Father's Day

While Charlie was up north with Sam earlier in the summer, I was at Walmart with one of my friends. We saw this grill for a very awesome deal. I thought it would be a wonderful Father's Day/Birthday present for Charlie, considering that his current grill only had 3 legs and, let's face it, was a bit of a safety hazard. I was really excited to get it because I knew that he would actually like it and use it. Then one night, I was talking to Charlie. He had been helping his
parents clean out their basement, and he came across a really nice grill. He said it was a lot better than the one he had (it couldn't really be much worse) and his dad said he could have it. So I had to tell him about his present. He felt really bad that he spoiled the surprise. I don't think he believed me that the one I got him was a nice one, because he kept saying, "Well, I'll still bring this one home, just in case." He ended up giving that one to our friends upstairs because their grill wasn't the best either.
I set to work putting the grill together. It took FOREVER!!!!! Not only were there a million pieces, but the instructions only had pictures, so I really had to guess at what I was doing. At one point, there was once piece that I flipped around backwards, but I didn't realize it until much later in the assembly process, when things just didn't look quite right. I debated whether I wanted to just leave it how it was (it couldn't really be that important, right) or take everything apart and put it the right way. I finally decided to take it apart and fix it. And it's a good thing I did. It turns out that piece of metal so small you could barely see it in the instructions was a major part in allowing the coals to be brought up closer to the grill plates. Food probably would have never cooked if I left it the way it was. In the end, it took me a total of probably 15 hours to assemble. What cracked me up was that the instructions were in English AND Spanish! With just pictures! The only difference was at the top of the pages, one side said "Step 5" and the other side said "Paso 5." And they screwed that up too. some of the Spanish pages were mixed in with the English pages. No wonder the stupid thing was such a great deal. Charlie likes it, or at least he pretends to for my sake :)


On June 18th, the day before Father's day, we decided to go explore Vedawoo up in the mountains near Laramie. We had never been there before and heard that's it's a great place to pass your time. It's basically a whole lot of cool-looking rock formations. We took a hike around the area. I think we figured we hiked about 5 or 6 miles that day. We went off the beaten path a few times and just followed game trails.


Sam was fascinated with everything, and I mean everything. He would walk around going, "Oooh, yellow flowers! Oooh, big rocks! Ooooh, deer poop!" Seriously, everything.














We really liked this tree. A rock fell in it's way. The tree just grew around it.








Sam was pretty skeptical about going in this little cave. I guess it could have had something to do with Charlie telling him that the bears were going to eat him.























We stopped of at the Lincoln Memorial, yet another place we had never been. It was actually quite interesting. They have a really nice visitor center there that talks about the area and gives a little history about it. Sam was having a ball! They had an area where you could sit and watch a video. There was no sound, but Sam still loved it because there were fish in it :)
They had an interactive area as well, where Sam could run around touching everything. They also had a photo opportunity :) They had a small plaque to hold up to your face. I couldn't get very good pictures because my camera wasn't agreeing with the lighting.




After that, it was off to Kurt Gowdy State Park to go fishing. Sam had been looking forward to fishing all day, so he was a bit impatient when it took us a long time to find a fishing spot. That place was packed! Normally, it wouldn't have been so bad, but all the camping areas in Snowy Range were still closed, so anyone that wanted to go camping that weekend had to go to the other mountain range. We finally found an area that had enough room for us to fish. Sam had a good time :) After we ate our dinner, Sam started getting a little cranky. He didn't have a nap, and he'd had quite a bit of stimulation, so we packed up and headed out. On the way out, we found a little playground. We had told Sam earlier that
he could play on it, so we figured we'd better stop. They had a few little random things to play on. Sam's favorite things were the truck, where he would spin the wheel and pretend to throw Charlie back and forth, and the little spring penguin thing (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term :)


















This was in another area around the lake. I'm going to make my kids a fort like that one day :)



After a long but fun day, we headed back home. It's something that we will definitely do again some day.