Mt. Jackmore

Bloooooog. Blahg. Blig-blog. Bliggity blag blug blog.

Hi blog! I missed you! It has been a RIDE this past year. That's fer stankin sure. First the pregnancy from outer darkness. Then the childbirth experience from the depths of despair. Then the shockingly awful recovery and pelvic floor pain that lasted I swear 5 months longer than it was supposed to. Also I had the most colicky baby of all time for several months so that was interesting and I think I just turned off my brain and soul for those months. What is UP with me and bringing children into this world?! I tell Jack (our baby) on a daily basis that he must have realllllly wanted to be an only child. I'll have another baby someday, but if the whole experience is the same as it was this last time then that is IT sisterfriend. I cannot even. Which is sad because I would really love to have 3 or 4. But we here now! I made it! And I have the cutest little bb in the world to prove it and occasionally he takes naps. Like now! And I get to blog about stuff again.

Man, I have pictures and videos for dayzzzz of stuff I should probably blog about. No way I'm ever gonna catch up on all of it, but I think I'll start with the recent stuff and then work my way back when I have the time. Today I'm going to blog about when we went to Mt. Rushmore with my bro and sis-in-law a week ago.

So to start out with, I guess I should tell you that we moved to Casper, Wyoming. Yay! We love it (because it's not winter yet), but it is legit in the middle of nowhere. The closest attraction to Casper is Mt. Rushmore, and it is a 3+ hour drive up in South Dakota. I had a reunion in Utah the week before this trip and needed a ride back to Wyoming, so I told all my siblings, "Hey come visit us! We live right by Mt. Rushmore!"...hoping that one of them would take me up so I could catch a ride haha. Luckily my brother and his sweet wife were stoked on the idea of a trip to Mt. Rushmore. She will be teaching 5th grade this year and was excited to get some pictures to show her students. After spending a day in Casper, we made a day trip to Mt. Rushmore.

It was really cool! Not at all what I expected it to be though. For some reason none of us pictured driving up into actual mountains to see Mt. Rushmore. We all pictured a bunch of flatness and then a big blank mountain with the presidents carved into it. I'm gonna blame Richie Rich for that. But the area surrounding Mt. Rushmore is incredibly beautiful. It is in the Black Hills of Dakota. The area is full of hills and trees and lakes. I'm excited to go back in the future and make a whole big thing of it.

After you park at Mt. Rushmore, you walk through an archway of all 50 American flags and some other cool stuff, and then you come out to this view. I would have taken pictures from lots of different angles and gotten the flags in there, but it started pouring rain shortly after we got there. Also my sister-in-law was sick, so we didn't stay for long. I'll take a better variety of pictures next time we go.

I am loving that I can push Jack around in the stroller now! Like I mentioned above, he was really colicky for his first 3-4 months and he HATED his stroller. He would last maybe 20 seconds before absolutely losing it. But after he overcame the colic and I realized that I could tilt the stroller up and put him facing outward, he decided he loves the stroller. I think he really likes taking in the world around him. And I'm grateful that I'm not confined to our house all day anymore. We take 2-3 short walks around our cute neighborhood on any given day.

And that is all! Next time I'll get a close-up on good ol' Teddy Roosevelt. The details on his glasses was really cool. I love America.