PARKER FAMILY: August 2011

ASHTON, ID

HEY LOOK!! Its ASHTON in ASHTON, ID!

Wobby has to take this picture every year we go through here. My kids have learned to just give in to Wobby's crazy picture taking! SORRY ASH! :)

We stayed at the KOA in West Yellowstone, and it is the NICEST place to stay!! They have really nice cabins, very very nice bathrooms and showers, camping spots for trailers and tents, mini golf area, and this really nice swimming pool. With the kids finding out there was a swimming pool, we couldn't get out of NOT SWIMMING. So we decided to stay a little bit longer on Sunday and let the kids swim. Jon & Holli decided to do the same thing too.

Ashton & Jacob jumping in at the same time.

Jon & his kids:

Branson taking a turn jumping in. Swimming lessons payed off big time! The boys have so much more confidence in water now, and Brian sure likes it, he isn't paranoid anymore about them being in the water.

After we got done swimming, the boys decided to beg and beg to go mini golfing too. Brian being the dad he is...(always gives in to the boys:) let them play. We then had to go do some shopping for Wobby to play a little bit too. We headed into West Yellowstone to do some street shopping. I wanted to let the kids find some shirts of yellowstone as souveniers. We went into several shops and just couldn't find anything we liked. Until we decided on one more last store to look....and sure enough we got exactly what we wanted!

The store had a whole wall full of iron on yellowstone pics, and you were able to choose your shirt (color and size) and what you wanted on it. This made for some happy kids & Wobby! Branson of course chose a buffalo on his shirt to go along with his hat.

And Ashton designed his shirt all on his own:

He did a really good job. He has always wanted shirts like his dad, where the main picture is on the back and the wording on the front, so that is exactly how he designed it.

We sure love Yellowstone, and are so glad the Downs Family decided to join us this year! Love you all!

Dinner & Smores

After being in the park all day long, we were all ready to get out of those cars and trucks and get some dinner & smores.

Branson loves his smores!

Micheal & Jon always looked like this roating their marshmallows, I guess they didn't want to kneel on the ground or something??.... so they ended up hunched over with their stick stretched out. Crazy Grandpa was making fun of him!

FUN FUN TIMES with the Downs Family!

Day 2 Yellowstone

Day 2 on our fun Yellowstone Vacation:

Brian bought Branson this super cool buffalo hat in the morning. He told Ash he could have one, and Ash thinks he is too old for those now....sad that he is getting that old to know that!

Branson got so many comments from other people all day long on how cool he looked.

Good Lookin Buffalo Kid

Since we did Mammoth the day before we thought we would do the Canyons and Old Faithful part on our second day. My favorite part of Yellowstone is the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, so we headed there first.

We did this stair hike last year, and loved it. Our plan was to head over there and go on it, after seeing it from this point of view everyone pretty much chickened out on it (expect Micheal and Afton :)

This was huge for Grandma to get this close to the edge. It was quite funny watching her creep up to the rocks slowly to look over, trying to hold on to everything she could.

AAAHHH, straight cliff down to the water. It gets you a little bit nervous.

Wobs & Dad gotta have their kissing picture!

Hailey, Jocelyn, Branson and Jackson riding in our truck

On our drive over to have some lunch we seen this on the side of the road:

Super cool!

Another view of the waterfall. I made my family stop at every lookout point areound here, cause I just love the views!

Jon & Holli's fam:

Branson took this picture of Grandma & Zach & Ash

Another view of the elk, after we ate lunch. It was just on the side of the road, with no pull off spot, so all we could get was a drive by camera shot.