Sunday July 16th
Josh and his family arrived late Saturday night. We had
cleaned the house, planned our menu and what fun activities we wanted to do
with our relatives.
We tell the kids that their cousins are coming but to our
kids “cousins” and “friends” mean the same thing. They don’t call their
neighborhood friends cousins but they usually say “friends” instead of “cousins”
because their cousins are all automatically their friends.
We all went to sacrament meeting together. Sterling then
took Josh’s family to the Badlands. The kids and I stayed at church and did our
classes.
Everyone joined together again for pizza spaghetti skillet
dinner.
Luke and Ty slept over in Athena’s room while their cousins
used the boys’ bedroom. Josh and Janette stayed on an air mattress in the
workout room.
Sterling learned how to make towel elephants to make our
workout room more like a hotel stay. Lol. She always does a great job at that.
He buys candy and sets it out in our fancy bowl from Italy
on the dresser in the room. They have their own tv in there too.
Sunday evening Tiffany made chocolate chocolate chip cookies
which we ate with mint chocolate chip ice cream .It was a heavenly blend that
may have ruined mint ice cream alone forever. (I have since then had mint ice
cream and craved the cookies to go along with it)
Monday we ate breakfast burritos before going to Mt
Rushmore. We stopped in Keystone along the way to look at the chain saw wood sculpting
store.
At Mt Rushmore we watched the video, the children earned
their junior ranger badges and hiked to the museum.
Back at the vehicles in the parking garage we made
sandwiches and ate a delicious lunch together.
Then we drove to Crazy Horse where we stopped to get a look
but we didn’t pay to get in the gates.
From there we drove to Wind Cave National Park. We saw
prairie dogs and bison. We hiked up to the tower where we saw rain clouds
rolling in. The clouds made our hike cooler.
The view from up there is always amazing.
We hiked back down to our vans where we enjoyed chocolate
pudding cups.
At the visitor center everyone went on a wind cave tour
(except Tiffany and Athena).
Tiffany and Athena played, had storytime, hung out in the
car and cleaned the trash out of the van.
We drove back to Rapid City where we went straight to Sickie’s
for dinner. Mmmm. The menu consists of burgers of huge variety including daring
and crazy creations.
Tiffany tried the glazed doughnut burger! Dinner and dessert
in one. Lol
We introduced the girls to Kirby’s Epic Yarn on the Wii.
Then attempted Mario Brothers also.
Tuesday Sterling made us a delicious breakfast of pancakes, eggs and sausage. We
went to Storybook Island end enjoyed an hour and a half there. The kids all had
a chance to ride the little train and the carousel!
Tasting berries on our way out of the park
We then went to the chapel in the hills called The Stave Chapel.
We had leftovers at home for lunch and a little play time too.
Then we drove to the military base. We started at the air
and space museum before going on base. The sun was blinding so we didn’t spend
too much time outside the building.
We went to Sterling’s tower and saw his place of employment.
We went on the catwalk.
Then we went rock wall climbing. Aspen learned how to get to
the top then made a goal to reach it ten times! And she did it!
By this point we were all pretty dirty and sweaty. So we went
home and got cleaned up.
That evening we had a pizza and movie night. Pizza Ranch and
Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them (in 3D)! It is awesome in 3D!
Wednesday morning the kids ate fun cereals for breakfast and
went outside to play together one more time. We said goodbyes at 8:30am. Athena
went off to gymnastics with mom and our relatives got on the road for their
trip.
