Over 1900 Miles Traveled

That is how far we traveled in the last two weeks. Immediately after Lake Powell, we headed up into Utah, then Idaho for the Waite Reunion. Matt and I got to go river rafting which was great. I secretly, okay maybe not to secretly think we could have handled something a little harder, but it was good to get our feet wet. We went into Yellowstone a few of the days and it's all of Eric's(BIL) fault that we didn't see a bear. I told him my trip would be ruined if I didn't get to see one. I was pretty sad. While we were driving around I kept thinking to myself, "If I were a bear, where would I be?" Apparantly not anywhere people could see me I guess.
It was fun to see all of our Waite cousins. Can you believe there were 6, two year olds there(counting Jolie who is almost two). That's a lot of carseats. As we were driving around and admiring how green it was, the wild flowers everywhere, the rivers and streams that were so pretty, I kept trying to tell myself how bad it must be here in the winter. "Oh Katie you don't want to live here. They have horrible winters. They can't even leave their homes it's so bad. They have to stay inside for five months." Don't tell me if this is not the case. I don't want to know. So if you haven't been to Yellowstone, go. It's incredible.

Could We Have Had Any More Fun?

The answer is probably, but that would have meant our kids would have liked the water. One of the things that I find the most interesting/frustrating about raising kids is that you really can't MAKE them do something if they don't want to, right. I remember when I was little and my mom would fight with John about eating fruit(he hates fruit). It would go on forever, and I remember thinking why doesn't he just do it. Why can't she just make him do it. Or with me and wearing dresses to school. My mom every now and again would make up this rule that I had to wear one dress a week to school. I'm still not quite sure what her reasoning was(I'm sure she had one) but I hated it. It would be the longest drawn out process, and yet, she could punish me, threaten me, but I was still not going to wear a dress to school. It would have been the end of the world or something. Now as a parent, I get to have those same fights or trials I guess you could call them. Last year Jayden loved the water, you couldn't really get him out. This year, nope, he wasn't having it. I think having immediate access to a pool may have spoiled him a bit. The Lake Powell water isn't clear, it's cold(colder than our pool), and for an OCD kid who doesn't like to be dirty, the sand is tortuous. Then for Jolie, she turned on us as well. Our "happy go lucky" girl was more of a "crabby hold me all the time because this environment is different and so therefore I'm going to be difficult" kind of girl. Oh don't you worry your pretty little heads though, Matt and I still had a great time. I mean when you are getting a tan how can you not be happy!?! Of course we had a great time with our family and we had the BEST spot this year and the water was so high. It was seriously amazing. Not five minutes after pulling our boat out of the spot, someone else took it like bam. Oh how we love the lake. Until next year.