Yellowstone National Park Day 1

We took a trip to Yellowstone National Park.  It was just the 5 of us, Austin stayed behind at his Kenny Dad's house because he had was starting football that week and didn't want to miss his first practices.  He was missed!  After hearing about our trip and seeing our pictures he said that he definitely does not want to miss our trip next year!  Yay!  We left on Saturday the 30th and headed toward Idaho.  Funny story, we had Ashton, ID set in our GPS and were on our way.  We stopped at a rest stop a little ways before Pocatello, we had lunch, did bathroom breaks, changed diapers, we were there for a little while so we let Abby sit in the front seat of the car and play.  She was playing with our phones, the GPS, and whatever else she could find.  It was finally time to get back on the road, we hopped back on the freeway and did as the GPS was telling us to.  Before we knew it, we no longer saw signs saying Idaho Falls...so many miles, we now were seeing signs that said Twin Falls...so many miles.  Suddenly I realized this was THE WRONG WAY!!!!  Yikes, we had driven about 25 min west instead of North, argghhh!  U-TURN!  Lesson learned about not checking the GPS after children have played with it, or even just solely relying on the GPS.  OOPS!
Anyway, we arrived in Ashton, ID around 4:30 pm.  We drove around the cute little town, went and saw my Great Grandparents graveside and then headed toward Warm River to feed the fish.  However, it wasn't warm river that I was thinking of, it was Big Springs.
We stayed at Pond's Lodge in Island Park, ID which is about 30 min outside of Yellowstone National Park.  The next morning we got up and were out the door by 10:00 and off we were to Big Springs.  I was really excited to share some of my childhood memories with my Hubby and the Kiddos.  First, we walked the trail up to Johnny Sacks Cabin. (if you click on the link it will tell you all about the cabin)

When we were done looking at the cabin we went across the street to the bridge to see and feed the fish. The water in the river was so amazingly clear and beautiful!  There are springs here that come up from the ground and this is where the water begins, so it is so fresh and clean and then it heads down and eventually runs into the Snake River.  Unfortunately there were hardly any fish for us to see.  Mostly seagulls eating the fish food and bread that people were trying to throw to the fish.

Time to go to Yellowstone!

We stopped and walked around Lower, Midway, & Upper Geyser Basins.

  The kids seemed to enjoy it with the exception of Sebastian who was just being a pill!  We had to take Abby out of her stroller and let her walk so we could put the stinker in the stroller since he wasn't cooperating..

But we weren't going to let that stop us, so we just kept on going...

Next, we decided it was best to stop for a picnic and maybe Sebastian would cheer up a bit and enjoy our adventures..

He munched his sandwich and soon became playful and was happy again.  In fact, he was even posing for the camera and being quite the little ham..

Time for more exploring..

 The Midway Geyser Basin was fun and exciting.  Here Vinnie and the boys are testing the temperature of the river because the hot springs run off into the river.  It wasn't too warm but it certainly wasn't freezing.  This is where the Grand Prismatic Spring is which is the largest hot spring in the United States.  The colors of it were amazing, that is when the wind would stop blowing long enough for the steam to settle down for us to see it.  There is a big boardwalk that walks around several other hot springs before getting to the Prismatic, as you walk along the steam is coming up from all of these springs and it is so warm but when the wind would stop for a minute and the steam would settle it would suddenly feel chilly because your body would get use to the heat.  Gabe loved this and thought it was "so exciting". 

Next stop...

We had about a 45 minute wait for Old Faithful to erupt.  The kids did pretty well entertaining themselves while we waited.

Sebastian found a bug to watch...

Abby joined him, and Gabe played on his iPhone..

There she goes!

Sebastian is being a little stinker again and wanting to do his own thing...

Now we are off to the Mud Volcano..it was starting to get a bit late and the temperature was cooling off a bit so we needed to hurry up just a bit so we could get back to our cabin in time for dinner and bedtime.

Gabe got excited when he saw this tree and said "it's the letter J!" 

I love Abby's lips in the last photo...too cute!

 What a very fun day!  Can't wait for Day 2!!

24th of July!!

It's a camp out!  We had not planned on camping out for the parade until we had a wild idea to drive the parade route and check out a good place to go watch the parade the next morning.  We drove downtown before noon and people were already camping out so we figured that we should go home and grab some chairs and a tarp and claim a spot for ourselves.  We drove home, got our stuff, went back downtown and found a great spot.  As we began to set up we noticed a couple of police officers that were moving peoples belongings.  We asked them what was going on and they told us that people could not camp out or reserve their spots until 8:00 that night.  We headed back home and decided that instead of taking another trip downtown and then back home again that we would just go for it and attempt the crazy downtown camp out.  We went a little early and arrived shortly after 7:00 to find even more people were all set up.  We found a GREAT spot on 900 S and about 450 East.  It was a park strip in front of a small business.  The business owner was sitting on his porch with his kids and we asked him if we could camp out there and he said yes and also offered his driveway for us to park in.  Later that night he was doing some fireworks in his backyard with his kids and invited us to join.  To make things even better, he let us use his bathroom, yay, no Porta potty!!!

The kids did pretty well!  Sebastian went to bed the earliest of all.  Gabe and Abby decided that there was too much going on for them to go to sleep.  Austin had his laptop all charged up so he was quite content.  Gabe and Abby finally went to sleep a little after midnight.  We followed shortly after but it was one crazy loud night!  All night long people were driving up and down 900 south honking their horns, yelling, laughing, talking (loud), etc...  We woke up around 6:00 am and set up our chairs on the street for the parade.

She loved her Tiara!  I remember loving these as a little girl.

There's my cute little family, enjoying the parade!

The parade was over around 11:30, we packed up our things and headed home.  Well not before we exchanged contact information with the business owner that was so generous, you never know we may do it again next year!  

Later that evening we had family over to our house for a grill out, swimming, and fireworks.  Heide, Elisabeth, and Lillie were in town from Las Vegas, they brought their really good friend Michelle, her baby, and her niece.  Mindi, Chandler, Noah, Ingrid, Mia, Niklaus, Grandpa Jim, Nana, my Mom, also came over and then of course all of us.

The kids went crazy in the pool and had a great time!

My kids really really enjoyed the sparklers!

The bigger kids had fun helping Vinnie light the big fireworks.

I think we were out there til somewhere around 11:00.  Both Sebastian and Abby fell asleep outside and Gabe had no complaints when it was time to go upstairs to bed.
What a fun holiday this is for us!  Happy 24th to all you Utah peeps!

Road Trip to Deming, NM!

We went to Deming, NM at the end of June.  Vinnie's High School Reunion was the weekend of  July 4th.  I am pretty excited for this trip because Vinnie will not be working while we are there.  Every trip we make there he is usually working for the majority of it.  Unfortunately Austin did not go on this trip with us because his last day of school was Friday July 1st and we needed to get to NM before that in time for Vinnie's reunion which was going all weekend long.  My Mom came and stayed at our house  with Austin.  We left on Wednesday morning June 29th, with plans to drive to Cortez, CO which is about a 6 hour drive.  Deming is a 14 hour drive from our house so we thought it would be best to split it up for the kids sake. 

 We arrived in Colorado around 3:30 and stayed at the Holiday Inn.  This is a fun hotel for the kids to stay in because we stay in the "Kids Suite" which is called Fort Holiday. 

It's really nice because in this little sectioned off area there are 4 bunk beds, a TV, and a game cube.  Although our boys do not play the game cube but we sure love having an extra TV for them in the room which we hook up their portable DVD player to and they just play and do their thing. 

This is the other side of the room that we get to sit, relax, and watch some TV ourselves.  The hotel also provides us with a crib which is super nice and convenient for Abby.  We also have a small Kitchenette area which is a huge help!                    

There is also a swimming pool here at this hotel that the kids love to play in.  This is actually the same hotel that we stayed at last year so the kids remembered it and were anxious to get in the pool.

For some crazy reason BOTH boys ended up in bed with us at some point during the night!  4 other beds in the room and they both climb in with us?  This is unusual because they never sleep in bed with us.

On the Road again...

We arrived in Deming, NM around 5:00 just enough time for the kids to run and play, stretch their little legs out, have some dinner and then off to bed.

The 1st day of the reunion was Friday.  There was an afternoon luncheon and then everyone met up again later that night at a local bar.  It was fun to see people that Vinnie went to HS with and hear stories, well SOME stories anyway.  :)  

The next day was a dinner with a slide show of pictures from their Senior year.  After the dinner, quite a few people headed over to a local brewery and hung out for a while visiting and reminiscing about back in the day.  It was a fun weekend and I am happy that Vinnie got to attend his 30 year class reunion.  Yes, I said 30 YR.  That shows our age gap right there.  It was funny because throughout the weekend all of the women kept complimenting me and telling me how pretty I was and how much Vinnie had scored.  Well by the end of night at the brewery one of the guys told us that a group of the women kept talking about  my age and trying to guess how old young I was.  They had me pegged at 28.  THANK YOU!  I later told one of them that I was 33 and she asked my why I was telling her this.  I explained that I heard there was some question and I thought I would help out  :)

We spent a few more days in Deming visiting with family.  Our poor little Sebastian got pretty sick for the last couple of days of our trip.  He was burning up with a fever and just simply layed around not wanting to do anything at all.  He ended up getting a really bad bloody nose that gave us a good scare because it seemed like a faucet that we couldn't turn off.  Poor guy!  

We left Thursday the 7th and headed back to Cortez, CO. to Fort Holiday.  However, when we arrived at the hotel they couldn't find our reservation anywhere.  Turns out they had us in for Saturday night, ughh!  They didn't have any kids suites available, so they put us in a large room that had a jacuzzi tub in the shape of a heart.  Oh well, I guess we will make do.  :)  First thing first though...

SWIMMING POOL!

The tub actually turned out to not be such a great idea!  Sebastian found the button to turn on the jets and water sprayed everywhere because we didn't have the tub full enough of water.  What a mess!  Also, the jets kinda freaked both Gabe and Abby out.

So, now without our Fort Holiday we are missing our extra beds.  :(  Kids seem to be doing just fine with their beds that we made for them on the floor with all of the extra bedding that the hotel brought to us.  Of course they brought Abby's crib too.

Unfortunately for Vinnie and me our night turned out to be a sleepless night..

Sebastian's bloody nose came back 10x worse than the other day.  Poor kid, he seemed really scared.  He completely soaked thru an entire pillow.  I was up hand washing his blanky in the middle of the night, Vinnie was sitting in a chair holding Sebastian upright.  We got everything cleaned up and back to bed but not too soon after it started again.  Once again, I was up handwashing things in the small bathroom sink while Vinnie was holding Sebastian trying to calm him down.  They both fell asleep in the chair.  Every time Sebastian would move it would startle Vinnie and wake him.  It was a long rough night.  When we woke the next morning, Sebastian seemed to be doing just fine and in fact acted as though nothing happened, thank goodness because we have a 6 hour drive ahead of us.

They did really well on the drive and about 1/2 way thru Sebastian fell fast asleep.

We made it home!

4th of July!!

We spent our 4th of July in Deming, New Mexico.  They put on a firework show at the fairgrounds so about an hour before the show we headed over to claim our spot.  It was Grandma & Grandpa Almanza, Uncle Sid,  Auntie Sandra, Gabe, Sebastian, Abby, Vinnie, and me.  A fun family affair :)  Unfortunately we were missing Austin.  He stayed back in Utah with family.

The kids did great waiting patiently for the fireworks to start.  They didn't know exactly what they were waiting for or why we were hanging out in a dirt parking lot next to our cars but they were good.

Gabe managed to keep himself busy drawing shapes and writing words in the dirt, Abby kept busy by running around which in turn kept us busy because we had to chase after her.  Poor little Sebastian wasn't feeling very well so he was very mellow.

Poor little guy!

 SHOWTIME!!

Hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July!