Yellowstone...Winter Trip

 For Christmas this year Russell and Layne gave our families a trip to Yellowstone from the company. It was so much fun to do a get away on Martin Luther King Jr Day, just a couple of weeks after Christmas break. We stayed in West Yellowstone and on Saturday we did a 8 hour tour to Old Faithful and back.

 Here we are with our guide for the day. He drove us around and told us interesting things about Yellowstone.

We saw buffalo with snow covered faces

 The snow was deep and beautiful. Especially since we had not seen any in Orem. 

 We were on this big bus with some other tourists. It was a fun way to travel.

 The tire was just about as big as Jack!

The bus driver dropped our families off so we could do a two and a half mile snow shoe hike and then we met up with the rest of the group at Old Faithful. This was the funnest part of the trip for me. We did not see anyone else out on the trail and it was so pretty and not too cold.

Here is Jack by a hot pot.

Here are Kyler, Zach, Aiden, Eliza and Jack looking good.

 All of the kids did a great job snow shoeing

 My cute family with geyser steam in the background.

Jack by the trail sign

Russell and Aiden

 Nearly to Old Faithful, Eliza taking a break on a snow covered bench.

Eliza in front of the Old Faithful Inn

After the hike the boys all fell asleep on the bus.

 We are usually eating ice cream cones watching Old Faithful go off. Not this time, drinking hot chocolate and playing in the snow.

 My favorite color of blue, in the hot pot.

Russell organized the whole trip, booked the hotel, the tour and planned the whole weekend to make it as fun as could be. And it was!!

Eliza and Paige had a great time.

Jack hanging in the snow watching the wolves...those little dots behind him are wolves. We saw 17 and heard them howl. It was so cool. We have never seen wolves like this on our other trips so this a highlight for sure!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning and then went to the Wolf and Grizzly Bear Discovery Center. Here are all the kids with a big bear.

There is a wolf behind me!!

Eliza, Troy and Jack checking out the wolf. They had 6 wolves and 5 or 6 bears that we saw. It was a fun place to spend the afternoon. 

That night after dinner we drove around town and found a 20 foot tall snow hill in the middle of their city park with a couple of broken sleds so the kids got in their snow gear and they played on that hill for two hours. They loved it.

Then on Monday it was back to reality. It was a super fun weekend.