Vacationing in July!
We're posting this a little late, but as the saying goes, "better late than......." (slideshow at the bottom)
We started our July out by sending Brett off to NECC Conference (national educational technology conference). He said NECC was great and he loved seeing the Alamo and the River walk there in San Antonio, Texas where the conference was being held. He loves to travel and see new places but he also misses his family a lot when he’s gone and we’re grateful for that. He flew back in town Wednesday evening and we picked him up with the car loaded for the Ellis Family Reunion and our camping trip.
The Ellis Reunion that followed Brett's return from San Antonio was awesome. We picked him up as he flew in and drove to Page that night before traveling the rest of the way to Pocatello the next day. Every year the reunions get better and better and every year we think they can’t possibly get any better but they always do. The rented gym was really fun watching everyone take turns jumping from the waterfall into a pit filled with foam blocks, but it was especially fun watching to see if anyone could beat John at diving over a 6 ft foam wall from a trampoline in the floor to the same pit filled with foam. John can get some air that’s for sure. Our kids kind of liked roller skating, but we liked it, especially the adult race at the end. The parents seriously had just as much fun if not more than the kids. But the ultimate high light was the sumo wrestling. We have never laughed so hard for so long. We really thought someone was going to pee there pants or start crying from having laughed so long. Becca’s favorite was the slip-n-slide and the Birthday Piñata is always one of our families favorite. I almost forgot to mention the fireworks, they were Brett’s favorite since we can’t buy or set off fireworks in Arizona. Well done John and Rachelle. Thanks for all your hard work and to Mom and Dad, Josh and Cami for housing everyone. We can’t wait for next years. Go Sarah!
We took our first non-family reunion family vacation this summer and it was sooooo much fun. Our plan was to go camping two days in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and then two more days at Cherry Hills Campground in Utah. Amber was really nervous about the YNP part of our vacation because 1)over the years the animal sightings have been fewer and fewer, 2)long car drives with little kids not to mention a newborn can be well… you know and 3)gasoline was climbing even higher to just over $4.00 a gallon. Thankfully Amber was pleasantly surprised and YNP was just as exciting in its own way as Cherry Hills would be. We knew the kids would love Cherry Hills because they have a water park, mini-golfing, and a hamster haven (a play place like at McDonald’s). Here are some of our favorite highlights.
Packing the Car: We left the Ellis Family Reunion in Pocatello, Idaho on a Monday and headed north. We stopped a few hours later in Rexburg to get food for the next three days. At this point the car was already packed to the hilt with a tent, sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, camping gear, a cooler (filled with just some of the camping gear!), luggage and entertainment items for the kids. Poor Ben was evening sleeping at night in his car seat because there wasn’t even enough room to fit the pack and play. So when we got back to the car with the 14 or so bags of groceries and even more camping gear we didn’t know where we were going to fit it all in. By the time we were done unloading the cooler so we could fill it up with ice and some of the groceries the car was literally packed almost three feet high from the floor up and to the ceiling in the back and around the kids (with the soft stuff like pillows, and sleeping bags).
Yellowstone: It was awesome. Right when we got into the park we saw a Bald Eagle sitting on its nest and Buffalo within 20 feet of the road. The kids love to go on hikes so we planned to take them on two hikes the first was an easy short mile hike to a natural bridge. We were right about the easiness of the hike but wrong about it being short. Jared, Becca, or Nathan would stop every 10 seconds to explore something off to the side of the trial and it was almost three hours later when we returned to the car. We decided one hike was sufficient. The kids tolerated the rotten-egg smelling geysers at their parents’ insistence, but the most exciting thing we experienced were seeing two brown bears and Becca spotting a Black Bear 30-40 ft out her side of the car! The not so fun highlights of camping in YNP were 1)taking down and setting up camp with children “helping” where help wasn’t needed and not helping when it was needed and 2)Amber taking Becca to the bathroom at midnight worrying they’d meet a bear in the dark. On our way out of YNP we got in a traffic jam because a huge Buffalo was walking down the middle of the road. We were only three cars back and it took us at least twenty minutes to get around it. Last year it was a prong horn cow in the road on the way home from Drew and Rachelle’s, this year a buffalo, who knows what animal will grace our presence on the road home next year!
Cherry Hills: Definitely a family favorite. The kids loved to go mini-golfing. We’ve learned a few tricks over the years and it was even somewhat enjoyable to take three kids mini-golfing. Our favorite pass time at Cherry Hills was the water slides and lazy river. The lazy river was only three feet deep and so it was perfect for young kids like ours who can swim and when they’re tired they can stand up and only have the water come to their chest. The hydro tubes were a blast for the kids and even dad. Mom preferred the inner-tube ride where you can go down in groups on your tube. Jared didn’t love any of the water slides or lazy river parts of the park; he did however enjoy the pirate ship and toddler water park. The water was only a foot high and he played there for two hours pretending to shoot the cannons, steering the ship, and going down the little kiddie slides with Becca.
On our way home from Cherry Hills saw Kung Fu Panda with the kids and spent a few days with Bryan, Noel and Eliza. While we were there we had a BBQ with Stacey, Mark and Emily and Brett helped Bryan fix his bee infested Basket Ball Hoop. We celebrated Amber’s birthday when we got home with cake and ice cream with the Hintons. That’s it for us.
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