Frontier Days Parade

Across the street from the splash park is the parking lot for all the horse trailers,and participants in the rodeo, so all the parade ended up in there. We had a front row seat without all the people! Noone was at the splash park, they were all over at the parade, so we had a great time. The parade kept coming and coming, so we would go play and then come back and watch, and then go play. I only posted a few pictures, but there was every kind of horse imaginable, and carts that went by. In dowtown Cheyenne, they have the really large boots on every corner that have things painted on them that represent things about Cheyenne. That's a cool thing, it was way too crowded to go deep dowtown, but this one is just as you come into the city.

Splash water park

In Cheyenne, there is a really, really fun splash park. The kids just walk around and there are things that splash, spray, dump and shoot out water. The water is really cold because it's from the mountains, but it was pretty hot that day, so the kids didn't mind. It was really fun, and we had the place all to ourselves because across the street is the frontier days parking lot where the big parade ends, and everyone was over there for the parade. A total kid friendly place, and a lot of fun!

Lincoln monument

Along the same highway from Laramie to Cheyenne there is a very large monument of Lincoln's head. There is a pretty neat visitor's center there as well. Kind of a fun thing to see along the highway.

Through the mountain

In between Laramie and Cheyenne is a really cool tunnel that goes through the mountain. It's the kids' favorite part of the long, long drive, and gives us a point to look forward to. Kind of cool to have a road going through the mountain!

Happy Birthday Jeffrey

Jeffrey had his 7th birthday on July 20th. His little cousin Madeline has a birthday on the 19th, so we had a family party for the two of them. We celebrated it on the 17th, because we headed down to Cheyenne for Frontier Days. We had cupcakes, and played games and had a fire that night, so I think he didn't feel cheated. He got to bring his gameboy games and toys with him on the trip as well. Happy birthday Jeff!

House progress

The house is coming along. It's slow, but it's going. Wayne is working daily and very hard to build this house right and good. The basement is now done, and the ceiling/floor is now going in. The stairwell is being boxed out, and they are coming to pour the garage/driveway and patio next week. It is turning out kind of neat because it will have a walk out basement, which is fun, with a large patio. Perfect for kids to ride bikes, draw sidewalk chalk, later basketball hoops, or whatever.

Halee behind the camera

On the scavenger hunt Halee wanted to have a chance to take some pictures of things. She tried to capture lady bugs on the flowers and then the purple ones because that's my favorite color. She then got me and Dallin and the last picture is Dallin by the chickens.

Scavenger Hunt

I am late in getting these posted, but I am making myself take some time to get them updated before leaving for girl's camp tomorow. Otherwise, I'll have a ton of updates to do. Last week sometime I made up a scavenger list for the kids. I try to take a walk with them everyday, and make sure they have some outside time. This seems to make them not aware of how far they are walking up the hill. They were really excited about it, and asked if we could do it a lot, so maybe we will have to do that. We went up the road that goes in front of the land and on up the mountain. We found things like grasshoppers, tractors plowing the fields, bird's feathers, 3 kinds of butterflies, 3 kinds of flowers, and a cloud shaped like something. They were very good sports, and I made sure they all had hats, sunglasses and a bottle of water because it is kind of hot now. The first picture is them running down the driveway as we are starting out. The second picture is Halee, Jeff and Ethan checking out the flowers, the next picture is a Sego Lilly. I was very surprised to find a patch of these growing on the side of the road. How fun to find Sego Lillies!! The last picture is them running to the chickens to get their "bird feather." Oh well, at least they were outside and having a good time.

A great investment

This trampolene sure has been a great investment! The kids love to jump on it, as well as Dallin. In fact, sometimes he pulls Halee or Ethan out to jump with him. I sure like how it gets them outside, gives them exercise and fun. Their favorite right now is the put the sprinkler head up top so that it showers and rains on them as they jump. =)

"Hay" season

The people around here say that there are 6 seasons here. Spring, summer, fall, winter, mud, and hay season. After a long winter, the snow melts and there is rain and mud for awhile. That makes the fields all nice and green with tall, tall grass which they prepare to make hay out of. The valley is turned into a patchwork quilt and you can tell where everyone's property lines are. They use very large machines to do this, and we've been watching the men mow the two fields behind us. It's so pretty when it's in rows like this all down in the valley. Also, to go along with this being "hay" season, they also call it that because with all this mowing that is going on, everyone suffers from hay fever and allergies.!!=)

Soccer camp

This week the High School sponsored a soccer camp for the little ones. I like how they do that here. It's a big fundraiser, but it gives the kids something to do, and it doesn't last for very long so they don't get tired of it. I thought I was going to have to drag them to do this, but they were good sports and at the 2nd day said it was actually fun. It was 2 hours each day, so it was kind of long, but I was very proud that they each really tried, and participated. Of course, getting a really cool soccer ball at the end was their favorite part. In the first picture on the left, is Ethan in the white shirt with a green jersey over it. He had just kicked the ball in for his team. In the middle is Jeffrey celebrating that he made a goal, right after I snapped the picture, he fell into the goal!=) Last picture is Halee in blue dribbling the ball down the field. Anyway, it got them outside for awhile, doing some exercise, and having some fun.

July 4th

Ethan has been talking about the 4th of July since about March! He even included in his prayers "Please help us see the 4th of July" so we were worried that it wouldn't meet his expectations! But, it turned out to be a fun day. We popped poppers all day, the kids loved doing that. We had a TON of sparklers, so anytime they asked to do sparklers, we let them. Chereon, the oldest daughter who moved into town now, had her family over so there were lots of cousins to play with as well. Later, we took the kids to see a "hometown" rodeo, where the neighboring business owners who happened to own ranches, participated in events using each other's animals. The kids had never been to a rodeo before, but they liked it. They even went out into the arena to participate in the calf chase. They tie ribbons onto the tails of calves, and a million kids scramble and chase them to get the ribbon off. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me.

We came home and had a fireworks show and we could see all the fireworks going off in the valley since we are up on the hill. That was really cool to see.

Pictured here on the first picture is cousins JaNelle, Madeline, and Megan in front, then Dallin, Halee and Jeffrey watching some spinners. Then Eric teaches Dallin not to touch the pretty light!! Lastly is Halee and Madeline watching the fireworks at night.

progress

Well, the concrete trucks brought over the concrete to fill the walls of the basement. That was a cool thing to watch, even though it spilled out of a couple of windows like a volcano! Guess someone forgot to screw down the boards across the opening. =) That was a fun time. hehe