Yellowstone and Nostalgia

I love Yellowstone. My family used to go ever year (at least I remember it being a regular vacation) because my parents love Yellowstone. They met while they were both working there. Matt used to work there over the summer, too. He worked at the cafeteria at Old Faithful.
This summer my parents invited us to join them on their business trip. (Dad owns his own company, so all the employees were going. I got to go because I help when Mom is drowning in filing and month end.)

We got to see a few geysers go off that I've never seen... and an osprey living in the bald eagle's nest. When I loaded our pictures, Google+ added the "Auto Awesome" effect, which makes these really artistic and Matt is now very grateful he takes way too many pictures :) (at the bottom of this post)


I don't spend much time with my sister's family (well, any of my sisters' families for that matter). We're fiercely independent people. I'm the kind of person that needs a reason to call. "Hi, how are you" for some reason, it's enough when I look at the phone. It made this trip especially nice because I got to spend time with the Smarts, and again see Matt play with the kids. He's so good with kids! :)

We also saw Matt's cousin at Old Faithful. This world keeps getting smaller, I love it!

Me and Dad :)

I love walking with my Dad in Yellowstone (well, I love being with him anywhere). He get just as fascinated with the little things as I do. He also takes his time to enjoy what is happening in the moment. Such a gentle heart. On one loop, everyone had gone ahead, but because we lingered in the back to enjoy the sights more, we got to see this baby go off!

Oh, and when Dad says "over there", he means the geyser was going off when we were in the car a good half mile away.
Now for some pictures:

Isn't the Auto-Awesome fun??
On the way home we stopped at Harriman State Park because Jared (my brother-in-law) wanted to get a picture of this tree:

It was beautiful there. Misty and wet. The spiderwebs and sun rays were incredible!! (With the exception of the "Auto-Awesome" picture below, nothing has been edited. These were taken with our Canon Rebel camera.)