A Montana Weekend

Since it was gearing up to be a gorgeous Father's Day weekend, we decided to do something fun and go to Yellowstone on Saturday.

We were out of the house before 8 am, driving down to West Yellowstone and into the park that way.  First thing we saw were two baby elk with their moms!

Next were some buffalo coming up the road right for us.  The kids thought this was hilarious!  Ruby thought we should name this one in front "Funny Guy".  He walked right by her window.

At Old Faithful we had a picnic on the lawn, waiting for the eruption:

We couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day!

Oh wow, this is cool!

Jason usually gets the inconvenient jobs, like taking all of the picnic stuff back to the car while the kids and I headed to the visitor's center.  I had to take this picture because it is so funny how this picnic backpack (it has plates, silverware, the like in it) most definitely does not fit on his back!

We started out on a walk around some geysers until Ruby stopped and said no, she's not walking any further:

So we headed back up to the lodge and had ice cream instead (no picture, duh).

Then we hopped in the car and stopped at a place to see the Grand Prismatic Pool.  We also saw baby buffalo:

And the pool was pretty neat!

Then we hit the road for the falls.  Within a few minutes Reder, Ruby, and Mom were snoring away.  Poor Jason didn't have that luxury.  Anyway, we got to the falls refreshed and ready for a climb down 331 stairs (Reder counted) to a great view of the falls:

Both kids were awesome climbing up again.  No complaining and we raced up fast!  An out-of-breath woman asked how Reder was going so fast.  I told her he was 6 and had youth on his side, but it also helped we're from the area and of course elevation wasn't going to get us.  She was from Chicago.

Then we headed home through Gardiner and stopped at Outlaw's Pizza for dinner.  Ruby was getting tired and slap-happy, hence this weirdo picture of her and her piggy pillow:

My boys:

Reder saw they had chicken noodle soup and insisted he get some.  Since it was only $1.50 I agreed - he loves soup but I think he was thinking this would be like homemade soup...not quite the same.  He also had a root beer - an enormous root beer!  I should have paid more attention and not let him but I think he drank the whole thing!

Today was Father's Day....we went to church and stuck around afterwards to help decorate the sanctuary for Vacation Bible School, which starts tomorrow.

This afternoon we had an early dinner of grilled pizza, asparagus, and cherry crisp.  It was great!

It was windy this afternoon but by dinnertime it had stopped so we went up the canyon to look for wildflowers.  There is an amazing hillside full of them if you catch it right but we were too early - we'll come back in a couple weeks.  But we love the fact that we live 15 minutes away from this:

Ruby spied a triceratops in the snow on the mountain.  Can you see it?

Got kids to bed early tonight since tomorrow starts a very busy week.  I like VBS but I'm usually quite thankful when it's over.  It's a lot of work, though the kids think it's cool!