Summer Vacation, part 2

Okay, continuing on with our vacation adventures.  Before I share more pics and stuff, I just have to say that I am truly amazed (and SO thankful!!!!) for how well things went!  By all rights, this vacation really should have been an absolute train wreck.  We had been gone for almost the entire previous week at Family Camp.  We got home from camp on a Saturday, and the next day was Michael's first birthday.  Then Abby woke up that night with the stomach flu.  Including that Sunday, we were only home for 3 days between camp and our vacation.  And that 3 days included stomach flu and and LOTS of unpacking, laundry and repacking.  Additionally, Michael had NOT been doing well AT ALL with sleeping places other than home, or with being in the car.  He did do well with sleeping at camp, but really, how long could that last?  The last time we had stayed in a hotel (in June, for a grad party), I ended up spending almost all night walking the halls and lobby with him.  And did I mention that he had NOT been a fan of being in the car?  Yeah.  We were looking at a week's worth of hotel stays, plus  hours (and hours, and hours) of car time.  Sounds like a recipe for success, doesn't it?  But praise God, it really was!!!  All of the kids were SO good in the car, and generally were so tired at bedtime that they crashed and slept GREAT!  This led to a VERY happy mama.  The only issue we really had at all was that Michael seemed to have a little bit of a stomach bug.  There was no throwing up (that would have been a disaster with a 1-year-old!) but the diapers were awful.  Thankfully, it almost always stayed contained. :)  

Anyway, back to the fun stuff.  Our third day, we started out from Billings and traveled south into Wyoming, via the Beartooth Pass.  This takes you directly up, around and through the Beartooth mountains.  Our plan had been to take a somewhat leisurely drive through the pass and then check out Mammoth-Hot Springs just inside of Yellowstone.  It turned out that the drive took us pretty much all day (not because of any problems, but just because it is SO beautiful and we kept stopping to check things out).  The good news was that we really didn't have a strict agenda, and we had a pretty flexible time table (we really didn't know how long we would be gone when we started out) so we could just enjoy things as they came up.  

This was our first real glimpse of the mountains.  Randy had been out this way a couple times when he was growing up.  I had been to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee before, but otherwise this was my first real experience with seeing the mountains, and it was a first for all of the kids.

Throughout the trip, I was truly in awe of the beauty and diversity of God's handiwork.

We ended up with several family pictures on this trip, which was really fun.  I think this one might be my personal favorite.

The kids thought it was cool to see so much snow in the middle of July!

All I can really saw is WOW! 

The kids wanted to get a picture wearing their shorts in the snow.  We were trying to hurry and get a picture in before the storm came.

I just loved the pointy mountain.  It is exactly what most kids would draw if you asked them to draw a picture of a mountain.

This was a really cool waterfall that we saw along the pass.  Look at the water just roaring down from the mountains!

Considering the number of pictures in this post, I think this is enough for one post.  To be continued...