Life Philosophy

A friend emailed me this link today. I've seen it a few times before, and each time I am more impressed and touched by his message. I think it sums up my life philosophy. Enjoy.

Vacation Log Done

I finally got my videos and pics uploaded last night, so I finished my brief travelogue of Yellowstone. :) I backdated each of the days to the actual day things happened, so the trip starts on June 30th.

I think I took some good pictures this time. :)

Memememe!

Jen tagged me to do a couple of memes. So without further ado, here we go!

The rules are as follows:

1. Link back to the person that tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your entry.

Six unimportant things about me:

• I have about 26 mosquito bites right now.
• I know what offsides is in soccer.
• I don't embarrass easily.
• I have a heart on my keyboard made of wax from a little BabyBel cheese.
• I freeze to death more in the summertime because of air conditioning.
• I own two neti pots.

And to heck with tagging six other people. I'm rebellious. (But that's an important thing about me to remember...)

On to my picture mosaic! This was fun. :)

What you do:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into this mosaic maker.

My Answers:

1. What is your first name? Suz
2. What is your favorite food? Fruits and Veggies
3. What high school did you go to? East Valley
4. What is your favorite color? Green
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Nobody
6. Favorite drink? Fresh-Squeezed Limeade
7. Dream vacation? Travel the World
8. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A Kid at Heart
10. What do you love most in life? Family
11. One Word to describe you. Geek
12. Your (blog) name. GreenJello

Love yer guts, Groovy Mom! :)

Home Again

....which means unpacking. Ugh.

I took Jak to the dentist this morning, and she had broken her tooth in two places. It may or may not require a root canal within the next six months, depending on whether or not it starts to turn black. Eep! I'm glad we were able to get her in so quickly upon returning, though. Our dentist is awesome. :)

But what a great vacation! I highly recommend Yellowstone to everyone. It is one of my favorite places to go. I've been there.... oh.... I think 6 or 7 times now. :) I think we saw practically every kind of animal Yellowstone has to offer. It was awesome!

I wanted to share my three favorite quotes of the trip with you:

Jak: "Kayaking really helps your Ninja skills."

Violet: "Mom, your ideas work 100% of the time."
Ron: "Well, they work at least 99% of the time."
Violet: "I guess the other 1% is where you got your scars from, huh."

Woman we passed on a trail, talking to the guy she was with: "Don't you just hate it when the FBI comes to your house?!"

And now I'm back to the daily grind at work. Yuck.

Yellowstone, Day 7

I guess that technically, this was more of a "Grand Teton" day, as we packed up camp and drove out of the park this morning. We stopped for lunch at String Lake in the Tetons, which is a beautiful little lake to kayak in. We made passing hikers jealous of our lunch of grilled hamburgers and hotdogs.

I love the Grand Tetons-- it is so amazingly beautiful there. I camped there a few years ago, and am just itching to get back. It's so peaceful, and the backdrop of these stunning mountains just adds to the experience all the more.

On the drive back home from the Tetons, we amused ourselves by playing a song game-- I whistled tunes from Disney movies, and they had to try to guess the movie and the name of the song. I had a terribly dry mouth after a hour of this! :)

Jak called her mother when we got closer to home, to see if she could come home with us that night so I could take her to the dentist tomorrow. Her mother was awful to her, as usual. She insisted that Jak had to stay the night at her house that night, and that we could drive all the way back up to pick her up in the early morning (45 minute drive, usually), and then take her over an hour back down to the dentist office, and then drive her all the way back home. Jak was crying after she got off the phone, saying, "She's such a bitch when it comes to you guys. I don't know why, but she just hates you." I responded with, "But this isn't about us-- it's about you." She looked sad and said, "I know. But she doesn't care." I told her I was sorry.

Divorce sucks even worse for kids when one of the parents is an asshole.

But, even with the little spoiler at the end of the trip, we had a GREAT time. :)

Yellowstone, Day 6

We pulled our sorry bodies out of bed this morning at 6:00am. We were heading out to Lamar Valley, in the northeast part of the park, to see if we could spy any wolves. About 45 minutes later, we saw this:



And less than an hour later, we saw this guy. We were thrilled-- not many who come to Yellowstone get to see wolves... and we saw 8 of them, 3 of them fairly close up like this one.

After we got back, Ron cooked a wonderful dutch oven dinner of barbeque-apricot pork and buttery potatoes/carrots/sweet onions. Then out came the makings for s'mores again. :) When we were stuffed, we left to go try to catch the Great Fountain Geyser. It only goes off like twice a day, and we wanted to see it. And saw it, we did! This is the third (and highest) blast it came out with this eruption.

Afterwards, we did the 5.2 mile round-trip hike to Fairy Falls. Violet loved the falls, as you can see. :) My pedometer was being stupid, though-- it said the hike was just under 3 miles. So either the pedometer was lying, or the mileage signs on the trail were made to discourage too many people from hiking around. :)

I'm sorry that we have to leave tomorrow. It's been a fabulous vacation!

Yellowstone, Day 5

Happy Fourth!

Today we did the Fountain Paint Pots, and the thermal areas along the road to Old Faithful. Some of my favorite pools are in this area. Beautiful! I especially love this photo I took of the Grand Prismatic Spring-- it looks like a sun or a flower.

We then drove into West Yellowstone to celebrate the Fourth. They had a local parade, which consisted of pretty much all Yellowstone Tour buses and vans. It was a total tourist parade! The kids scored lots of candy. I had fun "heckling" the parade people-- we were yelling for one guy to throw his boat to us instead of candy; and when the Kentucky Fried Chicken people came by, we yelled like crazy at them to throw us chicken. It was fun. :)

We picked up pizza for dinner at Wild West Pizzeria. They are known for the best pizza in West Yellowstone, but I'd say they had some of the best pizza I've ever eaten in my life. You gotta eat there when you're in town!

In the park, the kids played on the teeter totters and flirted with boys. Jak had a bit of a mishap on the teeter totter-- she smacked her mouth on it, and broke her tooth.(!!!) She said it didn't hurt too bad, so we figured we'd get an emergency appointment Monday morning when we were back.

We listened to a local band play at the park, and Ron and I danced to a number of songs (to lots of applause afterwards). We like to swing dance, so it always looks very cool when we get going. Some lady intercepted us on our way off the "dance grass" and asked if she could dance with Ron. The girls were shocked, and told him when he came back that he should only dance with me. :)

We watched the fireworks, and drove back to camp late. Yawn!!!

Yellowstone, Day 4

We headed off for the east part of Yellowstone today, and started out at Upper and Lower Falls. We went down Uncle Tom's Trail down to the waterfall overlook, which has approximately 4, 628 stairs. Okay, maybe it was only like 200 or so, but at 8,000 feet altitude, it was a difficult climb back up! The rainbow was as awesome as the falls themselves, I thought.



We saw herds of buffalo down through Hayden Valley, and Jak caught a frog in a marshy meadow. We ended up at Yellowstone Lake for a late lunch, where the girls and Ron paddled the kayaks around and I took a nap. :)

We ended our day at West Thumb Geyser Basin, which has some beautiful pools. It's right on Yellowstone Lake, which makes a beautiful backdrop for the thermal area.

Got back to camp late, but not so late that we didn't have time for s'mores! Yum!

Yellowstone, Day 3

When we told people we were headed to Yellowstone, we heard over and over "Watch out for the bears!" Well, I'm here today to tell you that it's not the bears you need to watch out for, it's the buffalo!

This morning at breakfast, I was flipping pancakes on the camp stove, and the kids were at the picnic table eating. Next thing we know, three HUGE buffalo come running straight through our camp. Talk about getting your heart a-pumping!!! And none of us had our cameras at the time. Bummer. :(

Today we went to see Tower Falls, which is a gorgeous waterfall in the northeast part of the park. Then we drove over to Mammoth Hot Springs, which has (sadly) dried up, for the most part. On the way there, we took the Blacktail Plateau Drive, which is a dirt road that kind of parallels the main road. We saw four bears. First, we spotted a mama black bear and her two cubs. WAY cute! Then, we noticed a huge grizzly bear headed over to them. The mama bear sent her two cubs up into the tree, and then charged the grizzly. Wow! Those are things you usually only see on animal shows. It was very cool!

Yellowstone, Day 2

Today was going to be our longest day. I figured we'd do this one first, while the girls were still totally hyped up with excess vacation energy. :)



We did the Norris Geyer Basin, and then headed down to Old Faithful. We did the long walk behind Old Faithful, and saw a LOT of geysers go off. Very cool! We got back late, but it was worth it. I think we saw at least 10 geysers go off today!

I logged 24,941 steps on my pedometer today. My feet and back hurt!