I know it has taken me forever to get the rest of our vacation blogged. But here it is.
After spending a week in Utah with R’s fam. we along with 6 of my siblings and their families journeyed out to S.D. for a big family reunion. My parents got released from serving their LDS mission in Rapid City which is where we grew up. So we decided to go “pick them up” from the mission and go see S.D. one last time in a big huge family reunion.
R and I met and fell in love in Rapid so it was extra sweet for us.
Here we are at one of the MANY pit stops. Our 12 hour trip ended up taking 18. Although it honestly flew by rather quickly. He had two way radio’s and kept each other entertained. It was fun.
FINALLY we got to see Grandma and Grandpa. It was sooo wonderful to finally be reunited with them.
Here are some of the cousins chillin. We rented a lodge that was big enough for all our family. We were out in the middle of no-where all by ourselves. It was lots of fun.
Here we are eating luch one day inside the lodge.
Before the reunion my parents sent all of the grandkids an invitation for a birthday party to celebrate each birthday they missed while out serving. They rented out the party room at story book island (a super cute park in Rapid) and my mom surprised all the grandkids by showing up in costume and putting on a darling show.
My mom is a professional clown and it was a fun surprise. Most of the grandkids had never seen one of her shows, only heard about it. Boy was it ever a treat. She is also a vantrilaquist and let K hold her Uncle Sam puppet.
Nose to nose with Muffin the clown. It was cute, when my mom was introducing herself she said that she is muffin the clown. She is a Grandma clown. She use to have bright beautiful vibrant RED hair, but now it's turned pink. ha ha.
J loved being Muffins helper. It was cute, one of my little nieces asked my sister where Grandma was. :)
Grandpa passed out b-day gifts to everyone and we ate pizza. After the party the kids ran through the park.
B had grandpa wrapped around her little finger
Can you tell where my kids are?
Yep you guessed it, the famous yogi bear picnic basket.
Home of the 3 little pigs (and K in the window)
And of course the big bad wolf.
The kids LOVE Cat in the Hat and little B was so excited she was about to burst!
Some of the cousins inside little boy blue's house
The next day we had an outdoor carnival for the kids that my sisters put together. They had all kinds of games that you could earn tickets at and then the kids got to pick prizes from the prize table. I didn’t get any pictures of the games (I was running a booth, but here is the prize table)
We went and saw the home I grew up in (out in the middle of no-where) and hiked around to some of our favorite spots like…
Sandy caves, They really aren’t caves, but we all hung out there with our friends at one point or another. This pic. is of Ryan (my brother) and Chelsea
We use to come to this tunnel that goes under the highway and explore. R and I came here a lot as teenagers. It was funny to come back to it.
I do miss the black hills, it is such a beautiful place to live.
J and his cousin on the Fourth of July
We watched the Mt. Rushmore fireworks at an old friend of ours private lodge. It was incredible and we were alone. It was so nice to not have to fight the crowd and still get such an amazing show.
There is this BIG hill in the middle of Rapid City that splits the west and east side of town. Well they put these huge life sized dinosaurs on top of the hill and you can see them from where ever you are in town.
We had a picnic there one day. I made huge dinosaur eggs (out of paper mache’) and had chips, fruit snacks and a Capri sun inside. Each kid had to hunt for their egg and break it open to find their lunch. We served it with subway sandwhiches. I didn’t get any pictures of the eggs because I was too busy hiding them. :)
We had a picnic there one day. I made huge dinosaur eggs (out of paper mache’) and had chips, fruit snacks and a Capri sun inside. Each kid had to hunt for their egg and break it open to find their lunch. We served it with subway sandwhiches. I didn’t get any pictures of the eggs because I was too busy hiding them. :)
We also went to the famous big blue water slides. I have so many fond memories there I just had to take the kids. This picture of B’s hair cracks me up. She had a blast in the water.
Home at last. The kids traveled so well. I was worried, but they were little angels. It was great. We had such a fun time and it was awesome to see everybody again. Can’t wait for the next one.
