A few more...

Here are the two cubs with their mom.  I love that the one was playin' in the tree.

 And here is our little lady in Mammoth.

One of my favorite parts... Madi kept calling the elk "reindeer".  (Two of her fave movies are Elf and Santa Clause.)

Home sweet home...

Madi was thrilled to see her daddy! It was so nice to be home with Derrick! We both missed him so much!

What the hail???

Wednesday I got Madi all dolled up and thought I would go take a few pictures of her after we ran a few errands for my mom. I went to put her in the basket at the first store and found green beans on my arm. That's what she had the night before for dinner. It was all over her clothes and on me. Yuck!!! I still had more errands to run and my mom doesn't live in town so I was not about to go back to change her. There was an Old Navy in the praking lot so I went over there. They didn't open until 9:30 and it was only 9:00. So we waited. As sootn as they opened we went in and looked through the clearance. It must have been the first mark down because the cheapest thing was $8.49. After about 5 min. I decided to go to The Children's Place at the other end of the strip mall. I saw a *SALE* sign. I drove over but they were closed. They opened at 10:00. So again, we waited. I ended up with a cute pair of orange shorts and a pink and orange tank. After all that she was too tired and too ornery to take pictures. :( Thursday morning we had a huge hail storm!
Here is a piece after it had already melted a bit. Some areas got hail the size of ping pong balls! CRAZY!!!

Since it was crappy weather it was an inside day. When Josh got home from school Madi wanted him right away. After a few minutes they were both out! How sweet are they! :D

We left late Thursday for the LONG drive home. Madi did great again! What a champ!

Play time...

One of my mom's friends brought over a high chair for Madi which was great! Madi was able to play with grandma and mom was able to enjoy Madi without lifting her. Madi has taken to all of them quickly and will miss everyone when we go home. Madi and Grandma

The temperature has been in the 90's so we took advantage of it and Joshua got the pool ready for the year! Madi wasn't so sure about it but decided it was okay as long as you held her real close and didn't put her in her inner tube.As I said, Madi has taken to everyone, but especially her uncle Joshy! She has even gone to him over me!

As soon as he gets home from school she wants him. If he walks by without saying hi she whines. She is such a cutie!

Miscellaneous of our trip...

I have to apologize for the LONG posts of pictures from our trip but really, I've done well, since we took over 2,000 pictures. Here's the last of them and they are just random ones of the family. I will actually do one more post from the trip of our family pics that we took there but they need editing first. :)

Ava Daniel and Ava
Handsome little Parker

On Friday, the guys decided to have an arm wrestling contest among other things. Here is Nicholas and Derrick.And the winner is....

DERRICK!

(actually, he beat all the guys! What a champ!)

Caitlin

Sisters... Whitney and Caitlin

Isn't Ava the cutest thing ever?!? I wish she lived closer so we could see her more.

I LOVE the curls in Caitlin's hair. I hope my little girls have curls!

Rachel and Caitlin

A baby shower for Christina...

Christina is pregnant and due August 17th with a boy. We thought it would be fun to have a little baby shower for her while we were up there. We played some fun games and enjoyed some girl time.Erin and WhitneyCaitlin was so mesmorized by this gameChristina opening Brenton's outfit

We had alot of fun and are so excited that our little one will have a friend the same age!

Thursday: Yellowstone - The animals were out...

We saw buffalo just about everywhere this year in the park. We were stopped by them MANY times. :)The plan was to go to Old Faithful and the hot pots today.Me, Chris and Mom waiting for everyone to get there. (These rockers were comfy but $575! WHOA!)This is on the trail to Morning Glory. The calfs were hopping and chasing each other all over! They were so cute.Caitlin didn't want to ride in her stroller... but, she didn't want to walk either. :D This is when it was my turn to carry her.This is her mom, Christina. She took her turn too! What a cute grin.Daniel and Erin at Morning GloryMorning GloryChris, Kelin, Mom, Me and RachelCaitlin, Christina, Whitney and KelinMe and DerrickThese are female big horn sheep with their babies. They were fun to watch climb the cliffsEveryone said the place to see the animals is Lamar Valley. Sure enough, we saw almost everything we wanted to see there. Here is a coyote.A big horn sheep This is my favorite. We were driving and there was a bunch of cars looking at something. We stopped and got out to walk to the other side of the hill to see what they were watching and right as I got it in view people ran to their cars and I saw a black bear coming towards the road. I yelled for everyone to get back in the car and Chris just stood there. I told him to come on and he said "he stopped" so I headed back to take pictures but told Derrick to pull up so I could get in quicker if he ran toward us. He came to the side of the road and Chris and I stood in the middle od the lane taking pictures of him. He was only 10 or 15 feet away. Everyone on the other end was yelling "Get in your car morons!" and stuff like that. We got some AWESOME pictures though. I think he must have been scared of us because he just sat and watched us and then as soon as we got into the car he ran across the road and over the hill as quick as he could and was gone. It was one of the highlights of our trip! :DSome more buffalo friends. The calves were so cute!Here is a wolf. They had killed something that morning and this one was guarding the kill while the others would take trips hauling it to their den. It was actually pretty far off the road and kind of hard to see but was still really cool! We had dinner at an overpriced resteraunt in Montana and then headed back towards the cabin hoping to make it before the closures for construction. We saw another black bear close to the road but didn't have time to stop. We didn't make it and had to go all the way around the east part of the loop and arounf the lower loop to get out of the park. We didn't get home until around 1:30 am! It was worth it though for the animals we got to see!

More from Wednesday: Yellowstone

Another picture from Towers. Mom, Caitlin, Nicholas and Kelin At Undine Falls pull off. Undine Falls Our next stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. Most of them were dried up but they still looked cool!

By this time some of us were burnt out and headed back the cabin. The rest of us forged ahead to Norris. Front to back: Christina, Tiffany, Rachel, Whitney, Nicholas, Caitlin, Joshua, Andrew, Bekka, Kelin and me On our way home we saw three bald eagles. They were really cool to see this close!