YeeHaw 4th of Ju-ly!

Brock and I were able to go visit daddy (Darrik) in Kansas for the 4th this year.  Darrik is in Ulysses Kansas and if any of you know where that is, you know it's in the middle of no where. SERIOUSLY! Ha ha ha.  Really, there is not a lot to do there, but we still had a good time. Small town entertainment.

 I flew there with Brock all by myself.  I had Brock's car seat, his little umbrella stroller, my large suitcase, my carry on, and my diaper bag/purse.  You should have seen me trying to carry all of that by myself, plus my kid. I wanted to stop and ask someone to take my picture. I'm sure it was a sight to see.  It was hilarious.  Brock did really well on the flight, thanks to portable DVD players and the movie Cars. He just watched his movie the entire time. No problems what so ever.

I asked the nice lady sitting next to us to take our picture. I love Brock's little cheesy grin.

This was my attempt to do a panoramic picture. But you get the gist.  Darrik is building a dental clinic and right behind it is a beautiful park. Mostly shaded by trees, a nice picnic area, green bushes and lots of flowers. You can't really tell by looking at this small picture, but it is a really nice park. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it was gravel, very smooth little rocks, instead of sand. But other than that, I loved it. How nice for the dentists to look out their window at this park, or to be able to go there on their lunch. Way cool.


Brock had a ball playing at the park, which he usually does.  He had a lot of fun with his cousins too.

Ok, so my kid is obsessed with tractors, we just found out! He just sat here and looked at it forever and jumped up and down and had a huge grin on his face the whole time.

Darrik's co-worker Rusty's awesome back yard.  Homemade wood jungle gym, trampoline, large sand box, and I didn't take a picture of it, but off to the left there is an amazing garden and a pool.  This is where they had their 4th of July ward party.  It was insane, and so much fun!

Brock loved the kitties

Right before he dropped this one, poor little guy.

This was part of the dinner. We had hot dogs and hamburgers too, but this is rattle snake on the left and some other animals unmentionable parts, deep fried and dipped in sauce.  I didn't try it... yucky!

This was one of the activities.  Homemade bull riding.

Here my niece Mia is ridding it.  The guys bounce it up and down until you fall off.  They were pretty ruthless.  She was a good sport. She was soaking wet.

This is Rusty riding it.  He stayed on for a while.

This was the 'find the money in the hay' activity.  Brock just wanted to watch.

Then daddy found a toad.  It was peeing all over the place.  Every time it jumped, it would spray a ton.  Brock didn't want to get too close.

Then there was barrel racing.  They had stick horses you had to hold on to and run around the barrels. It got pretty exciting.  One of the guys picked up the barrel and ran off with it.

 Aren't they adorable!  I was in love with this old truck too.

 

Brock 21 months

Another activity was dressing the cows like clowns.  They weren't successful. It was kind of sad...

So then there was this spinny chair.  It is connected to a truck axle thing, so when the tires spin one time, the chair spins like 10 times and then it's connected to a 4-wheeler, so  you go super fast. It was scary, but so fun! I screamed the whole time, but I liked it.  I went twice, but only so I could get a good picture. ha ha.  Not that you can get a good picture on this thing.

Some cool cars on Rusty's farm.  This is a model T.  One of the first cars ever built. Crazy!

Here's Rusty in front of his sweet ride. It's a 1967 Ford Mustang. I was in love with it.

It was still pretty light outside, but we decided to do some sparklers.  Brock was not a fan.

You can't really tell in the picture, but it started raining really hard while we were doing sparklers and Brock wanted to play in it but was too scared to go all the way out in it.  It was coming down so hard all of the sudden.  It was crazy.

Then it was time for the big night-time fireworks.  Kansas doesn't have rules like Utah does with fireworks.  It was crazy.  There were fireworks all over in the sky.  You couldn't tell which ones were the city fireworks and which ones were the neighbors.  The were going off like warfare.  Some of the neighbors were laying them down in the street and lighting them off.  They would scream down the street like a flash of light and then blow up huge right on the ground. It was insane, and they almost hit a few cars.  Some of our family and some of their friends got into a roman candle war.  There was a few burns and some singed eye brows.  It was so funny! 

We had to put ear plugs in Brock's ears because it was so loud.  We couldn't keep them in for very long. But he was pretty scared at first.

But give him a brownie and he's fine. ha ha

We came home on Monday the 5th.  We had a 5 hour drive to Denver to catch our flight.  It was long... but the flight was good and Brock did fine again.  My mother-in-law flew home with us and she was a huge help.  Here Brock is sipping juice and watching Cars.  We had a fun trip, as I think you can tell.

Just wanted to throw this one in here.  This is Brock last year on the 4th.  So funny huh?  He's grown up so much, I can't believe the difference a year makes.

Darrik came home on the 8th of July, a few days after we were in Kansas, and we did some fun things.  One night we did our own fireworks.  Darrik did a few snakes and some pops with Brock.  Then Darrik took a big one out into the street and lit it.  Brock got one look at it started bawling and took off running into the garage.  He hated it. Poor kid.  We thought he'd warm up to it so I held him and tried to get him to calm down, but he so wasn't having it.  It was really sad.  So we ended early.

This is a really bad picture, but it's brock in the garage crying..

What a mean mom, taking pictures of me when I'm crying. ha ha. We thought it was so funny. We're horrible aren't we.

I just want to say that I am really proud to be an American. I'm thankful for the many who fight so hard to protect our freedoms.  Thank you troops.  I hope all of you had a fun and safe Independence Day.