I heart Yellowstone

I told you once about the Bells.  I am making a presidential quilt for them.  One day I'll finish it.  They invited Eddie and I, and the Allens to stay with them at Yellowstone for a few nights.  It was SO nice.  I feel like a big dork for living in Idaho for 7 years and never making it there until now.

This is a pic of cooking hillside.  The trees all died on this hill because after an earthquake the ground temp got to 200+ degrees and cooked all of the roots of the trees.  Bizarre.  There is a fire behind the hill from a lightning strike.

This elk was freakishly close to people, just sitting in a meadow striking all sorts of poses. 

We fished in Yellowstone river.  Bison crossed right near us.

Did you know Yellowstone is a super volcano?  It's hot.  And, just here and there and everywhere there is steam coming up from the ground.  Such a cool place.

We saw bison, elk, a moose, coyote, eagles, osprey, and a grizzly with 3 cubs which was very far away and had to be looked at with binocs.  I now mock my husband relentlessly for saying "binocs".

Funny LooLoo

I took Elizabeth to get her ears pierced today as an early birthday present.  She was very excited and a bit nervous.  On the way to the mall she timidly asked "what if they mess up and I have big holes like some people do".  It was so hard not to laugh.  I guess ears with grommets (there is another name-right?  to me it looks like grommets) do look like someone messed up and accidentally made the hole too large. 

Also, for my memory- a few months ago she told me of a scary dream she had where there was a type of vampire that would bite you and inject a poison into you that made you really fat so that when they got around to sucking your blood there would be a lot of it.  Okay, that is gross.  But, even still I was so impressed with her imagination. 

Photo Essay of Summer thus Far

Okay, maybe some words too.  The funniest picture to me of this bunch is the one of everybody golfing.  I declared yesterday my vacation day since dad is going out of town for the week and I felt like some sanity was in order.  I didn't really do anything spectacular, and in fact I did a lot of work but still, I was cleaning the house for a good hour before I realized how QUIET it was.  I just enjoyed it for a good 45 more minutes and then I got curious as to what everyone was doing to be so quiet.  Eddie had all the kids golfing and swinging away at little foam balls.  The pic isn't that great but I needed to document my husband's brilliance.

I also love the strawberry picture because it proves that the cable man who tromped on my asparagus three years ago didn't really kill the whole plant.  It's alive!!  However, this is all there was.  One stalk.  What will we get next year?  And, our strawberries get larger every year.  They are really good!  The best part of all is that my blender broke and now the kids can't use them all up in smoothies.

I haven't looked into how much a new bosch blender is.............