West Yellowstone

We spent the last week in West Yellowstone, just me, Ava and Brielle and most of my in-laws.  Brig had to work. (BOO!)  I'm convinced that I went up there last Sunday with my happy-go-lucky baby and brought home a changeling yesterday.  She is either teething, has a massive cold, or ear infection or some other noxious bug invading her system.  I will know tomorrow when I take her into the doctor tomorrow.  We've gotten a total of about five hours of sleep the past two nights.  So if there are spelling errors or TMI it's because I'm out of it. 

Ava's first time in Yellowstone National Park.  I think she was about as impressed as I was, which is to say not at all.  Call me jaded, but any freakishly beautiful landscape can be ruined by bumper to bumper traffic that slams on their brakes for any furry critter willing to sidle up alongside their car.  Not to mention hoards and hoards of people.  The unwashed masses gather here.  I guess I prefer communing with nature minus the Commune.  Brielle hates her car seat.  So you can guess how that went. 

Ava and Brielle after watching the scolding hot gusher spectacle.  You can see Brielle is a girl after my own heart.  Can't watch a show without reaching for a snack. 

Ava's favorite activity up there...going into town.  West Yellowstone is no great shopping mecca, but to the kids it was.  This is Ava with her two cousins. 

Buffalo Gal won't you come out tonight.  Come out tonight.  Come out tonight.  Buffalo Gal won't you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon.  No?  I guess you didn't grow up with a mom that knows every old folk song, musical tune and obscure ditty in history. 

This cowgirl hat was sooo cute!  I think it was $20.  Not exactly practical with school shopping breathing down our necks.  We had to pass.  Look at that creepy sculpture right next to her.  I hadn't noticed that.  It's toenails are painted pink.  Curiouser and curiouser. 

Floating the river with Ava at the helm.  I had to sit out this three hour tour.  Literally three hours.  I also didn't want to be left behind so I took Brielle and we walked around Mack's Inn area.  Sitting on the dock waiting for my family to come floating by got me to thinking about Heaven.  I know.  Deep thoughts.  I read a book once called Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.  It's young adult fiction which I'm a big fan of.  Anyway the premise of the book is the main character who is something like 15 at the time she dies unexpectedly.  She gets on a big cruise ship and it takes her to Elsewhere.  Which is essentially Heaven.  You then begin aging backwards until you are an infant at which point you are reborn to Earth and floated back down the river ala Moses.  I remember not loving the story, but the basic premise was very interesting.  Tangent, anyway I was sitting there on the dock with Brielle waiting for the raft carrying my family and couldn't help but wonder when we die if it's a bit like this for our loved ones who have passed.  Standing on the banks of the river, waiting anxiously for the familiar shapes of your family to arrive. 

I'll be brief with my sappiness.  Okay, I'm not good at being brief with anything.  Let alone, sappiness.  The truth is I love these people.  And that is not just the Zoloft talking.  It's taken nearly nine years for me to let go of the past and love them for who they are.  They in return have loved and accepted me in spite of my flaws.  And in hind sight have been loving me and accepting me from the beginning.  One big thing for me has been to learn to love people without constantly wanting to bend them and twist them into what I wished they were.  People are flawed, and isn't that wonderful.  If people behaved how I wanted them to all the time there would never be any sort of surprise or variation.  After all I'm perfectly perfect in every way, right?  I'm sure no one has ever wished I were different.

When we got home I noticed Ava was burned from the edge of the back of her swimsuit down the backs of her legs.  I said, "Weren't you sitting in the boat?  How did this happen?"  To which my father-in-law said that every time he looked over at her she was bottoms up leaning over the side of the boat.  It's been a source of pain and misery for her.  Poor thing.  At least she saw five moose on the way down.  The first thing she said about the moose was that she saw it poop in the river as if this were the biggest highlight of the float.  Nature calls I guess.

Ava and Brielle with their cousins in the morning.  She got to play with her boy cousins the first of the week, and then they went home and it was mostly girls the rest of the week.  She had fun.  And Brielle did too until our last night there.  Then she turned into the vomiting, snot shooting demon of my nightmares.  Sunday morning saw me facing the dawn with nearly every bodily fluid coating my sweats and t-shirt from the night before.  And most of it was Brielle's.  ;)  All in all it was a fantastic get away.  Ava announced that she wanted to live at the cabin year round and was sorely disappointed to learn the next time we'd walk through that door would be in a year.  All good things....