Rain! Rain!

It is raining today! Oh what a glorious thing! The past month here an in Colorado we have been grief stricken with terrible wildfires and today it is raining! I hope that it can give some relief to the firefighters that have spending weeks fighting them!

I hope everyone had a safe 4th of July!

Keeping up with the Soderborgs

Where has the time gone!?!?! 

August just flew by!

Here is a synopsis of what we did and some pictures!

Adam started his new job at the beginning of the month. He will be training for 4 to 6 weeks. So he is almost done with that. He seems to really like it.

My sister-in-law and niece were here for 2 weeks. My brother-in-law came for a weekend.

Then, we spent a weekend with Adam's family. We went to Mirror Lake and we hiked, played games, ate, laughed and had a blast!

Here are pictures! (Not in any particular order.)

Now school started today! This should be my last year! I hope nothing unexpected happens this semester. I hope it is the best year ever! =)

Day 29 (Almost done)

A picture that can always make you smile

This is really repetitive. Sorry. Haha.

Me and my twin

This picture is from the summer after we graduated!

It was probably one of the best summers of my life. We spent every day together and never got sick of each other. We also went to KFC a lot. Gotta love their potatoes! That is all we ever ordered. =) 

I ♥ this picture and this girl! =)

End of summer. Boo!

This past month has been jam packed with fun stuff! At the end of July, I had the privilege of seeing one of the missionaries that I connected with very well in my journey to becoming LDS. I was so excited when my best friend Tanya told me that she had run into him and we should get together with him before he goes home! Luckily we found a day to hang out catch up! It was so nice to see him and remember all the awesomeness of our talks. He did a really nice thing for me at my baptism where he gave everyone a piece of paper to write something down about my baptism and I finally received those. I had to fight back the tears reading what people had written. It was so sweet. 


I finally decided to sit down and finish putting our house together! We bought this nice shelving unit for our spare room and we were having a problem with one of the screws. When we finally figured it out, I decided to put stuff on it and now it looks more like a room! Yay! It is so nice to have our house look more and more like our home! I love it! 


We have also had some birthday's this month! My godmother, Michelle's birthday was at the beginning of the month and we went golfing with her! She got to golf for free which was pretty cool! And Ashley's little boy, Aidan turned 4 in the beginning of the month as well! So we celebrated with them! 


We spent a lot of time with my sister in law and niece while they were here. We also had a family picnic one Sunday which was a lot of fun and very delicious! I am so sad that they had to go home! We always have so much fun with them when they are here! Hopefully some day we will be able to go to Texas and visit them! Although, I am sure the heat might not go over well with Adam.


Then our good friends, the soon-to-be Fortuna's had a pool party! Brad and his friends and family through it at Brad's house! Adam, Kristina, and I went! It was a total blast! We got to laze in the pool all day and eat lots of fruit! But the neatest part was that they roasted pigs! Oh my gosh! It was the craziest thing I had ever seen but oh so delicious! 


Adam has started his job. He is going around a neighborhood and surveying people and will soon be working down the street! School starts in less than a week and we both went a got our books! Wahoo! I can't believe how fast the summer has gone! But it has been a blast and I got most of my to do list done! There are somethings I didn't do but will hopefully get to do in the near future! 

Summer lovin had me a blast!

This summer has been nothing but amazing and I think it is only going to get better! School starts in a month so I better start living it up some more. But I am excited for school to start! Just because it is my last year! Shhh don't tell lady summer. I don't want it to go any faster! Anyway...I posted a quick blog about South Dakota but I think I'll go into detail about it now(sorry this will probably be pretty long since we were there for almost 2 weeks.) and post some pictures as well. Why South Dakota you might ask well I will show you why. Adam and I left at midnight after I got off work on Tuesday so we drove all of Wednesday morning. Crazy I know but it was nice to drive at night when there is no traffic. We took turns sleeping but Adam drove most of the way. Our first major stop was at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. 

We drove to the base of the tower and decided to walk around for a bit. It was so peaceful and beautiful.

I thought this was interesting since I had no idea what pray bundles or cloths were.  

So this is what we found...

I googled it because I was so interested and found out that these bundles of cloth, feathers and tobacco are physical and symbolic prayers of the Native American peoples of the area. If you look close enough you can see the feather and I think there might be tobacco but I don't know. 

After this we started to get back on the road but we found a prairie dog town so we stopped and watched them for a while. They are so cute! 

Adam was very intrigued by them so he watched them for a while. I thought it was cute! =) 

Then we actually found some geocaches before we left! It wouldn't be a vacation if we didn't geocache! ;)

We finally got to South Dakota and since I have been to SD many many times, I decided to take Adam to the tourist traps I knew about and loved going to! First on our journey was Deadwood! Deadwood is an old west town and they put on skits about Wild Bill Hickok's murder and we were just in time to see it! 

After this is was straight on to Rapid City! This was our first main stop of the vacation. We didn't do much our first night in Rapid City! We were pretty tired. My cousin, Ron met up with us at our hotel and we decided what the plan was for the next couple days. 

Our second day of vacation, we decided to head towards Mt. Rushmore. (This was definitely one of my favorite days.) 

On the way to Mt. Rushmore, we stopped at The Cosmos! *I highly recommend this to everyone if you are ever in SD.* 

What are the Cosmos you ask? Well I took a picture of the sign that explains it... Hehe!

It was totally mind boggling! People who are not taller than you all of a sudden become taller than you, water flows toward you, and you CAN NOT stand up straight no matter how hard you try! My mom told me that I had been here once when I was younger but I don't remember it at all! But I totally loved it! 

                                                                                     

He claims to be standing straight. Think again buddy!

These are my favorite pictures I think of the whole trip! We both thought we were standing straight! 

It was totally bizarre!

We headed to Mt. Rushmore after this and I've been their quite a few times. I was excited for Adam to see it since he really likes history but he said he thought it would have been bigger. But he still seemed to enjoy it. We had lunch there and walked on the trail that take you a little closer to the faces.

This was the best dessert I've ever had! It is called Kuchen. It is a German dessert and is the state dessert of South Dakota! 

PA representing!

Utah Native!

But loving the SD! =)

Yay for
Mt. Rushmore!

After Rushmore, we stopped in Keystone which is a little touristy town right before the faces. We spent some time there and took some old timey pictures. We didn't get a CD of them but we bought one to hang up in the house. It was a lot of fun! I dressed up as a floozy and Adam was a cowboy. Then we spent sometimes with my cousins, Ron and his wife Christina. We had dinner with them at The Olive Garden. I don't get to see Ron as often so it was nice to spend some time with them and I was so happy for them to finally meet Adam. P.S. They both seemed to love Adam! =)

Alright, so I am going to finish this blog up with day 3 of our vacation. We went to see Crazy Horse Monument and to Custer State park. Crazy Horse was not really worth the money we spent but hopefully it will help move along the production of the mountain! This project has be going since 1948! So hopefully they will make some progress for the next time I am out there. But it was pretty cool to see but you can see it from the road. Haha.

Custer park was our next destination. We drove up Needles Highway which took us to Sylvan Lake. For all of you National Treasure fans that is the lake they portray as being right behind Mt. Rushmore. I'm sorry it is not really behind there. It is about 20 miles away! But it is pretty and worth the drive!

Sylvan Lake

Sorry, we didn't find the eagle either! ;)

Sorry, just had to throw one of the kissy ones in there! ;)

We headed to Wildlife Loop, which is another road that is in Custer Park. We didn't see a ton of wildlife but what we did see was pretty amazing anyway. There were turkeys, and mountain goat, and mule, oh my. 

 Well hello there! 

Yes, they stick their faces in your window! I remember this from when I was younger and I love it! I just think it is a hoot! =) 

Cute little baby! 

This guy was a hoot and a half! He just came and used our side mirror as a scratching post! I finally had to push him away because I thought he was going to break it! 

And on the way out of the park there is a tunnel you come out of and you can then see the faces! 

Then we stayed a night on Ellsworth Airforce Base. They gave us a tour of the base, 

we had dinner with them and taught them the bean game. Oh P.S. the airforce base hotel was the most amazing hotel I've ever stayed in!! To be continued....