It's been too long!

 

It's been about 4 years since the last time I was up this far North.  I love the drive out the East Yellowstone entrance:  We tried to find the pig, elephant, goose on her nest and the lady by her cabin, in the  rock formations as we drove through the canyon...could see the creepy old cabin at the top of the hill as we came into the town of Wapiti...watched the sun getting low over the Beartooth Mountains as we came to the Cody Dam....told the kids the legend of Spirit Mountain and we all tried to hold our breath through the long tunnel... could see the rodeo was getting underway as we drove into Cody... grabbed a bite to eat and hurried on to Byron... Aunt Julie and Uncle Ed were waiting up for us. It's so fun staying with them, in the morning you are always served a huge grand slam breakfast by Uncle Ed and their home used to be my Grandma and Grandpa's, so it's full of lots of wonderful memories. My cousin Shayla brought her 3 darling kids over that morning and it was fun to see her sweet little Rylee for the first time, she is just about three months younger than Ruthy. Of course I didn't get a single picture of the two of them together. We also got to see Jenna and Justin and their two beautiful girls and their new home in Powell. They treated us to lunch at their favorite Mexican restaurant, which was really good!

We let the kids goof around for a while. I'm still just amazed at how little kids are just instant best friends, it's really sweet.

We grabbed an ice cream cake for Uncle Ed and Aunt Julie to celebrate their wedding anniversary that we so nicely planned our trip over.:) After stopping to see Mark and Shayla's new home in Lovell, which Mark did an awesome job building, we headed back to Aunt Julies for a big family dinner. My cousin Jeff came with his wife Kim and their cute little boys and Aunt Linda and my cousin Joe even stopped by. It was really fun eating, visiting and watching the kids play.

Aunt Julie making snow cones for the kids.

Aunt Julie and Aunt Linda taught the kids how to make hollyhock dolls and earrings.

The next morning on our way out of town I snapped a few pictures of a town I love. So here's a quick trip down my Byron memory lane....Grandma Doty's old house. The people that own it now painted it blue.

I loved going to the post office with grandma to pick up her mail.

And this was the little store where Grandma let us buy penny candy and ice cream.

 

And of course the oil wells.

Then we stopped by the cemetery to see Grandpa's head stone, it looked really nice...I miss him, his stories, his laugh, the adventures he would take us kids on. He had this cool old bronco that he would take us out to the sand hills in to look for arrowheads. Good memories.

Aunt Julie told us about this cool place to stop at on our way home. (Oh and she showed us the right way to follow the dinosaur tacks. Hahaha... I love you Aunt Julie!) It was out in the middle of no where and it was really cool.You can actually walk on the tracks! Luke loved it.

We stopped to have lunch in Worland with Aunt Jorja, Jill, Sylvia, Heather and all their sweet kids. I love them. Jill's little baby Sally is just over a month older than Ruthy and it was fun to see how much she has grow and how good she is doing.

We ended the day in Riverton, Wy. with our good friends (practically family) the Richardsons. We got to hold Preston and Megan's new sweet baby girl and stay up late and eat and visit. In the morning we headed for home.

I also got to see my sweet friend Kami and her two girls. Her husband past away from cancer last year.

 

Ruthy loved Alec! She cried when we took her away...this almost never happens!

It was a great trip!