Yellowstone with Spencer Cousins!

Our saving grace when we left texas in August was that we had cousins coming to see us very soon! Clay, Maurine, Avery, Landry, Mallory, and Ellie flew to Bozeman so we met them there to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone with them.  

We came to Bozeman the night before so we could spend the night with our Phillips cousins! As usual, it was a blast for everyone.  We sure love getting to be with Sayler and Hayven (and their parents...heee heee). Here they are snuggled up before bedtime.  We spent the night and left the next morning to meet up with the Spencer crew. 

We met at a grocery store, stocked up on snacks and lunch stuff, and hit the road to Yellowstone! The drive was beautiful and the weather was perfect!  Our first stop was the Grizzly Bear and Wolf viewing place.  Avery decided Montana was a good place to loose another tooth! 

There was a cool TeePee inside the Bear thing (thats what I'm going to call this place since I don't know the official name of it.) 

We watched the bears find their snacks....

...one was shaking the snack out of a tree! It was pretty neat to watch.  

Little wolf pups inside the wolf den. 

We left there and drove on in to the entrance of Yellowstone and almost immediately saw buffalo. 

First stop: Old Faithful.  We timed it pretty good so we didn't have to wait very long.  We did not have very good placement because that dude with the stripped sweater on is in every single picture. Every. Single. One.  It was fun to watch and pretty amazing that it really is so timely....and....well.....faithful. 

The rest of the evening we spent driving to the different prismatic pools along the road.  The different colors were really neat! I was pretty clueless to what Yellowstone was really all about, so it was fun to see all the bubbling water everywhere.  It's crazy that all of that is there! 

This might've been one of our favorites.  I think it was called the Artists Paint Pots. We got there right as the sun was going down, so it was beautiful and no one else was there so we had the whole boardwalk to ourselves.  That translated to the kids being able to run wild and free through there.  It was really neat.  

Ellie WAS in this picture. She was just on Clay's back. 

 Props to Uncle Clay for doing double duty with the little girls in pink. While on this trip, Jaylie June learned the phrase "2 girls".  If she and Ellie were doing something together it was "2 girls".   

Why does it just seem like the peak of perfection to see your brothers loving your kids?!

We stayed in the park til after dark and drove out to the town of Gardener where we had a little cabin on the Yellowstone River.  By the time we got in to town, most kids were asleep and starving.  There weren't many options that late but we found a restaurant and got a nice late dinner (Landry slept through most of it) and made it to our cabin around 11pm.  The kids were pumped to be there and the loft upstairs had enough beds for them to all sleep together so that was so much fun.  Kanyon woke up early the next morning which wasn't awesome, but seeing these elk out our balcony window across the river WAS AWESOME! 

They walked right up the street like they were headed to school! Crazy! 

We enjoyed seeing the town in the daylight the next morning.  This entrance to the park was super cool and a great place to line up the munchkins! 

We spent most of this day in the Mammoth Hot Springs area.  

Here was Mammoth Hot Springs, and according to June, Quinn, and Mallory, it must've been one of the saddest places on earth.  

Now it seems klp was a little sad.  

Just a huge bull elk chillin' in the yard.  No biggie.  

These 4 sure had fun running around together.  klp rode in the stroller some and walked along with them some if there were handrails.  It was fun watching them take it all in together. The kid version of "take it in" of course.  Much different than the adult version. Ha! 

This is a huge group of Asian tourist that were obsessed with our kids.  They were taking their pictures and asking us questions.  Except we don't speak whatever language they were speaking and they didn't speak English. But it sure was entertaining to hear Kory try to answer the guy's questions. 

We made a fun stop at the Boiling River.  We didn't get in because all we had was the clothes we were in, but it was a neat spot.  

After a fun stop at the boiling river, the Phillips crew had to head out.  We had cows to move that evening, so we left around 1 or 2 that afternoon.  Clay's crew stayed the rest of the day and saw a little more of the park.  I hated we couldn't stay, but such is life with cows. 

My only regret is that we didn't get a group picture in front of the park sign.  Oh well. It was a great "vacation". We look forward to going back and seeing more of the park.