Playing catch up

I have really fallen behind in posting the last couple months which is bad considering how much that has been going on in my life.  So I have decided that instead of doing one blog post for each thing and being so forever behind that I won't ever be able to catch up, I am going to try to do a brief summary of my summer.

Family Reunion

 The first thing that I got to do is go to a family reunion with my family.  We camped out in my sister's backyard in our fabulously big tent.  Great fun was had by all.  My only regret was not having Arnie there with us.

  

Fourth of July

After the reunion, we lingered longer and got to go to the Fourth of July festivities near my sister's house.  They have a great parade and we got to see a rodeo.
 

Waiting for the parade to start

A cool picture I got of a bronco-buster!

 Arnie's Homecoming!

Arnie came home after being away in Africa for a year.  It is so great to have him home.  The girls were so excited and three of them got dressed up for it.

Cross Country Trip

 Shortly after Arnie came home, we headed back east.  Our trip took us through three national parks, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Badlands, where we camped in our Big Agnes tent.  Bethany and Malia participated in their Junior Ranger program and got badges at all three national parks.

At Yellowstone in front of Beehive Geyser

Glacier NP along "Going-to-the-Sun Road"

 

Badlands as the storm rolls in right after we get our tent set up

The double rainbow during the calm between the storms

The girls in the back of Arnie's truck enjoying the sunset peeking through the storm clouds

Glacier National Park is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen.  I highly recommend putting driving the Going-to-the-Sun Road on your bucket list.

In the Badlands, we ran into some nasty weather, probably the worst thunderstorm I've ever been in.  Although it probably felt that way due to the fact that we rode it out in our tent.  Agnes served us well, I'm glad to say.  We were one of a very few people that woke up relatively dry the next morning.  One man I saw just threw his whole tent in the dumpster muttering something like "Rest in peace!"