Yellowstone Adventure

I've been wanting to go on a day trip for quite some time.  It has finally been getting warm and so I needed to get out of the house!  A week after Nate and I were talking about this, some of our friends invited us to go to Yellowstone Park with them.  It was the perfect adventure!  We headed out late morning.  When we left, it was probably 70 degrees in Rexburg, and beautiful, so we all dressed in light jackets and Nate even wore shorts.  Well, the day would prove to prove us not very smart.  First, Yellowstone is further north than Rexburg and it's much colder.  We did not anticipate this!  There was still snow on the ground.  It also happened to be extremely windy.  When we got to Yellowstone we were disappointed to find it had not yet opened for the season.  We did not even think to check to see when it opened!  The worst part was that our friend, Phillip, was visiting from Germany and he was the main reason we went to Yellowstone.  We had to settle with a picture with the sign since we never actually got to go in.  Somehow, we managed to find stuff around West Yellowstone to do for three hours or so.  It also got a little warmer and less windy so we could walk around outside.  All-in-all, it was a good trip, even though we definitely missed seeing Old Faithful and the hot springs.

Thanksgiving Shmanksgiving

For our first Thanksgiving together, we made the trip down to Arizona to visit Nate's sister Jennifer and her family.  It was quite the car ride (14 hours) but we split it into two days each way which definitely made it more bearable.  Here are some of the highlights!  (I realized once we got home that there are no pictures of Jennifer's family which makes me kind of sad...)

Crossing the Hoover Dam...

Thanksgiving Dinner

The Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple

Attending the Mesa Temple the next day.

Playing legos with my niece Elise.  She's amazing at them!  But the creation below was all mine.  Elise gave me instructions to build a place for the lego people to play with their pets and this is what I came up with.  I know, I should work for lego I'm so good.

Driving by the St. George Temple on the way home.

I'd say it was a pretty successful trip we made!  The only thing missing was that I couldn't write our wedding thank-you cards.  I had postcards printed (designed them myself!) but didn't open the package until we were in the car and it turns out the printer printed the wrong file....so I couldn't write a single one.  Hopefully they get the right one printed soon so I can thank all the fabulous people who sent us gifts and helped us out!