vacation continued

Okay, so where were we? Something related to poop I'm sure. Tuesday morning - after the poop. By this time the fighting had become somewhat unbearable so we decided maybe we needed to do something else for distraction. We let the kids swim a bit while I did more laundry and dishes and then loaded up to go to Custer State Park. No one was too excited about it initially but we picked a good day to do it because it began to rain and storm and the tent would not have been a fun place to be. The road we took took us up steep hills with very narrow lanes and Elexis kept saying we were all going to die. It was so awesome when we got to the top though - it was the needles or something like that. Anyway - we were sitting almost on top of this hill or mountain basically - about 6000-7000 feet in elevation between this gigantic rock structures overlooking the whole area and it was gorgeous. Even the children were somewhat impressed although still sure we were going to die because by now the thunderstorm had hit and there was lighting all around us and little Warren couldn't even count to one between the thunder and lightning strikes. He was very anxious for us to keep driving. But we had our sandwiches we packed and chips and enjoyed the view awhile.

After we went on our way, the skies cleared some and we didn't die and the kids even started having fun. We saw the roadside donkeys who always love a meal and so all the kids except Bethany got out and started feeding them. Josiah seemed to connect the most and was talking to them and feeding them and just loving it. At one point, Josiah and Samuel I believe were back to back with donkeys coming at them from all sides. Bethany would have loved to get out as well but we felt the need to protect her a little bit so she could only feed them from the windows. We called them little Warren's cousins after his nickname of Burro that a friends dad gave him for being lazy. That was a joke from previous years. After the donkeys, we drove more and found the buffalo/bison herd. It was awesome seeing so many of them. Josiah pointed out that the one was giving another a piggyback ride. Again, he seemed to enjoy them the most although these he had to view from the van. All in all, everyone had a good time, fighting was kept to a minimum, and it was a worthwhile trip. Oh, and I forgot to mention but the conversation in our van anytime we drove seemed to revolve around poop and butts. We realized that if we just said poop, Sam would smile so if we needed to see a smile, we would just say "poop." I'm unsure exactly what is wrong with my children except if you look at their parents.

Things turned a little ugly as we headed back and everyone was hungry. Unchain restaurants always scare us as you never know the seating or price situation so we drove through Custer and then Hill City looking for somewhere to eat. We found nothing that sounded good so we went back to the campground and decided we'd eat at the restaurant there even though we knew it would be spendy. However, despite the fact that there were many open tables - they told us it would be a 35 minute wait. Samuel especially could not tolerate this by this point. The poor boy had already been asking to go "homey, homey" and now was soooo hungry. I later realized he wanted to go home to watch a movie - not any other reason. But anyway - we said no thank you anyway, we don't want to come to your snobby restaurant and went to the fastfood type cafe also on the campground. $60 and no quality food later, everyone was pretty much full.

I don't really remember what else we did except for bed came early that night too. I had started to feel the effects of pregnancy and driving as my feet were very swollen.

The next morning I listened carefully and checked Bethany several times before she woke up to make sure no leaking out the front. It wasn't. However, when she did wake up, I realized she leaked elsewhere and again had poop on my air mattress and her although I think none of it ended up on me this time. That was tolerable. It was time to pack up though cause it was check out day at this campground and it had rained during the night and I was scared it would rain again that morning as it was very cloudy. We were able to get everything packed up and the tent put away without a rain shower hitting us though. We let the kids play minigolf and at the playground and bouncing pillow while Warren and I showered then and we were off. We were unsure what to do at that point as the day before had been a 20% chance of storms and it rained most of the afternoon and night. Today - Wednesday- was a 50% chance of thunderstorms and possibly an isolate tornado. My Pollyanna spirit was about gone and I didn't want to deal with the rain. We finally decided as we drove that we would eat lunch and then go set up the tent at the new campground and if it rained, we would leave the tent so it would be ready the next night after our day at Mount Rushmore and stay in a hotel Wednesday night to avoid the storms. Well, my fretting was for naught as it turned out to be a beautiful day and never rained at all. We were impressed with our new campsite as we had the pool on one side of us and the park on the other and two bathroom choices both within 100 feet of us. I was starting to feel encouraged again.

More later, I can leave work now.