Yellowstone Day 1

This past winter, Shauna called me up and talked me into signing up for the Yellowstone Half Marathon.  She needed to form a team of 6 people to be able to register, so she begged me to join.  She assured me that I could back out and get a full refund of my race fee if I changed my mind.  I just had to cancel by March.  I signed up, never thinking I would actually do it.

The night before the deadline to cancel and get a full refund, I told Scott that I wasn't going to do the race.  He told me he thought I should do it.  I told him I didn't have time with 7 kids to train.  He told me he'd help me make the time.  So, the deadline to get a refund passed, and I was locked into running the race.  I can't say that I did a great job at training.  I really don't have the time to devote to running that I should.  But, I built up the distance (even if my pace was painfully slow).  I did 15 miles with Shauna in McCall, then I did the Boise Half Marathon in May.  So when the Yellowstone Half came around in June, my legs had already seen a few miles.

We decided to make a family vacation out of it, and rented a cabin about 15 miles away from West Yellowstone.  Our vacation was the week right after Aaron's baptism, so Savannah and Sara went home with my parents after the baptism, and spent 4 days in Aberdeen.  Josh and Aaron went to scout camp on Thursday, and we left that evening for Aberdeen.  We spent the night at Grandma's house (which is almost as fun as going on vacation).

On the way to Aberdeen, we stopped at McDonald's for dinner, and let the kids play for a bit. 

Grandma had offered to let Kate stay with them while we went to Yellowstone.  At first, I said no, because I didn't want to take a family vacation without our whole family.  The thought of taking pictures of our family exploring Yellowstone, without Kate in the pictures, made me sad.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that leaving Kate with my parents, would be the best for her and for us.  On vacation, she wouldn't get regular naps, just little cat naps in the car from stop to stop.  She wouldn't appreciate the scenery.  And if we didn't have her with us, we could see and do more exploring (no stroller).  So we left our little Kate behind at Grandma's house. 

The next morning we loaded up and went to Yellowstone.  We stopped at our cabin and unloaded everything and got settled.

Then we drove into West Yellowstone for my packet pickup.  We met up with Shauna and her family, and got all my racing stuff for the morning.  We were going to walk around West Yellowstone, but it was freezing cold and the wind was blowing like crazy.  The weather report was predicting snow the next morning during our race, and I started to worry about what I'd gotten myself into.  We got some ice cream, then decided to go back to the cabin. We drove back to the cabin and just hung out for a couple hours, then went back to West Yellowstone.

We took the whole family to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Playmill Theater.  All of the kids loved it (expect for Owen, who wanted to go home and go to bed about half an hour into the play).  Aaron especially loved it.  At one point, I looked down the row to see him standing in his seat dancing along to the music.

We got back to the cabin late, and as I went to bed that night, I fell asleep hoping that I wouldn't wake to snow in the morning.