The Most Awesome Parents Ever

I have the most awesome parents ever. I really do.
During the past 20 years, they have visited us at least 2 times per year and sometimes even paid for me to come to visit them when they wanted to see me and we couldn't afford a plane ticket. I have been fortunate to not have missed very many holidays or special occasions with them.

Just in the past 2 months alone they travelled out to Virginia from Washington State (they even drove), to celebrate retirement from the military with us. They then stayed on and extra 10 days to help out with Vacation Bible School at our church, which they went above and beyond the call of duty for. They left Virginia and travelled to visit with other family members in North Carolina and then Indiana and then on home again.

Shortly after they left, we got ready to pack up and move to Montana. We arrived in our new home the beginning of August. My parents came over 2 weeks ago just to make sure we made it safely and to see our new home. They stayed a couple of days and then headed home again with a list of things to bring back so they could help us. Our household goods arrived last week and my parents came back Monday to stay until Labor Day to help unpack boxes and get us settled in. Dad is building a step up addition to the deck to cover the gaping hole left by the hot tub the previous owners took with them. Mom has been opening boxes, cooking for us and being a huge support to me. I do love her so.

Did I mention that I have the most awesome parents ever? I do.

Promised Pictures

I am posting pictures from our trek across the country as promised. I will post more of Montana and our new house in a day or so.


The St. Louis Arch and the Mississippi River.

We thought about going up to the top, but it was so hot that day and I am not fond of closed in spaces, so we chose to look through the museum and move along to visit with David's mother.
We had a nice visit with her (I posted pictures earlier of that part of the trip).


After our visit, it was off to our next destination.

The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

They were getting the palace ready for 2009. They have a festival the first week in August to put up the design for the following year.


It is a pretty neat process.
We left The Corn Palace and headed to Wall Drug.






Wall Drug, South Dakota.


You start seeing the signs for this place 400 miles away asking you to stop in and get a free glass of water.It started out as a small drug store and boomed into a huge tourist stop.

The kids mined for jewels and then did some panning for gems and rocks. Rebekkah found an arrow head in her bag of dirt.








Mount Rushmore! What an awesome site.



We walked around for quite a while looking at it from different angles.

From Rushmore, we went to Crazy Horse. I learned that the entire monument of Mount Rushmore fits in the head of Crazy Horse.

So far they have only completed the head portion of Crazy Horse. The statue in front is what the mountain will look like when the project is completed.

This project is privately funded. This is one of the reasons it is taking so long to do. It is also a very large monument to carve.



The last 2 pictures are of one of the forest fires that is blazing outside of Yellowstone National Forest.
The last picture is of Old Faithful inside the park. We only had to wait 45 minutes for it to erupt. The kids were amazed! I want to go back and see some of the other geysers in the park.

We Are Here

Well, we finally made it to our new house.
I will post pictures on Monday when we get our Internet up and running. I am currently on limited time using Wifi elsewhere.
So, I just wanted to let folks know I was still kicking and would check in and post much on Monday.
Till then, have a great weekend.

Almost There

We are almost to our final destination. I am sure this post will be mostly ramblings and fragments of what is on my mind.

Today we are still in Bozeman visiting with friends (Nancy, Billy, Tina, Kayla and Esther) that are more like part of the family.
David is planning to head up to Montana State University to talk to the admin folks in charge of the program he is in for his teaching certification. We will play one more day with our friends and then head off tomorrow morning to our new home.

We stopped at many places along the way and will post pictures once we get to Kalispell. I do not have access to my photos because I am not using my computer. So, the pictures will have to wait.

We went to church yesterday morning and I had a hard time getting through the service. One of the songs we sang was particularly difficult because I could hear the worship team from Virginia singing it and I was really missing their musical talent and voices. Don't get me wrong, the worship was wonderful where I was, just different.

After church, we celebrated Nancy's birthday with a picnic in the park. We had just finished eating when the sky opened up and poured down on us. The day ended with games being played by candlelight at Billy and Tina's because the power had gone out.

I miss my friends in Virginia more than they will ever know.