Mount Rushmore

Our second stop was Mount Rushmore. We stayed in a campsite in this beautiful canyon the night before we went to the park. We woke up to a deer just 2 feet away from the door of the tent. I thought it was going to come on in. After we cleaned up camp we went to see Mount Rushmore. What a beautiful park!!! We took a hike just below the mountain and were able to see if from several different views. Jacob skinned a buffalo skin and the kids played in tepee's. We saw all there was to see so we decided to drive over to the Crazy Horse Monument. It was more money than we wanted to pay to get in to the park so we just drove by and took pictures.

The Bad Lands, South Dakota

We decided that our vacations are always planned around just seeing family and so we never really get to have an actual vacation. So this year we decided to take the scenic route out to Utah. Our first stop was The Bad Lands, South Dakota. The kids loved this stop. They had a blast climbing to their hearts content. We drove around the park and stopped along the way so that the kids could get out and climb. The Bad Lands were really cool. We saw tons of prarie dogs along the side of the road so of course the kids had to stop and see every single one. MaKayla wanted to catch one to bring it home. I told her, "Good Luck!!!" As we were leaving we realized that we had only seen a tiny portion of the park. We could have spent the whole day there and still not see it all. It was amazing!!!

Family Fun

My counsin Danielle and her cute family have lived 4 1/2 hours away from us in Indiana for the last 2 years, yet we have never been able to get together to see each other. She finally called us last month and said that they were comming to Michigan to go to the beach and wondered if we were going to be around. Of course I made sure we were going to be there so I could finally meet her adorable girls. They came up and we had Sunday dinner together and then for the next couple of days we did nothing but play. We went to the beach, watched the musical fountains in Grand Haven and picked strawberries, well actually Danielle and I picked and the rest of them wimped out on us and sat in the air conditioned van. Wimps!!!! We had a great time and we both wondered what took us so long to get together. We are so glad that they came and we got to spend time with them. Let's do it again real soon!!!!


MaKayla and Allie


Allie and MaKayla


Abby


Brinley


Abby and Brinley


I stole this picture collage from Danielle's blog. Thanks girl it's way cute!!!

The Flood

As I was leaving girls camp I got a phone call from Zach telling me that there was a huge storm in Holland and that there was water over all the roads. At first I thought he was just exaggerating but as we drove closer and closer to Holland we got hit with it. It was so bad I could barely see to drive. Eventually it passed and we continued home. We then got a phone call that my Bro in law's power was out and the sump pump doesn't work without power. We then proceeded to call around to see if anyone had a generator and finally found one. As we continued to get closer to my Bro-in-law's house the roads were awful. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to get to their house because of all the rain and some of the roads were under water. We finally made it and found that their basement was taking on water and so we loaded up their 5 kids and took them to our house to stay while the men stayed and moved all the furniture to the upstairs level. This was around midnight on June 19th. Lucky for us my house had power and didn't have any flooding. However these are pictures of my backyard and the lake that made it's home there for a bit. My plants were under water and we had water about 4 feet away from our house. Holland recieved 7 1/2 inches of rain in 2 hours and there was flooding everywhere. Roads were out and some even collapsed and tons of houses flooded. Boy were we lucky!!!

Cub Game

The Cubs are always fun to watch play and what's even better is when they win. We had a crappy experience last time we went to a Cub's game so I was just hoping it wouldn't be bad. So on June 18th Zach, Jesse, Jacob and I decided to try it agian. We had great seats in the upper deck but we were on the frount row and didn't have anyone in front of us. We also were able to see an amazing game. CUBS WIN!!!!!