...and I know it! I have totally sucked at blogging lately- no end of school, no vacation, no start of school, nuttin'- ugh!
So for end of school- all the kids did really great last year and ended with their best grades yet! At Tyler's continuation ceremony (moving from elementary to middle school) he won a science award. I was so proud of him! He really loved his science teacher Mrs. Mallot, she really helped him to love science!
For vacation this year we went to South Dakota in June. Shawn had been there when he was a little tyke and Ash and Bay went there with their mom a couple of years ago but Roxy, Tyler and I had never been there. It was BEAUTIFUL! We totally loved it! If you have never been there I highly recommend taking the trip. Of course we started out the trip with rain. It rained ALL THE WAY THERE! It mostly let up long enough to let us set up in a drizzle but then started promptly pouring again as soon as we had everything plugged in etc. I can't remember if it was that night or the following night but the wind was blowing REALLY hard and it was raining and thundering and lightening like crazy. One of our "neighbors" told us there was a tornado warning and that really freaked the kids out. I had no idea they had tornadoes in the black hills of South Dakota!
Our friends, the Steins, met us up there and the second day we spent at the Mammoth Hot Springs archeology site. It was really cool. This is the spot where they found an ancient hot spring filled with mammoth bones that had fossilized. They have been digging there for years and still haven't reached the bottom. They built a nice big museum around and over the pit so we were able to enjoy it without getting wet.
By the third day the rain had finally let up so we were able to go to Mount Rushmore and enjoy it. What an AMAZING place! I had no idea it would be so cool! That evening we went back to see the lighting of the sculpture ceremony. It was so PATRIOTIC! After they did a slide show about the process of the sculpting they invited all of the veterans to come down on stage while they did the retiring of the colors. Both my love Shawn and his BFF John were able to go down while Cathy and I got all teary-eyed. It was really neat.
We really enjoyed the Custer State Park and Needles Highway. There were these amazing rock formations and tunnels that we got to drive through that were really tight! 
We hiked around a neat lake and the boys especially loved climbing on the rocks and pretending they were the KING OF THE WORLD! lol Then we also went a on hike called "Lover's Leap"- it said in the guidebook it was a "moderate to difficult" 3 mile hike. Well, we figured we could handle that (well, ok, Shawn figured we could handle it if he neglected to tell us about the strenuous part...). It was pretty steep going up but we rested as often as needed and it was really quite pretty and enjoyable. We finally reached the top where you hike along a ridge a ways. We found the lovers leap where the legend says to native american lovers lept to their death. Tyler had a good point when he said "why would they want to do that?" We finally started down and this is where the "strenuous" part comes in- we had to cross a river.... 8 TIMES.... WITHOUT BRIDGES! After about the third time of tightroping across teeny, tiny twigs I finally just gave up and walked across. Tyler and Reagen on the other hand were loving every minute of it. :)
The last night we were there it started raining again. And when I say raining I mean RAINING! It was thundering and there was this amazing purple lightening going on. It was really creepy though and none of us slept well that night. We kept worrying about tornadoes again and Shawn and I spent half the night watching the news to see if it was coming to get us! So needless to say, by morning we were ready to pack up and get the heck out of dodge!
It was a great trip that I hope we are able to make again someday! :)
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