July!

July was a fun and hard month. We were moving to New York shortly so it was busy - packing, saying goodbyes, packing. Also packing. Did I mention packing? It wasn't too bad since most of our stuff was still in storage but the rest was mingled with my parents' stuff throughout the house. We went camping right before we moved too.

We had dinner at John and Janet's house for our last goodbyes to them before we left. It was fun to watch Kate be so affectionate with her family. She misses them!

Goodbyes: Alicia

Jen
Grandma

Grandpa

She's my beautiful little girl!

Eating her greens! (I'm thrilled to have a daughter who likes veggies!!!)

Hudson the chick magnet

Kate's view of Alicia

Mommy and Kate

We've gone camping each summer with Nathan's family for the past few years. It's always fun to do things outdoors with kids because of the sheer excitement of possibility they seem to exude. The only part I could do without is sleeping in a bag with my daughter. She is a talker and a kicker. Besides that it was really fun to hike and cook, play games and chat with everyone. Nick and LaRissé were able to come up at night and eat dinner with us. LaRissé taught us a new song about brushing teeth and had the kids jigging for awhile. Viva tinfoil dinners!

On a hike with daddy's hat

Kate helping out by sweeping up the dirt.

The hike

The view from the trail

Ains in good hands

Kate looking over a bridge

Grandma and Ainsley (love Ainsley's sunglasses)

One of my favorite flowers - the thistle

At one with nature. :)

Climbing trees

So pretty!

Another view from the hike

Climbing trees like monkeys!

Bird watching?

I miss my mountains!

Tin foil s'mores. Mmmmm!

Hiking to the waterfall by our campsite

I'm still trying to figure out what Grant was thinking on this one...

private?

there always seems to be a question of making blogs private. i do worry about who is reading and with what intent. i don't actually mind people i don't know reading the blog, so long as i am pseudo-aware of who they might be, i.e. friend of a friend, facebooker, etc and where they got the blog address. I have a map that tracks locations of visitors and sometimes i can tell who it is, sometimes i can't. there are a couple of places that i don't know anyone who lives there (as far as i can recall at least) that visit frequently and it does sort of worry me. i would like to keep the blog open and to do this i'd like a few comments from people who read and where they are reading from. anyone from denver? oregon? florida? just for my peace of mind. salt lake city or nearby, don't worry about it, there are many people from around there that read the quintessence blog. thanks!

Yellowstone

We decided to take a day trip up to Yellowstone since we were so close but we couldn't afford more time than that. It's a shame; there's so much to see up there. It would really take weeks to see everything you'd want. Still I'm glad we went. I'm excited to see more of it in the future. It was neat to see Old Faithful again and to watch the stunning scenery pass us by as we drove. I kept waking Kate up to see elk or deer, poor thing. She was so tired. :) We drove straight back down to Salt Lake from Yellowstone and didn't actually get home until close to midnight. Kate made it almost the whole way. The last hour she'd had it and went pretty crazy but to have lasted that long was better than I could ever expect. My little angel. She had fun at the geyser. She liked running through the geyser mist even though it was "stinky". :D

This one looks like two kidneys. Just thought it was funny.

A beautiful view near Old Faithful.
She's so cute!I wish I could describe the beautiful colors. Even the camera couldn't catch them all.
A "smiley face" made of the heat-tolerant bacteria. What a nice welcome.

More cool looking growths.

More cool geyser formations. This one is dried up, leaving some wicked rock formation behind.

This one looked like eyes to me.

Kate seemed to be testing just how close she could get to the edge. Yeesh.

Heart Springs, named so for the shape. I love this one!

Old Faithful erupting.

The funny thing was that though Old Faithful was erupting, I couldn't seem to take my camera away from my beautiful daughter!

Nursing on her juice straw. She looks sort of Mobster or something.

Aren't we darling.

These are some elk we stopped to watch eating for awhile. Their fur wasn't looking to hot because they were molting or something. Still they are beautiful creatures!

While we were watching the elk, Kate took up her favorite pasttime, picking up rocks. Sometimes she keeps them, sometimes she throws them. Today she threw. :)

Driving along we stopped due to an unexpected visitor walking around slowly across the road. A sign of how tourists have impacted the wildlife. It was so fun to watch it so closely though. It was beautiful.

I just like the contrast of wildlife and automation in the same picture.

Though it is neat to see wildlife up close, I'd never get as close as that guy!

I created the next two shots putting lots of pictures together to form a panorama. I love how the finished product turned out!

Kate driving an Audi at age 2. Sigh.

We stopped by a waterfall on our way home. It was pretty, but to be honest, the camera again just doesn't give the impressions that being there gives.

We stopped again on our way home to see a herd of buffalo. Boy are they ugly and incredibly impressive. I'd NEVER want to be on the wrong end of one of these!

Fur falling off...

My favorite part of the journey was a gorgeous lake we passed by. We stopped to enjoy just a nice break in a beautiful place. There was something so peaceful and beautiful about it. Seeing those gorgeous mountains by that gorgeous lake. Watching my daughter throw rocks in. :)

This is my favorite picture of the whole trip.