She knew something needed to break

Laura: Whenever you bottom burp, say, "'I broke the sound barrier' or something like that."

Kendra: It's, "I broke wind."

Laura: Oh. Yeah.

Good behavior pays off

Every once in a while, I get a reminder about how well-behaved our kids really are. Wednesday night was one of those times.

After Evan's karate class, he and I headed to McDonald's to use the free ice cream cone coupon he got with his report card at the end of school. I thought a small strawberry shake sounded good to have while he ate his twist cone, so we both ordered. While they were figuring out how to ring up his coupon, they made my shake, then they started on his cone ... and only got about a tablespoon of ice cream into it.

The guy helping us turned around and told Evan that the machine wasn't wanting to make cones right then, so would he like a shake instead. Evan said yes and asked for a chocolate shake. A few seconds later, the guy turned around again and told us that wasn't working either. And that their other machine was out of commission right then also. So he asked us what we wanted to do.

I asked if Evan could have his coupon back (he could), and I told Evan he could share my shake with me, then we'd get to come back another night to try again. Evan agreed, took his coupon back, and sat down with me to share the shake.

A couple minutes later, a trucker came over to our table. He looked at me and asked, "Is he always that well-behaved when things don't go his way?" I looked at Evan, smiled, and replied, "Yep, pretty much."

The trucker smiled big at Evan and held out a dollar. He said, "Well, I appreciate that, young man. Their ice cream cones are 49¢ right now, and if your mom doesn't mind and if she'll throw in the few extra cents, I'd like to give you this dollar so you can have an ice cream cone two more times."

The trucker looked at me and asked, "Is that ok with you?" I smiled and said, "Of course. Thank you!"

Then he handed Evan the dollar and said, "Thank you. I really like to see a well-behaved boy!"

I got a wonderful reminder about how great my little guy is, and Evan's good behavior paid off -- with actual money.

Vacation -- the outtakes and select quotes

Since I was taking so many pictures on vacation, I deleted most of them that I knew weren't good. But a few slipped past, and those tell the vacation story all on their own.

Like this picture where Chad can't quite muster up a smile. He was so miserable for the first two days of vacation, but he stayed as cheery as he could and never complained to us nor even let on to the kids that he didn't feel well.

Or this picture that's supposed to be a great shot in the Badlands, but you can't see a thing because it was raining so hard at that point that I didn't want to open the window to take a picture.

Or this picture I tried to take of myself in front of Mt. Rushmore, but I forgot I had the camera zoomed in from the previous picture. But this shot shows how windy it was while we were there. 

Or this picture where you can't see Kendra's face, but it reminds us that there were these rock stands in nearly every store. And that Kendra spent time going through each and every one of them until we'd pry her away to move on. 

Or the pictures in Bear Country where the glare of the van windows interfered with the pictures (you aren't allowed to open your windows or doors since your car is right in with the animals), but I caught a shot of a grizzly bear yawning which shows we spent a lot of time driving through and looking at each and every animal we could find. 

Or any of the pictures the kids took of Chad and me where one or the other of us can't quite open our eyes all the way because we'd had even less sleep than the kids had. (Or at least I had less sleep than the kids. I think Chad was asleep before the kids all but one night, which I guess is the one perk of not feeling well on vacation.) 

Along with the 700 mostly-good pictures from vacation, I also wrote down a couple things every day that I remembered the kids saying. A couple of my favorites are:

Evan at Arby's the first night when we bought him a kids meal with chocolate milk: "I think I might cry I'm so happy that you got me chocolate milk!"

Laura on day 5 saying to Evan: "I'm not Laura! I'm Kendra!" [pause, giggle] "No, wait. I'm not Kendra! I'm Laura! Evan called me Kendra." And then a few minutes later, she demanded of Evan, "Don't trust me!" (instead of "just trust me").

So, as you've probably noticed from the numerous blog posts, we had a wonderful vacation! Even with weather we wouldn't have chosen, even with a daddy who didn't feel well, even with gas prices that went up before we left, even with mystery animals we never identified. Even with all of that, we were all together and all happy the whole time.

Day 6 of vacation

On our last day of vacation (Monday), we left Chad's parents' house and headed toward Sioux City so we could see Chad's grandma while we were that close. The kids had fun playing with her stuffed animals for a while.

When I offered to take a picture of Chad and his grandma together, she promptly patted her lap and told Chad to come sit on her lap for the picture. Clearly, it made both her day and his! 

The reason the kids only had fun playing with the stuffed animals for a little while is because they became enamored with the cat that was in her room. This was quite a change since Kendra wouldn't even walk in to the room when she first saw there was a cat there. A half hour later though, she was asking if we could take it home and didn't want to believe that we couldn't. 

After leaving there, we made one last coffee stop for our trip (sorry, no picture this time, but the place was named Scooter's), and then we made a wrong turn. A wrong turn in Sioux City lets you see this sign: 

So we had a good laugh and continued our journey toward home by heading south through Nebraska for an hour or so.

When we made it home that evening, Laura's roller coaster waves were getting a little limp (or maybe just silly), 

and Evan and Kendra were still riding happily too, but we were all ready to be home. 

Since I had 3 pictures left to take to make it to the nice round number of 700 pictures for our trip, we all sat down on the front step to get a picture of us all together. 

The next picture was a funny faces one, but clearly a couple of us weren't wanting to do funny faces. 

And, for the last picture, I told the kids they could put on the new shirts they had chosen at Wall Drug.

And, as all trips do for us, it ended with regular life swooping in at lightning speed. As soon as the kids were out of the van, there were three bikes racing around our driveway, and a mere 15 minutes later Chad was already seeing patients. It's good to be home!

Day 5 of vacation

Day 5 of our vacation (Sunday) was slated to be our biggest day of driving for the trip. We needed to make 8 hours of driving (that's 8 hours before figuring in stops) to get to our overnight destination, which was free room and board at Chad's parents' house.

The fact that I had no idea prior to leaving on our trip that we'd be crossing into mountain time zone made this 8-hour drive I'd planned look more like 9 hours since we'd lose an hour when we crossed back over into central time zone.

We started out our day with breakfast at the hotel, as always,

and with this view of Chad that had become very common:

We still had happy riders, who decided to treat the hills like roller coasters for a while. 

We saw a few hills that had been cleared for logging. Every time we saw one, one or more of the kids would  yell, "Truffula trees!" This particular hill did have a rather truffula-looking tree on top:

We stopped at Wall Drug on our way past because our first stop there hadn't allowed time for looking around since we'd arrived there when they were ready to close for the night. Evan found more cut-out pictures to pose in:

And Evan had been promised a few days earlier that we could get Wall Drug doughnuts on the way home. Evan chose chocolate frosting,

Kendra chose white frosting,

Chad chose to have another 5¢ cup of coffee with his doughnut, 

 and Laura once again proved herself to be a superb doughnut-eater.

When we'd stopped at the Minuteman Missile tour on our way toward Custer, we ran out of time for the third stop of the tour -- the missile silo where you can look in on an actual [deactivated] missile. So we stopped at the missile silo on the way back. 

Don't let this picture fool you for size. It really was an underground silo, the size of a regular silo. 

While Chad and I (and some random stranger) listened to the audio tour on Chad's cell phone, the kids ran around, played tag, and looked for crystals in the rocks. (Look at that! We're back to short-sleeve weather!)

Chad had taken along a special treat for the kids to have while we rode. This treat had been riding with us for 5 days on ice packs that had been re-cooled over and over and over again. He finally gave them their glass bottles of root beer somewhere in the middle of South Dakota on the way home. It was a hit!

Chad was getting tired of driving by that point, so Baby Cow drove for a couple of miles. 

But then Laura got a Baby Baby Cow in the clearance room at Al's Oasis on the way home, so Baby Cow had to go tend to her new child.

This is a picture of a South Dakota rest area. No, I don't normally take pictures of rest areas. But, after hearing Chad joke several times about it being a good thing to have a teepee at a rest area, because you really wouldn't want to stop at a rest area without t.p., I had to take a picture. 

A couple hours later than hoped for, but still in good time, we arrived back in our own wonderful state. 

 The kids were back to enjoying going down some big hills.

And that was the end of our ride on Day 5. We got to Chad's parents' house just in time for supper. (Not really. It was late. But they were nice and waited to have supper until we got there around 8:00.) We all sacked out in yet another set of beds, and we dreamed of heading home in the morning. (I don't think any of us actually dreamed about that, but it sounded nice.)

Day 4 of vacation

From day 4 of vacation (Saturday), we wanted to share that ...

our hotel room was big and wonderful,

we could see Crazy Horse when we'd head out from our hotel every morning (who knew!), 

we like trying coffees, 

South Dakota has some really cool wooden bridges, 

kids can still be happy on the 4th day of riding, 

Cosmos Mystery Area is pretty cool, 

Cosmos Mystery Area is very tippy, 

Bear Country is expensive but so fun, 

this may or may not be a mule deer (I forgot to pay attention to the signs at first), 

our kids think arctic foxes look like a fluffy, white lab, 

big horn sheep are drowsy, 

Rocky Mountain goats are shedding their winter coats at this time of year, 

dall sheep look a lot like big horn sheep to us, 

reindeer look lonely without jingle bells and a sleigh, 

bears like mid-day naps, 

my camera would rather focus on a fence than on the mountain lion that's behind it, 

bears can get cranky when they don't take their mid-day nap, 

bears can also get friendly when they miss their mid-day nap, 

bears look soft and snuggly even when they're huge, 

some bears like to show off for a crowd, 

some bears like to sun themselves while showing off for a crowd, 

arctic foxes look quite a bit like arctic wolves, 

badgers look less mean (and more chubby) when they're in captivity, 

foxes like mid-day naps too, 

baby bears, like most toddlers, prefer to skip their mid-day nap and play, 

this can make them fiesty,

this plane spent a good portion of the day letting us know we should definitely "VOTE 4 SAM", to the extent that at one point, Laura looked up to the sky and said, "Ok, fine, I'll vote for Sam!",

Dinosaur Park is located on a very high, very winding road in Rapid City, 

Dinosaur Park lives up to its name, 

Dinosaur Park has a spectacular view, 

somehow trees grow in rocks out there, but I still haven't figured out how, 

although some of the rocks are very soft and easy to carve, 

Storybook Island was a huge hit with the kids and deserved more hours than we gave it, 

posing like a princess is more fun that just posing with a princess, 

Chad was enamored with this maze that could be changed by moving the tarp pieces, 

Laura found her Prince Charming and snuggled up to him on his trusty, white steed [unicorn], 

Chad in a Snow White cut-out reminds me of the scene in Robin Hood Men in Tights where Blinkin is dressed up as a woman, 

slides are fun when they come out of the top of a house, 

Kendra has amazing blue eyes, 

it is possible to catch the gingerbread man, 

our kids can pose themselves, cooperate, and all look at the camera at the same time,
(This one is clickable if you'd like to see it larger.) 

vacation is very tiring, especially when vacation doesn't agree with your early bedtime and you've lost 3 hours of sleep per night that you've been gone,

the town where our hotel is has a huge sign (who knew!), 

and vacation is hard work.