Ending of vacation...

One day while we were in Colorado, we had a birthday party for my mom and Jaron, and splurged on making an old family favorite--Spring Rolls! (They are a Vietnamese food that my parents learned to make while working in a refugee camp around the time I was born.)

The birthday party!

Two peas of a pod!

We left Colorado on Wednesday morning, spent that night in Iowa, then went from there straight to La Crosse to go to the booksale where we ordered all of our school books for the next year. Jaron will be doing Second AND Third grade work, and Eliott will be starting Kindergarten. I'm looking forward to the summer break here in a couple weeks, but I love teaching school and am anxious to get the next school year organized!

And while in Colorado my sister let me play with the Lilla Rose hair accessories she sells, and totally sold me on them. Totally. I love the flexi clips for myself and for Leanna. Suddenly, even long, fine hair like mine is easy to deal with! I came home planning to have a party to show a few others what I found, but then decided to go ahead and become a consultant. They really do work.

A Sapphire blue flexi in Leanna's hair. Isn't it stunning?!

 

So, here is my info if you're interested in hearing more about it:
www.lillarose.biz/KickapooCountryStyle
https://www.facebook.com/KickapooCountryStyle

The end days of our trip

I know, it's been WAY too long since I last posted! And boy, do I have a lot to catch up on!

The cabin we stayed at while we had such a fun time in the Black Hills! It was so perfect for what we needed!

We left the Black Hills Friday May 2 and drove into Wyoming to visit my brother Josh and his sweet girlfriend Leah. My sister and her clan from Alaska also happened to be there while we were there. The kiddos had an utter blast blowing bubbles!

From Wyoming we went to visit my parents in Colorado. That was a lot of fun too! Megan and clan also came a day later, so we spent a couple days all together. One day, we went up into the mountains to picnic and hike. It was rather chilly, but oh, so beautiful!

Jaron throwing rocks into the lake at the park where we ate lunch. Rock addict!

Leanna enjoying the swingset.

Eliott and cousin really hit it off well together!

Shiphrah and kids in the van getting ready to go somewhere to hike.

A Bighorn ewe we saw right above the road.

We also saw lots of elk!

Megan and camera!

Shiphrah and Aunt Kay, who joined us for the day!

The cousins helping each other along on the hike.

My handsome man!

And another handsome fellah!

 

Rock climbing in a small way. Leanna was NOT impressed!

 

Well, I think I'll leave the rest of the pictures I have till another day! 

Gold Fever!

Now here's a small photo tour of what we did on Thursday. First thing was visiting an old gold mine. Imagine, two men working together for more than 30 years, drilling the holes by hand, for a total profit of about $50 each after all that time! I didn't realize that mining was such incredibly dangerous work--the average miner who worked with a pneumatic drill, before they were water cooled, worked in the mine for about 6 months before dying of miner's lung from all the dust they breathed. The men who worked in the mill, actually getting the gold from the ore, would use their bare hands in the mercury solution, and would get real "gold fever"--a fever of up to 110!--from mercury poisoning. The men who worked in the part of the mill that actually melted down the gold breathed mercury fumes all day, and would only live on average 4-5 months. Wow. An incredible price paid for gold! I think I learned more than the children did today!

Heading down the mine shaft.

In the mine.

After the mine tour we panned for gold in their sluice troughs. We ended up with more garnets (a gem) than gold, but it was fun! Here's my VERY handsome husband trying his hand at panning for the first time. I was surprised at how addicting it was.

Eliott loved playing in the water!

Here's a lovely picture of our lovely girlie! Couldn't resist throwing this one in...

After the gold mine, we took a hike to the base of the Cathedral Towers, a fantastic rock formation. We had gold fever--after crossing a wee little mountain stream we decided we should have bought a pan so we could see if there was any gold hiding in the gravel! Not that we really care about the tiny dots of gold we might have found, but we thought it would have been fun to really try it like they used to do it so many years ago...

Handsome and Little Miss on the trail.

The boys had an utter blast climbing all those big rocks!

Jaron took a family picture of the rest of us...

Here are the rock spires from the side, fairly close to the base.

A little view of how BIG they are--and this is just a little one!

As we were leaving the trail, we spotted a young fellow out rock climbing. He made it!

Playing Tourist

Well, we've spent the last couple days playing at being tourists, despite my husband's disgust at such a label being slapped on us! Here are a few pictures from yesterday, and what we were up to then...

At Crazy Horse.

At Mount Rushmore

In Custer State Park...

The determined Little Miss on our little hike. She did NOT want to be carried, even though the terrain was rather rough at times. It was a trail we'd hiked on our honeymoon!

The children thoroughly enjoyed the little hike we took through the woods on a ridge top.

Needle's Eye

Westward Ho!

Yes, we are heading west for a little vacation! 8 1/2 years ago when we had to cut our honeymoon short because of a funeral we needed to attend, Jere promised to take me back to the Black Hills someday. Well, we finally did it! Not exactly a honeymoon with 3 children in tow, but fun to show these places to our children.

 

First, however, we stopped in St. Paul to visit my grandparents. Then to Fargo to say hi to Michele and Lena, and we even got to see my Aunt Mary and cousin Erica!

 

Waiting for lunch, Fargo, ND.

From Fargo we went to Milbank, and attended at the church where we got married. It was incredibly sweet to reconnect with so many old friends there! Seems like there wasn't near enough time... But we had to keep heading west. This time, instead of taking the interstate, we traveled more through the back country. It was so much more fun, and very beautiful despite the rain and heavy cloud cover. We took a turn through the Badlands, and of course had to stop at Wall Drug...

The Badlands.

A Bighorn ewe--we saw a fair amount of these!

Taking a little walk, despite high winds and sleet.

We finally made it to the cabin we were renting, and the children were glad to have a place to stay for a bit! It's a nice cabin with a full kitchen and two bedrooms, and a creek running through the front yard. I'll have to get a picture of it sometime before we leave...

Yesterday we decided to take a drive to Deadwood, thinking we'd avoid the rain and cooler weather spending the day inside museums. Well, once we got into the high country on the way to Deadwood, the rain changed to snow... It was gorgeous, but got a bit interesting when the wind would gust down a valley so we couldn't see the road! Jere estimated they had 6-8 inches on the ground.

Heading down the hill into Deadwood.

However, unhappily, ALL the museums in Deadwood were closed due to weather. So we drove down the historic street downtown a couple of times, and then headed out to lower elevations. The only picture I got was of the main welcome sign!

After leaving Deadwood we went out for lunch, then decided to just go to the nearby Cabela's instead of trying to find another museum. At least it was raining again instead of snowing!

Leanna and the moose. Can you tell we were out in the wind?

Spring? At last?

Well, I think spring is finally starting to think about arriving! And we're loving it! It seemed like things were finally starting to dry out a bit, and I was SO glad the muddy part was about over... or so we thought. Then it rained, and rained, and then snowed. Um, this is spring for you in Wisconsin! So we looked out at our yard, where the mud was washing down onto the driveway, and I couldn't help but sigh. Now the muddies are worse than ever! That was the previous weekend. Through the week it dried up again a little bit, and warmed up enough that some of us went outside in short sleeves, and barefoot for a bit! And I encouraged Jere to work at cleaning up a little in the yard so it doesn't look so much like we live at the local scrap heap, instead of on some of the other inside projects. While pushing some mud around to try get rid of a few of the riverbeds the rain had washed into our yard, Jere found a spring on our property, bubbling up not too far from the house. Which clinched our suspicions through the winter that all was not well with our water pipes to the house. So, he started digging, and digging, and digging. I didn't get any pictures, as I was up to my ears in other projects, and now I wish I had! He dug down to where the water was coming from, and sure enough, where he had connected to water supply to bring it into the new house, the ground had settled and pulled the pipes apart. So late Friday evening all of our water was turned off, and didn't come back on till he had run to town Saturday morning to buy another fitting and more pipe. Even though that wasn't what he wanted to do that day, we're glad he was able to get it fixed!

It rained again this last weekend, so any drying up that happened is now back to mud soup. But, the grass really greened up yesterday! It was so nice to see GREEN on our way to church! Even our in our pasture things are looking greener. I can hardly wait till the grass is tall enough to turn the cows out and see them fatten up after our hard winter. There's green in the basement as well, where all my little seedlings, waiting for it to warm up enough to go outside, are growing happily. I'm anxiously keeping an eye on our new garden spot, waiting for it to dry up enough to plow, and till, so I can get my peas and carrots planted. Somehow it doesn't look very promising yet, and I have a feeling we will have a late garden this year. Oh well! Not like I don't have plenty to do in the meantime...

The children are LOVING the sunshine and warmer weather! The boys went with Jere to help a friend on Saturday, and spent pretty well the whole day outside in the sun and wind. They came home sunburned and windburned and looking like lobsters. But they had loads of fun anyway!

Out and about

Last week I was blessed with the opportunity to go with some very good friends for a girl's time out. We had a blast, and it was very refreshing to just hang out with such wonderful ladies, and go shopping and swimming. And the most important, of course, was LOTS of talking! Love those ladies!

Just a couple days later, we left for the Lake Home and Cabin Show in Milwaukee. Now that was a bit challenging! It was too far away to drive back and forth every day, so we stayed in a hotel. We had many adventures, such as trying to park the enclosed trailer in a parking garage that gave us only a couple inches of clearance to the ceiling, and whose parking spots must have all been designed with an economy car in mind. We also had to run to Walmart to grab a few last minute things, and I fought culture shock as we ended up at the most disorganized, crowded Walmart I've ever seen--made me think inner city, though it wasn't. I know, I'm a country girl all over! But the show itself went well, and we made a lot of contacts.

We went down to Milwaukee early Friday morning, and spent the day Friday setting up the booth and moving into our hotel room. And taking naps, to make up a little for the early morning start! Then on Saturday I took the children to the zoo while Jere manned the booth. Now, that was interesting, driving the big truck out of the parking garage, through downtown Milwaukee, to the overcrowded zoo (which, on an odd chance, was having a free day--nice on the pocketbook, but VERY crowded!), and then pulling out of the parking spot where others had parked very close. So much for choosing a nearly empty parking lot so I could maneuver! Big city attractions are obviously made with small cars in mind...

At any rate, the children had a blast at the zoo! There's been a lot of talk around our house the last couple weeks on bears, so it was nice to see bears in real life that weren't all that scary. :-) Jaron, for the first time, was able to read the plaques when he wanted to, so that was an exciting discovery for both of us!

The thrill of the day was getting to ride a miniature train. The boys were pretty pumped about that, and I was really glad for the opportunity to rest my weary feet! And, to have all three children contained in one spot for once, not getting lost in the crowds.

We came home again Sunday night. It ended up being later than expected, as the truck ran out of fuel thanks to a malfunctioning gauge. At least we had just gotten off the freeway so there was a gas station relatively close. Only, that one didn't have diesel... Needless to say, it was 9 before we got our supper and midnight till we got home. Ah adventures! I was just glad to see my bed...