We made it to my parents safe and sound and unloaded the few things we needed and went straight to bed. It’d be a long day of driving the next day and who knows what else!

Friday, June 6th
We didn’t really have anything planned for this day, but we decided to get up early anyway and hit the road and take our leisure time to get to our destination which was about 4 hours away.

Princess rode with Hubby on our first leg of the trip on Thursday so today she started out in the van with me and Belle. She’s so goofy. She has this game called “tweeter” that her and her friends play. Every time you see a yellow vehicle you say “tweeter”. And every time you see a white van you say “white van”. And every time you see a green vehicle you say “radiation”. And Hubby added a rule, every time you see a Jeep you say “Jeep”. Exciting, stuff, huh.

So the rest of the road trip the only thing I can remember is “tweeter”, “white van” “white van”, “radiation”, “tweeter”, etc, etc, etc. Then we pass a huge lot that has like 20 school buses. Oh ya, it’s a contest to see who can get the most “tweeters” and “white vans” and such. So being the competitive person she is, Princess starts yelling out “tweeter” for every school bus. And I wasn’t even playing this silly game. She was yelling this into the walky talky so Hubby could hear her.

Hopefully that’s not the extent of our excitement on Family Vacation 2008.

And it wasn’t. At one point along the way we decide to pass Hubby. Princess has the bright idea to roll the window down and stick practically her whole body out the window and pretend like she’s rowing a boat. As we pass Hubby we are laughing like crazy thinking we’re going to make him laugh. We look over and he has his head back, he’s eyes closed (or at least it looked that way), pretending to be sleeping. He got us good! I guess you had to be there!

We make a quick gas stop about an hour and 1/2 down the road and then we’re off again, this time Princess riding with Hubby again. Thank goodness, I was “tweetered” out!

We stop again about an hour 1/2 later at the famous Wall Drug, SD. We decide to take a little longer break here, do some sight seeing, eat some lunch, etc.

Here we are at the first store. Filled with things that everyone needs. Like this lovely hat.

And Princess had to try one on too. She wasn’t convinced she needed to buy it though. Silly girl, we thought it looked fabulous on her!

Here are Princess and Belle riding a stagecoach. Angel actually liked it alot.

Well, maybe “alot” is exaggerating a little. She didn’t cry anyway. Well, not til the very end.

Here’s Belle and me on top of the giant Jackalope.

And here’s Hubby making moves on some lady. As you can see she was mesmerized by his wit and charm.

And here’s our family in front of the famous Wall Drug sign.

After stuffing ourselves with very greasy and unhealthy food we hit the road again. We only had about 45 minutes to get to Rapid City, SD but then another hour or so to get to our campground at Custer State Park. After seeing many deer, a few antelope and much beautiful scenery we finally arrived at our cabin at Custer State Park. My parents and brother were going to be coming the next day but for tonight we had the cabin all to ourselves.

We unpacked and got settled and then ventured out to find my family. Not many of them were there but we did find a few of them. The rest were out seeing the sights of the Black Hills. We spent the next few hours visiting with family and getting caught up. Everyone was so excited to meet Belle and to hear more about Little Pip on the way.

This is the first time that all of us cousins have been together since we’ve become mamas. That was so fun. Here’s the breakdown of my cousins that have had babies in the past few years that were there…

Sarah has J who is 6 and N who is 2
Bree has K who is 1 1/2
We have Belle who is 7 months
Jessi has E and M who are 5 months
Becca has M who is 4 months

It was a blast seeing them all play together and check each other out. That evening we had a nice dinner with all the family…I think about 30 were there Friday night. Unfortunately it was pretty chilly out so we wimped out and went back to the cabin after dinner and went to bed, while alot of the family hung out around the campfire. It’s amazing how things change when you have a little one!