"We need to stay together" Yellowstone - Day 1

I love all the orange in the sand - it was cool!

The colors were so beautiful at the painted pots!

One of the most beautiful places I have ever been to!

Monday morning we started into Yellowstone and quickly remembered how huge it was.  Lucky for us the weather was nice but when we got close to the hot spewing water it was so HOT!  I was grateful we had packed hats for all of us cause it was hot.    We got some wonderful pictures of the geysers and the colors.  One of these pictures is still my phone backdrop!

We saw tons of animals - actually it seemed that for awhile all we saw were the bums of animals but it was still fun!  You always knew something was out to be seen cause the traffic would slow down and everyone would be leaning out of their windows with all their cameras ready.

We made it to Old Faithful Geyser about noon and waited for the geyser to erupt - it sputtered a few times and then finally erupted.  The girls started their video cameras a bunch of times thinking it was the time and no luck.  Pretty funny all the people waiting around staring at the ground!  It was also the only place we could get a phone signal.  We decided just to find a tree for lunch - we were all hungry.   Then we made one more visit to the shops for ice cream - Uncle Derrick was awesome at feeding ice cream to everyone!  Yum Yum!

After lunch we kept driving around the south side of the park and got separated - it was a "little" stressful mostly since we weren't sure where everyone was.  We had planned on going to one place - got separated - now do we stick with our plan, drive around looking for each other, sit still and waste the day?!  NO phone service - augh!  We decided to stick with the plan since it was the water falls.  One of my favorite parts of Yellowstone is this hike to the falls - I took a couple of the kids for the hike and it was beautiful!   I love the picture we get of all the kids together.  These are the things I miss most about being away from my family - the amazing smiles I see when my kids are with their cousins! They truly love each other!

 I love these pictures of all of us together - we were always trying to get scenery and animals but in the end my favorite pictures are all the ones of us squished up together or laughing.  It was a fun day!

We were still on the lookout for a moose and bear - no luck today!!  In the end finally found Jen, Derrick, Rachael, and Marin and met up for dinner at the McD's on the outside of the park.  The no cellphone service was a little bit of a pain but we learned we really had to stay together!  :) 

 I know these are a lot of pictures but these are the pictures I chose out of the 1,498 pictures we all took during our week in Yellowstone!  I know - it was nearly impossible to chose!!  So I apologize for how picture filled these next few posts are!  :)