4th of July weekend

We will just start at the beginning of July!! We celebrated my birthday July 1 by going out to lunch - I had a great time. The next day July 2nd Cam's brother Ryan and his family came up to Gillette to spend the 4th with us! After they got here we went on a little trip! We started out by going to Devils Tower and walking around it. The kids enjoyed taking little books along the trail looking for things so they could get Junior Ranger Badges! It was very hot but we had a great time together!

The Whole Clan - Us, Ryan's Family, and P and Sydney

The Kids working on their Park Ranger Books

Junior Ranger Parkar!

Junior Ranger Teylor

We continued on our journey and drove to Spearfish, South Dakota. When we arrived there we stopped by the Spearfish park -which is a huge park and very pretty! We ate lunch and then went to the Spearfish Fish Hatchery. The kids all had a blast feeding the fish and watching them jump out of the water for the food. We don't have any pictures from there because after we got to Spearfish Parkar threw up and was not feeling good so I stayed in the car and let him take a nap - so we just caught the last few minutes of the fish hatchery.

After we left Spearfish we drove to Sturgis where we stayed the night. My Auntie Bev and Uncle Gary have another house outside of Sturgis that they let us stay at. She took us out there and showed us how to run everything and then we headed back to town to go to dinner. On our way back Ryan and I had a great time giving Jenn heck - she is city girl from Denver and was having a little bit of a hard time with it being pitch black and actually being able to see the stars and nothing else!! We all had fun staying out at the "Ponderosa"! The next morning we got up early and headed to Rapid City. We started out at Fort Hays and had all you can eat pancakes for 99cents! We toured around Fort Hays after breakfast and the kids got to do some fun little activities.

Here they were able to make a rope to old fashioned way!

After they made the rope they went and got to shuck corn the old fashioned way.

After we left Fort Hays we went to Cosmo's Mystery Area and we all had quite the experience!!

Kendra and Teylor trying on the hats

Cameron standing straight up

Teylor was getting a scared because he couldn't walk by

himself without the "magnetic force" pushing him up against

the wall!!

Cameron flying without holding onto anything!

The Cosmo Mystery Area was really fun. After that we drove to Keystone and walked through the downtown. We ate lunch and went to the old fashioned taffy shop where the kids were able to see how they make the taffy and get a bag of taffy to eat! After that we drove back home.

We drove by Mt. Rushmore and thought this was a neat picture!

Hoobie was WORN OUT!!

The next day was the 4th of July!! We went to church and then went and did festivities! We went to the parade first and the kids all got a TON of candy and a few little toys.
All the kids waiting for the parade to start!

After the parade we went to the hot dog feed and ate hot dogs!! Cam's brother Preston was playing mud volleyball - they needed an extra player so Ryan filled in and played! They ended up playing my nephews team for the championship and won!!

Getting ready to watch the fireworks - it was pretty chilly that night which is a little bit unusual for the 4th - but we still had fun!!

The next day we went around to the few houses, schools, and some buildings where Cameron and his family had grown up. We stopped by a park so the "big kids" could play for a little bit. After that we went swimming at the rec center all afternoon.

That night Cameron made me a cake and we had cake and ice cream to celebrate my birthday!!

We had bought fireworks to shoot off and we thougth since the 4th was so busy and we were up late we would light them off on Monday night the 5th - well just as we started to go find a place to light them off it started raining! We ended up still doing it but it was a little chilly again but the kids were able to do the sparklers!

And that wraps up the weekend - we had such a fun time with them and look forward to them coming (hopefully with more of the siblings) next Fourth of JULY!!!