Monday morning, we drove the scenic Needles Loop Highway and looked at the beautiful granite outcroppings and pine trees. On a whim, we stopped at a lookout and saw this:
The Needle’s Eye
The kids had a great time scrambling and climbing on the rocks.
Cherry Pie is a fearless climber.
Even Baby Dumpling got excited about climbing.
Pumpkin Pie
Tamale Pie
Blueberry Pie used to be so cautious when he was 2. What happened?
Rock Monkeys
We had to go through 3 tunnels like this one. I held my breath for extra skinniness the whole time. Didn’t you know holding your breath makes you skinnier?
I felt like the Knight Bus in Harry Potter.
We had planned on touring Wind Cave, but we should have checked before driving all the way there, because it was closed due to prairie fires. Instead we went swimming all afternoon in Sheridan Lake. The water was pretty green smelling, but the sandy beach was nice and green water is better than no water when you haven’t showered in 2 days.
For lunch we had PB&J and pretzels with nutella. Everybody liked that. For dinner I made a rice & hamburger & tomatoes & cheese thing all in the frying pan. It tasted fine, I thought, but the kids hated it. Can’t win em all, I guess.
We had to overcome some wardrobe malfunctions Sunday morning. Blueberry Pie’s slacks were missing the main button, and root beer got spilled on my shirt when Ben was ironing it. (that’s right, ladies. The Man of this House does the ironing.) I don’t wear makeup when I’m camping so I didn’t bring any, but I wished I had some for church. We looked a little rag-tag, but the important thing was to go.
Sunday morning we found a meeting house. –One nice thing about our church is that all the chapels look about the same so you can just drive around until you spot one, and it is a good bet that Sunday meetings will start at 9 a.m. But if you don’t like uncertainty, you can find the address and meeting time online. After Sacrament meeting, where we were treated to an excellent talk about keeping the Sabbath Day holy, we reassured each other that appreciating God’s creations with your family was OK for a Sunday activity and we headed for Custer State park to find our campsite.
Dinosaur Park in Rapids City
We set up camp near Sheridan Lake, in the midst of hundreds of Ponderosa Pine Trees. I’ve always loved how they seem to be reaching towards Heaven–so straight and tall.
Normally when we camp, I do most of the cooking in a dutch oven. I like this because I can basically throw all the ingredients in and leave it for 45 minutes-1 hour and viola! Dinner. However, South Dakota was under a burn ban so we couldn’t cook with firewood or charcoal; only gas stoves on a hard surface were allowed. For lunch we ate Taco Salad. I precooked the hamburger at home and vacuum sealed it. So when we got to camp, I broke out the propane stove and we had taco salad in the time it takes to heat a can of refried beans. There are pros to gas cooking and speed is #1.
After lunch we drove through the beautiful Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore.
Blueberry Pie wants his face carved on a mountain someday.
It was fun to go through the little museum and learn how rock was removed from the mountain. There was also a slide show of pictures of the mountain taken at different times of day and in different seasons. George Washington looks especially distinguished with snow in his hair.
As you can see, we had plenty of cheese.
Also, plenty of energy. (And don’t miss Blueberry’s shuffle-step in the background.)
For dinner we had parmesan pasta (with chicken I had precooked and vacuum packed) and fresh fried zucchini. The kids loved it!
All the kiddie pies begged to go swimming, but that’s definitely not on my Sunday appropriate activities list, so we went for a family walk along the lake shore instead. It was beautiful and peaceful.
I tried out the new trekking poles that the Man of the House had insisted on buying for me. I was skeptical about carrying something extra around to trip myself with, but when I tried them, I could quickly tell that they were improving my balance. It was a lovely walk. After it got too dark to see, we went to bed– with no showers because there was no plumbing at this campground. Only pit toilets for bathrooms and a spigot down the path for getting water. The girls made the mistake of being curious about what is in a pit toilet and looking down there. I think they learned the valuable lesson that ignorance is bliss.
Holy Cow! I just realized I’m talking about toilets on my blog again.
**I’ve been trying to decide whether to give you a highlights version or the every single detail version. Couldn’t decide so I’m going to do both. I’ll put the main things in bolder font so you can skim through fast. I’ll put in all the other details too, which will make me happy and you can read them if you want/have time.
Our trip began with a 14 hour drive.
We got started by 7:00–only 1/2 hour later than our planned time! That was the best start ever for a family trip. For food in the car, we had granola & strawberry yogurt parfaits for breakfast & chicken salad with Ritz crackers for lunch–so tasty. For snacks we had, carrot sticks, grapes, and animal crackers. There were also so sour gummy worms and gummy bears for when car sickness threatened.
I was so busy planning food and clothing for 6 days, our longest camping trip ever, that I planned nothing to entertain the kids in the car. That could have been disasterous, but lucky for me, it wasn’t. The 12-year-old and the 10-year-old both brought a book to read. Somehow they kept busy and happy with not too much fighting. I think it is because of how much space we have in the Death Star.
We did play the license plate game and kept a list to see if we could see all 50 states. By the end of the trip, we had seen 42, including Alaska & Hawaii! We found every state west of the Mississippi River, except Louisiana. I guess Louisiana-ians weren’t visiting South Dakota this year.
On our way to Rapids City, We drove through Sioux Falls. For 20 minutes as we approached the city and then drove through it, we got to see some pretty neat aerial stunts that turned out to be none other than the Blue Angels in their F-18’s. That is the definition of serendipity, readers!
I also found out that South Dakota natives pronounce their capital city “Peer” not “Pierre.” That seems a little weird to me, but I guess it’s their state capital so they can say it how they want.
The drive was shorter than it could have been because the Man of the House rigged a …lou…. for the van. We are pretty sure we saved about 4 hours of stopping to take kids to the bathroom. I’m sure he is planning on telling all the details on his blog, so I’ll leave that for him. Besides I don’t know if I want to talk about a toilet on my blog. I’ll just say that my initial reaction to his idea was, “You’ve got to be kidding.” But it turned out to be genius because we didn’t have to stop every time a little kid needed to pee. Also we used kitty litter instead of RV chemicals in the lou. They were cheaper and smelled better. In fact we only had to open the windows once, the first time it was used, because we didn’t have the foresight to put some of the kitty litter in to start with. Perhaps you cat owners are shaking your heads at our ignorance right now. Go on, laugh it up.
For dinner we bought hamburgers at Burger King and I added homemade chocolate chip cookies and Mug root beer. Everyone got their very own can of soda. How exciting!
We got to Rapids City at about 8:30 p.m. and stayed in a motel overnight so we could clean up and go to church in the morning.
Saturday night I realized that Baby was dehydrated–no wet diapers all day and none I could remember from yesterday. That worried me. I realized I’d probably been giving her too many crackers and not enough milk the last few days while I tried to get everything ready for the trip. I pretty much stayed up most of the night feeding her and she seemed better in the morning. By Monday, she was much better. Phew!
Question: Why have I not blogged for over a month??
Answer: I can’t find the cord to link my computer and my camera. waaaahhhh 😦
The DH says it’s around somewhere. I’m pretty sure he’s the last one to have seen it, and thus is GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY. He will receive no mercy when he stands before the tribunal. **after reading my post, the wounded DH went and found my camera cord for me–supposedly sitting on top of our broken printer in plain sight. Wasn’t that sweet of him? I *heart* DH. In addition to that, I got copies of lots of pictures taken by other family members and due to some pregnancy insomnia and my new super high speed internet, figured out how to make collages with PICASA. I *heart* PICASA.
We had a wonderful, wonderful vacation and truthfully I was having too much fun at the family reunion to use my camera much, so I don’t have very many pictures anyway (hanging head in shame)
The treats and games I planned worked well on the 22 hour drive out to Idaho. Best last minute bring along was a library book of quickie who-dun-it mysteries. The older kids enjoyed solving them for as long as my voice held out reading aloud. They even read some to each other after I quit.
On the way home, I decided that we ate as many snacks as we had and didn’t really need so many. So I bought less and everyone was mostly OK. We never felt sick from car food, so I think the choices were good.
The toys/coloring didn’t work very well on the way home. Although Bubba made some improvements to the pictures in Cutie Pie’s “Dora the Explorer” coloring book.
Everyone was so tired of being in the car. The kids just wanted to watch movies and everyone was tired of the movies we had. I considered Redbox, but didn’t want to drive around unknown towns searching for one.
I chose the DVDs we did bring along based on 2 criteria:
#1 what I thought I could stand to listen to while not being able to see it
#2 The kids would like to watch over and over
( the kids would have loved Mr. Bean. But the sound track to Bean is just canned studio laughter and a little background music. Not fun to listen to when you can’t see what is so funny. Also no good is any of the Lord Of the Rings Movies. That entire sound track can be summed up as follows: “da-nuh- nuh, du du dunt…I’m glad you’re here Sam…da-nuh- nuh, du du dunt…I’ll always stay with you Mr. Frodo…da-nuh- nuh, du du dunt…*beastial howlings and growlings*…15…16…17…My Precious…da-nuh- nuh, du du dunt.” repeat.
NO!
I only chose 4 DVD’s because I didn’t want movies kicking all over around the car. Four is how many fit in the glove box. Next time I will bring more than 4 movies–the DH and I got to hear “Tangled” and “MegaMind” about 14 times each. StarDust was less popular and only got watched about 4 times.
DH has a lower tolerance for repetition of kid stuff than I do, so when he couldn’t take any more, I put in “Fiddler on the Roof.” The kids watched it at least twice, and now if Bubba sings, “Do you love me?” to Cutie Pie (who is 2 1/2), she will say back very vehemently, “I wash your clothes and milk them!”
LOVE IT 🙂
So we broke up our drive out west by stopping at the highest peak in Kansas, Mount Sunflower. I can’t say we climbed it, because we drove up and parked on the top. It was about 9 hours into our drive and made a lovely rest stop.
Cutie Pie is hardly in any pictures because she didn’t stop running from the time I let her out of the car until the time I caught her and forced her back into her car seat.
A few hours later we stopped in Denver at our Priceline-won hotel. We ordered pizza for dinner and swam in the pool for over an hour. Peach Pie said to me, “Momma, I dreamed of staying in a hotel and this is just like I dreamed it would be.”
Lucky us, we got a room with 2 queen beds instead of the usual 2 double beds. DH, Cutie Pie and I took one queen bed and we lined 4 kiddos up on the other queen bed, with their heads from side to side, so they would have more room. It was quite the pile of humanity. (I never tell hotels how many kids we have because they invariably insist that I can’t put that many people in one room and must buy two rooms. But they also refuse to guarantee me adjoining rooms and I will not have half the family down the hall, let alone on a different floor. The DH and I would have to split up so as to have a parent in each room and that would be no fun. So we crowd in one room and make do.)
The next morning, refreshed and rested, we finished the drive to the family reunion (my dad’s family) where we spent 4 days and 3 nights camping at a place near Rexburg, ID.
We ate good food,
ran lots of relay races,
the little kids tunneled in the giant sand box,
and we talked and laughed ourselves hoarse.
(speaking of the giant sand box–my favorite part of the reunion place–My family was assigned to clean the bathrooms at the ranch on the last day. My dad commented, somewhat perplexed, that the women sure tracked a lot more sand into the showers than the men did. I pointed out that the women were the ones who supervised the showering of most of the 38+ little kids each day, and the mystery was solved.
I, myself, showered 4 very sandy little girls each day, hoping to reduce the amount of sand that was carried into the tent and sleeping bags. I’m sure that my efforts made a dent, but the tent was very sandy, nonetheless.)
The DH ran off with my sister’s DH for 24 hours to climb the highest peak in Idaho: Mt. Borah. –if you think you are seeing a pattern here, you would be correct. It is his goal to summit the highest peak in all 50 states. We have to fit a couple in on every family vacation. The kids and I are happily doing the little ones with him. He is on his own for Rainier and Denali.
One of the events at the reunion was Family History Skit Night. Each Family Group was asked to come up with a skit about one of our ancestors. All the skits were amazing and fun. The other family groups all did fun, spiritual skits. Of course, my family group (comprising my parents, all my siblings and their spouses and kids) chose the irreverent route. We picked my dad’s grandfather, James Edward and a particular event in his life. We set it to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies” theme song. I wrote up verses and then Dad helped me refine it until it was 100% historically accurate and balanced as far as length. No artistic license was allowed, even for the sake of a good rhyme or meter. (you know how at the end of each stanza the Beverly Hillbillies tune has sort of parenthetical expressions–well the rhythm of some of ours is WAY off–but it was really funny anyway.) We sang it and acted it out. My brother James (Jimmy) played James Edward.
You have to imagine it complete with a full stop after the first line and an argument–not even staged–about how I had supposedly started the singing at too high of a pitch. I swear, I was just trying to match Dad so we were singing the same note. It still ended up being a bit too high and got screechy on the last line of most of the verses. I blame nerves and the fact that we were trying to sing loud–the microphone had quit working.
Here it is for posterity, our family history skit:
Come and listen to my story ’bout a Mormon pioneer
Raisin’ horses and a family in the wild frontier
James Edward was his name and he married Bertha Lamb
And they moved to Canada to live and work the land
(soil that is, planting crops, growin’ wheat)
Well he had to dig a well, to meet the family’s needs
So he and Uncle Nels got one dug down 60 feet
The hired boy was careless and the windlass flipped it’s lid,
James dropped right down the well, the windlass landed on his head.
(knocked him flat, caved his skull, scalped him clean)
So Nels and the hired boy ran and grabbed a rope,
They pulled the windlass up, though they didn’t have much hope
Down they sent the rope again and pulled with growing dread
And up from the ground came a bubblin’ red
(blood that is, straight from his arteries, spurtin’ left, squirtin’ right)
**at this point, Jimmy smeared ketchup all over his face and continued squirting watered down ketchup from a bottle every so often. We had quite a mess to clean up when the skit was over.)
They carried him inside and they laid him on the floor
Then to fetch a doctor quick, they both ran out the door
The boy ran to Mountain View, the doctor wasn’t there
Nels took a team to Cardston and waited in despair.
(All he could do, just wait until the Doc came back)
Bertha put down dish pans to catch all the blood
No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop the flood
James wasn’t even moving–blood was spurting everywhere
She finally browned some flour and put it on his hair.
(or rather, where his hair should have been)
The kids were all a wailin’ and a cryin’ heaps o’ tears
But Bertha calmed them down and she quieted their fears
She said, “the Lord will care for us, have faith, do not despair.”
At 2 am the doctor came and sewed back James’ hair
(tried to, but his mangled scalp could hardly cover the gaping hole in his skull)
**my kids and my brother’s kids provided the wailing.
Well, true to Bertha’s faith, James recovered real soon
And survived many more accidents that couldn’t fit in this tune
The family grew in numbers, in strength, in faith, in love
And we can all be thankful for these blessings from above.
So there you go. Now you have a good glimpse into my family’s humor. If you need more, you can check out the birthday posts on my sister’s blog. She even has pictures from the family reunion!When the family reunion was sadly at an end, we drove down to Salt Lake, mercifully only a 3 hour drive, to visit the DH’s sister, Linda. We spent about 2 and 1/3 lovely days with her and her 3 girls. It was not nearly enough time! “Anne of Green Gables” was watched. Amazingly, the girls also watched “Tangled.” Ben got to see some of the movie he had, up to this point, only heard. Dress-ups were donned. Chickens were fed. The tortoise was petted. The sunbird bit everyone’s fingers. Linda cooked us delicious foods. We went and tramped around the huge (for a city) lot they just purchased and will be building on soon. I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. Linda’s DH is quite a green thumb and the landscaping will be breathtaking. They have over 40 houseplants–all of which made the move across country 2 years ago when they left their home in New York City. I am still amazed by this, as I have a total of 3 houseplants that I have managed not to kill, and they were large and sturdy when I got them.Our last evening with Linda, we went to the park for our first attempt at pulling together a family reunion for DH’s family. I got to meet Sarah and Rena for the first time. (I’ve stalked their blogs for at least a year now.) and re-meet his cousin, David, whose wedding reception we went to about 11 years ago. Also their cute, fun kids and spouses. We are so glad they came. I loved getting to know them all.
Then we headed North again and spent 3 days of heaven at my mom’s family cabin on the Weber River. Again, my sister Katie has pictures. I’m not sure how she manages to take pictures and keep track of her boys, but she is amazing like that.
The DH, Bubbah & Katie’s DH, Nate, plus Orville snuck off to go camping again.
I don’t think Orville had a great time, but it turned out that he was sick 😦 DH was, as always, super impressed with Nate’s fitness because he (Nate) was a faster hiker, even though he carried a pack and Orville most of the time.
After those 3 idyllic days in Weber Canyon, we headed back home to the Midwest. It was 37 degrees fahrenheit the morning when we left the Weber. Then next day as we crossed Kansas, it was 105 degrees fahrenheit. We were definitely going in the wrong direction is all I can say. We stopped at Panorama Point, Nebraska on our way home and bagged another highest peak.
We saw a dust devil. The mosquitoes were murderous. We stopped in North Platte for dinner. All I have to say is Perkins may be a Family Restaurant, but it isn’t easy on a family’s budget. $4.99 for a kid’s plate of mac-n-cheese with a few grapes on the side, ouch. We stayed at a hotel with free hot breakfast, but the DH was so anxious to get on the road again that he wouldn’t let us stay to eat it. 😦 Sad day. We ate cheerios in the car instead and Cutie Pie spilled hers in her car seat. That was nasty to clean out later, let me tell you.
I thought that last day in the car would never end. As we watched Nebraska and Kansas go by, I was so tired of the car that I thought pulling a handcart would be great fun and a nice change. The DH pointed out that we can go faster in 1 hour in the minivan than the pioneers could go in a week with their handcarts. I still sort of wanted to be out of the car and walking.
Now we are home and have to do stuff like clean house and weed the garden again. Truthfully, I’m happy to be home. But I sure do love all my family. They are the most awesome people on earth–the cool ones that I’m sure I’d never get to be friends with otherwise, but they are stuck with me because I was born in their family. 🙂
Yay!! We leave in just a little over 24 hours for 9 days of Family Fun!!
First of all, 21 hours of car time. But no worries. I am prepared and loaded for BEAR.
First off, we have an awesome practically new Toyota Sienna WITH DVD PLAYER. Let me just say that the best part about this is that the kids won’t fall asleep during the day, so when we stop at night, they will be tired enough to sleep so us, the drivers, can sleep as well.
Speaking of which, every other trip we have taken, we always talk about stopping, but I think a hotel room should cost $50. So when we drive by on I-70 and everything is $75-80-99, we decide not to stop. KOA is $20 and I don’t feel like paying that and then having to set up the tent either. So this year we got on priceline and bought nice hotel room in Denver for $50. My first time bidding on something on Priceline! VICTORY! It has a pool in case the kids need to get some energy out before bed. I’m not allowing us to watch the TV though. We are stopping so we can get sleep! That way we will not end up at a truckstop somewhere in Wyoming at 4 a.m. trying to snatch a nap because we just can’t drive another minute. Ahh sweet sleep.
Second, I have coloring books, including one of those cool ones that has the colors printed on it and you “paint” it with a wet q-tip. My kids have never seen one so it will be a huge hit.
We are not taking crayons because those melt in the hot car, so we will be taking colored pencils and markers. I also have batteries for Bubba’s sudoku puzzle game and his rubix cube game.
Third, I am giving the kids some control over their snacks. They will each have a snack bag and be responsible for portioning out their own treats. This way, I hope they will bug me for things less. Don’t worry, I’m keeping back snacks so we are not left bereft if they gobble all the treats in the first hour of driving.
Speaking of snacks, I put a great deal of thought and friend research into choosing snacks that would be yummy but not too sticky or messy AND not make us feel sick by the end of our trip. Here is what I came up with:
Cheddar whale crackers (cheaper than goldfish and just as tastey) Wheat thins Pretzels twizzlers smarties starbursts cheerios fruitloops mint gum bubble gum Capri Suns water bottles
Then in the cooler: Apples Grapes (were on my list, but at $3 a pound, did not make the budget after all) chive & onion cream cheese for the wheat thins Blueberry Bagels (with choice of plain or strawberry cream cheese) baby carrots cellery sticks already peeled boiled eggs **this is a maybe baby dill pickles and toothpicks PB&J on store bread already made up and cut in cute triangles slices of cheddar cheese lunch meat (turkey) for sandwiches or just eating Milk gatorade
Side note(these snacks and food for 2 days of car travel cost the same as a week of groceries. yikes! That is the hard thing about travel food. maybe i’ll be lucky and can stretch it for the two day trip home as well. After looking at my list, it seems heavy on the candy. It didn’t seem that way in the store….)
What did not make the list Granola bars (my kids never quite finish the ends and then drop those sticky messes on the car seat for me to find later) Suckers (same reason) laughy taffy and fruit snacks(same reason) oreos & animal crackers (same reason) cookies & graham crackers & homemade bread– too crumbly
One of my friends says she has her kids wear their shirts inside out in the car. That way when the get where they are going, they turn the shirts right side out and look clean. GENIUS!!!!!!!!!
Last of all, I have a bag of magic tricks for when the kids just can’t make it another mile. I scored some pretty sweet stuff at the dollar store, including a set of travel games and one of those magnetic fishing games where the fish rotate around and their mouths open and close. also one of those pictures that you can change the hairstyle by moving the iron filings around with a magnet, a mini magna doodle and a mini etch-a-scketch.
If only my printer worked and I could print off a few Madd Libbs games for Bubba and Magpie, it would all be perfect. None of the coloring book places had Madd Libbs. Just endless crossword puzzles. you’d think they could have ONE madd libbs book.
I still need to compile the CD’s and DVD’s for traveling and see if the library has any good books on tape. But I think we’ll be good.
I can’t wait to see all my family good times will be had, and probably enough good belly laughs to keep us all out of the hospital for another year. Plus I’ll meet some of my husband’s family that I’ve never met in person before. His family has never done a reunion, so he tried to organize one this year. He didn’t get very much response, and got pretty discouraged for awhile. I think he wanted more involvement on the planning side. I kept telling him, just plan a potluck at the park and tell people when to show up. That’s what we’ve finally done, reserved a park pavillion by a lake, so …..here’s hoping lots of cousins come!!
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 