Mt. Rushmore and the First Day of School

In July we went on another family vacation.  We  left on Monday, the 20th and headed for Gillette WY.
  Our first stop was at Martin's Cove.

 We took a small tour and then walked to Devil's Gate.

 We then drove on to Gillette, WY.













We stayed there for the evening and the next day got up and drove to Devil's Tower.  It is a huge mountain that just juts up in the middle of no where.  We took the mile walk around the base and it was quite interesting to see.

 After seeing Devil's Tower we drove the 2 hours to Mt. Rushmore.

We arrived at our hotel to check in and then went to spend the rest of the afternoon seeing Mt. Rushmore.

We drove towards it and Jason said, "Look, there it is!"  I looked and saw the faces and said, "I thought it would be bigger."  I guess after seeing it in pictures all of my like, I expected it would look big from any angle.  :)

We arrived parked and walked into the monument.  It has       a walk way you go through with flags from each state and territory.  On the pilars it lists the state name and when it was admitted into the union.    You then arrive on to the Grand View terrace which faces the president's faces.   Below the terrace is an amphitheater where we watched the lighting ceremony at 9 p.m.  At the ceremony they talk about the contribution of each of the presidents.  Washington got the country going, Jefferson helped with the laws that would keep it going.  Lincoln helped keep the country together, and Roosevelt helped the country continue to progress and move forward.  Afterward they had all veterans, who were in attendance, come down to the stage to help take the flag down.  Then they had each of them introduce themselves and tell which military branch they served in.  It was quite good.
                                                
Before the lighting ceremony we took the Presidential trail, which leads you up and under the faces so you can see them closer.  There was also the sculptor's studio where it explained how the faces were planned and sculpted.  It took 14 years to finish....they blasted, carved and chiseled.   That was very interesting!  We were there from about 3:30-9:30.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove through Custar State Park.  We did the wild life loop and drove


through Needles.  This is actually driving through the eye of the needle.  Here you can see us approaching the "eye" and then as we are driving through it. It is very narrow!

We arrived at Crazy Horse Monument and saw a movie to introduce us to it.  It was started in 1948 and is STILL being built.  As compared to the 14 years it took for Mt. Rushmore.  It is privately funded and sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started carving, by himself, in 1948.  Ruth arrived about a year later (along with others) to help with the monument and she and Korczak married.  They had 10 children, 6 of whom still work on the monument.


This monument is much bigger in scale than Rushmore.  The president's heads from Mt. Rushmore could fit into the feather section on Crazy Horse's head!

 Of everything we saw, this was the thing Jacob seemed to love best.  The Viewer!

After coming home we spent our final few weeks going to Cowabunga Bay and Seven Peaks.  One day when we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wong, Jacob saw MarySue's foot bath.  He asked what it did and thought that sounded great to have warm, swirling water shooting at your feet.  He decided wanted to make one of his own.  We found a bucket, he put the hose in to start filling it with water and then added Jason's pump to pump air into the water.  It was harder than it looked...he was done with it after a few minutes.

Almost annually we get together with guys from Jason's MBA class.  Here is 2013 and 2015 (sans Ryan).

Ryan, Roger, Chip, Jason

Jason, Roger, and Chip

In August Jared and Stephanie moved back down fom Idaho so Stephanie could begin working in Provo District.  Some of the kids stayed with us the first week of August while Jared and Stephanie were back and forth, packing, moving etc.  We went to the park and splash pad.  Had a fun time!

Toward the end of July, Dad began to have some heart problems.  The upper section of his heart was not in rhythm.  They went in  to make sure there was not a blood clot behind the heart and then shocked it back into rhythm.

That seemed to help and he began to feel better.

Ah, then the day arrived!  Back to School!  Here he is on the first day of school.  Jason was in Thailand for work, but Jacob and I went to breakfast with out him.  This year we went to Penny Ann's Cafe.

Yum!!

To finish it off--Jacob made our bed for us a few times!  :)  

July 4th

We arrived home from Las Vegas on Friday, July 3rd.  Jared and Stephanie came down that day from Idaho Falls for the 4th of July weekend and to pick up Mylee.

Saturday  morning our neighborhood had it's annual breakfast and children's parade.  Breakfast was at 9 a.m. and Natalie decorated her front lawn so cute!

Getting ready for the parade

Lining up

Snow cones.  Yum!

After the parade, Jacob went with Jared and Steph to Stephanie's family for a BBQ.

We went over to Karen's house around 4 and had a BBQ there.  We also celebrated Jason, MarySue and Lilly's birthdays.

 That night we went back to our house, gave the kids baths and then went out to see fireworks.  It was like the battle of the fireworks in our neighborhood!  Airels were going off all over.  It was beautiful, but loud.  It was fun to see all of them!

Kristina was in town while we were gone.  Sunday we went to Heidi's for dinner to see them and had a fun visit.

On to the rest of the month!

June--What a Month

June was packed full of fun stuff.  After our 2 weeks of swim lessons (at the end they had them jumping into the deep end) Jacob had his last baseball game.  He plays with a fun group of boys!

That week he also began a 4 day morning camp called the Evil Scientist's Academy.  They did experiments with magnets, putty etc.  The promo for it listed more than they actually did, but he had fun.

That weekend, June 18-20 we went camping at Payson Lakes with one of Jason's old college roommates and his family--Robert and Rachelle Hokanson.  On Thursday, when we arrived there were very few people and it was nice and quiet.  We picked a spot, got our gear up and then went down to the lake.

Robert, Emily and Sarah

After seeing the lake and wading in we went back to camp for lunch.   We found a shady spot and sat there for a few hours and visited.  (Rachelle didn't come up with Hannah until Friday afternoon.)  While we visited Jacob wanted to climb into our tent and enjoy his alone time.

That night was tin foil dinners, a walk to the lake to fish and then s'mores for dessert before heading to bed.

Dinner

Getting ready to fish

Gotta get in the picture sometime!

Good Morning!

The next morning we hiked to another lake to fish.  Jacob had fun the night before and was looking forward to fishing.  He got his hook ready with bait and began to cast.  There were tons of fish and he caught one!

Just casting

 We were going to catch and release it because it was small, but the bait  had gone down too far. That is when the reality of fishing sunk in for Jacob.  He saw the fish die and did not feel good about that. I have a hard time with that too.

He cried a little bit and we talked to him about food and how we get it.  He didn't want to fish anymore so I suggested that he take the hook off and just cast.  He enjoyed that much better.

Robert cleaned the fish for us and took it back and cooked it.  It was quite good.  That afternoon Rachelle arrived with Hannah and we sat in our shady spot again to visit during the hottest part of the day.  Jacob got along really well with their youngest, Elizabeth.  She is 9 and they hung out and had fun.

That night Robert cooked a delicious dinner in the dutch oven, complete with peach cobbler.  It was so good.

Both mornings we were in charge of breakfast and did scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and pancakes.  As we were working on it I thought, "Why do we pull all this out here to cook and try to keep the flies away from it when we could be in our comfort controlled kitchen."

After breakfast we went down to the lake again and Jacob and Elizabeth played while Jason and I talk with Rachelle.

The next day was Father's Day.  We opened gifts at our house and after church we went down for dinner at Heidi's.

Opening some tools

David's new paddle board

Mom and Jason must be taking smile lessons from the same person.  :)

On  Wed, we went to the new splash pad in Sandy.  It is so fun!  Jacob loved it!!














We had so  much fun we went 2 days later on Friday.

Elias, Jacob and Rush

It was really hot and even though we had been to the splash pad on Wednesday, we went to the Lehi pool with playgroup.  It was us, Andersons, and Gees.

Coming off the slide

Waiting for the water to dump

On Friday, Jason had a golf tournament for work and won all of this.  A golf ball picker upper, and a fishing pontoon boat!  Too bad he doesn't really fish!  We plan to try and sell it.

On Saturday, June 27, Jason's birthday, we drove up to Idaho Falls to pick up Mylee for our vacation to Las Vegas the following week.  We got there and then loaded up the canoe to use at the reservoir. It was too crowded so we headed to Rexburg, had a picnic lunch, and played at the splash pad.

Jacob escaping

  That night we celebrated Jason's birthday and then did fireworks.

Jason forgot his tie.  Tried on Jacob's

After church we left for our house to get ready to go to Vegas.

Emma came home with us to spend the week with Karen.  On Monday the 4 of us went to 7 Peaks.  We could bring a friend and we had a great time!!

Tuesday morning we left for Las Vegas.  We arrived about 4:30, checked in, put on our suits and went to the pool.  It was about 100 degrees so the pool felt great!

We arrived!  Our first dip into the pool

 That night we went back to the room to shower and have dinner.  I had brought some garlic chicken to heat up and since it was late we decided to have it that  night.  We had a good sized mini fridge and microwave, but there was not a big bowl to microwave the chicken.  So I did it in small batches.  Took a while, but we ate.

The next morning we were at the pool by 8:30.  It was so beautiful.  Kids played with the noodles and squirt guns we brought.

At 10:30 they  had a kids craft.  We went up to the Kids Club and made door hangers.  Then we went back to the room for lunch.  After lunch we hit the pool again until 3:00.

 At 3:00 we went to the Kids Club and they decorated cookies.  It is nice that they have breaks during the day when the kids can go in and do something different.

We then showered and went to dinner.  Jason had asked at the front desk for suggestions.  We went to Ellis Island.  Jacob and Mylee had the hamburgers and they were good.  Jason and I tried the steak.  It was OK.

 We went back to Tahiti Village and out to the pool where they were going to show a movie.  Because of some light wind they moved the movie indoors.  We went up, got some of the free popcorn and lemonade and went back to our room where we had talked the kids into watching Despicable Me on the video player.

We all went to bed around 10:30--which was actually 11:30 Utah time.  We slept in the next day!

Eating breakfast

We had breakfast and got to the pool around 10 am.  We swam until noon, grabbed some lunch and then went to our 2 hour time share presentation.  We said no, but going to it enabled us to stay 4 days and 3 nights for free.  :)

We went to the Kids Club for root beer floats and then back out to the pool until 7 p.m.

We need to edit the guy to the right out!

 For dinner we  had pizza and left overs from the night before.  We were in bed by 9 p.m.

Friday morning we left at 10 and headed home.  It was a great vacation!