Ho! for Wonderland

 That's the title of the book I picked out as my Yellowstone souvenir. It's a collection of accounts from visitors during the first decades of Yellowstone's existence as a national park. A wonderland it is, and not just for adults. I was surprised how much my kids enjoyed the scenery. This first picture is my kids and my friend's daughter in Star Valley. We left after church and drove up to visit them. We had yummy dinner and they were kind enough to let us camp at the family picnic shelter. It was really fun to catch up with Shelly and be jealous of their beautiful valley. Monday morning we packed up early and drove past the Tetons on our way to vacation. "Are we at vacation yet, mom?" was a question we heard many times. We heard from many people that thought we were crazy to take two young kids camping for a week. I thought it myself. But we survived, and we even managed to have a good bit of fun. Here is a small selection of our photos from the week.

 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

 a rainbow created by the Upper Falls

 Our kids wanted to go swimming every time we walked down to Lewis Lake from our campsite. They didn't care the water was frigid. They also didn't care too much about the mosquitoes, who in turn didn't care that we assiduously put on mosquito repellent. They were voracious, for Clara's skin especially.

 Camping = dirt and rocks. Fantastic. Luckily Clara decided to not be so fastidious about dirt this week.

 Clara gives new meaning to the term "stow and go." Stow and go was one of the reasons we bought the Town & Country, but we had no idea how versatile it would be.

 Nathan was fascinated by this sign, which was posted prominently at every geyser basin. (If you can't tell, it's a picture of a boy falling into a geyser and getting horribly burned).

 The shore of Yellowstone Lake. This was possibly the best hour of the entire week. Rocks to throw,

 warm sand to stretch out on,

 and volcanoes to build with sand that once spewed out of a volcano.

 And what's Yellowstone without wildlife traffic jams? Luckily at the worst spots there were rangers telling people to keep driving, and to not park directly in the road to gawk at animals eating and sitting.

 Nathan packed a bag of toys to bring on the trip. Luckily this included a few cars so hanging out at the campsite was still pretty fun. The kids also liked playing in the van.

It was such a beautiful week. It had its share of tantrums, but that would have happened at home anyway. We let Clara sleep between us on the air mattress, and then we didn't have to let her scream herself to sleep. And I discovered ear plugs are a very wonderful thing, although they caused me to miss out on the most exciting thing:

In the middle of our last night, Levi was awakened by some rangers waking up the man in the tent next to ours. They had seen some rocks in his car, and wanted to know where they were from, and could they search his vehicle? First of all, 1 a.m. is a very weird time for this to happen, and second, are they driving around looking in everybody's windows in the middle of the night? Eventually he let them search his car, and said he'd picked up the rocks outside the park, and that was that. So I guess the moral is: hide your rocks better.

While packing I got fed up with the sheer number of things we HAD to have and decided that not one unnecessary thing was making the cut. Among the rejects: our DVD player. I don't know why I considered this unnecessary. But I had checked out several children's books on CD and that seemed to do just fine. Unfortunately, Nathan's favorite ("I want to listen to the same same same bears!"--also known as the Berenstain Bears) was also the single most annoying thing I experienced that entire week. And it was the only thing he wanted to listen to. It was the authors reading a collection of their stories, accompanied by corny synthesizer music. It pains me to remember. But, we had relatively few car tantrums, even though a great deal of each day was spent in the car.

Another title I considered for this post was "Oh! The Places You'll Pee." When you travel with a three year old, now means now. Levi joked once that we should take pictures of all the weird places Nathan had peed during the week and make a book of it, Dr. Seuss style. But we figured we shouldn't document all the times we had to violate the "do not leave the walkway" signs--those rangers are always watching. But we only had a couple of accidents all week.

So, good times. But by Friday I was ready for home. We packed up and headed, and made fair time until we hit this little beauty. Luckily we were only stuck for an hour before we got to a place we could turn around. Eventually we got home and I spent the next week trying to recover and clean up. I need a vacation from my vacation.

It's always a good day

. . . when you get to ride the ambulance train. That's what it's called at our house. Actually, it sound more like "ambience." We rode the train, met cousins and grandparents in Farmington, and headed to the Discovery Gateway.

It was a really fun (and exhausting) day. Thanks grandma and grandpa!

Twenty-Fourth of July?

 Wait. Am I in the right month?  Yes, it is nearly September, but I've got some catching up to do. I can't keep a face like this to myself.

 We went to Ogden's parade on July 5. I haven't gone to a parade in years. Something about crowds and junk. But even though I wasn't expecting to have a good time, I did. There was a national guard band playing, and so I felt all patriotic and stuff, and then there were airplane gummy snacks and letter cookies to share, and so the two hours seemed less. Also, umbrellas are fun. Just ask Nathan.

 Clara didn't care so much about umbrellas, or keeping her hat on.

 But we had plenty of cousins to keep us company. Lydia was kind enough to put Clara's bow back in her hair when it fell out. Three year olds are so helpful. She was so proud of herself.

 And when the parade got to be too much, there was a cement barrier to lean against and look homeless while eating poptarts. You could peek through the screen and watch the construction crew demolishing the temple. Don't you find it ironic that people working on the temple were not allowed to celebrate pioneer day?

 And now, our reason for coming. My grandma was part of the Pioneer Days Daughter of Utah Pioneers royalty. She's the one in the purple in the middle.

Happy Pioneer Day.

A place of refuge (and lots of bragging)

This is Clara's favorite place. When it gets a little suspiciously quiet in the house, I have to go looking. While Nathan is usually downstairs absorbed in trains or cars, I usually find her here. With a book.

The only drawback is, it's not her place. She wishes it were, but her lucky older brother gets to sleep here every night. But I have a feeling she's biding her time.

(By the way, did you notice the horrid green walls are gone? I'm almost ready to unveil the new kids' room. Did I mention I was redoing it? I am. And it's taking me a while to finish.)

Clara's really learning a lot. A couple weeks ago we had a real conversation:

Mom, side please?

No, we can't go outside in our pajamas.

Yes!

No.

Yes! (accompanied by heartbroken wailing.)

It's so refreshing to ask somebody a question, and know that they really mean their answer. Nathan's knee-jerk reaction to everything is no, even when I know he really wants it. It's making me crazy. But when Clara answers, it's definite. There's no waffling here. (Now waffles sound really good.)

Last week we left the kids at their cousins' house so we could go to the Salt Lake temple. We missed the 7:00 session, and had to wait till 8:00. So it was a late night for everyone involved. About 9:00 Clara turned to Grandma and said, "Home please?" She's been talking about grandma quite a lot for the last few days, though. Today she called grandma on her phone, which happened to be one of my dress shoes.

I could go on, but I won't belabor the point. She's just so fun to hang out with lately.

At the car wash

Apparently these are the only pictures we got of our latest car wash. But aren't they adorable? Mmm...I hope those bubbles are nontoxic.

Hanging out Poolside

Brr... Water right out of the hose is cold. I bought this pool during June I think, and then it was always too cold to set it up. We were able to set it up a couple of times in July, though. And the kids loved it. It took Clara a minute but she made it.

And my favorite part? Weeks later, Nathan could still tell dad where we bought it: "Cake-mark."

Going to the Bear Lake

The little noisemaker-peacemaker. On the drive up, when Clara would fuss, he'd usually yell along with her/at her. Once, though, he stopped mid-sentence to say, "Oh, I need to talk to my sister. Calm down, Clara, it's okay." It didn't really work.

What do you think you're doing, dad? Taking my picture?

 If you can't be rich, you should know rich people. That's my motto. It's helpful. Some people my dad knows let us use their beach house for a couple of days and we turned it into a vacation extravaganza: seven adults and nine children in a two-bedroom house.

 We spent one morning at Minnetonka Cave. I'd never been before, so it was fun. The kids were a little nervous, but they enjoyed it.We even got to see a couple of bats sleeping. That was Nathan's favorite part.

When we got to the farthest point of the tour, the guide turned off the lights. Did you know if you lived in total darkness for a couple of weeks you'd lose your sight? Turns out eyes like light. While the lights were off the guide tested everyone's diamond rings. She'd shine a laser at the diamond and tiny refractions of red light would bounce on the uneven rock ceiling. Luckily everyone's turned out to be real.

I was impressed at Clara's vocabulary demonstration: dark, wet, outside.  She asked to go outside for about half of the tour.

 The rest of our time was spent at the beach. The water was high and the weather was slightly stormy. It was good times.

 Unless you dislike getting dirty. She was really unhappy if you set her on the sand.

 Going through a tunnel.

 Being unexpectedly pleasant about being in the water. She'd reach over and touch it, but didn't want to be too much in. I can't blame her, though. It was pretty cold still.

 Rediscovering as a family our love for speed rummikub. We grew up playing Rummikub at my grandma's house, and then somewhere as we got older we learned speed rummikub: you just play as fast as you can until all your tiles are gone. What's not to love about that? We could have played all morning if the kids hadn't insisted on going to the beach.

 The next day I put shoes and pants on her, and she gladly sat down to play in the sand. Then she'd want her shoes off to touch the water, and then she'd want them back on because the sand was sticking to her.

 Luckily the cold water didn't diminish our enjoyment of the sand. There was no shortage of sand toys and castles, swimming pools, and roads were built.

 The boys made this little swimming pool and she liked that, until a curly-headed little boy started splashing. Oh, cousins.

We had a great time. Then we came home to catch up on all the sleep we missed. Turns out kids (clara) don't like to go to sleep when not at home. And other kids (Nathan) stay up until 11 and still get up at 6:30. Naps were solely in the car. And we're thinking of going camping for a week? Parenting is a state of perpetual forgetful optimism. Probably because we're so tired we forget how awful it was. But really, we had a fun time.