This is a recap of our vacation/road trip to Idaho and Utah. I really should have broken our trip down into at least five separate posts, but that would have taken up 5 of my 10 in '10 posts and I have more to catch up on. Instead I'm going to break it up into two posts (part a and part b.....so here is the first doozy of a post with a billion and one pictures. One more post will follow.....try to contain your excitement....I do realize that there are few things more painful than reliving other people's vacations via their pictures.
Here goes....
We took a much needed little vacation getaway in July, and proved to ourselves we could travel 8+ hours in a packed to the max minivan with 5 kids and still arrive with our sanity intact (mostly). In an attempt to keep the backseat smiling, we had a little incentive we called the traveling peacemaker award.....It was a high dollar (a whopping five dollars), highly sought after award that was awarded daily to the person we felt went out of their way to keep the peace both in the car and sight-seeing. It was an extremely effective incentive. The kids were highly motivated to win because there were giftshops nearly everywhere we went and they saw lots of stuff they wanted to buy. If there was ever a squabble, all we had to do was so much as mention the award and everyone was happy and smiling again. And for us, five dollars was a small price to pay to keep everyone happy, smiling and not arguing.
The first day of the trip was mostly driving, although we make a couple of pit stops in Yellowstone Park to stretch our legs and let the kids run. First stop was Fishing Bridge, then Old Faithful.
We pulled in the parking lot at Old Faithful just as it was emptying. We were pumping our fists at the awesome parking spot we scored.....until we unloaded to find that the reason for scoring such a great parking spot was because the geyser had just gone off and we now had over an hour to kill before the next estimated eruption time. So we walked the boardwalks......and walked the boardwalks some more.....and then we ate a snack and took a few pictures.....and walked the boardwalks again.....
And finally, it was time and we saw what we came to see, and guess what? the kids really weren't that impressed, not like I thought they should be. I even thought about giving them the "back when I was a kid before HDTV and mind numbing video games we appreciated nature lecture," but we just loaded back up and hit the road instead.
Somewhere in Idaho, Emma fell asleep on Lily in the backseat and it was really sweet.
Day two was spent in Twin Falls at my cousin's wedding. This is Ava outside the temple.
Grace and Ava.
Ava eating grass a little later at the reception.
Nothing like a big ol' family dance.
These girls danced the night away.
Ava going in for the kiss....
Lily and Rindy had matching shoes and thought I should take a picture....
The reception was very country, the take-home favors were little jars of jam that had a cute little quote about being "sealed for time and all eternity."
Jacob and Grace are 3 months apart and have been buds for a long long time. Ava thought Jacob was pretty swell too.
We spent day three at Lagoon.
Ava tried chocolate for the first time.
Grace was fearless (actually everyone was fearless, except me) and rode every big ride in the park including the Rocket. I didn't ride the Rocket, but I did ride the Wicked and the Colossus....and then I was sick.
Lily bought a pretzel and cheese with her "Traveling Peacemaker Award" money.
By complete coincidence, we ran into the Mayes family and it was so fun, we planned to "bounce back" to Lagoon with them a few days later.
