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.

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.

A whole lot of ruckus.

We had a pretty good storm last night. We were gone for the evening and came home to a minor mess. My laundry on the clothesline is sopping wet, many pieces of clothing are in the mud instead, and the line is hanging ridiculously low. The cast iron grill was blown over (impressive!) and, from the smell, leaking propane. For a brief moment I thought it broke the sliding glass door. It didn’t, but the screen was knocked out. We walked through the house, wary of creatures. There were none. A few small branches are on the ground, but from the news I’ve heard of others in the area, we didn’t get nearly the storm others did. The electricity had been out, but it was back on when we got home.

Driving through that storm though… I’d been headed to Walmart, was informed Walmart was closed due to the impending storm. Then I had to drive across town. Hard rain, having not been getting so much of this in the last many months, was a new thing for me in a 12 passenger van. Traffic lights were out, and between the rain and the wind (up to 70 mph I was told) made for an interesting and loud experience. The kids thought it was terrific fun. It wasn’t.

The discussions as the gray sky poured down on us went to the flood. Funny how bright sunny skies change dark so fast, and when it’s raining so hard the wipers can’t keep up, you realize in some minute measure what all those people not on the ark must have been thinking when it didn’t stop for a month and a half. (I’m sure limited thinking was going on after the first bit. You know.) It’s a dark and dreary feeling. We like to think we’re in charge, building and doing and going about our business. In that moment, you realize how truly vulnerable, how dependent on God we really are. One storm lasting an hour caused a whole lot of ruckus around here.