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!