Pickard Ponderings: She's "Officially" Ours! and Hills Highlights

Kassy has been a loved, treasured, and welcomed member of our family from the moment we received the phone call from our social worker, Barb, that her birthmom had picked us to parent her baby. Even so, the law is the law, and on June 28, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. we were in court to finalize the adoption of our precious Kassandra Briahna! The judge gave Kassy a little stuffed tiger-striped cat as a congratulatory gift and said that this he was glad to hold court proceedings for this reason.

I can't imagine life without our little Kassy. Her big brown eyes see so much and it's amazing how much she has learned and is learning each day. We are so blessed to have the opportunity to love, nurture, cherish and encourage this unique person with her own personality. You are wonderful, Kassy, and we love you very much!

Our Beautiful Baby Doll

After a big family pizza and chicken lunch, we headed home to finish packing our camper to leave for the Black Hills. We drove to my folk's, helped them finish packing their camper and headed for Rapid City at 6:30 p.m. I got to drive the pickup pulling the 33-foot camper from Ft. Pierre to Wall while Allen took a nap. He sure has a lot of confidence in me! We were almost to Rapid when Dad's camper blew a tire. Nobody had a flashlight-except David! He had a cute little dinosaur light that shines and says, "roar!" when it's mouth is opened. It didn't take the guys long to get us back on the road and we were finally settled for the "night" at 1:45 a.m.

We met up with my brother's family and visited Dinosaur Park. Mom and Dad stayed in the pickup at the bottom of the hill while the rest of us climbed the stairs. David was pretty excited to see the dinosaurs but didn't like posing for pictures. We had supper at a Burger King with an indoor playland and gave Jonah and David the opportunity to burn some more energy.

David and Jonah on the way to meet some friends

June 30 is Mom's birthday, so we celebrated with traditional camping fare for brunch-pancakes, sausages (that took 2.5 hours to cook on Dad's grill-they were good though!) and scrambled eggs. This year's candle for Mom's pancake played "happy birthday." We didn't get to light it because it was too windy. Then off to Bear Country, USA for a wild time. We saw all of the animals that the signs indicated we would see except one-the mule deer. Jonah had a good time going from side to side in the van to see the animals on each side. David, Kassy and Caleb took naps. We had grilled burgers (on Allen's grill) for supper then Allen, David, and I went for a quick dip in the pool. We had heard that the water was very cold, so we spared Kassy. It was cold and David clung to Allen the entire 15 minutes we exposed ourselves to hypothermia.

That brings us to Thursday, which was a windy, wild ride home. We bucked the wind all the way except for a 35 mile stretch where we went north. Dad lost the tread on one of his camper tires. Fortunately, he had a spare, and in less than 9 minutes they had the tire changed and we were rolling again. Not quite NASCAR, but impressive anyway.

Friday and Saturday Dad, Mom, Allen, and Jody (Tricia's brother) cut, chopped, hauled and pushed alfalfa. There's still more to do but rain Saturday night stopped further progress.
We celebrated the 4th at Allen's brother Kurt's house with yummy supper and entertaining fireworks. David and Conrad played in the sandbox, the pool, the house, and anywhere else they could. David came home with about 20 mosquito bites in various places-yes, he had repellant on!

Our precious Kassy