Camping: Stump Lake, ND

 

While the kids spun around on an old-fashioned (read: super fun) merry-go-round, my mother took these photos:

In order to get said photos, she did this:

I’m nearly positive it is the first time I have ever seen my mother on a merry-go-round. Go Mom.

 

 

 

 

In other stories, Charlotte gave it her best attempt in learning to ride a bike. She was marginally successful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And since Sterling learned how to do this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and do it fabulously well, Ruby decided to do this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

although she’s not quite so fabulous at it. Give her some time. She’s not about to be one-upped by her older brother.

It’s a zoo.

Since the friends we went to the zoo with here in South Dakota are far more on the ball than I am (While I took pictures, my camera still holds them captive.) I’m going to steal her photos and share them all with you. Thanks, LC.

My kids love the head boards. Or whatever you call these things.

I just want to know what was going through Eden’s mind when she made this face. Close up, for good measure:

Oh, dear girl, you make me laugh.

Pierce really enjoyed the zoo. He took in most of it from this position:

Yep. Thrilling.

Once I get my camera back into my parent’s house from the van and our most recent trip to North Dakota for camping, rain bathing, and mosquito blood donation, I’ll share a few more. In the meantime, half a dozen loads of laundry a bit of calamine might be in order.

On Friday morning, bright and early, I throw a week and a half worth of clothes for seven people in the van (7x12 = 84 outfits. Be still my beating heart. We’ll take less and wash laundry. I’ve learned to limit them to packing in their backpacks or our gas mileage will suffer from the weight they attempt to bring.) and we drive ten hours to South Dakota to my parents’ home.

Pray for me on Friday?

It’s a trip we’ve made many times. The kids are champion travelers. We’ve exacted our technique to a science. (Except there’s no Taco John’s on our trip until the miles past lunchtime. That would make it perfect. I haven’t had Taco John’s in months and months and months.)

It still fills me with a bit of dread. The worse case scenario, followed by a multitude of other scenarios, fill my brain each time we go.

But, when we get there, I get a day of rummage sales shopping with my mom. A day of sheep shearing that the kids get to be a part of. A visit with good friends whose children fall into friendships with my children like it hasn’t been months/years since we’ve seen them last. A camping trip to North Dakota is on the schedule, and the kids are beyond excited about that.

Ruby tells Blaine he needs to tell the teacher at his work that he needs some days off so he can come with us. If only it were that simple. (Where the teacher idea comes from instead of a boss, I haven’t figured out. For weeks she’s been calling the awful wormlike seed structures falling from the trees ‘mancha’. We couldn’t figure it out. Found out friends told her that’s what they are. In the end, I think she’s saying a version of ‘mulch’. Cheap entertainment, I tell you, when we all sit around and try to figure out what Ruby means. Fun times.)

When we get back, we potty train Pierce. Posts to come that will be greatly anticipated, to be sure. A battle of wills may ensue, knowing this boy.

South Dakota days.

My dad has long made up words for old songs. The "Oh Christmas Tree" song with a line in there about green teeth instead of a green tree comes to mind from my growing up years.

Not much has changed. As "The weather outside is frightful" got it's line change yesterday, Ruby was present and listening yesterday. My four year old was singing later something about Grandma's kiss being delightful. It still has me giggling.

The high for today was -1 degrees. I wouldn't know firsthand, however. It was a balmy 70 degrees inside the house. I didn't leave it.

Pierce is getting molars. And I thought he was crabby before.

When Pierce wanted to drink my coffee, I tried to encourage him to stop whining and sign. "More. Coffee. Please." I had him signing each one, and then encouraged him to try on his own. He made a valiant attempt, and followed it up with "Amen!" both with the sign and a pretty clear shout. He got the coffee.

One dear child has taken to sighing when told to do a job. The others don't mind a bit though. Said child then had to do the jobs alone. The laundry was folded and put away without assistance from anyone. The others are all encouraging more sighing.

Ruby's been practicing saying the "ck" sound. It always comes out "t" instead. She's getting better, but tonight I had her trying to say "kitty". After giggling at her mispronunciation, Grandpa wisely suggested "cocoa" instead.

Weary travelers and a cold, frustrated momma.

You know you've been up for a long time when Ruby asks for lunch at 9:19 am.

We're in South Dakota. The drive took 10.5 hours and we stopped twice. It doesn't get much better than that with six kids. No one peed their pants and there was minimal crying - and none of it came from Pierce. They are growing up, my friends. Fast.

We were well over halfway to South Dakota and I'd been freezing the whole way because the kids were hot and sweaty and I couldn't figure out why they weren't getting the cold air that was blasting at me, when Pierce's cheeks were redder than any boy ever ought to have and I asked Liberty to adjust his vent. The poor sleeping boy looked like he was wearing an obscene amount of rouge, and his hair was wet with sweat. She opened the vent. Really?! It's 19 degrees outside, I all but have the A/C running trying to cool the back of the van for them, I'm freezing and they have the vents closed and the windows open?! Oh. my. HELLO! Liberty asked Eden about the vent further back, to which Eden replied, "Oh, I closed those because I was cold." She didn't mention that to me, who is shivering in the front, still blasting the cold air for all it was worth.

My children are no longer allowed to adjust the vents without permission.

Pierce was up in the night, trying to find me. He was in a sleeping bag with all the kids and I was in the next room over. I found him in the bathroom, feeling around on the sink and hollering for me. Talk about confusion. I thought him in a sleeping bag might be interesting. He fell asleep without fuss about 25 seconds after I laid him down. Yep, they are growing up.

A little road trip in the planning…

We’re planning a trip to South Dakota. My parents have a little sheep farm there, and this week they start lambing.

Can anyone say what a good life experience this is for my kids? It’s a homeschool field trip on steroids!

So, we pack. We’ll head up for a week and a half, the kids will get to experience real winter (Because the 70 degrees we experienced here last week was most definitely not winter-like.) and lambing and Grandma and Grandpa and snow. Likely, lots of snow will be available to be experienced.

It’s home. I love it. I’m a bit of a baby these days after living south of South Dakota, but I’m looking forward to it. I dug out snowpants and boots and hats and gloves and we’re off, headed to freeze our behinds. Our travel has been moved up a day, with one little girl showing classic cold symptoms, making her unfit for co-op. With any luck, she’ll sleep the day away. I’m hoping.

Just for the record, I hate packing. I cannot be organized, because no matter how hard I try, it all falls apart anyhow. I gave up. I gave each kid their backpack, told them to pack four shirts, four undies, six pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, church clothes, and let them have at it. The only ones I know for sure have what they need are Charlie and Pierce and me. Everyone else I’ve deemed old enough. We’ll see when we get there exactly what was packed. This could be interesting. Their bags are full though – either with what they were told or bricks – that remains to be seen. I’ve already stated I will not be purchasing anything that they were told to pack and forget. I may regret that statement.

Tales from the back of a very large van. Part 2.

On the way home, Ruby asked if we were in Africa. We were in Sioux City, IA. Strange, those Africans looked remarkably Dutch. Detour?

I bought bananas and peanuts for snacks on the way home. They were buried under three feet of luggage. We found them when we unloaded the van.

A box of Kix spilled in the van. Kix on vinyl van floors are something akin to marbles on ceramic tile. I had to catch more than on kid as I opened the doors when we stopped to use bathrooms along the way.

Kix and shop vacs don’t work well together. I simply vacuumed them up, moved to a different area, shut the vacuum off, and had Kix roll back out. The hose was plugged solid with them.

I’m hoping birds like Kix.

We were 52 minutes into our drive that averages 10.5 hours when I banned the question, or anything remotely similar to, “Are we almost there?”

We were 46 minutes down the road when I got the first “I need to go potty” from the backseat.

Despite using many, many toilets along the way, one dear fairly recently potty trained child didn’t make it. Many times. Her car seat had to be poured out and thoroughly scrubbed when we got there. She wore a diaper on the way home. Blessed invention.

A can of pink paint from my childhood bedroom came home with us. Some of it didn’t make it. My van was sporting pink stripes when we pulled in the driveway. Clorox wipes saved us from wearing them permanently. If you drive a really nice car and found yourself wearing pink polka dots after driving anywhere near a very large white van somewhere in Missouri on Monday… that’ll be $200 for a custom paint job, drive through style.

Pizza night.

8/10’s of the kids and cousins that were here this week. As you can see, not a one of them enjoyed the pizza. :)

Back to your regularly scheduled chaos.

Vacation’s over.

Guests left, dishwasher’s running, and life is back to normal. The house is too quiet. Actually, it’s not quiet at all. But it’s all our noise and none of the joyful cousins-playing noise. Boringly normal.

So normal, in fact, that Blaine’s sick, Charlotte is still recovering, and Pierce is back to his mostly chipper self after a bout with a cold through the week. It remains to be seen if we shared the bug with our guests. Or with more siblings. Or with Momma.

There’s just never a dull moment. Quiet moments, yes. Quiet moments like when Pierce dumps the jumbo sized bag of honey nut cheerios on the kitchen floor. Oh yes.

But no one washed hair with the unlabeled contents of any cups this week, so we’re all good. Or at the very least, I didn’t hear about it.

Many, many thanks to our guests family that visited this week. We had the time of our lives. I haven’t laughed like that in ages. We couldn’t have asked for a better visit. Cousins played, laughed, and made the best of memories. Dominoes into the wee hours made for such fun after-mommying hours, and no one complained about cramped quarters even once. We even left ten children to them one night and Blaine and I went out for supper. I married into an awesome family. :)