Hi everyone!  So I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks and since so many of you choose to share your families on my blog, I think it’s only fair that I share my family with you too!  We headed out to Denver first to see my sister and her husband!  We hiked the 2nd flat iron on the 4th of July and while it was an amazing experience – I left my camera in the car!  I almost made everyone go back to get it… but then there were a lot of kiddos ready to hike soooo I was overruled.  Thankfully my brother-in-law took some great shots for us with his phone for our personal collection – sorry everyone doesn’t get to see them here!  We made our way to the Grand Canyon next where we hiked a couple of miles down from the South Rim and my younger boy exclaimed his displeasure that we would do something so dangerous just to “see the Grand Canyon. I mean really mom, there’s virtual reality for that.”  😉  After the Grand Canyon we headed up to another brother’s home in Montana to rest up a couple of days.  He has a ranch with their own horses… so my oldest lady got some extra lessons and was able to try riding bare-back!  Seriously fun!  We all went as a group to Yellowstone next – two vans full with 4 adults and 8 kids most of which were happy about the situation.  😉  We got to see a lot of bison and elk – as in right up to your car, sneaking up behind you while you were playing in the water, etc.  We were close with them.  😉  My dear husband was disappointed that we didn’t see a bear, but I was ok with the lack of bear sightings myself.  To end the trip we said goodbye to the other half of our vacation team and drove to Mount Rushmore on the way home.  As luck would have it we got to speak with one of the original builders!  We could have stopped at more… but by then the kids were starting to suffer some motion sickness at about the 4500 mile mark so we called it and headed home.  Hope you enjoy our fun/crazy family vacation shots below!

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