Kaylee is a big girl!

She completed swimming lessons

She loves to read

She feeds herself cottage cheese

She goes down big girl slides

She wears hats
She pulls herself up to a standing position

She crawls like a big girl (no more army crawl)

The only thing not big about her is her size... at her 9 month appointment she was in the 10th percentile in height and weight for her age. Surprising, considering how much she loves her food :).

Yellowstone Wildlife

The Yellowstone posts are going to be quite long, so I'm splitting them up. I'm starting with the easiest: wildlife.

Elk were the first animal we saw entering Yellowstone. I was just on the other side of the river taking pictures. I thought they were deer so I was extremely impressed by their size, but I guess they were elk... and that's a normal size for elk. I'm still impressed. There were a few more adults and two babies.

The next animal we saw (besides the normal crane and squirrels) was a coyote running across the road... and that was on our drive out of Yellowstone. We were pretty sad not to have seen anything else on our first day, but the second day made up for it.

This wasn't actually at Yellowstone, but I'm posting it anyway because I really liked these fish. This was in Island Park at Big Springs before we went to Yellowstone that day. Check out the size difference in these two fish (there's one to the left and above the big one).

We went to a couple of big waterfalls in Yellowstone and still hadn't seen much wildlife and then all of a sudden... one right by the car!

This one was right next to the road, walking parallel to the car for a bit. It ended up walking into the road. This is when we first saw it (it's the big dark brown thing in the middle of the picture).

This is when it was walking parallel to the car

And video of it (not the best video because we were in the moving car, plus Joel didn't want to have to look at the bison through the camera). We couldn't stay as long as we wanted because a mean person came up behind us and didn't want to stop.

We thought it was pretty cool that we actually got to see some bison and then we turned a corner and...

tons! It was really pretty. After that turn there were a ton of bison everywhere we went.

Including near one of the geyser trails. This guy was just chilling by the walking trails.This is how close he was (though he seemed closer). (And Kaylee does have clothes on her bottom half. She's wearing a dress with bloomers.)

This next video shows what I had pictured Yellowstone to be like- everyone having to stop in the middle of the road because wildlife was right next to their car.

It was seriously amazing! We didn't see any bears (well, Spencer almost did), but it was still really cool. I felt like such a kid every time I'd see an animal. The bison were huge and it was so neat to be right by them (though I did freak out a few times that they were going to charge us).

Next up: Geysers!

What a weirdo

She did this for about 2 days, stopped for 2 days, then did it again last night. I got her on video the first time she did it. It looks so funny! What a weird child I have! :)

There's a reason I've been ignoring everyone's blogs for awhile....

We were on vacation!

We went to Island Park with Joel's brother, Spencer, and his wife, Tiffany. We left Thursday evening and returned home Monday night. It was so much fun! I took a ton of video and pictures of everything and I'm having a hard time deciding which ones have to be left out. I guess I'll just start and see how it goes...

THURSDAY

Kaylee's packed and ready to leave!

We stayed in Joel's families cabin in Island Park. We got there after midnight.


FRIDAY

We relaxed this first day. We ate out for breakfast, got groceries, and then mostly hung out at the cabin. We walked to "the tressel," but had to leave sooner than we wanted because it started raining.

The Tressel

Next to the tressel (notice the dark clouds).

Kaylee loved touching the rain coming off the cabin porch.

Being lazy in the cabin.

Friday (Aug. 8) was also my sister, Kelsi's birthday. She got some birthday texts from Kaylee.

SATURDAY

This was our big Yellowstone day. It was mine and Tiffany's first time! I'm going to do a separate post about Yellowstone because there are so many pictures.

On the way to Yellowstone there was a natural spring. It was so cool! We stopped by the side of the road and each got a drink of delicious water straight from the spring.

We hung out in West Yellowstone (a little tourist city right outside of Yellowstone) for a bit. Here's Kaylee playing with some rocks in a bookstore.

My favorite geyser: Sawmill (I'll have video of it on the Yellowstone post)

On our way home we stopped in West Yellowstone again for caramel apples (my favorite!). This is Kaylee and Joel in the candy shop.

Back at the cabin. Joel playing around with cupcake frosting and our child.

SUNDAY

Island Park has so many people on vacation during the summer that the local stake has a designated sacrament meeting for visitors. The visitor ward used to meet at 11:00, but we got there and it has been switched to 1:00. To kill time before the meeting we went to Big Springs. It's a gorgeous area a few minutes from the cabin. We took bread with us and fed the fish, ducks, and muskrat. I loved it!

Big Springs

The muskrat I was feeding. I thought it was so cute!

Sacrament meeting was really good. They had a senior missionary couple speak. Afterwards we went back to the cabin for lunch then headed back to Yellowstone (about a 45 min. drive).
The pass we had bought the day before was good for a week, so we went back to Yellowstone. It was awesome to spend our Sunday afternoon in such a beautiful place.



MONDAY
With Kaylee's help Joel and I were up earlier than Spencer and Tiffany each day, so Monday we decided to go up to Sawtelle Peak. It's a peak with one of those airplane control tower ball things, so it has a road leading all the way to the top. I was having a minor freak out on the drive up (the road was curvey, steep, and had a drop off on one side), but the view made it worth it.

You could see 3 states at once from up there. It was beautiful!

Near a gas station in Island Park. Kaylee thinks she has to have one now.

You'd think this next place was Yellowstone again because of how beautiful it is, but it's the Island Park dam and it's just minutes from the cabin.

That's a moose in the river. After I took this another one joined this one. We think it was a mom and her baby. They were fun to watch.

After this we went back to the cabin and finished packing up. Joel and I arrived back home around 11:30. Kaylee was quite a trooper considering how much she was in her carseat.

I'm so glad I finally got to go to Island Park. It's Joel's favorite place and he's told me so many stories about it. I was actually worried that I would go and wouldn't love it as much as he does, but that wasn't the case. I loved it and I can't wait to go back!

My husband and I agree sometimes :)

I've refrained from sharing my opinions about the Twilight series in the past, but Joel has posted about it on his blog, so I'll let my feelings be known too.

I agree with him. For different reasons than the ones he states, but I still agree.

http://theformer786.blogspot.com/2008/08/breaking-silence.html

Got it...