Yellowstone

Watch out for this post, folks. I may have busted my "add anthother image" button forever, but I just had to share every second I could of our trip to Yellowstone. I'm not sure how I have this many pictures, since my camera batteries seemed to have developed a severe allergic reaction to my actual camera and kept popping out whenver I needed them most, but somehow I still managed to reach picture overload.

First up is our awesome cabin. It looks a bit dubious from the outside, but it was the complete opposite on the inside. It was beautiful, clean and fit us all perfectly!

We had a little bit of time after checking out the place before dark, so we hopped into our cards and checked out some lovely falls. I am clearly not a master photographer, but trust me, they were breathtaking.

First stop the next day was Old Faithful, of course. Fortunately we didn't have to wait too long, but I did mange to get some shots of our good-lookin group to fend off the boredome.

Grandpa and all his grandsons. Too great.

The Brielle with her beautiful cousins.

Then we took a jaunt to fishing bridge, where we did some shopping and got to hear the story of how Grandpa got chased by a bear while fishing there. The kids were in heaven. So was Grandpa.

Of course, no day at Yellowstone is complete without at least one tour of hot pots. Brielle kept finding ingenious ways to not have to actually walk the trail...

The buffalo, however walked right across the path just before us! I've never seen them actually hanging out at the hot pots, but they were snuggling up with them like they were hoping for a facial or something.

Day two was all about some guy time (fishing, where no fish were caught--so I guess it's ok that the camera wasn't there) and some girl time (shopping and eating, of course)

We had to get a picture of our girls with the giant stuffed bear, just in case it's the only one we saw all trip.

And we coudn't get through the day without admiring all of Hayley's handiwork-matching hairdos for all the girls (minus little Lucy, who's just not quite there yet)

When the guys finally gave up on fishing, we met up with them and visited the bear and wolf center, to make sure the kids could all scratch those animals off their lists.

And later we were completely surprised when Island Park put on about the best fireworks show we had ever seen. We were lucky enough to be able to watch from our cabin and it went on forever!

The kids would probably say that the best part of their trip was all the surprises from Grandma. I loved this shot of the boys using their brand new binoculars. We had to look at everything through the binoculars for the whole rest of the trip!

Our last day in the park was full of surpises, including a very up close look at this black bear! Our very first ever in-the-park-bear. Hooray!

We saw tons more hot pots.

And some more elk at Mammoth hot springs. Although, let's face it, the obligatory ice cream was way more fun than those elk! The best part for me was being able to spend so much time with my whole family together.