Easter duds

If you missed it, we got some awesome Easter pictures this year. Technically, it was the week before Easter, but we were at District Conference in Pierre, and it was a lovely day, so why not? The only downsize was that we forgot Jonah's shoes and he was wearing big snowboots, but that's how we roll. I'm glad we did pictures that week too, because the actual Easter Sunday was cold and windy at our house!

I was excited that I'd found matching dresses for the two girls, as this is probably the last year Elora can find something to match River, and probably soon she won't want to match.

 This is a behind the scenes shot, before everyone sat down. 

All of these could use some improvement...like these would be perfect if Eli was actually visible and not making silly faces.

And I love the light shining by the log, but Elora and Josh are kind of hiding in the background.

Look at the boys all tipped the same way. ha.

I wish I had a few more in this zoomed out format, but this is the only one that turned out. I love how River is framed under Jonah's arm, and how the light is shining on everyone's hair. This would look great as a big print.

River looks so cute in this one! I just wish it was a little more zoomed out; I actually had to go back in and add some ground at the bottom.

While we were there, we had fun throwing rocks in the river and enjoying the sunshine. Daddy has his own life size River doll.

What fun.

Pinewood Derby stuff

Pinewood Derby time! Last month, our new scout troop got to participate in their first Pinewood Derby! Years ago, there was a pack here, and we were able to obtain their racetrack for the boys to use. We set it up in one of the bee workshops of our friends from church, and we were all set! 

The boys had less than two weeks to make their cars, from the time the derby was announced. This was so we could be done in time to register the winners for the regional competition in Rapid the next month. Joseph and Joshua both had fun making cars. They got a book all with templates and tips, as well as design ideas. Josh's is the green one with a skull, and Joseph's is the racer with the red. They both have cool batman decals.

Joseph was pretty proud of his sleek design

Josh's car turned out great! He did it mostly himself, too.

All the cars for our local competition, including two adult cars to the left.

Good job boys!

Josh didn't end up winning, but he still had a lot of fun. Our two winners, one for the Bears and one for the Wolves, went to Rapid two weeks later, and we went too to support them! The story was featured in the local paper, and Josh even got in a few pictures. Our local boys both won fourth place in their respective categories, pretty good when they were each racing 15-17 boys.  While we were there, we saw that for their "Outlaw Division" even girls could make a car and enter. You can bet Elora is excited about next year!

can you see me? I'm in the back with an orange shirt.

Date night

A couple of weeks ago, Joseph decided we needed a date night! We've always brought the baby with us on our annual anniversary date, but Joseph figured we could do something in the nearby (one hour drive) town of Lemmon, so we could leave the baby home. Where we lived before, Lemmon was just as far from us as Rapid was, so this was a new opportunity.
(Side note: Once we were telling our kids the town of Lemmon, was probably named after a person with that last name. Josh quipped, "I bet everyone called him "Sourpuss!" )

Joseph wanted to find something I would like to do, so we decided to visit the 'famous' petrified wood park in town, and then find the sculptures of a local artist. Afterwards, we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. I didn't take any pictures there, but the humble front for the store was very deceptive, as the food was wonderful, and came in vast quantities. Yum!
The park also has a museum on site, but it was closed for the season, so I guess we'll have to go back with the kids sometime this summer.
The petrified wood park was a project in the 1930's that gave people employment during the depression. Some of the creations there definitely reminded me of the outside of the rock church in Cedar. We had fun posing by the different stone pyramids and other creations there.

dinner time!

Joseph layed an egg.

Pink quarts archway! SO cool.

Sign in front of the museum.

wide view of the park. It takes up a block in town.

So, maybe you're familiar with the movie "Revenant" that came out this year. It's a Leonardo DiCaprio movie about a guy who gets mauled by a bear. Or something like that. Anyway, that story happened near Lemmon! They have a campsite and some streets named after the guy, as well as another museum with stuff about it. We had wanted to see a sculpture of the guy and the bear, but I guess it was inside the building, which was also closed for the season. But they did have this awesome photo op outside:

Also, they had another sculpture by the artist outside too. If you can't tell, it s the same guy who did the two sculptures in Faith that I showed in my last post. This one too was created out of metal reused parts. Most of it was deliberately rusted, but I liked the bits that still showed a bit of color too.

Can you tell what it is yet? I'll give you a hint. It's like a combination of the two Faith sculptures together. That's right. It's a cowboy.........(with a scary burn-victim face)

riding a dinosaur! A triceratops to be precise.

All in all, we had fun wandering around town. Next time, I hear there's a bowling alley somewhere...

Flat Sydney

 We recently had a visit from a Flat Stanley girl, aka "Sydney" from Lander, Wyoming, and we had a great time! We showed her around our town of Faith.  After seeing the sign for our town, Flat Sydney learned that there was a dinosaur discovered here, named "Sue".

 

 

 

So we showed Flat Sydney our cool dinosaur statue made out of found objects like shovels and chains. 

 

 

The dinosaur pretended to eat Flat Sydney, and she pretended to be really scared, but they laughed about it in the end and exchanged phone numbers.

 

 

 Flat Sydney also met the other found object statue in town, a cowboy! He's made out of some knives, wrenches and even another statue if you look close.

 

 

We told Flat Sydney if she liked our dinosaur, she should see the dinosaur park in Rapid City.

 

 

 It was awesome! We saw a t-rex and an apatosaurus,

 

 

 a stegosaurus, 

 

 

a triceratops,

 

 

and a bunch of other cool stuff.  Flat Sydney was sad we couldn't go to Mount Rushmore to see the presidents as it was so close, but we just didn't have time that day. 

 

We had a great time with our visitor. Thanks for sending her to see us, and we hope she has fun on her next adventure!

Sincerely The G Family

PS if you want to see pictures of us there, we have those too! We've all been there before except for River so we were anxious to show her the sights.