Happy 4th of July (cont.)

Okay, I had to stop my posting in the middle, because I was so frustrated, and it wasn't working, so sorry that the last one was kind of random, and now I have a lot of the same pictures again, but I don't care. If this doesn't work this time, I think I might swear off blogging forever! (And these are out of order, I know that you don't care, but it bugs me). Like I said, I'm still kind of testing this whole blogging thing out.
The picture in front of the statue is in the Sculptor's Studio at Mount Rushmore. This is what Mount Rushmore was supposed to end up looking like, but the guy who was doing it died before it was completely finished. I thought it was cool though because this statue has down to like their stomachs and the mountain just has their faces. Some of you may ask who is standing next to me... That's Josh's brother. He's single so he was my stand-in husband for this picture!




This is a picture of Josh and I at the walkway leading to Mount Rushmore. You can't tell but the mountain is behind us.


















Mount Rushmore itself.














I said this on the last blog, but these are pictures of Josh and I pushing handcarts at Martin's Cove. We stopped there on the way to South Dakota, the day before we went to Mount Rushmore. (Like I said, the pictures are out of order.)
Ah! I just deleted the picture of Josh and I, and I don't know how to get it back. (You can look at the other blog for that.)








This is me wearing a Junior Ranger's hat at this windcaves National Park we went to AFTER we went to Mount Rushmore.
We went to Crazy Horse right after we went to Mount Rushmore, and it was pretty much a huge disappointment. We felt like we got ripped off because we paid like 3 times as much to get in, but the carving isn't even close to being done. But here's a picture of the whole fam at Crazy Horse. (For all those who don't know, (because I didn't) Crazy Horse is a carving that an indian tribe is doing in honor of Chief Crazy Horse. They started it like 60 years ago, and it's still not finished yet. Just for the record, it took 14 years to complete Mount Rushmore.)
This is me standing next to a statue of what Crazy Horse will look like eventually. (Probably not in our lifetimes, but maybe someday.) You can barely see the mountain in the background, and so far, they've carved his head, and started his arm-no horse yet.
There's the closest picture that we got of Crazy Horse, because you had to PAY to ride a bus to get any closer, and since we already felt that we had been taken, we weren't about to give them even more money!
Oops! And here's the whole family at Mount Rushmore again!
On Saturday night, we went to Sturgis, South Dakota, which, (I learned) is where the biggest motorcycle rally in the world is held every year. Josh and his brothers were pretty excited, but for me there pretty much wasn't anything worth taking pictures of. It's a pretty old, run down town, and a lot of the stores and stuff are closed all year except during the rally. So we went for long enough for Josh's family to spend about $600 on motorcycle leather, and then we left. At least we can say we've been there!

On Sunday before leaving we stopped at a Mammoth exhibit. In the 70's a man was digging holes because he was going to start building a subdivision, and noticed some bones. As it turns out, there was a sink hole a long, long, long, long time ago, and some Mammoths got stuck in it, couldn't get out, and now there's an exhibit with a bunch of Woolly and Columbian Mammoth bones. They're not done digging-they work on it about 7 weeks a year, and the rest of the time tourists can go through the exhibit. It sounds random, but it was actually pretty cool.



They had several groups going through the exhibit at a time, so the tour guides talk to their group on individual phones-thus, the picture with me on the phone. The picture with Josh and his mom shows how big a Columbian Mammoth is compared to Josh. (Josh is 6 feet.)

Then we drove home, and it was a very long drive, but it was a lot of fun, and I don't know if we ever would have planned a trip to see Mount Rushmore, so I was glad that we took this opportunity! Happy 4th!

Happy Independence Day!

This year, independence day had a little bit of a different meaning for Josh. We are still very grateful for our country and our forefathers, but July 3rd was Josh's very last day of school...FOREVER!!!!! So he was really excited about that. He started the day off by waking up early to finish his VERY LAST PAPER EVER! (Trust me, I was as excited about that as he was, because that means that it was the VERY LAST PAPER EVER that I will have to edit.) Then he took a three hour test that didn't count toward his grade whatsoever but is used by the college to see how well they are teaching. When I came home around 4:00 he was zonked out on the Love Sac :)

That night we went to the fireworks, and hopefully I might put pictures of that on here someday. The next morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn (okay, like 7) to run the Honeyville 5K, which is basically the one event that haunts me all year. But this year I felt like I could run at least pretty well. My goal was to beat Josh, because this will be the only year EVER that I will be able to beat Josh. And I did! :) He was really great to me, because he paced me at the beginning, and made sure that I was running a good pace, then, about half way through he told me that if he started to slow down, I should just keep up my pace. (I didn't believe him that that would ever happen, but sure enough, he slowed down, I kept running, and he congratulated me at the end.) (Since he was so great, I couldn't rub it in so much that I beat him.) I got second in my age category for the girls, and Josh got third for his age category for the boys. So I would say a job well done for the both of us!

Immediately after the 5K, we, with some of Josh's family headed out to drive to South Dakota. On the way, we stopped at Martin's Cove in Wyoming, which was one of the places that the Mormon Pioneers stopped on their trek, and one of Josh's ancestors was in the company there. The pictures are of Josh and I pushing handcarts.

Then we drove for a very long time, stayed the night in Rapid City, South Dakota, and the next morning went to Mount Rushmore!

Happy Anniversary!

Josh and I have been married for 2 years! (Can you believe it?) For our anniversary we went out to eat and to a movie, then over the weekend we went to Lagoon. We had a lot of fun at Lagoon, we've had a lot of fun the last 2 years, and I guess we're going to just keep having fun! For our anniversary, Josh got me athletic socks, and a shirt (which, I know, sounds very romantic-but, trust me, it was just what I wanted.) And he MADE me this flower bouquet! (I needed to emphasize the MADE because he was very proud of himself.) I got him a remote control car, basically because I've wanted one for a long time, and with everything in life being so serious right now, I thought he deserved to just have some fun! I love you Josh, and I know things are just going to keep getting better and better!

Jared and Amy got married!

Josh's brother Jared got married on June 26th. Sadly, this is the only picture we took with people in it. Don't worry though, we got about 10 pictures of their car!

I think blogging looks fun! But I'm not sure what I'm doing so this is just a test drive:)