The Start of our Yellowstone Vacation

Wow! I have so much to catch up on. This will have to stretch out over several posts. Let's start back two weeks ago. Scott and I got home from two glorious days in Jackson Hole on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning my parents kindly took our three older kids back to Aberdeen with them for some big kid time at Grandma's house. All three kids loved it there and didn't even get homesick. My parents have baby kittens that the kids got very attatched to while they were there. Savannah fell in love with the runt of the litter and we felt like really mean parents when we crushed her hopes of getting to bring it home with her.

While we were down to just our two little boys, Scott and I took on the project of making a bed. The time is soon coming when Nate will have to give up his crib to his new little baby brother, so he is in need of a new big boy bed. It turned out to be a lot more work than we anticipated, but I love the way the bed turned out. I'll post pictures, but first I've got a little more work to do on it (filling screw holes).

The kids left for Aberdeen on Wednesday, and the rest of us headed to Aberdeen on Saturday for our big summer family vacation. We were very happy to see Savannah, Josh, and Sara again. Nate and Aaron really missed them while they were gone. Saturday evening we all went out to dinner at the local mexican restaurant (there aren't many choices of places to eat in tiny Aberdeen). Then Grandpa took us across the street to explore the fire station. That is one of the kids' favorite things to do in Aberdeen--go to Grandpa's fire station.

Sunday morning we loaded up everyone and we drove to West Yellowstone. We brought my parents along with us to help out with the kids, but they drove their own car. We got to West Yellowstone and got settled into our cozy cabin. It was small, but had all the essentials (kitchen, bathroom, laundry, beds). The kids loved that it had two lofts. Savannah took one loft as her bedroom (and loved having her own room for a few days), and Josh and Aaron took the other loft as their bedroom. They all spent most of their time in the cabin going up and down those two ladders.






After getting settled, we left Grandma and Grandpa at the cabin for a nap and we took the 5 kids on a walk. We walked a few blocks down to the IMAX theater and watched the "Yellowstone" movie to give the kids a sneak peak at what they would be seeing in the next few days. After the movie, we got soft serve ice cream cones, then walked back to the cabin. By then it was bedtime. The kids had a hard time settling down to sleep in a new place, and their excitement of being on vacation didn't help much. But, they finally all went to sleep. We'll save day two for another post. I've got tons of pictures to post. It will probably bore most of you, but since this blog functions as our family journal, I have to document well our family vacation for our sake.