Right after school let out, we took our family vacation, predominantly to celebrate with Dave on the momentous event of his graduation from Rosemount High School. It was a good trip, not too uncomfortable really.We took off in the morning (not quite as early as I wanted but we are talking about Kelly & Allie here) with Des Moines, IA as our destination for the night. It's actually quite a haul, going from Denver to there. The CRV handled it great. What an awesome little car really. About the only negative of this first leg was the nasty south to north wind that literally blew the entire day. It required me to stay more alert so the drive wasn't the typical "relaxing" drive across Nebraska and Iowa. We spent the night in Grimes, a suburb of Des Moines.
The next morning we got up and goofed around, had some breakfast and got back on the r
oad. Our next stop was Mason City, the home of Meredith Willson and the Music Man museum. This let us complete our 12 month obsession with this play on a high note. It's a pretty neat little museum and it was about the first time I could bear to listen to any of the music. They have a neat little recreation of the street from the movie and a cute little gift shop inside of the Paroo house. We got Junia a "Trouble" T-Shirt. That little girl was exposed to way too much Music Man in the womb...hope she's not scared for life. We then boogied up to Greg & Nikki's house in Rosemount, Minnesota from there.Dave had qualified for state in the pole vault and the state meet was the next morning, so we all headed over to St. Paul to watch. Dave wasn't thrilled with his results but we had a good time. Then it was back to the house t
o get ready for the commencement ceremony. That took place at the high school football field. It was interesting to see our girls process the size of the senior class, at over 450 in comparison to the whole K-12 at
the School...which will be about 450 this year. Dave was in the honor's choir and they performed and were terrific. Then after it was all over, we went down to the field to take pictures and congratulate folks.The next day, Nikki and Greg through a big party for Dave and his friends. There was so much food and it was all terrific...naturally. Nikki was also convinced that since Dave wanted mexican food (she made excellent tamales) that there should be "mexican" decorations, so we had put up
all these tacky chili-pepper & cactus decorations...all over the place. I don't thing the kids even noticed, but we all worked hard at it.The next day we kind of chilled...we did hit IKEA over by the mall and drove downtown to the Guthrie, Minneapolis' downt
own theater. We also got to drive around Edina where Kristie grew up, and coincidentally, where Greg & Nikki want to move. We finished the evening by dining at Big Bowl in SouthDale, Nikki's favorite restaraunt. It was good to see Greg doing well this time as the last time we ate at this Big Bowl, he was still in the hospital.We left the next morning and headed down to Sioux Falls for the night. The next day we stopped at Wall Drug, then on to the Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore and Hot Springs, SD. Our stay in Hot Springs was very uneventful. We were all pretty tired so we just slept and watched TV. We then headed home and rescued Martha...our vacation was complete.