home and head intact!

We got in last night around 8ish and Josephine was so excited to be home that she squealed and quivered and ran her feet in circles for a good two hours before finally crashing out for the night. She did way better than I thought she would in the car and slept better than I thought she would in the hotels.

If you've never been to Yellowstone I highly recommend that you make plans to go there. The hot springs and geysers are incredible to see, a little stinky, but pretty amazing (and dangerous, this was supposed to be a stop for us the second day there but it was closed).

And of course we saw Old Faithful and the famouse Old Faithful Inn.

Then there are the animals! I didn't get pictures of all the animals we saw because some were just too far away, and some were just too boring to stop for I guess... We saw bison and their babies, black bears, fox, deer, elk, moose, pelicans (really! pelicans in Wyoming!), more bison, a stink bug in our hotel bathroom, marmots, and a bunch of boring birds.

The bison were everywhere! They stopped traffic several times and then I saw a sign at the beginning of a short trail that led around some geysers and hot springs that warned of bison charging and goring hikers. We started walking the loop and around the first corner we saw some bison very very close to the trail and a ranger asking us to go around the other direction and hopefully they'll have moved on by the time we get back to that point. My mom and sisters decided they'd rather wait in the car. So my dad and I come around to the spot on the trail again where the bison were and they have only moved about a foot away. My heart is beating a little faster. Dad takes my camera and I start down the trail. When I get close to the bison he yells my name so I'd turn around and then the bison stops eating grass and looks right at me with a snort. I immediatly turn forward again and keep moving so he only got a shot of my backside. And I may have peed a little.

All in all it was one of the best family vacations I can remember. Very little bickering, much laughter, and I only had to crack the window twice because of someone's farts in the car. That last fact is probably the most surprising to me.

might attract bears, the whole head exploding thing

If you don't hear from me this weekend, it's because tomorrow we're leaving for Yellowstone.
If you don't hear from me ever again, it's because I'll be in a car for several hours with my family, and my head might explode.
Driving with my father who thinks the earth might actually stop spinning if we stop the car for anything but gas.
Driving with my mother who is constantly uncomfortable with the air temperature and will ask for it to be cooler, cooler, cooler, I can't breath it's so stuffy, agggghh it's so cold in here, open a window, shut up and grab a blanket, why is the a/c blasting?
Driving with my sisters that can go from zero to ax murderer in .2 seconds if they feel they have been trapped in the car too long with the parents (see above).
Driving with a baby who cannot yet understand that Honey we'll be there in two minutes and you can get out then, just relax a little bit longer, I'm sorry but we all have to be buckled in, I know I know, here have a snack.

pray for me.

Here is a video of my cat just for the hell of it. I'm going to bed.