The Harrisons wanted to have a "small" reunion of just the twelve kids, and it was decided that we would all go camping in Yellowstone. Yaaaaay, camping! My favorite! -_____-
The Harrisons have had this trip planned for months and months, so when Jas came along, naturally Matt wanted to just take her with us. After much pleading and begging on Matt's part (you can stay in a hotel room, you can sleep in an RV, Jas is the perfect baby and she'll be fine) and much complaining on my part (I was sick, we have a baby, I was still sick, I hate camping, I was still very very sick, I DON'T WANT TO GO CAMPING WITH A BABY AND I'M SICK), we packed our bags and drove up to Yellowstone to sleep in a tent.
My boss had given me a hard time about taking more time off since I had just spent 10 days in California, so I was stressed about leaving work early on Friday. Matt told me not to worry about it, just to work as long as I needed to, and we would leave for Yellowstone when we left. So I stopped stressing, got my work done, and was able to get on the road stress free! Until I realized half way through our drive that we were not going to get to the camp site until 1:00 in the morning. 1:00 IN THE MORNING. This will be the SECOND time that Matt has taken me on a camping trip and we have arrived at the site in the middle of the night. And I knew that this time it was completely my fault, but how could he not make that more clear to me?? Anyway, I immediately made Matt call and text Lance to see if we could get him or someone to PLEASE set up our tent for us (luckily dad had taken a tent up for us in his car), but of course they were already at the park, so there was no way to be sure that they would even get our messages. I was so tired and frustrated by this point that I just laid back in the passenger seat and went to sleep.
It was almost 1:00 when we got into the park, and it took almost another hour to drive through to our campsite. I was able to sleep most of the way, but every 20 minutes or so, Matt would slam on the brakes and gasp and I would shoot forward in my seat wide awake and shout "WHAT HAPPENED???" to which he would quickly reply, "A deer!" or "A mouse!" or "I think that was a wolverine!" or something else ridiculous until I finally just gave up and stayed awake. We finally made it to the campsite with amazingly minimal searching, and I got Jas ready for bed in the car while Matt went off into the woods to hopefully find our tent that was hopefully set up for us. Seriously. Apparently he just walked around the campsite, found the smallest tents, listened to see if he could hear anyone inside of them, and luckily found one that was empty. Then we dragged our necessities into the tent and finally fell asleep at about 2:30 in the morning.
Looking back, it was pretty funny. At the time, it was definitely not.
We were pretty tired the next morning, but once we woke up we had a great time!
I was SO worried about sleeping in a tent with Jas. She had already proved that she doesn't like to sleep anywhere outside of our closet, so I knew she would probably wake up in the night (which she did), and it was way colder than I expected it to be. But we bundled her up tight in about 15 blankets and she did pretty well!
She got cold one night, and I woke up in the morning to find this:
Out of her own bed, snuggled up next to dad on his sleeping pad, with his extra sleeping bag wrapped around her, sound asleep. All the heart eyes.
Yellowstone is pretty awesome! We went to Old Faithful and grabbed some lunch while we watched it go off
(Jas was extremely impressed)
Then we spent the rest of the day walking around all the amazingly gorgeous hot springs in the surrounding area.
(Jas was even more impressed)
It was so beautiful! We also had lots of family activities each night, including a family spotlight and a family talent show,
And we saw a decent amount of wildlife, including a hawk that swooped over a flowing river and scooped a fish right out of the water and flew away with it. Also, a deer that walked right through our campsite one day. We were basically living a wildlife documentary.
We kept our eyes peeled the whole time for bears, but unfortunately never saw one. On our way out of the park, the traffic suddenly stopped, and Matt refused to go see what was happening, so after waiting for about 30 minutes, I marched myself up to the front of the line of cars to see what was wrong. Turns out there was some construction ahead of us, and oh also there was A BEAR IN THE CONSTRUCTION SITE SO THEY COULDN'T WORK. I guess they were waiting to see if the bear would leave, so they could let cars through? Or something like that. So I walked all the way back to our car, relaying the message to everyone else waiting in line on my way, because apparently they were also too stubborn to get out of their cars and just ask. Luckily, it didn't last that much longer and we got through pretty quickly after that. I was hoping we could spot the construction bear somewhere, but alas it was not meant to be.
Jas was great in the car on the way home like always, even when we had to stop at a gas station and change her diaper on the grass outside.
I am SOOOOOO grateful that she doesn't mind being in her car seat! And I am also grateful for a husband who doesn't mind driving for entire road trips because that's right I WAS STILL SICK. And I am also grateful that we didn't die while he was taking this great family portrait and driving.
We love family reunions!!!
