Memorial Day Camping Trip 2009

These are some of Ricky's pictures of the flash flood that they encountered trying to leave Goblin Valley....this is the result of the hail storm that David and I and Jade got caught in earlier trying to flee the storm....

For Memorial Day Weekend we headed back down to the San Rafael Swell area outside of Green River, UT. We went with our oldest two kids and their families, plus a whole lot of their friends! It was certainly a memorable weekend! We had rain, and more rain, hail, some sun, cold and a whole ton of mud! This is a picture of our camping spot.

You can see how there was mud everywhere with all the rain!

But when the sun would come out, we would head for the jeep, ranger and four wheelers, and go out of some of the amazing trails in the area. The three oldest grandkids, Kenadee, Bailee and Sage road in the jeep with us. We had "Wicked" playing on the IPOD and we had 5 way stereo....the three girls singing at the top of their lungs, and they knew every word of every song!

On Friday while the weather was good, we went over the Devils Racetrack again.....you may remember that we did this same trail 2 weeks earlier and ended up towing Jon's four wheeler out! Well, today was no exception, just shortly after these pictures, we ended up towing this Ranger off the mountain in the pouring rain. We finally just went out on I-70 and towed them down the side of the freeway, because we had 8 freezing kids with us and we were all soaked!

I didn't get any pictures of Devils Racetrack last time, so here is a picture (below) of the hardest part, but of course, the camera does not even begin to do it justice!

Everyone gets out and walks down this part.....it is good that I took pictures this time, because after someone breaking down both times, we probably won't be doing this trail again.

Jake (2) and Hunter and Curtis (5)...above

and Jake and Jade (2) below. It was fun to have

the kids want to ride in the jeep with Grandma and Grandpa!

The jeep is a great place for that afternoon nap! (at least little Jake thought so!) It is amazing how kids can sleep through all the bumpy trails!

Below is the ranger being towed out of Devils Racetrack and up Eva Conover!

On Sunday, there was some sunshine until about 3pm and so we drove over to Goblin Valley State Park for the kids to play on the Goblins and to have a picnic! After all day Sat. cooped up in the trailers because of rain, they really needed the break and to be able to run and play!

Bailee caught a lizard, and named him "Larry" ....she had so much fun with that lizard. She made a little house for him in a water bottle and took him on her hike up the mountain back at camp. She put him on her shirt to climb up a rock, and sadly, Larry jump off and ran away!

Goblin Valley is really an amazing place...

Hunter and Curtis tried surfing on the top of one of the Goblins!

I wanted some new family pictures, so above is David & I

Jon & Amy and their children, Curtis, Kenadee, Bailee and Jake (above)
and, Ricky & Michelle and their children, Hunter, Bailee, Sage and baby Paxton hiding under the blanket!

After our picnic lunch in the Goblin Valley camp ground, the dark clouds started rolling in and David & I decided we had better head back to camp before it started raining again.....we took Jade (2) with us.....rather than out running the storm, we drove straight into it on Temple Mountain. I have never seen hail so fast and so furious. There was three to four inches of hail in less than 15 minutes.....you can see that the jeep only had a top, and I was sitting with Jade in the back seat trying to keep her covered and David finally had to pull over because we couldn't see anything! Thank heavens we had extra coats and jackets in the jeep to throw over us. It was freezing and we were completely covered in hail. You can see the hail piled up on the jeep!

Monday morning there was sun again, and we headed out....this cool arch is just below Swassey's Cabin on the Eagle Canyon trail.

Traveling home on Monday afternoon, Jon's truck blew something just south of Wellington, and we ended up putting 3 kids and Amy over in our truck, and Bailee and I traveled home in the 5th wheel....talk about a bouncy & noisy ride. Bailee thought it was great fun, we played Uno, tic tac toe, rush hour, hangman, and then once it was dark, we made up stories for each other. That will be one of my greatest memories......after getting home about 10pm, David and Ricky headed back to tow Jon's truck and trailer. All in all David was in the truck over 12 hours straight!

Mother's Day Party

We had a late Mother's Day Dinner this past Sunday....and the one thing I wanted most was a new picture of our grandkids.....with Paxton's birth 4 weeks ago, my photo's were outdated. I always put Stefanie in charge of pictures and she does a great job! If you can over-look the red punch faces, here is our new picture of all 9 grandkids! We had a great dinner and had fun getting together! Grandpa David & I worked Saturday on getting a new sandbox for the kids....the old one could only hold 4 kids and it wasn't working any more.....we bought a new pool and loaded it with more sand for them to dump all over the yard.....it doesn't look like it is big enough, but it really is double the size of the old one! In fact there were 10 kids in it on Sunday!

Spring in Yellowstone

On Thursday, May 7th we took David's parents and his sister Carolyn and her husband Gregg up to Yellowstone. David has been wanting to try Yellowstone in the spring .....we go every fall, but in the last five years we have only seen one or two bears total, and he wondered if in the Spring we could see more bear! It was a really quick trip, but just in the first day we saw 4 bears, 2 grizzlies and 2 black bear! But, we also had alot of fun driving around and seeing everything else as well! This is Gregg and Carolyn stuffed in the back of Michelle and Ricky's Yukon...it was fun to all ride together in one car, but it was alittle tight on space!

On the way up we stopped at Island Park.....the cabin above is where David's family spent two weeks every summer. This is where David learned to ski and their family has many fond memories of these summer vacations!

Of course, we have no idea who owns the cabin now, but that didn't stop us from peering in the windows to see what it looked like!

Both David and Carolyn remember spending many fun days on this floating dock, just steps away from the cabin!

David, his father, Carl and Carolyn and mom Lois!

We asked some kind stranger to take a picture of all of us on the steps of the visitor center in Mammoth, at the park headquarters.

Grandpa Webster was telling some joke about John Wayne coming to Yellowstone....he had Grandma and Carolyn laughing by Gibbons Falls.

Here is Carolyn by the falls just outside of Mammoth! I can't remember the name???

Gregg having a little alone time with the buffalo.....buffalo kiss???

The great thing about having condo's is starting each day off with a hot homemade breakfast.....Gregg is the king of omelets!

Grandma watching Old Faithful!

The gang at one of the monuments...

The girls at Old Faithful....there was still quite a bit of snow at Old Faithful, and pretty cold, but the sun was shining.... below are the boys waiting for Old Faithful!

And the reason for the trip, besides (of course) the company, was the animals....we saw everything except a moose (which we have never seen inside of Yellowstone) and we didn't see any wolves, which are really hard to spot anyway! (but we have seen these in the fall)
So below are just a few of the pictures I had of animals.....(David loves animal pictures, but I prefer pictures with people in them) so first we have a Bald Eagle...

A coyote

One of the two Black Bear that we saw! The grizzly bear that we actually saw twice on the same day....once in the morning around 10am and later in the afternoon around 3pm....we are certain he was the same bear because he had a hurt front paw and limped on his wrist!

Antelope or Pronghorn

We saw a ton of Elk, but this big boy below, we will have to watch for in the Fall. If his antlers are this big already, he is going to be huge come fall!

Below is some kind of mountain sheep!

Below is just one herd of Buffalo, of the thousands that we saw.....I just thought this was a cool picture because it shows them crossing the Firehole River.....This same herd we watched get caught in the hot pots and burned their feet trying to get across them, and then headed for the river to get cooled off!

Eliza's 3rd Birthday

Wednesday, May 6th was Eliza's 3rd birthday.....grandpa and I were missing her birthday party on Saturday, so we took her to Olive Garden for lunch and to give her her present! She loves Olive Garden's "noodles" but she didn't love it when they came to sing to her!

The camera just missed her blowing out the candle on her ice cream sundae!

Grandpa with celebrating with Eliza.....we gave her a little camping set, and Erin tells us that the little doggie that came with it is now the new family pet, which she named "Filbert". Where did that name come from?

We love you Eliza....Happy 3rd Birthday!