July 5

We are home from our first family summer vacation this year. Since Friday, I got really sick and thought we would head home on Saturday. After being up most of the night and sick most of the morning, we left Hot Springs, South Dakota around 11 or 12, I really can't remember. By the time we hit the Colorado border, which meant we not only went through South Dakota, but Wyoming too, I was feeling better. Thankfully.

It was raining almost the entire way but we decided to check out the Greeley Stampede anyway. It was fairly sunny when we arrived, found a (free) parking place right near the entrance and went in. It was around 3:30 and we found out at the information booth that the fireworks were scheduled for 10pm after the concert.

The boys rode several rides, Beckett went on a roller coaster and I thought that would be his last ride of the day. He screamed to get off the entire time and almost killed himself getting off (before the ride came to a complete stop). He braved up and went back to the rides he was comfortable with before the rain started.

We found a (beer) tent to wait out the storm, which didn't seem as though it was going to ever stop. We decided to get tickets for the concert, since that would kill two birds with one stone. First, we'd have something to do until 10pm and second, we'd get out of the rain.

The concert was a lot of fun, Bucky Covington opened for Blake Shelton. We made it through about half of Blake's show before the boys had had enough and wanted to wait for the fireworks back at the car. Given Blake's show didn't start until 10, we had a long wait for the fireworks. Finally around 11:15 they went off and it was a great show.

Getting close to midnight, we still didn't know where we were staying but saw a row of hotels that looked promising. The first we stopped at had a room and in fifteen minutes or less we were all in bed and probably close to asleep.

When we woke up this morning Beckett thought it was great fun that we all slept in our "clothes" or lack there of instead of dragging in the bags, finding jammies, etc. We are so infrequently spontaneous, it was a refreshing change.

We took the back roads home from Greeley and were all anxious to go and pick up Ballou who was equally anxious to get in the suburban and come home.

It was a long week, but great to have undivided and uninterrupted family time. We have another family vacation planned at the beginning of August during which we plan to go to Pennsylvania and see Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle John and Aunt Julie and Frank and Beck's cousins, including the newest member of the family, Ally's son. It's hard to think about another vacation before I've finished the laundry from this one, but we are all looking forward to it.

Uncle Jeff called and he and Doug talked about going to New York for Uncle Andy's wedding in October. We'll see if we can make that one happen or not.

Tomorrow I plan to dig in at the wine bar with fresh eyes, the new staff needs a TON of training on wine, which we'll dive into right away.