Love'm. Love'm all - Part 3

You know, I've never really been to a family reunion before as an adult. I have a few scattered memories of family reunions growing up (unless you count the annual Christmas Eve party...then I have some pretty solid memories), but I was always, of course, playing the role of the grandkid. Being an adult was actually quite fun! And what was more fun was to see my kids having fun with their cousins.

I have a lot of cousins. Like, a lot. So many that I wouldn't even be able to give you an exact number even if I thought about it for a while, and I certainly couldn't name them all. My dad is the youngest of 8 children, so most of my cousins are quite a bit older than me. Not so with my own children. They only have three cousins, and they all live in Sweden. So when they came to America for a visit, my mother-in-law jumped at the chance to plan her first Alder family reunion, and we were thrilled to jump on a plane to see them.

And so, driving up to Yellowstone, began the first reunion. It actually started out a little rough, with a trip to the emergency room with Carson. He was screaming (literally screaming) for two hours because of abdominal pain, and I thought for sure his appendix was rupturing. Turns out it was constipation... so that was fun to take care of.

But, we made it. And Yellowstone was beautiful. Absolutely, gorgeously beautiful. From the tiniest flowers growing wild and free in the forests..


...to the perfectly pillowy clouds fluffing along in the sky.

I seriously cannot believe I came home without a good picture of the clouds. I should have taken thousands! How could I have not pointed my camera up at those clouds? Every time I'd point another one out, Brian would roll his eyes..."you and your clouds," he'd say. It's true. I have a weakness for clouds. Always have. And, I don't get to see many in North Carolina. First of all, they don't have awesome clouds very often...and when they do, you can't see them very well because of all the trees that are blocking your view of the broad horizon. *sigh* I guess I'll just have to feed off of the pictures my brain took...

We rafted down the coldest river in the history of rafting down rivers -

Brian's little brother, Dave. Too chicken to let the water touch his skin...

Miles was out on this raft with Brian. He had a good time.

Samuel was exhausted after sitting in the cold water for a little while.

The first night we were there, we saw a mouse run underneath the stove...and the next morning found these inside the slightly opened marshmallow bag:

Yes, I'm pretty sure that is a mouse hair wrapped around that first marshmallow...

But the Alders didn't let that stop them from diving into the rest of the bag for the games that night


*Photo courtesy of my brother-in-law, Chris*

Miles had a fantastic time playing outside and spitting in Grandpa's face





And one morning I woke up at the middle-of-the-night hour of 5:30 to go into the park early to see something beautiful. I was not disappointed.

I would like you to meet the buffalo that almost chomped my ear off. I was leaning slightly out of the window in the cab of the truck, trying to get a picture like this:

When this nasty buffalo came right up to my open window without me noticing (because my eye was behind the lens....) and snorted in my ear. I was much too scared of him to try to get a good shot, so I clicked the shutter button once, and this is what we got:

YOU CAN SEE HIS TONGUE HANGING OUT! GROSS!!!
Man, if I ever start feeling down about the way I look, I'm just going to think of this nasty buffalo.

We met the rest of the family at Old Faithful to see the famous eruption. I must say...it left me quite lacking. That was it? I must be missing something.


I know I've said it before here on the blog, but I really do have wonderful, wonderful in-laws. The kind that you would hand-pick if you were given the choice. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Alder family for making the reunion so much fun!