Summer Road Trip Part 1: Wyoming

The Cook Family Road Trip 2010, aka "Leave No Potty Behind"

***WARNING*** Since I use this blog to not only share pictures with friends and family, but to journal about everything going on with our family, these posts from our trip will be long. Just skip all the long boring details and jump to the pictures if wanted.

We were planning this trip for a long time. Originally we were going to fly into Salt Lake City, rent a car, and do all our west coast traveling from there. After moving to NC, I didn't want to make that long drive again. But the airline companies messed with my master plan. Ticket prices were so high for months and months and months. I kept checking every week to find something good. Usually the prices will eventually come down. I was looking right up until the day before we left. But alas, no good prices. So in order to make the trip, we had to drive. After a lot of schedule juggling and mapquesting, we came up with a plan to fit everything in our time frame. We made the drive to Lander in 2 1/2 LONG days and spent 4 days with my parents and grandmother.

Since we didn't have a lot of time to spend in Lander, I hadn't told many people we were coming. I figured we would just call a few friends when we arrived and try and stop by to say hi. Unfortunately, Courtney couldn't get ahold of anyone. But I was able to see one of my good friends. And Bruce stopped by his old job to talk with a few coworkers. It was a nice, relaxing time with my parents.

Love those Wyoming skies!!

We arrived really late on July 4th, so missed all of Lander's great festivities and chances for my kids to show off their pyromaniac skills. I had picked up some snappers along the way, so that was our Independace Day celebration that year! Woohoo!!


Once again we were in Lander for Dylan's birthday. I took him to the store to pick out a fun cake, and we had a nice celebration for him.

A little running around in the wide open spaces is always necessary!

Bruce and Courtney spent many hours driving the 4-wheeler all over the fields. Dylan and Travis went along for the ride. My mom was even brave enough to let Courtney take her for a spin around the driveway.

{cough, cough, cough}

And of course, we spent time riding my dad's horse, Nugget. It's always a highlight of our visit.

Courtney just loves her horses!!

School's Out!

Both Courtney and Dylan had end-of-year celebrations last June. Here are the pictures from those events.

Dylan's Kindergarten class had a fun celebration. They invited the parents to class, sang us a bunch of songs they learned, read us a book they wrote about the school year, gave a slide show, and served us ice cream sundaes. It was a lot of fun to see how much they have grown throughout the year.




Dylan's best friend, Spike, is the 4th kid to his right, the blond boy. They are inseparable at school.




Here are a few pages from Dylan's book:
"We learned words that are word walls that are easy. And I learned the alphabet and count to 180."

"My favorite time of day is recess because I like to play. I like to play police and I like to play with Spike."


Courtney's last year of elementary school was celebrated with 5th Grade Graduation. It was a really nice ceremony for the kids and parents. I'm usually not very emotional with my kids' school advancements. I don't cry when I send them off to Kindergarten. But I broke down during graduation. Looking at her up on the stage, thinking about how far she has come since Kindergarten, and feeling so blessed to have a wonderful, strong, beautiful, and smart daughter caused me to lose it. I was just a little choked up until they had each student take a flower and give it to their Mom in the audience. That was it, I was bawling like a baby. Even now, remembering is getting me teary eyed.

I had a hard time taking pictures during the ceremony. The ones I managed to take came out blurry because my camera was on a weird setting. So this is all you get.





Courtney receiving her diploma.

The specials teachers (art, music, PE, library) gave out awards to a few kids who displayed outstanding work during the year. Courtney received one from PE, which she was so excited about. She loves PE so this meant a lot to her. (I didn't have my camera ready so I only got a picture of her heading back to her seat.)


With Mrs. Penland, her teacher.

With one of her good friends, Jacob. Her other really good friend, Jonah, was out of town so we didn't get his picture.

The kids in her class wrote down words to describe each of their classmates. When they recieved their diploma, her teacher read a few things that were written about each of them. It was really special so hear the different things they came up with.

Now we're off to another school year!!

Fun in PA

For Father's Day weekend, we went up to Pennsylvania to visit Bruce's parents. We had a great weekend hanging out with them and Bruce's brother, Tim and his family. We helped with some yard work, Grandma took the kids hunting for toys at garage sales, swam in their pool, practiced our archery skills, and just played.

The highlight for the kids was our trip to Kennywood. These are the only pictures I took from the whole weekend. Tim's wife, Hilary stayed home with the babies. The rest of us went and baked in the sun, but had a great time.









Bruce and I took Travis and Rachel to Kiddieland for some great rides for little ones, while the big kids went with uncle Tim, Grandma, and Grandpa for some big rides.











We met up for lunch, then got soaked on the water rides.




Travis and Rachel were pretty tired, so they left with Grandma and Grandpa. We took Courtney, Erin, and Matthew on some big rides, (Dylan was too scared to go on most,) then Tim took Erin, Matthew, and Dylan home.





We stayed with Courtney so she could ride the 2 big roller coasters, Thunderbolt and Phantom's Revenge.

She was a little nervous before-hand, but loved them so much and wanted to ride again and again. Unfortunately we only had time for one ride each since the lines were so long. While waiting for Phantom's Revenge, one of the cars got stuck on the first hill going up. They got it down and everyone out safe, but we had to wait about 45 minutes for them to fix and test the ride. It was a lot of fun, although I've decided my roller coaster days are about over. I love them, but I came off feeling really sick and dizzy. Getting old stinks!