a time to remember: The week in review: 6/30: South Dakota!

Sunday. Mason was looking like a big kid modeling those sparkly pink "Bob's" of Brittany's.

Monday. Headed to town for a tire rotation and passed Kailey's grazing goats. She's getting quite the herd!

After supper, Alyssa w/Shiloh, our cousin Rachel, and myself hit the road for South Dakota! Shiloh wasn't too excited and fell asleep before we left town.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and did the night shift driving from 10-5ish. Idaho border!

And Montana.

Earrrrrly morning stop. Alyssa had rigged up that tent so the bright lights wouldn't wake Baby.

Silly Shiloh at 5 am :)

That coffee was working so good that I was excited to be so awake while driving in the middle of the night! At the next gas stop I had gotten another cup (hazelnut this time-yum) and kept going. All good and dandy, right? Wrong! I moved to the passenger seat at 5 and wasn't able to sleep a wink. Good way to get that "Stay up for 24 hours" goal knocked off my bucket list. I figured about 8:41 was a 24 hours. I then proceeded to surpass the goal and was awake about 40 hours, with halfway dozing for 5 minutes somewhere in there. Good thing Gramma told us to sleep as late as we wanted!

Whoopsie, daisy! "79 in a 75. Not the crime of the century or anything." Pretty sure he mostly wanted to do seat belt checks since we all had pillows, though.

Random gas stop--still in Montana. I thought gas was supposed to get cheaper headed this was but it hardly did this time!

Lunch stop--Montana again.

And in Baker (still in MT, but almost out!), with temperatures at 107* and not much AC in the back, Shiloh was not a happy camper. So what's an auntie to do? Buy ice cream of course! (See next picture for true face color.)

Ahhh...

...that sure hits the spot, auntie!

Whew!

Grasshopper! AKA, oil drill. Not sure which one of my older siblings started calling them grasshoppers.

And finally, North Dakota!

And then for dessert, a stick of celery. She liked that, too!

Sooouth Dakota!

Ever eaten trail mix with a spoon? Do what you gotta do when it's hot enough to melt chocolate chips!

I joined a photography site on Facebook that gives you a new challenge each week. This week was "something dead," so I got oh-so-creative and snagged this picture of dead bugs on the windshield.

Destination is getting closer!

Shiloh trying out Gramma's antique wooden high chair.

Ah.. haha. Basically the most fun part of this trip was surprising Krista. Rachel had talked to her some beforehand about maybe coming with me before I had told her it was supposed to be a surprise, so we figured she expected me to come. Still we thought it was going to be fun to surprise her with Alyssa and Shiloh. So we showed up at Jim and Karina's (where she's been living since she moved) while she was in the shower (not purposely but that actually made it even more fun.) Alyssa, Shiloh, and I were just chilling in the living room quietly, waiting for her to get out of the bathroom. Too bad she takes after her big sister in the shower... it was worth the wait though. When she was finally done, she opened the door about a foot and stared at Alyssa (she couldn't see me.) And stared. And stared some more until Alyssa said, "Hi!" Then she gave a demanding, "What are you doing here?" "Oh, we just popped by to visit," I threw in. Then she peered around the door to see me and was alllllll grins and giggles for the rest of the day--awesome! Also pretty cool was the fact that she had a day off the next day after working for 17 straight days! God worked the trip out well! Especially considering I had given up on going to SD this year, after my original plans (which really were more non-plans) didn't work out.

Krista later said, "You know that saying that you 'couldn't believe your eyes?' Yeah. That's what it was." After recovering from the shock, we went to the drive-in for ice cream. Well, they got ice cream. I knew Gramma was already gonna have plennnty of sweets for me and I probably didn't need any extras.

It was just slightly warm out--high 90's I believe--so the ice cream was going fast.

Shiloh thinks ice cream is quite the thing!

Ice cream toes.. er, foot.

And then we went and tried out the dirty lake until some nasty bright green slime was coming in waves.. gross!

She didn't mind the sand at all.

This is a picture I was sent that made me smile--made for a cheerful phone background!

Had to take this picture for Mom to show to the kids and make them giggle. She wanted me to buy it! But the picture hadn't gone through until hours later so we were long gone from that store.

After some thrifting to get Krista a few things for her soon-to-be apartment, we went to lunch at Godfather's Pizza. It's a pretty sure bet if you go out with either of them it will be pizza, so when you're with both it's a done deal! Good thing I kinda like it, too.