Summer Vacation

Here's some pics from our summer road trip! We flew to Denver and spent a couple of days in Colorado, and then drove to Montana to visit Joel's sister Carrie and the rest of the Bock family for a week.  Then we headed to Yellowstone for three days, and then drove back to Denver to catch the flight back home.

nothing like starting your vacation off being stranded at the wrong rental car company!!

Sadie snoozing on gondola ride. The girls "panned for gold" and are examining all their loot. We basically paid $10 for a bag of rocks but it was worth every penny--they've been washing, drying, and polishing these rocks for days!!

mountain slide in Breckenridge--the girls rode on their first chairlift and then took a coaster slide all the way down the mountain

our own personal hot-tubs!

The drive to Montana was great--we never drove more than 4 or 5 hours each day and would stop and take breaks whenever the girls got fussy! Sadie only cried once on the way out there--a real road tripper!It helped though that I sat next to her the whole time and Joel did ALL of the driving! :)

picnic lunch near the Tetons

These next pictures are out of order chronologically but I'm going to save myself the headache of moving them around and just write some captions!

We rented out Carrie's next door neighbor's house--and this was the view out our front door. They live on a cul-de-sac and the girls had so much fun biking and scootering every day! Larkin asked Uncle CJ, "Did you move here because there's no cars?" It was quite a change from the 'burbs!!"

in Texas we find dead snakes on bike rides, and in Montana, elk!

hiking

I love this pic of Willa

rainbow trout with Uncle Ryan

The highlight of their trip was the horse ride!

Willa rode "Hot Rod" and talked about him non-stop for days!

Aunt Lisa

The girls swam in a snow-melt stream and froze their tails off! Here they are warming up with Aunt Carrie and Aunt Jaime

Grandma and Grandpa

even Sadie loved the water

about to strip down to undies and take the plunge!

sandcastle on the Taylor Fork--one of Joel's favorite places that we went

Taylor Fork

Joel and Uncle CJ with a double

Carrie and CJ like to rock climb and they took us out! Joel and the girls climbed and loved it.

Larkin went up very high until I got nervous and told her to get back down!! She was fearless!

Carrie and CJ have their own rafting boat and they took us rafting.  Willa thought the rapids were called "rabbits" and told Uncle CJ, "Let's go find some more bunnies!"

After a week in Montana, we said goodbye to all the relatives and headed to Yellowstone National Park. Joel and I had been there before six years ago when Carrie and CJ got married, but this trip was much different since we were toting around three kiddos!!

We forgot to pack the girls' cameras and they were so mad--so I let them use mine. Willa snapped over 100 pictures in less than 20 minutes--everything was "just so pretty" and she wanted pics of it all. Larkin used Joel's cell phone to capture Willa snapping pics of Yellowstone Lake.

Willa got a great shot of the wood

All the geysers smelled like sulfur, which Larkin said "smelled great." 

Yellowstone Lake

We hiked down to the bottom of the canyon to see the waterfall--Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

geyser flowing into a river

Their favorite place we stayed in Yellowstone were these tiny cabins that you can see behind them. They were super tiny and you had to share a community bathroom, and the girls thought it was so neat that our cabin didn't have a bathroom.

There was an impressive prairie dog population right outside our cabin door and they kept the girls entertained for hours!! They would "feed them" rocks and watch the prairie dogs scurry to catch the rocks.

Joel and Willa headed out to go fishing

bison crossing

Old Faithful

On the way home we stopped for lunch and Sadie was in a great mood--until we put her back into her carseat!! NOT THIS PLACE AGAIN!! The drive home was not as smooth as the way there, but we would do the trip again in a heartbeat. It was great to stop and see so much scenery along the way!

Thanks Carrie and CJ for helping us have such a great trip!!! And thanks too to all the family members that flew/drove out to Montana. It was a family reunion and vacation all rolled into one--and memories that the girls will be talking about for years to come.