Jelli Melins & Yellowstone

We found a HEIDI COKE & brought it home for Heidi.

 SUNDAY 7.12

Sunday evening dinner at Grandma's with our California cousins.They just arrived on 7/11. This is Cousin Matthew and James. They are exactly 4 weeks apart.

Never get tired of this view at the ranch.

 MONDAY 7.13

Me and my posse heading to Old Faithful on Monday morning.

Addie was so excited to go meet up with her LDS Instagram friend, Shelbie from Arizona. Shelbie's extended family was on vacation in Yellowstone.

The drive was beautiful and the high for the day was 76 degrees.
(you can see my driving reflection I the window in this picture)

Shelbie, Addie and Heidi meeting up at Old Faithful

Shelbie and Addie

Our family just after Old Faithful erupted
(Heidi, James, Mom, Ammon, Niles, and Addie)

We had 25-minute construction stop near Swan Lake south of Mammoth. On the way down we stopped and made sandwiches and went "pee in the weeds" (a highlight for the boys) and on the way back we got ice water and blueberries for a snack and entertained ourselves by throwing berries at an obnoxious crow. The kids also liked watched the weird birds you can see in the field in the middle of this photo.

I snapped this while driving...I wish the camera could capture the vastness and the greenness.

Zoomed in-- Heading up the hill toward Mammoth.

Ammy crashed.

Heidi snapped this photo of her dream car.
I got to tell the girls about "the short bus."

James snapped this photo of an adolescent Elk. They were all just chillin' in Mammoth as usual. There is a beautiful new visitor center at Mammoth but we were waaaay behind schedule so we couldn't stop, so we will take a trip just to Mammoth later this summer.

So I had planned our on our Yellowstone trip taking from, like 8:30am til 3:30 pm. We had invited the Elders over for dinner and also offered to take dinner to the Mills family and I needed to be home to do that. Turned out we didn't leave home until 9am, then we drove an hour to Gardiner (the north gate) and the line to get in the entrance was backed up all the way through Gardiner (I had to slow down at The Flying Pig...and I got out of line at the gas station to use the bathroom cuz I could tell we would be there a while).

We finally got in at 11 am and I remembered why we haven't gone to the park in the summer in 4 years. I feel so sorry for the tourists. Then there was the construction. Then there was mass hysteria about something in the trees. I assumed it was a unicorn judging from the faces on the people running down the highway with their giant cameras. But it was a bison scratching his back on an aspen tree. Which we can see at our nearby bison ranch anytime. So annoying. So we got to the super crowded Old Faithful parking lot at 1pm...two hours later than I thought. We had just enough time to use the rest rooms, change the baby, grab some froyo and watch the eruption. Addie;s friend arrived just after the eruption, so we found her, took some pictures, then headed home at 2:40.

The traffic was so bad that we didn't arrive home until 6:12. Luckily Rich is awesome and he made a huge Breakfast-for-Dinner. The Elders had just arrived and the kids were starving. They sat down to pancakes, sausage, and hash browns. I ran some of the food over to Mills and visited with Sheryl a little bit (bless her heart, chemo is way worse than they warned her it would be and her hair fell out this week--cancer sucks). I came back to crazy kids, overwhelmed dad, and snickering missionaries at 7pm. They gave us a message and went on their way. Rich and I got the kids bathed and into bed and he worked on packing for Scout Camp while I had a bath. PHEW! What a crazy day...but so fun. The kids didn't fight, the baby didn't fuss, even though things didn't go as planned at all. Being a family is pretty awesome.