Last night was a blast. I had my sis, BIL, niece and mom over for a dinner party. I made a great grilled, marinated chicken breast (that I never made before) and my (safe - I make often) corn casserole, fruit salad and for dessert that blubarb (blueberry/rhubarb) pie I tried for the first time. Everything turned out perfect - bonus!

I ended up getting my sis a silver cross necklace with her birthstone in it (ruby) and a Merlot Wine Cake Mix that came in a wine bottle. I hung the necklace around the neck of the bottle and wrapped it up that way...very cute. She was VERY surprised. Her birthday was last week, and she wasn't expecting A THING! She was prepared to dote on me (I'm the "baby girl" of 4 girls...) and I just wanted to spoil her for a change...she's just a sweetie...all my sisters are...

And, Jackie (my niece...her actual name is Jacquilyn Smith...like the actress Jacklyn Smith...) brought her big collie, Holly. And it was fine. Angel was a little bent out of shape and was frightened for a long while, and didn't like whenever Holly went near me or my mom (my mom just watched Angel for the first 2 1/2 weeks of  July while we were vacationing, so Angel has become very attached to my mom). But, Angel eventually tolerated having Holly around. Holly is a good dog. Angel is just weird around other dogs...she either loves them, or hates them...it's weird. She doesn't care for Holly. But, she warmed up a little bit throughout the night...she went from hate to tolerate, at least...as long as Holly didn't move near me or my mom.

We had four people captive in our house, so we made them look at our vacation photos on our big screen t.v. as Mike narrated. (ha ha...no, actually they asked to see them!) Here are a few of the wildlife photos I told you about:

I kept calling the male elks "bucks," and Mike kept correcting me...so I can now CONFIDENTLY inform you that this is a bull elk!

This is an antelope. They make the weirdest noise! (One scared me when it snuck up behind me once...) And they are FAST!

This is a black bear...not a grizzly...I was in the car when I shot this photo, but the bear came almost right up to our car...when a park ranger came over and told us to leave. Oops!

We got up at 5:30am to drive around and spot wildlife. We weren't disappointed! This bull elk was illuminated by the early morning sunshine. It looks almost surreal.

At the beginning of our vacation elk seemed like a novelty. After a few days of snapping pictures, we realized they were all over the place at Yellowstone!

These mule deer bucks had velvet on their antlers. They were fun to watch.

Bison were everywhere, too. There were signs not to get too close to them, though, because people have gotten gored by them.

I love this elk picture with the birds in the background!

Doesn't this look like a three-headed deer? It's those same three velvet-antlered mule deer bucks...

Here's a mean lookin' bison wanting to play chicken with our truck.

We have about 400 more pictures of our trip. I thought I'd spare you...for now. (Be glad you weren't at dinner last night...) lol