Our trip to Yellowstone!!

WARNING!!! PICTURE OVERLOAD!!!!

I have never been to Yellowstone and I have been wanting to take the kids. Well, some friends asked us if we wanted to go with them, so of course, we said yes! (Thanks Scott and Tiffany!)

It was so much fun! We saw so many neat things and the kids had a blast! We were going to get hotel rooms, but decided to take the camping trailers instead. It was a lot of driving and the kids were great! Avery especially. I was so worried that she wouldn't handle being in her carseat all day for 4 days in a row very well, but she was perfect! The first night we stayed in Jackson Hole.

Avery with her new hat that she got in Jackson.

Posing with BIG FOOT!

Gavin and Dad

While we were in Jackson, we went to see the Bar J Wranglers. I had never heard them before. They were very funny. It's not my favorite type of music, but they were definately entertaining! They also fed us a HUGE meal. It was fun. I'm sure we will be going back.
The daddies with their babies.
There is a little trail going around the building with some fun things to look at.
Going for a walk.

We Spent the night in Jackson, and went to breakfast in the morning. I tried some sourdough pancakes. kinda wierd tasting, but good. Then we were off to

YELLOWSTONE!!

I love this picture!


This waterfall was HUGE! We went to a different spot where you are standing right on the edge of the waterfall, looking down on it. It was amazing. And nerve-wracking! The first thing Gavin did when we got there was try to climb up onto the ledge. I couldn't take my eyes off that kid for a second. He had no fear. Here's one looking down on the waterfall. It doen't look so impressive in the picture. It's so big, you can't fit the whole thing in one picture.

Some pictures that Dallas took.
OOPS! Dallas cut off Avery!

Some-how, I didn't think to take our stroller. So luckily, while we were in Jackon, we were able to find a little one to use for our trip. I don't know what I would have done without it.

This is what Gavin spent his entire vacation doing: Pushing Avery. He thought it was his job and no-one else's. He is so cute with her. However, there were some places where I wasn't comfortable with him pushing her; going down steep hills, inside the gift shops, ect...

And this is what he looked like whenever he wasn't able to push her.

Waiting for Old Faithful to erupt!

Wow! mackenzie is already asking when we are going to go back to see it again
More pictures of the scenery.

Avery Chillin' in her stroller

Mackenzie wearing her new hat!
Gavin wearing his new hat

Saturday was our last day there. We had seen lots of animals, but nothing spectacular. Just the usual. Buffalo, moose, deer, elk, antelope, and we had seen 5 wolves in the distance. Dallas wanted to drive through Lamar Valley and it was getting to be dusk by the time we got there. We parked to look around for a few minutes and Dallas spotted a black bear and her cub up on the hill. They were pretty far away. You could only see them with binoculars. Gavin was upset because he couldn't see them, but I thought that was the best we were going to get. We decided to head back to camp. Dallas said he thought he had heard a wolf howling but I didn't think anything of it. We started driving down the road and ran into this:

He walked right toward us. Dallas got out to take pictures, and the wolf just kept coming closer and closer. You can see in the picture that he is standing right by the road. Dallas was standing in the middle of the road. He just stood there and kept snapping pictures! I think I would have peed my pants! We watched him for a while then decided to continue heading toward our campsite. We get a little further up the road, and we see this:
He was standing on the side of the road eating some grass. Gavin was so excited that he finally got to see a bear. We watched him for a while, then went on our way. A little further up the road we see this:
A baby big-horned sheep.
And some "Big" Big-horned sheep! It was crazy! To see all of them, so close together, and all of them right next to the road. I bet that doesn't happen too often!

We keep driving toward our campsite. It's starting to snow. We get to a sign that says "Road Closed", but there are people coming in the opposite direction so we don't know if someone pulled the sign as a joke, or if it's closed because of the snow or what. We had been on it not too long before, and it was open then. Our alternative, was taking a 2-hour detour. We all had hungry, tired kids, so we decided to go around the sign and continue on our way. The further we got, the heavier the snow was. It was June 6th and It was snowing! It wasn't too bad. We got through the worst of it. We were just a matter of a few miles to the end of the closure when we see flashing lights ahead. The forest service. Great! They make us turn around and go back the way we came and take a detour that took us 2 and a half hours to get back to our campsite. It was snowy and foggy the whole way. We didn't get back to our trailers till after 11:00. We had some very hungry and very tired kids! I know we were wrong to go on the closed road, but we were not the only ones. There were many other vehicles doing the same thing. I just don't see what the point was of making us turn around and go back. We had already driven through the worst of the snow, which was the reason for the road being closed in the first place. We were literally about 5 miles to the end of the closure, and they made us turn around and go back. I think they thought it was really funny. On the way back, it was darker, and snowier, and the roads were getting worse and worse.
Here's a map showing our little adventure. In-between the little blue dots is how far we had left to drive to get past the road closure when they turned us around. The green line is the detour we ended up having to take to get back to the campground. I thought it was pretty funny. It's a good thing I threw in an extra bottle for Avery at the last minute of I would have been in big trouble!Wearing our new hats and getting ready to go home! It was snowing for about the first 2 hours of our drive home. I'm glad that Dallas was driving and not me. He doesn't mind the snow at all but I hate it! It was a very fun trip! I think we will make it a yearly tradition!

CaTcHiNg Up!!

It's time to catch up. My computer crashed so I didn't have a computer for a while. Luckily, the nice people at Best Buy were able to extract all of my files from the old hard drive. But, they were all just put into a single folder so I have spent hours and hours going through them and putting them back where they belong. I also had to reinstall all of my software and everything. What a pain! We've only had the computer for about 16 months. I guess we should have bought the extended warranty. Not that it would have done us any good anyway, because we bought it at Circuit City, and they are no longer in business. Anyway, the point is, I've got my computer back and all my files are now back where they should be! Yay!

Mackenzie is done with kindergarten. Where has the year gone? It seems like she was just starting. We are looking forward to summer-If it ever stops raining. It's been raining all week. We are going to Yellowstone this weekend and I'm kinda bummed because it's supposed to rain all weekend too. Oh well. It will still be fun.

My baby is already 9 months old! I can't believe it! It has gone by so fast! She is so much fun. She is into EVERYTHING! More than Mackenie and Gavin ever were. She is very "Grabby".

Mackenzie and Gavin absolutely adore her. They are all so fun to watch.

I took this the other day and thought is was so funny. I love her chubby legs and tummy.

Dallas took Gavin fishing the other day. They were gone ALL DAY and Gavin was furious when Dallas told him that they had to come home. He is definately his father's child!

Mackenzie got a caterpillar from school. She was so excited. She got to see the whole process of changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
She was sad when I made her let it go.
Silly girl.

Girl Scouts Camp-out!!

For Girl Scouts, we had a mom and daughter camp-out. It was lots of fun. We did lots of fun crafts. We painted hot-dog sticks, made flower presses, and decorated little gardening aprons. The girls all got journals and pens. We played games, made s'mores, the girls all got little gardening tools, and some seeds to plant in their gardens. We went on a nature walk and had a scavenger hunt. It was fun to get some one on one time with Mackenzie. We don't get that very often. She is already looking forward to next year's camp-out.

Kenzie and Hannah painting their hot-dog sticksKenzie and I roasting marshmallowsKenzie kept burning themeating S'moreswriting in her journal

Holding hands with Lindsay. They are so cute.

Getting ready to go to bed on the top bunk! She thought that was pretty cool.

Kenzie and Hannah going to bed

Painting her flower press

on our nature walk

coloring her apron

She is so sweet!

The clan

trying to warm up in front of the fireplace.

My Sweet Baby!

2 weeks ago, I took Avery to the doctor. She had a runny nose for a couple weeks and her eyes had started draining also. She had a horrible sinus infection that had gone to her eyes and to her ears, so he put her on an antibiotic. Her eyes cleared up within a few days, but as of this morning, she has been off the antibiotic for 2 days and her nose was still yucky, and she was rubbing her ears all day yesterday. So I took her back to the doctor and Dr. Rose said she has a horrible double ear infection. He put her on a stronger antibiotic. Her nose has been running for over a month now so he wanted to check her for food allergies. He sent us to the hospital to get some blood drawn. It as awful!! Her arms are so chubby, you can't see the veins and her veins are so tiny, that they couldn't really feel them very well either. It took them almost 30 minutes to find a vein. I got so sick watching the nurse move the needle around in Avery's little arm, trying to get the vein that I had to lie down. Avery took it like a champ! She didn't cry at all. I couldn't believe it! They tried in one arm for about fifteen minutes, then they switched to the other arm and it took about 10 more minutes for them to get the blood drawn. It's pretty sad that she didn't shed a tear, and there I am lying on the floor, about to pass out. I think I would have been OK if I hadn't watched. The nurses couldn't believe it! As they were digging around in the first arm, she fell asleep! She said that she has never seen anything like it. Avery must have a very high pain tolerance. She is such a good baby. We won't get the test results for about a week. Hopefully, they will all be negative.

SpriNg FeVeR!!

I am so ready for warm weather! It was pretty nice the other day so I mowed the lawn, which I have been anxious to do. I also noticed that our lawn was looking pretty dry, the harsh wind that we have here sucks out all of the moisture, so I also decided that is was time to get the sprinkler system going. Well, maybe that wasn't such a wise choice. The sprinklers are set to go off at 4:00 am. This is what we woke up to this morning. Everything is frozen!!

The Sill Family

Dallas's mom has been saying forever that she wants to get a picture of the whole family. So Last weekend we went to their house and finally got the picture. The kids had fun playing together. We even got to see Kyson and that doesn't happen very often. It was a good day.