Yellowstone Day 1

We got to Island Park Friday night, had an ice cream social at the main cabin and then headed down to our family cabin for the night. Steve and Andrew talked Allison and Jerrod into playing a game of Liars Dice. Allison was quite good at it. hmmmm....wonder why :)




The girls all settled in outside with cups of hot cocoa. They thought they were so grown up as they were laughing and talking.

The next morning we decided to go rafting before we headed out to Yellowstone. I'll post about our rafting trip by itself since we have so many pictures. The kids thought it was really cool to ride in the back of Uncle Jason's truck.


This was our family cabin. It was so nice. If anyone wants to buy it, it is for sale. Only $300,000 I think. Not bad.

After rafting we headed into Yellowstone to go see Old Faithful. On the way we saw a herd of elk so we stopped to take some pictures.




Next we headed up to Old Faithful. The kids were freezing and of course we got there about 10 minutes after it had erupted. So we had to kill 90 minutes or so in the lodge.




After it finally erupted we turned around to go back to the lodge and there was the prettiest rainbow. For all you bachelorette fans....it prompted me to tell the story of Chris and his rainbow in Tahiti. Everyone laughed at me :)


Once we got back the kids took a dip in the hot tub at the main cabin and then we headed to our cabin for a movie and some of Aunt Jamey's caramel corn.

Idaho

Our next stop was Idaho. We were able to stop off and see some family on the way to the Crouch family reunion. Our first stop was Twin Falls. My aunt Susan lives there so we stopped to say hi to her. We drove by the Twin Falls temple. It is very pretty.

Mom and Aunt Susan

Our next stop was in Burley where we went and stayed the night with my Grandma. Once we got there we went over to see my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Kathy. It was so good to see them!

My Uncle Bruce has a dairy farm and Ava's one wish from the trip was to pet a cow so we went to one of Bruce's neighbors house to see some animals. It was like a big petting zoo. There were horses, cows, goats, pigs, peacocks, dogs, cats etc......






Later that afternoon we met some family at the local park. We were so grateful some of them could come meet us.

This is my Uncle Neil giving Jerrod a ride in his sweet car

Uncle Neil and his new wife Karen

This is my cousin Brent, his wife Carrie and my Aunt LeeAnn and Uncle Ken

After the park we went out to my grandma's house. She has the prettiest view so we took a few pictures to remember

My future model :)

The kids playing pool in Grandma's basement. Nice carpet huh?

The kids with Grandma Bowen

The next morning, we went to go see my dad's sister Karen. It was so good to see her. It has been way too long. We had a nice visit with her and then the kids and I headed toward Yellowstone for the reunion while Jenny and my mom headed home.

On the way to Island park, we stopped to see the Rexburg temple.

Elko part 2

After we got back from Salt Lake we spent a couple more days in Elko. Uncle Andrew invited us to his house one night to light some fireworks he had gotten and to roast some marshmallows and make smores.

Allison spent a lot of time pulling Kallista and Ava in the wagon

next stop Salt Lake City

The next leg of our adventure was in Salt Lake City. We rode up with my parents to go to see my brother Brad and his family and to attend a wedding reception for Kasey Yardley, our neighbor we grew up with.

The first stop was of course at Cafe Rio. Grandpa Wahlstrom has to eat there whenever he is near one. Ava must have been starving because she kept eating and eating.

Sorry Dad, you have to quit giving me ammunition!

The wedding reception was in Alpine Utah up by the mountains. The kids were so excited to come tell us that there were deer over by the fence. We had a great time seeing old friends. The food was so good. They barbequed pulled pork and corn on the cob and made dutch oven peach cobbler. Kasey's dad is a good cook!

On Sunday, I decided to take the kids and Jason to temple square. It had been a long time since we had been there so they didn't remember a lot of it. The first thing we did is tour the conference center. We had a great tour guide who told us lots of stories.




This is on the roof of the conference center. The guide said that the goal was to make it feel like you were in the mountains. It was hot so we didn't stay out there long.

This is the front of the conference center
Next we went to the visitor centers on temple square. The kids wanted to see this statue and I wanted to take them to see a new exhibit which is a scale model of the Salt Lake Temple. This model shows exactly what is inside of the temple and shows you how it is all laid out. It was amazing all the detail that went into it right down to the tiny door knobs.

This is the reflective pool in front of the temple. Ava was tired and started to cry and told me she was not leaving til she saw her reflection. Before we left for Salt Lake I had had some issues with my car battery but the car had been running ok. On our way back from temple square we went to leave and the car was very dead. We couldn't even get it to start using jumper cables. Luckily, a mechanic happened to be in the same parking lot we were and his girlfriend had an extra battery in her car she used for her stereo. He turned her battery upside down and touched it to ours and the car started right up. I told everyone it was a miracle in temple square.

After our adventure downtown we headed back to Brad and Aimee's house for a barbeque. After dinner all the girls put on lots of plays for us that were "wildly" entertaining.




Here are all of the cousins that were there including Zeus. We had so much fun seeing everyone!

Monday morning Grandma and Grandpa had dentist appointments and then we headed back downtown. While grandpa shopped, we headed back to temple square to see the temple model again and to go see the Joseph Smith movie. I was so glad we did. It was very powerful. We also went to the observation deck of the Joseph Smith Building.




After the movie we took the Trax train to the mall Grandpa was at. The kids told me I was lame to take pictures but they will thank me someday!




I had to take a picture of this silly tree that is on the way to Salt Lake from Elko. We always called it the basketball tree. The kids were done by this point so I only got a quick one from the car.