BYU Football...oh, and Yellowstone

Just a little behind, but here it is. Labor Day weekend we decided to drive through Yellowstone National Park and then head on down to Provo for BYU's opening football game against Arizona. It was a wonderful trip and the boys really had a good time.

Here is a video of Mason getting into the drive. You CAN be strapped down and still have fun!

These are the pictures that Porter wanted to take. Not too bad.









I have a weakness for Nestle Flips, the milk chocolate covered pretzels. Yumm. I decided to be nice and share with the boys, but somehow Campbell went a little crazy with the melted chocolate all over his fingers! I don't know why he just didn't lick his fingers, that's what I did :0) Maybe he thought he could save it for later.



After spending the night in Boezman, MT we entered Yellowstone from the north entrance so our first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. Here are my boys in front of one of the mineral formations. Pretty amazing.

What was amazing is that none of my boys threw anything into the pools of water or fell off the board walks that snake through all the hot springs. Here are Porter and Campbell being very good even though they REALLY wanted to know how hot the water was.

Hi Mason. We did have to carry Mason quite a bit. He was a little more reckless than the other two.





Porter was amazed by all the dead trees in the middle of the pools. We had to keep explaining that the water and minerals had killed the trees after they had been growing. He couldn't understand why the trees would grow there in the first place.
We were really lucky and got to see a lot of animals in the park up close. Our first sighting was a black bear cub walking along the side of the road. In this picture you can see the back end of a Bison. He was standing right next to our van, but Campbell didn't feel safe enough to open his window until he had passed by a little. I don't blame him, that Bison was huge!

Andersen posing with a bison from the safety of the van. I really don't know what face that is he's making, I just take the pictures.




I had to hijack the van to see Old Faithful. For some reason Andersen had no desire to see it, but I insisted. Unfortunately we missed it by 15min and I really had to drag my feet to keep us around for another hour to watch it go off again. Here we are in front of the Old Faithful Inn. It was amazing inside. Andersen said it looked like a huge tree house from the inside. At least he was impressed by that. Not so impressed by Old Faithful.


The craziest thing happened when we first got there. One of the park rangers was talking to a group of people who had just seen the geyser erupt when Andersen casually asked, "so how close CAN you get to Old Faithful," and then pointed out to the spot where some guy was walking right up to the geyser! The ranger went crazy and was all, "whoa, whoa, whoa, sir stop right where you are and retrace your steps!!!" She was pulling at something on her belt and Andersen and I both thought she was going to pull out a gun, but it was only a radio. She yelled into the radio, "we have a code walker, we have a code walker," and ran off to apprehend the felon. I wonder how much a fine that is to deface national property? What was that guy doing anyways? He was only a few feet from looking right down the hole of Old Faithful. There are signs posted everywhere telling you to stay on the boardwalks. Andersen did say it was worth driving there just to see that. Here is a video of us finally getting to see Old Faithful erupt.


Friday we finally made it into Provo and were able to go to the temple for Tiffany and Joe, Andersen's youngest sister and brother, to have their endowments taken out. I hadn't been to the temple in a few months and it was so great to be able to be there for such a special session. There were a ton of people there from Tiffany's Provo ward. Here is a picture of Tiffany (in the brown shirt holding on to Porter) with some of her friends. What a great experience.

A few of Tiff's old roommates offered to watch our boys so that we could go in and do the session. But here they are in full force afterwards trying to get a close-up look at the fountain outside the temple. Hold on tight to Mason, Nana!

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for...the BYU football game! Here is our whole group ready for the start of the game. There's Porter, Joe, Mason, Andersen, Campbell, Tiffany, some of Tiffany's friends, and Papa and Nana way down on the end.

It was a scorcher with temps in the 90's and we were in full sun the entire game. Don't worry, that's water on Mason's shirt not sweat. Although it did smell like a boy's locker room in the stands. Gross!






Porter was the wimpiest of us all. He kept wanting to go under the stands to get out of the sun. Unfortunately I ended up going up and down the stairs with him more times than I should have. And I missed the whole 2nd quarter waiting in the Snowie line with Mason and Campbell. Wouldn't you know, the other snow machine in the stadium had broken.


My brother Ben is starting his Freshmen year at BYU so he was there at the game too. He had really good seats in the student's section so he just came up for a quick visit. He's really excited for the Utah game because his seat for that game is on row 1. He called my parents already and told them he wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving because he was going to be at that game.

We all had a really good time and the best part, BYU won! BYU 20 Arizona 7. As you can tell in the picture we're all smiling. It was a great trip. A perfect one last horah before the baby comes. Go BYU!