Little gals

Edie

Kate

Rosie

Little guys

Crew. I wish I could have gotten a good picture showing his curls!

Bryson.

Charlie.

Davis girlfriends get together

The Big Boys.

Emily and Caden played and played for hours in Caden's room!

And what do we moms do best? We talked and talked and ate and talked some more!!!
Thank you, Cody, for letting us invade your home! You are awesome!!! Thank you all who traveled so I could see you and your cute kids. Kim and her 2 boys also made it, but they left before I got my camera out. We missed those of you who couldn't make it! Let's do this again in December:)

You thought your nose was big

I was so excited to see this. While visiting, I had visions of Cary Grant hanging from the mountain in Hitchcock's North By Northwest. Our visit was very spur of the moment and spontaneous, which is not something that I ever "plan" on being like. I'll be spontaneous if it's someone else's idea. Just ask Michael's Aunt Lisa the next time she's pushing a grocery cart, but I digress.

Well, along the way to SD we noticed many motorcycle enthusiasts returning from a biker celebration in Sturgis, SD. Being "spontaneous, we did not reserve a hotel to stop at along the way. The problem with spontaneity is that other things may be going on at the same time that you didn't know about. Luckily we got a hotel room along the way with Michael jockeying through some biker dudes dressed in leather. (Not really, but it's fun to imagine!) There was only one bed in our room, but the kids had their inflatable sleeping bags and got to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the hotel TV, so things worked out.
Emily is AWAL in the picture above because she's at our feet, disappointed that everyone else there has giant ice cream cones and she doesn't. Adam's feeling the power that comes from the mountain of historical giants and Belle's looking cute and I appear to be sleeping standing up.
See, 10 month Belle thinks this place is great fun.
We stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial before Mount Rushmore. This thing is immense! The whole Rushmore monument would fit in just the head of Crazy Horse. The batteries ran out in the camera, so we only have 2 pictures from here. Check www.crazyhorse.org for more pictures of what it will be like when it's finished. Their visitors center was amazing. The kids really enjoyed their visit here with lots Native American artifacts, weapons (Adam's favorite), tepees, and a video showing the workers blowing up the mountain side!

And here is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. We saw this place on Food Network 3 years ago and as we were driving we saw that we would be passing along the way and decided to drive by. It is recovered with corn, hay, husks every year. There's not much else to see, but you don't get to see murals made out of corn everyday and it's something they've been doing for over 100 years.

While we were away...

We are back from our jouneys to and from California. Here's Emily at Mount Rushmore. She's giving one of her "special" looks. I'll share more about our trip soon!