Your First Family Vacation

Not too shabby, only three months old and you got to take your first road trip and airplane ride with us. Your Uncle Grae graduated from college at the University of Wyoming in Civil Engineering and since this is a big accomplishment and we hadn’t been to visit him once during his college career, we went to go celebrate with him for your first vacation. Since we were going all the way to Laramie and flying through Denver, we decided to do a few other things as well. We stayed the night in Denver and then the main add on to the trip was a drive over to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.

As I write this, we are on our way back from  South Dakota so we haven’t yet encountered your second plane ride, but I am hoping it goes as smooth as your first one. You were a little fussy as we boarded the plane I was trying to hold off on feeding you until we started the climb into the air to make sure your ears popped alright. However, I didn’t think you would make it that long as you were already irritable, so I fed you while we were on the ground and waiting to taxi on the jetway. You fell asleep while eating and then slept the whole plane ride. So I didn’t even need to feed you during the descent. You were complimented on what a wonderful baby you were.

Friday night we went to Casa Bonitas in Denver. Mom went there as a kid and it is one of the few childhood memories I have from Denver so I wanted to go back. Obviously you are too young to really appreciate this, but we still had fun with you anyway.

On Saturday we drove to Laramie for Uncle Grae’s graduation. You did pretty well. I caved and realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep you in the car seat for the full 15 hours of driving we were going to be doing over the next few days, so I took you out as needed to feed you or to calm you if you were screaming. For the most part you have done well in the carseat though. Fortunately a lot of the driving has been during your nap times so you were able to sleep in your cars seat quite a bit. Below are a few pics of you in the hotel we stayed in while in Denver. You were so cute in the giant king sized bed.

After the graduation we went back to the hotel for a bit and Nana and Popper watched you for a while so that your Uncle Grae and Dad could celebrate while I took a short nap before dinner. After dinner we  took you in your first swimming pool. You did really well despite the water being somewhat cold. In fact I am convinced that if the water was warmer you would have done even better. I tried to lay you on your back in the pool and you didn’t love that. So mostly you just clung to me with your tiny little goosebumps all over your body. After playing in the pool for a bit we took you into the hot tub. The hot tub fortunately wasn’t much hotter than a bath tub (much cooler than a normal hot tub) and you preferred that much more than the pool. In fact I was able to lay you on your back in the water of the hot tub and you were very relaxed at that point. After your water excursion you were tired and fell asleep on my chest. It was so precious I just had to take a picture! I think you will love the water as you get older.  :o)

Sunday we left for Mount Rushmore. Your Uncle Grae came with us.  We arrived with enough time to go to Mount Rushmore on early Sunday evening. You sure do love your baby bjorn, Dad strapped it on and sure enough you slept through the majority of the Mount Rushmore experience too.  We walked around the viewing site and then went on the Mount Rushmore trail loop to explore. You finally woke up at the very end of the trip and we were able to get a few pictures with you awake. Most of the pictures you are asleep in though, much to my disappointment.  I’m excited for you to go back to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse some day though, knowing that you have already been with your Mom and Dad.

We woke up on Monday and headed out to Crazy Horse before heading back to Denver. Crazy Horse isn’t finished being built though and so it  was neat to see it as a work in progress. It is amazing to think they have been working on this since 1948. Maybe it will actually be done during your lifetime and you can go back and visit it in its completed state and compare it to the pictures we took today. It was very windy and even though you were awake, you weren’t very happy at the level of the wind and so getting a photo with you was not as easy. The site truly is amazing though. For a first vacation it was nice. You did great for the most part considering all of the traveling we were doing. I know you won’t remember it, but we do have pictures for you to see when you grow up.