Yellowstone National Park

We were in Idaho on my birthday and I realized there was something I wanted to do that I hadn't for a long time - go to Yellowstone!  I grew up 2 hours from Yellowstone National Park, and my mom made sure we went there OFTEN.  We were there every Memorial Day, every Labor Day, and a lot of days in between.  It was fun, but we live sort of far from there now, so we haven't been in years, and neither of our girls had ever been.  We decided to take a VERY last minute trip up there.  We left at 1pm.  I know, we're crazy, but we had so much fun!  We ate bambinos on the way there, and saw 5 moose (including twin calves) on the way in!  Hooray!  Mady declared the moose "beautiful" and was very excited to go in.  We stopped at the Firehole River to dip our feet in.  Sydney was terrified she was going to fall in, so I held her tight.

 She ended up being fine.  It was Mady that fell in!  Oh my gosh, it was hilarious.  The water had been very high previously, so there were holes all over where the buffalo had come down to drink.  Mady (not the most graceful child anyway - you can tell she's mine) was running toward me and went straight down in one!  She sank up to one hip before Nana yanked her out and set her on solid ground.  She started cry/whining and said, "I fell in the muddy!"  She took ONE STEP toward me and fell in another hole! (like I said, not the most graceful!)  When rescued again by Nana she informed me, "I fall in the muddy again!"  Oh silly little girl.  We dipped her in the river and she cleaned off!  Good as new!

 Here we all are!  (Aaron had to work, so my mom took us up! - Thanks Mom!)

 Here's Sydney by one of the beautiful pools up there.  When we pulled into the parking lot for this place, Sydney excitedly announced, "This place is wonderful, and AMAZING!  I LOVE this place!"  I loved sharing a place with them that I had grown up with.

 In my family we generally like the northern loop of the park better (more animals and less tourists), but it's longer, and we didn't really have a lot of time.  So we did the tourist thing and went to watch Old Faithful.  The kids were not overly impressed by this.

On our way out of the park we saw a grizzly bear!  I love seeing wildlife that is still wild and it was fun to see it.  Sydney wanted someone to make it hold still so she could see it, and I had a hard time explaining that this wasn't like the zoo where they all had houses and keepers.  We were in their house and we had to be careful.  She didn't get it, but we had oodles of fun!  We'll definitely be taking them back there!