What can you do in one week?

After we went to Yellowstone Ryan rode home with his family and me and the girls stayed for a week with the Merrill family. I have not been able to go to IF as much as I would like when I have girls doing sports, and with a new baby it has made it hard to go anywhere. It was my moms birthday so I was really glad that I was able to stay that week and share her birthday with her. Monday evening Summer watched all the kids so my sister, my mom and I could go shopping and hang out together. We went to Target and then the mall and we looked around and figured out that Yard Sales have really ruined shopping for us.... why buy one item for 30 bucks when you can buy the same thing for 50 cents..... So we didn't really shop to to long. We went back and picked up the kids and took everyone out for my moms birthday dinner. I thought it was going to be nuts having 8 kids with us but they all acted very good and we had a nice time.
For my moms birthday I wanted to do some house work for her. She works very hard all day and I know that if I worked all day the last thing I would want to do when I got home would be cleaning. So I cleaned out the camper from top to bottom one day, then mopped her floors the next, then the next day I cleaned out her pantry. I pulled everything out and put it in the kitchen and I couldn't believe how much stuff you can fit in a pantry. But I put it all back in and got it all organized so I hope it is a little easier to find things. The rest of the cleaning was just trying to keep cleaning up after my own little family. We also were able to watch Mia and Ava this week and my girls had a ball with them. A couple of the day's Tessa came over and I couldn't believe how well her and Brytlee played together. They were so cute! But one of the days when my mom and I got busy talking and doing other things upstairs the little girls all started to play dress up. They would come up and show us how cute they looked and then go down and change again. There was a while that it was really quiet and before you knew it three little green goblins came up the stairs and said "BOO!!!" My mom and I about died. They had gotten into her stamp sets and taken the green ink out and rubbed it all over themselves. It wasn't that hard to get off of them and we were relieved that there was only a little spot on the carpet that ended up coming out.
Ava really wasn't bad, she just had a little on her arms and a little in her hair, but Tessa and Brytlee were covered.
cute little green goblins!
The girls had so much fun playing at my parents house. My parents have made their yard into a great playground and it is so fun for the kids to play on. (I wish I would have taken a picture of it) a while back they bought a marry-go-round and they set it up in the yard and then next to that is a teeter- toter then they put the tramp in the ground next to that and then a great little swing set next to that.
Not only do they have all of that but they have the four wheelers and the Rhino and the camper, and the pirate ship, and so many other fun things for the kids to do. My kids were in heaven. Their yard is great to with all the flowers and all the trees so it made it very easy for Elizabeth to catch this big butterfly.
The girls played with it for a while and then let it go so it could live.
One of the day's Annette, Cindy and I all took the kids to the Zoo. The kids were all so excited and had a blast. I had not been there in forever so I enjoyed going also. The penguins are always one of my favorite animals to watch. There was a cute little penguin that was a little showoff and kept going in circles and was fun to watch.

Elizabeth and Mia had so much fun together. They get along so well and love being together.
Adison was a good little girl while we were there. She was a little tired for a while but wasn't bad at all.
such a cute group of kids.
Check out this goats eye... weird
Elizabeth is hatching from a egg!
Oh and look at the two sleeping baby chicks
Now she wants to eat... cheep cheep cheep
Yea ha! Ride'em chicken girls

This was a really wild ride!
Alexis being eaten by the lions head!




We didn't ever get to see the otters... the kids were all wondering where they all went?
Giant Turttle
Cindy and Tessa with a cute little monkey
these were little spider monkeys that were so cool to watch. They were jumping all over the place and were so playful. One of the monkey's had a baby on its back but it was so tiny you couldn't even see it. You can't tell in the picture but the full size monkeys are not much bigger than my hand.
The girls love it when grandma reads to them. As you can tell all of the kids are very sleepy in this picture and a few times couldn't keep their eye's open.


My girls love being ready to and I just loved this picture. My mom can never get through this book (you are special) without crying a little and I love that about her. She has such a soft heart and is such a sweet, caring, thoughtful person. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful mom!
one of the nights the field was flooded to water the corn and so there was a lot of mud around. Their cousin Mike told them that they should throw mud balls at Tanner and all the other kids but I think Elizabeth just rubbed it all over herself instead.
Chris has a GREAT yard and they water the backyard by flooding it. So they invited us over to go play in the water.
They also have a beautiful pond that had warm water in it so the kids liked playing in that.


Tanner showing me his sweet baseball slide!

Cindy and Lizzy lou
I was able to color my momma's hair and so I said that she had crazy hair so Elizabeth didn't want her to feel bad so she ran inside and put her hair in some crazy piggy tails and came out to let her know she wasn't the only one.
I had such a great time and we did a lot more but I can't remember all of it. Mostly just hanging out with family and the girls getting some great play time in with their cousins. I always have a long list of people that I want to go see but for some reason time slips away so quick and before I know it it is time to go home.

Yellowstone Vacation

The Harris family went on Vacation together to Yellowstone this July and my girls had a blast. Our first stop along the way was this cool little area where you can feed some ginormous trout. We had a bag of bread that we thew to them and there was hundreds of fish fighting for it.



Adison in her cute little hat. She isn't crazy about it, but I thought it would keep her little head from getting burnt...
Our second stop was Mesa Falls. It was beautiful! I love the smell of it, the sound it makes, and the feel of the water in the air. I found this sweet hat in my parents camper that we borrowed for the weekend. I thought that it would be great for keeping the sun of Adison, but now that I look at all the pictures it didn't do much.
This is the whole group that was able to go. It is a little crazy that we are almost outnumbered by kids.....




the two baby's hanging out with mom.

This is how you know that your kids are having a good time!!! Almost every time we drove these two would fall asleep. sleeping like this would give me such a sore neck...
It was really nice when they were asleep, but on this trip there were times that I was ready to go a little crazy with all the fighting going on in the back seat. I heard, "she's touching me" way to many times, and "she won't stop doing this" and then there were tears. I could tell that my kids are not used to sitting this close together, and it really made me wish we had taken the Van....
Adison was such a good girl on this trip, and was sucking on some beef jerky on the ride. It was a little hard to be out in the middle of nowhere when you have to feed a baby a bottle. She is so picky about the temperature of her milk and gags if is cold at all. On the second day we took a bunch of water bottles and warmed them up as much as we could and then let them sit on the dashboard in the sun until we needed them.
The first buffalo we saw... I was a little disappointing with the animals. I was expecting to see a lot more. We saw a few elk, white tailed dear, a couple girl moose, a little fox, birds, and a lot of buffalo. A couple of weeks before we left there was a man that was killed by a bear and so my girls were sooooooo scared of going and talked about the bears non stop. They were really sad that we didn't get to see any bears, also. One of the nights that we were camping a bear went into the area we were at and tore apart someones cover for their camper because the guy had hung his garbage on it. (it was within 100 ft of were we were at...)
Day 2 we went to Old Faithful. It was such a beautiful day, and the drive was beautiful. I love all the trees but one thing I couldn't figure out was, why in the world will they not let anyone go in the park and clean up all the dead trees. There is so many all over the ground that it looks kinda trashy in some places and there are still a ton of trees from the fire that are dead everywhere. If anyone has a good reason why they can't clean it up let me know

Yea! So cool, I love the rumble you can hear and feel while it is going off. We were also there when the Beehive one went off. It is twice the size as Old Faithful and twice as long. They said that it only goes off once a day and it is usually in the middle of the night so we were really lucky to have watched it.
a little way's from Old Faithful we took a one mile hike up to this beautiful waterfall. This was one of Ryan and my favorite parts of this trip. It was so peaceful and beautiful. Little Adison didn't really agree and was wanting to take a nap instead. She cried for most of the hike, but as soon as we gave her to Denton he was able to get her to sleep.
Elizabeth was very nervous about this picture, and so was I. The rocks were very slippery and it was a big fall down if you did slip. Ryan tried to put her on the rock to sit for this picture and she would not let him.




Grandpa put the hat on her to keep the sun off of her head. Such a cute little baby!
I loved the wild flowers growing on the side of the trail so we had to get a picture. It was really funny because this lady was taking a bunch of pictures of this one flower and just sat and looked at it forever, and Elizabeth was just watching her. Then when the lady was done Elizabeth just walked up and picked it. I am sure the lady thought we were monsters....
These hot pools are sooooo beautiful. If I ever did a swimming pool I would want it to look like this. There are layers of rocks and then a huge drop off. The color of the water was so beautiful and the steam from it felt so good. It was funny because while we were walking around the girls kept saying, "I smell eggs"
There was a couple of ponds that were so hot that they were bubbling so I was wondering how hot the water was. Along one of the paths there was a few little streams that were going down the hill into the river so I bent down and felt it. Alexis thought I was going to die or something because she yelled out, "mom NO." But it was only warm, and then a little closer to the pool we felt the stream and it was hot enough that you couldn't keep your hand in it. So crazy
We went to a place in town right next the IMAX and it has a cool little museum about bears and other Yellowstone animals. They take animals that have attacked people or that would be called problem bears out of the wild and put them in this little place. The bear that just killed the old guy in July is now there and his name is 101. He is over 1000 lbs and is still very wild.
This picture cracks me up. The bear in the back is dead and so Alexis and Elizabeth are looking so sad and Brytlee's face is so happy. I have to write a funny story about Brytlee before I forget... we were in the car listening to my Grandpa Merrills funeral and it was my uncle Larry speaking and she was listening for a minute and then say's, "Is this Jesus talking?"
Some wolves. They had all sorts of carcasses all over in the cage they were in and if a bird would land inside they would go after it. They were pretty cool to watch.
The bears they have are really cool, and I really liked the system they had to show them. They had 8 bears and some would come out alone, but then there was two sets of Brothers that they would keep together. They all take turns going out for everyone to see and before they come out someone goes in and hides food and moves things around. They would put food up in the tree's, put it under a ton of rocks, logs and other things so when the bears came out they had to hunt for it. It was so cool to watch the bears throw around a huge rock like it was nothing at all.
This bear is climbing the tree for some food.
They had food in the bottom of this log pile and they found it in seconds.
We went back to the cabin area and made a delicious dinner. Can you guess what we had for desert???
mmmmmmm
Just a little sticky, no big deal

Ryan's parents are so cute!
The place that we stayed had a lap pool that was heated so it was more like a hot tub. Adison is used to having a bath every night so we thought she would like it. Well she didn't.... she LOVED it. She was so relaxed and just hung out for a long time, and then when we were done she went straight to bed and slept all night long. The next morning we were getting up early so we would maybe see some animals in the park so I even had to wake her up. (I might need to get a hot tub :)
Day 3 was our last day. We drove up to another waterfall that was so big and so beautiful. Even though we had woke up early, we didn't see any different animals that we hadn't already seen. Ryan's dad made me laugh when he said, "I saw a timber wolf and a stone bear" I was jealous and was like no way! Then he said, "you know a tree that looked like a wolf and a rock that looked like a bear."
The Sundstorm family and us took a wrong turn so we were the only ones that stopped at this lower falls and it was beautiful.
When we looked around we saw there two buffalo right next to us. They say don't get out of your car... well they were right next to the parking lot so I don't know if that rule would apply this time.
Adison still in her PJ's and had just woke up. (as soon as we put her in the car she went back to sleep)
This is the upper falls and they were awesome.



close up view of the falls. I wish they had a cave behind the waterfall that you could walk behind like the ones you see in the movies.
We had such a great time, and the girls loved all of it. They were so happy to be on a family vacation together. It was a little hard at times and felt like a lot of work at times also, but it was so worth it. I hope that my girls will always be able to remember all the cool things they were able to see and how much fun we had together as a family. I have always loved going on trips with my family and have built so many great memories that I will cherish forever, and this is also one.