Balancing Bliss

time....

 with this girl...

the boys are at scout camp this week...we thought we would craft our girls week away but instead we made use of it just being two of us and visited with many friends and ran errands. we go from morning till night. fun and exhausting all in one.

will try to post the finale of yellowstone pics later...off to spend time with great grandma and grandpa today.

scheduled....

this cub scout camp is exhausting! and i don't even stay...it's just getting everyone up, ready, lunches made, and gone at 7:30 a.m. next week we have swim lessons every morning and the week after that! my summer break is slipping away!

another day at the park will be my last post on yellowstone tomorrow and we saw bears......thats all i am saying.... going to get the kids out of the pool and go to bed the same time as them....yawn

The yellowstone story and 1/4 of a tank of gas.....

 new plan again... headed an hour+ back towards the wolves, the ones we may or may not see. we see all the same wildlife feeding, just now they are on the other side of the car for the kids to say 'they are on my side'. then... all of a sudden 50 cars were where we had scouted out to stop AND there was the wolf! 5+ buffalo and 20+ elk who now have the scent of the wolf stalking them and are running back and forth with their heads up.

see the buffalo kicking up dirt? the heads all up on the elk? at the bottom of this pic is a river bank... the wolf was creeping along the side of the bank to single one out... we never did see any others but there probably were... 

about this time one man with a camera who wanted "THE SHOT" ran down the river bank and a few teens followed....and it ruined the hunt... the wolf was more aware of the people than the herd and the herd was in 'get out of here' mode.... again, 85% of people respected the park and the wildlife... 10-15% treated it like disneyland.

still so cool to see in action. so about that 1/4 tank of gas....

it was now dark with two highways to get through and oh yeah...one closes at 10pm for construction!  so we have an hour to get out of the park or we have to turn around and take the entire loop out of yellowstone (hours in the dark with huge wildlife on the roadsides) and then another 25miles to our cabin. 1) we would get home @ 3am .... 2) we have 1/4 of a tank of gas. Even the kids understood the dire situation. we didn't even need to talk about it. we made it to the construction within 10min of it closing. we were the last group of cars for the night...phew. long drive even then. we had left at 8am and did not return to the cabin until after 11pm. too long for this momma. not even a dinner, we ate what we had in the basket without having to stop and get in the cooler, jerky, dried mangos, and mini cereal boxes. 

 

yellowstone...finally....

the first day brian had big plans to see geysers and hot springs....we were on our way when there was a bad wreck that shut down the hwy and our plans. i felt fortunate that we still had the option to make plans unlike the families in the wreck...count your blessings.

 all along the roads were various springs.some were beautiful, some smelled worse than 4th of july fireworks....

so onto steamboat geyser. it can actually be bigger than old faithful but it's so unpredictable that you might have to wait 50yrs to see it do so. i was satisfied with my 10min stay and 8ft spray.

it was beautiful but i have to admit that i didn't care for the destinations as much as the drives through the park where we saw wildlife. the destinations seemed to be crowded with people and lines to portapotties.

brian took gav and luci to see more...eli blu joined me for a rest in the shade. he was quite happy just poking at some buffalo poo with a stick until they got back...sigh...boys!

onto yellowstone river falls...

this was the upper falls...brian took the kids to see the lower ones. my dads bum knee and me being 6mo pregnant made us hesitant after seeing the trail. so happy we opted out! brian counted 328 steps in one section! he is such a good daddy. for being carsick and having bloody noses, i must say luci was our best hiker out of all 6 of us. she was always up for it...sweet thing.

onto canyon where a ranger told brian where to see the wolves in the evening. so new plan...to our newly planned day already. 

saw this on the way to our next destination..

even though not all of it was visible, it enormous size was jaw dropping. don't even think this picture captured it...

so my dad spent his 1st birthday in yellowstone. he did not even know this until i told him i read that on the back of some pictures. he also went back with his dad and twin brother when they were 9 or 10. he vividly remembered 'fishermans bridge'. the one stop he really was looking forward to. people lined the bridge fishing for huge fish you could just see in the clear water under you. the next picture is titled poppy's disappointment;

 

see the signs? there was also a picture of the 1950's (when he was there) of everyone fishing off of the bridge... he still got to share his story with his grandkids.

headed to old faithful because we have time to kill between now and when the wolves have been seen. lots of wildlife along the way...

 

and

as we round the corner to old faithful...wouldn't you know that we saw this for the 2nd time right before we got there?;

yep! we missed it...

so i could only tell the bliss of these stories or i could be honest. i usually go with honest... at this point we have yet to eat dinner, we've been in the car since 8am, adults are having 'discussions', kids are wanting out of the car, and not one plan we made was coming about. so we had to make a decision... to wait 60-90 minutes for old faithful to blow again OR go see the wolf pack. we would forever miss one because brian made the call that we would NOT be coming back to old faithful a 3rd time... this left some of us feeling;

 

okay so 5 of us felt this way...

but you can always count on eli blu to be oblivious to a situation like this... (totally different story if it had to deal with a ds or wii) ...

he just scooted around the bench that surrounded old faithful... brought our spirits back a little... we decided we needed to see the wolf pack...

will continue this story tomorrow after i take my boys to scout camp and come home to a quiet house....and THERE IS a story!

just so much summer happening here and now...

off to church and a family get together and then more of this;

i promise.... lots more...

summer evenings....

the sade kids are living the fulfilled wish of having a backyard and their first pool. our other house had a small lopsided yard on a busy intersection so this was many years on the wishlist. the water has yet to even warm but they are soooo happy to shiver.

we've been making the most of our picnic table and campfire too. even if i make a full dinner inside we usually take it out to the patio to eat. enjoying the harvest of our berry picking with a berry/rhubarb crisp. 

today we are having friends over for a pool party. after our bbq and i get the kids in bed i will load all my pics of yellowstone...there are too many to do this morning... we just watched a video of a lady being thrown about by a bison at yellowstone yesterday. she and a friend followed him around a parking lot trying to get closer and closer. we saw this too much while we were there. including someone throwing their kids out of the van and down the grassy embankment towards a bear cub whose mother was seperated from her on the otherside of the highway with tourist taking pictures of it....i mean REALLY?... i didn't even let brian stop because that is something i did not want my kids to witness. fools. it's bound to happen.... i assure you my pics were far away with catherines lens (thanks again...be over this week with it and a dutch thank you) ok....pool toys are waiting to be blown up.....

day 4...

okay so the first part of this story makes me sound very high maintenance...which i truly believe i'm NOT. however...it was eye opening of how accustom i have become to having a target store and a safeway down the street. for the record i camp for 5-7 days every year so far up the mountain we don't having running water or toilets and i enjoy the solitude immensely. 

so on with the story.... after 3 days without much civilization,  (besides the stop at my aunts), sharing an outhouse with another cabin full of old fisherman, and eating at the only greasy spoon...i mean a restaurant... you can only imagine my delight when we came over the hill into jackson hole wyoming and i spotted a bagel shop! BLISS BLISS BLISS. we did a prompt a u-turn. i had refused breakfast that day until we came across somewhere that did not have flies (live and dead variety) and was not named after an animal or animal part. luci had already thrown up 2x in the van and we were all starved. as we walked in you could literally absorb the culture. my dad did not appreciate my bliss probably as much as i did not appreciate his chicken fried steak and dirty silverware. i ordered a cherry almond bagel with a ginormous layer of berry cream cheese and a mocha. i almost hugged the girl with a tear in my eye when i saw the infamous leaf design in the top of my coffee. sigh.... we took our breakfast (brunch at this point) bliss out to a picnic table along the river bank. my spirits were lifted beyond measure.

so does that make me sound high maintenance or just appreciative of the simple pleasures of life?

now onto the grand tetons...

my boy who is always poser ready...

 

we looked on in awe as we drove around the mountains and then we headed onto yellowstone...

(notice we have evolved from puke bucket to a box of tissues. as we climbed in elevation the bloody noses started...she was such a good sport...really)

swan valley, the family history tour.....

 

we all have talents we are given, that are embedded deep within us. mine is to tell our story. it's a love of family history, photography, talking to people, more importantly...listening to people, writing, and combining all of the above for my children and theirs to have. brian will probably never get a gourmet meal served to him by his wife, not even a great meal without me boasting, i loathe social functions, not much of a soccer mom, and you will never catch me out going for a jog, HOWEVER.... hand me a camera, a journal, and someone over 60 to tell me a story...pure bliss.
 

the young boy in the picture is my granddad, ray...he is standing next to his uncle olive... this picture carries such significance to me because he is the reason i didn't grown up in the dust bowl of oklahoma... my granddad did. olive moved west to farm in idaho....years later my granddad ray followed him. i do believe he admired him, he was also a teenager living in a home of many during the depression in the dust bowl so he had to go out on his own.

olives farm is still being lived in and thriving along the river;

 

we were able to walk back into my granddads 40acres. i had to climb a gate 6mo pregnant and walk a 1/2 mile but it was worth standing where he stood. the chicken coop he made from brick was still there. my dad said he spoke of it often and was very proud of it. the barn still stands....i wouldn't go inside and the slam any doors but it stands! unfortunately the house has been replaced with a cabin for the owners to weekend in. i had already scrap booked this place from some 1970's pictures i found.

my dad was brought home from the hospital to this home. in 1948 they didnt have ultrasounds and as i read in my dads baby book "i was so embarrassed that i didn't know there was another baby"....that baby was my dad, a twin born 30min after his brother. there was no room for a set of twins so my granddad made a bedroom about the size of what we would want a walk in closet to be these days in a lean to fashion on the end of the house.

 

brian graciously offered to keep the kids @ the cabin while i went on this journey with my dad. i love that man. i grabbed gaven on the way to the van because he is old enough to remember this and take a bit of it in. i hope he did.

(onto the grand tetons and yellowstone tomorrow)

making the most of our day...

before i sit down to blog the rest of our vaca, i'm taking the last day of brians vacation time to spend with the family. we picked berries this morning and tried to catch a few frogs... now we are in the yard (i took a little sit down break) setting up the pool for summer and doing some much needed yard work from our absence. hoping to make smores tonight..

it's been so nice to wake up next to my husband instead of an empty bed...back to the every day tomorrow...

days 1 and 2....

day 1; nothing spectacular happened...we were just on a mission to get through oregon to idaho. just a lot of this;

 

i know i know, only a scrap booking, story telling momma would take a pic of a girl and her puke bucket but she was a great sport about it and that WAS our story.

one other story....we finally pull over @ some little store towards burns oregon to let her out for air and to 'get legs' when poppy asked her if she would like to see some stuffed animals... like any 6yr old little girl she says 'SURE!"...in her mind it would be a room of webkinz and maybe a pillowpet....knowing my dad for almost 35 yrs i knew he was taking her to the back room of this gas station/ store to the taxidermist and sure enough...sigh....

day 2; we did a drop by @ my great aunt mimi's. so good to see her. i spent a lot of quality time with her as a very little girl. she is the reason (and my gram) that i love to bake. many of days in her kitchen and why i have a love for dutch doors. my uncle ron loves to play his guitar or a harmonica or any instrument at hand... the kids loved the show...he loved the audience...

oh wait...there was a little story here...our eli blu...enough said?... well when we got there he asked if he could go play in their yard...knowing we had 400miles to go that day i said "GO"... 20min of visiting goes by and brian says "i think i should check on eli blu" aunt mimi says "there isn't a thing he could hurt out there" ...brian and i look at eachother like 'you don't know our eli blu' ... and sure enough!... brian found him in our rental van crying... he had decided to 'test' the theory of the automatic van doors stopping if something got in their way...well probably shouldn't throw an arm in there last second... he was pinched in the door so badly that 8 days later he still has a 5" bruise on his upper arm...how can you even get mad at your little man when in the back of your head you know something even more horrible could have happened? got a good picture on my phone to 'write home about' but forgot to get one with my camera... did get this;

on to the destination of swan valley idaho where my dad was born... we drove in around bedtime...