While We Are On The Subject...

Okay, so if you read the LAST blog (Once Upon A Time) this will make more sense. I told you I still hadn't blogged about our friends, the Stokers, coming to visit this summer. They came because they had a family reunion in Island Park - but they decided to visit their FAVORITE people first. I tried to make dinner for everyone but was SO distracted with vacation plans that I burnt EVERYTHING to a crisp! Luckily the conversation and atmosphere were great - otherwise I think the whole evening would have left a bad taste in our mouths - ha ha - get it? Bad taste? Never mind. The kids sure didn't mind. They sat on top of the swing set talking and watching the sunset. I don't know what they discussed the whole time - probably the issues of the world, politics, religion, and video games. I think we had as much fun watching them as they did being together. Hopefully there are some seeds of love being sewn, but I won't say that here because we don't want to encourage dating for 259 years and also, I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone!

Then we went to Yellowstone. Can you believe how many children we have between the two of us? Holy cow! For us, Rhineharts, it was our second time this year of going to the park, which is funny because in the 5 years of living in Idaho Falls we had not YET taken our children, until this summer. Anyway, we saw a lot of wildlife including a Grizzly bear cub. The best part was that we had a boy car and a girl car - well, a mostly girl car. Brad and Chris didn't trust us enough on our own so they had Austin ride with us to make sure we behaved ourselves. We did sneak a few things past him, but he was a pretty strict disciplinarian. At the entrance gate the ranger gave them a wildlife sheet and the girls had a ton of fun looking for the animals on the sheet while Shel and I speculated that all the "wildlife" was REALLY in the other car! Oh, the poor boys. We had a picnic lunch and got out at every site we wanted to visit. I think we were all just happy to be with the Stokers. I hope that some day these things - hanging out on the swing set past dark and riding with friends through Yellowstone - will be the memories that our children talk about.

By the way, this last picture? You totally need to click on it and see it in big size. We got this stupid mule deer mid bite. He is even chewing with his mouth open. Obviously his mother never taught him any manners.