Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Working at the Car Wash

I've been wanting to post these pictures from last Friday night all week.  The boys wanted to play outside but I really wanted to keep them in the backyard so I could relax a little bit.  The truck was needing cleaned out since they had put sand all over it and it was just dirty from the garage.  I asked Ryan if he wanted to wash the truck and he jumped all over the chance.  He loves to clean things!  They always say at school that he will stick with the cleaning tasks longer than anyone.

So, here are my little worker bees washing the truck:



Had to have a towel to dry off all of the water spots: 


They actually did a really great job:



Ryan didn't want his picture taken with the truck but I told him that people might see it and then want him to clean their vehicle as well.  Then he wanted to pose and he told me to send it to everyone that I knew:



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A FULL weekend of fun

Is it really Wednesday and I'm just getting to recapping the weekend?  Well, I'll be as abbreviated as possible.  

Saturday I was able to go to Runner's Edge again (been off since October) and I LOVED it.  It was their end of Spring Session run and Chris Cakes was serving pancakes.  I may have just ran the 8 miles for the pancakes but I sure enjoyed being back.

Russ went to Lincoln, NE for a race after I got home from running so the boys and I had some time to kill.  Grandpa Jerry & Grandma Cella came down and we went to Dairy Days at Deanna Rose.  The boys got to learn about all things Dairy Cow.  They saw a live cow being milked by machine, got to practice milking cows with buckets of water, and saw some baby cows born in May.  They also scored some free chocolate milk.  We did all the usual fun Deanna Rose stuff - bottle fed the baby goats, fished, and played on the playground.  We had a really good time.  








Ryan was very proud of his fish (which mom actually caught - and I swear it's the first time I've ever caught a fish).  We let grandpa take him off the hook and grandma was putting the worms on the hooks for them.  I really want nothing to do with fishing ;)

he wouldn't touch it so he just posed by it ;)




I forgot the sunscreen :(  Someone got a little pink.
After Deanna Rose we went home and the boys played in the swimming pool out back.  At one point Ryan left to go find a friend and came back with four girls:




I think we wore grandpa and grandma out for the day so they headed home and the boys and I played outside for most of the evening.


Sunday morning I hired a babysitter (our favorite Alyssa is back in town!!!) for 6:30 am - woo hoo!  I was able to meet up with Suzanne and Lori for a 7 mile run that morning.  I always feel spoiled when I get to run both days of the weekend!  I was home from my run before Ross was even out of bed.  While I was in the shower he woke up so after Ryan played with him in his bed and read him some books, he helped him out of the bed.  When I came down from my shower I found that Ross had made his own breakfast:


Nine donuts in a perfectly straight line; empty donut bag on the floor of the pantry.  And no - he didn't eat all of them.
After our breakfast and getting around, I took the boys to the neighborhood swimming pool and they actually lasted almost three hours.  Ryan and I could have stayed longer but Reid was done and Ross was getting tired.


Russ was able to run his race around 10:30 (as opposed to his 12:00 heat) so he was actually home at a pretty decent time, although tired from the driving and the trip itself.  His race went well, although he didn't really push himself.  The entire race was a sandy mess... the pictures did not look fun at all.  He showered and cleaned up but still had dirt draining out the corner of his eyes for a couple of days.


So, the weekend was good but it went extremely fast.  I'm glad it's already Wednesday... I'm ready for another weekend :)

Monday, June 11, 2012

Day 4 and 5 - South Dakota

Anyone sick of hearing about our South Dakota trip yet?  Ok, I'm going to wrap it up today.

On the fourth day (Sunday), Russ and his parents got up early for a planned trip to Deadwood while the boys and I got around slowly to head across the highway to a water park inside a hotel.

As it turns out, Deadwood wasn't as impressive as that group thought it would be and they didn't spend a lot of time there.  All of the parking was meter parking and everything was basically gambling.

The boys really enjoyed the water park but after three hours Reid was ready to go.  We left for a while to get lunch and left Reid and Ross at the hotel for some down time and Ryan and I went back.  We had a lot of fun hanging out together.  After SIX hours at the water park and 24 trips down the water slides (at 70 steps each), I told Ryan that it was time to go.  This was the face that I got:


He did; however, want to be in a picture with the slides!  The big red and blue one was his favorite.  It spun us around and around the bowl before then taking us down a water slide and dumping us in a pool.


That night we had dinner at the bar and grill connected to the water park called Sliders.  We had the best service and the best food!  It was the perfect way to end our trip.

We got up on Monday and hit the road by 5:30 mountain time (6:30 central time).  The drive was pretty uneventful besides our lunch stop.  I was trying to pick somewhere quick but decent to eat and saw a sign for a Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I drove past a lot of exits to get to that one and then there was construction on it.  After lunch when we were ready to leave there was a train blocking it.  We probably lost 30 good minutes at that exit, besides our actual time eating lunch - FAIL!  The boys were a little restless with a couple hours left (and everyone except Ross was completely SICK of Alvin & the Chipmunks) but overall I give them an A for the entire trip.  We made good time though because even with that bad stop and two other quick stops, we were still in our driveway right around 5:00pm.  

This picture pretty much sums up the majority of the car ride.  Ross is sucking his thumb and watching Alvin, Reid is playing DS, and Ryan is keeping himself entertained:


As I said at the beginning of my four blog recap, it was a great trip.  We spent some great quality time together as a family and with the boys' grandparents.  Doesn't get much better than that!

Friday, June 8, 2012

Day 3 - South Dakota

Our first full day in Rapid City brought another busy and fun day.  We started the morning off with a trip to see Mt Rushmore.  We got there before 9am so it wasn't too crowded and was still pretty cool (although the sun was very bright).  We were able to take a walk on a trail around the park and get many good views of the monument.










Once we were finished at Mt Rushmore, we drove another 11 miles to see Crazy Horse.  This drive was through the Black Hills Forest and was very beautiful.  The place was crowded as there was some race, Volksmarch, going on.  We were all shocked by the $27 parking fee (more than Mt Rushmore) and then overwhelmed with the large crowds.  We drove up and parked, took one picture, and then left.  All was not a waste though, we found two more license plates for our license plate game. :)


After we were done at these two places, we went to lunch (Golden Corral) and then back to the hotel for a break and some down time.  After a while, we headed back out to hit up Bear Country USA and Reptile Gardens.  Ross fell asleep right as we drove into Bear Country USA and slept through the entire drive through "zoo" and the baby land portion.  I sat in the car with Ross while the rest of the crew went to the baby land area so he could get some decent sleep.  We kept this little guy going hard every day :)






There was a little National Geographic going on... I took a video of it too if anyone wants to see :)


Pictures from the Baby Land portion.  Everyone said this was the best part of Bear Country.  They said the babies were just playing like crazy:






When we left the hotel for Bear Country we kept Reptile Gardens as tentative but decided to go ahead and check it out as well.  We caught the alligator and crocodile show just as we got there.  After the show we walked around and saw the prairie dogs, the tortoises, and lots of snakes and birds.  

















After our busy day we decided to go back to Texas Roadhouse (the peanut restaurant).  We had eaten at one in Sioux Falls and it was pretty good.  Not so much in Rapid City.  I called ahead so we were seated quickly but the wait for our food was LONG, the food was rotten (Steve got wings that tasted like vinegar and Reid's requested medium steak was overcooked).  Despite the rotten food, we had a good time.  We celebrated grandma's birthday (one week early) with TWO desserts although she kept telling the waiter it wasn't her birthday. :)