We just completed a great vacation.  We took the family the Yellowstone.  We were concerned that the trip might not be as fun as some of the trips we have taken in the past.  It was a great trip.  We left Monday mid day and planned to take our time driving up.  We stopped to visit the Idaho Falls Temple.  We ate at Rexburg.  We took a scenic route from Ashton to Island Park.  we saw a great waterfall and some beautiful farm land.  The acres of wheat were impressive.  We stayed in Island Park at a home we rented.  It was on a island which made for a lot of driving.  Once we booked this trip I wondering if having a lease on our van was such a good idea.  Our cabin had a teepee, fire pit, and a trampoline.  We spent two days in Yellowstone and saw everything it had to offer.  We came across a herd of buffalo, saw the geysers, waterfalls.  the best part of our time in Yellowstone was a small stream we came across while hiking between the falls.  it was a picture perfect steam, small falls, cave area.  we spent about 20 min just trying to soak it all in.  We also stopped at a lake and skipped rocks for 30-45 min.  We visited a great wolf/bear museum in West Yellowstone.  We were lucky to be in West Yellowstone the same time they were having a mountain man rendezvous.  We floated the Snake river on a raft.  It was supposed to take 2-3 hours.  it took a little over 4 hours.  We took a side stream and it didn't work out very well.  Tiffany was concerned about us getting lost.  The stream got so slow I had to get out and push.  The stream was heavy in vegetation which was making us slow down.  I was struggling in mud up to my mid thigh and water up to my mid chest.  We eventually got to the mainstream again in time to see a moose and her calf.  We were very late to our lunch we had a Boondocks.  we had reserved some sweet rolls and were concerned if they would keep them for us.  they did.  they were delicious but Tiffany's are better.  Tiffany had us do an activity in the teepee.  she was trying to impress the importance of power of words on the kids.  I was assigned the popcorn but when I made it out to the teepee she was leading the kids one at a time in silence.  We read some poetry from "where the sidewalk ends" and ate the popcorn.  It was a very cool experience.  We did something similar our last night at the cabin.  We read the poetry, ate smores, played a themed song game.  hyrum started singing so loud I had to threaten to with forcing him inside if he can't control his volume.  We had a great experience but I'm grateful to be home.  Hyrum starts football tomorrow.  We just heard the high school needs a boy Hyrum's age to play Michael Banks in Mary poppins.  Hyrum is interested but it will conflict with football.  It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.