Our first family vacation

Like I said in my last post, we went to Mt Rushmore over the Memorial Day weekend. It was our first vacation with just the three of us, and we had so much fun. We left on Thursday and drove 5 hours to Alliance, Nebraska. We stayed the night at a crummy hotel there, and we saw Carhenge, and played in the water fountain at central park. One cool thing, is that for about 10 blocks in downtown Alliance, the streets are paved with bricks. We had lots of fun at Carhenge. I don't think I would recommend going out of your way just to see it, but if you are ever near by, you should check it out.
Corbin loved Carhenge. He kept saying, "car! crash!" and he starting crying when it was time to leave.

I loved all the beautiful, green fields

We visited the central park fountain on Friday morning, and then we got back in the car and drove for about 3 hours, until we got to Rapid City, South Dakota. Fifteen miles outside of Rapid City, Clark hit a speed trap and received his first speeding ticket. Definitely a bummer for him. Especially because we had no idea that the speed limit had dropped to 55 mph.

We went to see some dinosaur sculptures. Corbin neighed at the first one he saw. We also went to a cave with a small waterfall in it. Unfortunately, you can't see much in the picture. The waterfall is to the right of Clark and Corbin.
We stopped to see the Stavkirke Chapel, which is a replica of a famous 850 year old Church in Norway. The wood working was amazing.

Saturday we started the day with a tour of Rushmore cave, the closest cave to Mt Rushmore.

Corbin lasted about half of the 60 min. tour in the backpack. Clark carried him the other half.
After the cave, we went on a drive around Custer state park, while Corbin took a nap. We drove through some really need stone tunnels. There were also a couple of really neat wood bridges we drove across. After Corbin woke up, we drove to see Mt Rushmore.

Corbin was getting pretty antsy after Mt Rushmore, and Clark and I were getting tired, so we decided to skip Crazy Horse and instead we went back to Rapid City. We stopped at an amazing kids park called Storybook Island. Corbin rode in his first barrel train, and he loved it. For the next hour he kept talking about the "twain, choo-choo"

Sunday we drove to Badlands National Park. The name comes from early French trappers, who called it bad lands, because it was a difficult area to travel through. Unfortuately, it was a little rainy, but we were still able to drive around and enjoy the park. We just couldn't go on any hikes.

I loved Badlands, It was beautiful!

After driving through badlands, we stopped at Wall Drugstore for lunch, and we wandered around the stores there, and took some fun pictures, like the one below.

We also stopped at an airplane museum, but we didn't take any pictures there.

And that concludes our vacation. We drove back home on Monday, and now life is full of laundry, unpacking, work, and preparing talks for church on Sunday (Yikes! Anyone want to volunteer to do mine for me? I'll prepare it, and you can just read it word for word in front of everyone...any takers???)

We got back last night from our Memorial day trip to Mt Rushmore. I haven't had time to go through all the pictures we took. I will try to post them in a couple of days. In the meantime, here is a fun picture I played around with, using Gimp. I actually didn't do anything to Corbin's head. He was sitting on Clark's shoulders right next to Mr. Washington's head, and so I just cropped out Clark's head and shoulders.

I just broke Corbin's heart...

...by putting his blankie in the washing machine. He sat in front of the machine and cried for at least 10 minutes. Then he came over to me and cried some more. Poor kid.

spoiled rotten

I had a great Mother's day weekend. Clark really spoiled me. On Saturday, we went to the Denver Aquarium and had lots of fun looking at all the fish. After that we went to out to dinner. Sunday afternoon Clark cooked me a steak dinner. He also changed all the poopy diapers all weekend. With no complaints. It was fabulous. Here are a few pics from the aquarium. Unfortunately, there aren't any picture of me. My camera battery died, and I was lucky to grab these few before it shut down. Thanks for the great weekend, Clark!!

I'm not really sure why they have tigers at the aquarium, but Corbin loved them.

Not too much has been going on here lately. Just a lot of the same old stuff. Clark has been pretty busy with work (seriously, when is he not busy?) He didn't get home until 10 pm last night :( Thank goodness we are going on vacation in 2 weeks!

Corbin is learning more words each day, which is really fun. I still think of him as my little baby, so it is crazy to see him growing up! A couple of new things about Corbin:

* He loves to help me push the shopping cart. He lasts about 5 minutes in the front basket and then he is begging "down" and "helpy" (helping). He pushes the cart from the bottom, while I steer. It works fairly well. I just have to grab my stuff off the shelves pretty fast, or else he tries to leave me behind.

* Corbin LOVES watching "Cars" He will find the "moke" (remote) and come and say, "car? lie-een keen?" (Lightening Mcqueen)

Corbin coloring pictures to send to his grandmas for Mother's Day. One of the pictures has dinosaurs on it, and he kept saying, "haasy (horsey), neigh!"

Corbin loves helping me vacuum. Even if he is mid-tantrum, he is instantly happy if I get the vacuum out. I wish I found vacuuming so enjoyable.