Fun Weekends

Two weekends ago, my mom, step-dad, and little sister came to visit. We had a great time of hanging out at the pool, grilling, and watching movies. We had a great time just relaxing with each other and catching up. The week went fast... and we hung out with more family on Sunday. After mountain biking, we had the Irby family over for pool time and a bbq. Kyle & I went mountain biking with his dad and brother-in-law Sunday morning. We went to a single track trail outside of Spearfish that Kyle had found on the internet. It was a really fun trail, 4 miles of uphill and then 4 miles back down. We had a great time, and i was excited to find out that it was probably an "advanced" trail. That made me pretty proud that I kicked butt like i did. (You'll have to trust me on that.) We didn't get any pictures, but we plan on going again, so I'll take some the next time. In the meantime, if you're looking for good mountain biking, Tinton Trail is where you need to be. :)

Custer Camping Trip

Last weekend, we got to go to one of our favorite camping places - Custer State Park. It was so freaking hot - over 100 degrees all weekend. Way too hot. We woke up early to go for a hike before it got too hot. We went on the Sunday Gulch Trail... only 3 miles, but marked as "strenuous" - ha. Here's the begininng:

Ok, I'm not really climbing the wall.... I'm only about a foot off the ground.

We saw some really cool scenery on the trail.

My future as a National Geographic photographer.

Ok, so it started easy... we were definitely wiped out by the end of the trail. It was fun, though. Can't imagine doing it in over 100 degrees, though. It was about 95 when we got done at 10:30. So, we headed to the lake. I'd post a pic, but I'm not confident enough to post a swimsuit picture. Maybe next year (yeah right). Saturday night, we went to the Black Hills Playhouse and saw Fiddler on the Roof. It was really good, as usual. We love the Playhouse. If you're in the area, you should definitely go. Go at night, though, there's no air conditioning, and the matinees get really warm....

Before going to the play.

You can see Mt. Rushmore through one of the several tunnels on Iron Mountain Road (my favorite road). The trip was a blast, we spent Sunday at the lake too. We're going back next weekend with Tyler & Krista. More pics then. Right now I'm trying to clean my house before my mom, step-dad and sister come tomorrow afternoon. Yep, it's THAT dirty :)

Get Well Soon, Maggie!

My 9 year old little sister, the family princess, had a little scare last night. After a day of fever and vomiting and a "pain in her side", my mom consulted the trusty medical book. Thinking it sounded like some appendix problem, they took her into the hospital late last night. This morning at around 4:30 or 5, the poor little girl was wheeled into surgery. She assured the nurse that "My parents said I would be alright." And she is. But, in need of well-wishes, so give her a call. She's at the Rapid City Regional Hospital over night tonight. Get well, kiddo!

denver!

A few months ago, Kyle and I bought tickets to a Rockies game. We wanted to make sure that we got to a game this summer. Last year, we went to early in the year and froze our butts off the whole game. We wanted a hot game where we could enjoy a cold drink and a foot long hot dog. However, it rained ALL weekend in Denver... so we stopped at Target and got some ponchos and headed to the game. There is nothing like the excitement around a stadium. I love it. I just love walking in and seeing the field and all the people, and the foot long hot dogs. I love hot dogs. The rain stopped long enough for the game, with a few sprinkles in one inning. Nothing we couldn't handle. We didn't even have to pull out our ponchos (so, we took them back and got our $$ back!). It was a great game. The Rockies didn't win, but they came close.....

SAN DIEGO!!!!!

So, we took our trip to San Diego! It was awesome! We had such a great time. Here are some pics:

The funniest thing about this picture is not the GIANT piece of pizza.
It's the fact that Tera is posing with the pizza, and she didn't even have a bite.

We hung out the first night at the beach. We went to this fun bar/grill that had a surfing wave in it. We got some good seats to watch the surfers only to find out that we were there for the premier of some surfing movie. So, we got a karate-like demo, a fashion show, and a demo on the surf wave by the famous surfer. We left before the movie started. We're not surfers.

Saturday night we headed downtown to try out a place called Dick's. While we never made it there (Katie was a few years too young), we got tickets to the sold-out baseball game and watched the Padres lose to the Giants. We were die-hard fans that night, even heckling the Giants fans sitting below us.

Our seats weren't too bad.

We had such a good time hanging out. We found this Italian place and requested a seat outside. However, after seeing a few too many cockroaches and one too many mice, we asked to be moved inside. Made for a fun evening, though!

On the top of Mount Soledad there is a little war memorial with a giant cross. There is a lot of controversy right now about the cross on the memorial (separation of church and state crap), so we had to drive up and see it before it is gone forever. We ran into some North Dakotans currently living in Seattle up there. They're the ones that took this picture.

We got a little bored waiting for our plane.

Maybe more than a little bored.

A lot bored.

A heck of a lot bored.

You know you're laughing right now.