Yellowstone, Baby!

I am here at one of my favorite places in the world--our cabin at Island Park, by Yellowstone! These three pictures show the view of the Snake River and beautiful nature from the porch of our cabin.
Whenever I need to "go to my happy place" to relax, this is where I go in my mind. This year's family vacations is so fun, because everyone is here except my brother's wife Robin and my sister's husband Kyle. It has been several years that we have all been together. With my 3 sisters, 1 brother and all the spouses and kids, there are 17 of us here. At times it's a little loud, but so worth it!
One thing that has been interesting about the trip this year, that we haven't had to deal with in the past, is grizzly bears. Yes, I said grizzly bears. The forest rangers came to our door the other day, warning us that there have been bears in the area and to keep all of our garbage, food, and everything else that would attract bears, inside the cabin. We, being concerned for the safety of our children, did what we were told. We even moved our refridgerator from our screened in porch area, to the garage. (Apparently, bears can smell berries from 8 miles away, so smelling food in unopened cans, and refridgerators is literally a piece of cake). Well, our neighbors were not so obedient and left their trash outside. Hello ding dongs! Sure enough, the bears, a mother grizzly and her baby cub, came for their midnight snack. My brother Mike, hearing them crunch on the trash, watched out the window until they were scared away by the ranger's spotlights. He couldn't believe how fast they could run through the trees. There were paw prints all over the place, including the window of my sister Corinne's suburban (they were peeking in her car because she had food in there--they could smell it. How crazy is that?!).
Anyway, other than that, we are having a fabulous/relaxing time and it is awsome. I also have an extremely fun post to do, so I will probably do that today as well. This blogging thing is getting pretty fun!