (sniff, sniff)

and had a perfect day
we visited my favorite part- the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

and did something we'd never done before-
swam in the freezing river by the hot (really, really hot)
springs and created our very own hot tub!

and had so, so, so, so much fun!







(here's the part where we moved back to Arizona and it was so stressful and crazy and total mayhem for about a week that we just want to forget most of the things that happened (like cutting my toe and having to get stitches or leaving a day and a half later than we planned on) and I didn't take any pictures the whole time and we're just glad it's over so we can forget the whole thing except for the part where we had so much wonderful help from all our lovely ward members and friends (but I'm kind of still embarrassed they had to see our home in such a state.) We were only in that ward for 10 months but it is going to be hard to beat!)






Moving on to AZ...




The kids built a Lincoln Log town (they took about a hundred pictures and it's pretty funny to see them from their vantage point, like looking out the windows from inside the buildings, etc. But we don't have time for all of them here...)

chilled (as much as we can in this heat) with Grannie and Otter Pops

Rex' went to his first day of preschool

(his shirt was all wet cuz he got toothpaste on it:)

Gracie celebrated her 9th birthday

(seriously, is she only 9?!?!?)

(Krispy Kreme's was a huge splurge and that won't be

happening again anytime soon, but it was seriously so good!)

She received all things girly,

which included tons of earrings that she has been coordinating

with her outfits and wearing to school every day.

(Those flowers are for her hair, not her ears.)

played at the splash park to have a little fun before the first day of school

(All five of them are in this picture, can you spot them? It was the best I could do.)
had their first day of school

(Thankfully all went well.)
and played in the sprinklers!

Whew! Now, I bet you'll agree we've had one crazy busy month and this wasn't even all of it. We also had a visit from my sister Tara and her family, cousin sleepovers, too much school shopping, family dinners, played in the wonders of the irrigation, AND Kris went to Rexburg and back to retrieve the rest of our belongings that wouldn't fit in the giant moving truck in the first place! I'm exhausted just thinking about all of it. Hopefully now things can calm down a bit around here and I can get back to blogging!