First Vacation of the season :)

We had our first vacation of the season! We had so much fun. We drove out to Wyoming about 8 hours away to visit my parents who live out there. We left at 4 am on a Saturday and arrived in Casper to meet my parents for a brunch around 10 am. We found a really cool park the boys were able to play at for a while and after some much needed food shopping we headed the 2 hours out to their house. Since they live out in the middle of nowhere we had to plan our destinations with a whole day in mind because it would be 1 1/2-2 hours away. First we went to Rapid City, SD which we had been to before last year for Mount Rushmore and an Alpine Slide. This time, we decided to find other things to do. We first stopped at a place called Storybook Village which is a huge free park. The boys really liked playing there. Then we packed up and found the Cabela's. Not highly impressed with it but Jackson LOVED looking at the stuffed previously shot animals. His favorite was the bobcat. He wanted to take it home with him because he's "sooooo cute!" I tried to explain to him that just because it has the word cat in his name doesn't mean he's a friendly animal. He didn't want to listen to me. After we finished up at Cabela's (which is way smaller and not as cool as the one in Utah) we headed out to Deadwood and went to Gulches of Fun Amusement Park. It's a lot like Boondock's in Utah, but had things for Jackson to do which Boondocks really doesn't. It cost 2 tickets for Jack to spend countless time on a bouncy house that had slides and other things inside it to play on. Patrick and I first headed to the bumper boats where you got in an inflatable tube thing on the water and got to drive it around and had a squirter on it to squirt each other. Patrick wanted to play with Jackson on the bouncy house so my dad and I decided to go try out the go karts. We had a lot of fun! I took Patrick and together we shared a go kart and won the race we were in. He had a blast. A few days later we went to Hot Springs SD to go to a place called Evan's Plunge. It is a natural hot spring that is large enough to be a water park of sorts. There is a water slide, small kid area, rope swing, and rings to cross the pool. The weird thing was that there were river rocks all on the bottom. Patrick and my dad were smart enough to wear Water Socks, I had a pair of swimming socks on Jack and I went barefoot, which didn't feel all that great with river rock on the bottom. They had a large floating alligator to climb on and float around on that Patrick just loved. Jack learned how to swim and got comfortable with the life vest I had on him. Patrick is very comfortable in the water so he just took off. We also were able to go to an old family friends house out in Gillette. That was so much fun. He has little dirt bikes and 4 wheelers for the kids. Patrick was apprehensive to try the motorcycle so he just rode the 4 wheeler, but had a ton of fun. We bbq some steaks and had his awesome jalapeno poppers and salad. We had a really good time talking. We came home after a long 10 days in Wyoming and Jackson did so much better on the drive than I anticipated. He told me when he needed to go to the bathroom and didn't whine too much. Just when the sun was in his eyes. He really hates the sun. They did really good with the dvd's and games to watch. I was also happy to have my brothers nook he gave me with books for the boys on it with us. They really liked reading on the drive. We have another vacation in August when we will be trekking to Portland. It'll be our first time staying over in a hotel. It's going to be a lot of fun! Until then we plan to spend a lot of time at Lagoon using our season passes to the fullest :) That is going to be a yearly expense we will be happy to spend.