Wednesday mid afternoon we finally made it to Yellowstone, just in time to check into our hotel. We unloaded, rested for about 30 minutes and then hit the road into the Park. We headed straight for Old Faithful with a few unexpected stops along the way when we drove past something that looked cool - Bison, different geysers, etc. Jared and I were both so happily surprised when all the kids loved Yellowstone. No one complained, no one was bored - it was amazing and awesome! We were enjoying ourselves so much we didn't realize how much time had passed and then finally decided to leave the park and head back into town for dinner. We got stuck in some crazy traffic on the way out and the older 2 fell asleep and the younger 2 made a band and played and sang to the 80s songs we were playing in the car. Jared finally got service on his phone and placed an order for pizza and we picked it up around 9:30pm and headed back to our room to eat and go to bed. The next morning we got up, had the free breakfast in the hotel and they even had slices of bread, peanut butter cups, honey packets, etc that we packed enough food to feed us for lunch! Then we headed back to Yellowstone and got stuck in 2 hour traffic entering the park and getting to a decent turn off inside the park. We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, Grand Prismatic Spring and a few other random spots along the way. Tyson was our little map reader the whole trip and found where we needed to go and how we needed to get there - he took his job pretty seriously! We found the perfect little picnic spot on the side of the road with some benches and pulled out our free lunch from the hotel and our snacks and drinks in the car from the car trip and had a lovely little picnic! We decided it was probably time to start heading back to Ashley's house so we didn't get stuck in traffic leaving - everyone was fine with it but disappointed we hadn't see very many animals. Well that was about to change and we saw some elk, a black bear, more bison, etc. The boys were heaven and everyone's hopes for Yellowstone had come true. I am so happy I was able to take my family there and experience some of Americas greatest beauty. Plus they thought it was cool that in one day they had been to Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming! The next day was Friday and we dropped all the kids off at Lagoon to play together and Jared and I headed to Park City to shop around eat some lunch. Right as we were about to find a cute little place to eat, we get called that Tyson doesn't feel well and didn't want to be at Lagoon anymore and wanted to leave, but was upset he was ruining our date time. We headed back to Lagoon to pick him up and take him to lunch with us and assured him, he was totally fine and we weren't mad at all. After lunch we were going to make a quick trip to RC Wiley's furniture place and look at the sectional I wanted for our new house. Fast forward to 3-4 hours later and Jared and I left with a new mattress, sectional, ottoman, kitchen table and chairs and the twins whole new bedroom set - oops! Tyson was so good there and would hang out with us, play some of the arcade machines they had there and then confessed to running on top of all the mattresses so he could see what it was like in the movies - ha ha! We picked up the kids from Lagoon at dinner time and headed back to Ashley's house. Saturday was going to be our last day In Utah so we met Bryant's family at the lake and we paddleboarder, canoed and had lunch. The kids had the best time! Then that night we went with Ashley's family to a jumping place and hung out for an hour and a half (while the kids jumped, Ashley and I treated ourselves to some chair massages!) and then went and got ice cream tacos! (we had a ton of yummy desserts in Utah....ice cream tacos, Handel's ice-cream, a few trips to Hokulia shaved ice - oink, oink) The kids had the best time with all their cousins, playing basketball at Bryant's all the time, playing in the creek behind Ashley's etc. A very sweet memory of mine will be when we were walking back from the Temple to Bryant's and Theo had to hold someone's hand - he took Tyler's hand and they just talked to each other back and forth and Tyler took care of him. Hettie LOVES Emma!! I hope our kids always remember how much their younger cousins look up to them and love them and how much fun we had on this family vacation together making memories and bonding! So blessed to be able to spend 10 days on this trip together!
