HOME + a really fat chipmunk

Six weeks is a long time to be away from home, but we're finally back. We pulled a 14-hour drive (on a cracked rim, no less--eep!) from Yellowstone yesterday and arrived to a yelping and howling Jasper who was so excited to see us that he ran in circles around us for several minutes and then licked Forrest's legs for several minutes more. It was possibly the best welcome home we've ever had.

We had such a great (and needed) trip. It was so wonderful to see our far away families, but it feels great to be home and settled again. Now we just need to find a place to live in Seattle by the end of September...

I took about a thousand pictures (literally) at Yellowstone over the course of three days. I can't wait to get those up here, but until then, I'll leave you with these:

What you are looking at is a very large and majestic chipmunk. As my sister Megan so aptly put it,"He looks like he swallowed a tennis ball."

I saw this particular chipmunk or "Fat Daddy," as Forrest called him, from a distance while we were eating lunch one day and I wondered out loud how close I could get to him. So I inched closer and closer until I was about a foot away with my face at the same level as his. He looked at me and continued eating with no regard for the clicking of my shutter. Forrest came up to take a picture of me with "Fat Daddy," but as soon as I handed over the camera, the spell was broken. The chipmunk leaned toward me with a gleam in his eye, and I thought for a split second that he was about to leap onto my shoulder and pose for the picture (as is such the charmed life I lead, of course). However, it was not to be and instead he sprang in the opposite direction and disappeared among the rocks. Then I spotted him again, because it is nearly impossible to hide such a girth as his.

He was really, really fat.

Orange Beach

So just a warning, this is a very photo heavy post of our vacation to Orange Beach, Alabama. My grandparents were kind enough to take us there and we stayed in a condo on the beach. The weather was perfect for sunbathing and floating on the waves in our dorky inner tubes.

We went to Lambert's one night for dinner. They throw humungous rolls at your raised hand (or head). I hadn't been there for about 12 years, but the rolls and apple butter were almost as good as I remembered them. I tend to build things up in my head.

I asked Forrest to take a picture of the outside of the building and these photos are what I got.

Full disclosure: I was just pretending to catch a roll here.

The Roll Man! We were seated in the corner with a fake roof over with equally fake hams hanging from the side so it was really hard for us to catch rolls. I didn't even catch ONE.

Megan caught one.

And then we went down to the beach for the sunset.

I have no idea.

The next day, we went down to the beach and I didn't bring my camera again because I like my camera and don't want it to die a salty death. We were having fun trying to skimboard when all of a sudden, a huge shadow descended over us. We all looked up and saw this:

We looked behind us and everyone was packing up their towels and umbrellas and booking it out of there. These photos are from our balcony after we got scared of being burned up by lightning and headed up (it didn't even actually rain in Orange Beach that night).

Due to the imminent storm, we all headed over to Pensacola to meet my uncle for dinner. We stopped at the Pensacola fishing pier on the way.

Dolphins!

And my little cousins.

So dorky, but so fun.

Now we're in Kentucky with Forrest's dad and brothers! We visited Abraham Lincoln's birthplace on Saturday and went to the Kentucky Kingdom theme park yesterday in Louisville. We're having a pretty good vacation, I'd say.

**Thank you to my sister Megan for taking all of the pictures with me in them. ;)

Petrified Forest National Park

On our way up to Washington in December, we saw an advertisement for the Petrified Forest National Park and impulsively decided to stop. You know, for a few minutes (aka two or three hours). The park is basically a big loop right off the freeway so it didn't really take us out of our way at all. We probably saw two or three other cars the entire time we were in the park. I have concluded from this and other such experiences that traveling in the winter (especially in the southwest) is totally worth it. If you're not hiking or camping, obviously. I mean unless that's your kind of thing.

First, we drove around and stopped at all the lookouts.

The views were stunning. The hills seemed to stretch on forever.

These striped hills were my favorite.

The photo below is of a log that petrified a really long time ago and remained after all the earth washed away. Later it was reinforced with concrete on the bottom.

And finally we saw the petrified forest.

Most of the petrified wood is made of quartz and it was so much more beautiful than I expected. My mom has a piece of petrified wood (that she bought, calm down) from a smaller forest in Washington and it isn't even close. It's brown.

Seriously, I was not expecting rainbows in rock form.

And then we had a lovely sunset as we got back on the open road.