Sunday, May 23, 2010

Custer State Park

Yesterday we went to Custer State Park for their Open House weekend. Entrance into the park was free and they had a ton of free activities scheduled throughout the day. First we went on a pony ride, which was a big hit for both of the girls. Linnaea's pony was named S'mores, but I don't remember Elise's. Hers was more of a horse anyway. Next we went to a Fire Truck demo and got to play with the fire hose. That was also a lot of fun. Then we drove to Sylvan Lake, the northern tip of the park, and Linnaea fell asleep on the way. Elise and Kevin went to the Amazing Reptile Show (which was actually only 3 snakes, so the girls dubbed it "the snake show") while I stayed in the car with Linnaea. I ended up waking her up so she wouldn't miss touching a snake. Then we walked around the lake, which was absolutely gorgeous. There were a lot of people fishing and the girls were REALLY interested in it, so that may be an endeavor we take on this summer.



Linnaea on S'mores.





S'mores stops to take a bite of some grass.





Elise on her horse.





Elise on her horse again.





Elise and Linnaea at the end of the ride.





Linnaea gets ready to put out some fires.





Elise is ready for some water works.





The fire man shows them the hose.





Elise gets to make a big squirt.





They got to shoot the water at a bottle, knocking it off a tree stump.





They got Smokey the Bear bandanas for a prize.





Linnaea holds the face of an Albino Python.





Elise touches the python.





Sylvan Lake.





Elise walks around Sylvan Lake.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Countdown to Age 3!


Elise sets her animals up to "watch TV" which was actually our wood stove. Do you think she's ready for the summer? We're still waiting for it to hit 70 here.





The seats were logs for the wood stove.





Linnaea "cleans" the bathroom floor.





This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME they get to color with markers.





Linnaea models Kevin's old Budweiser iguana hat. This hat was destroyed pretty quickly. Big surprise there.





They have both been into doing headstands lately.





Elise was sick one day so spent a few hours on the couch. This picture proves that Taffy has FINALLY accepted them into the house. It only took 3 years.





Another funny hat we found while packing up all of our stuff.





Linnaea models the latest in fashionable headwear: a raccoon hat, complete with eyes, nose and ears.





Live long and prosper. Just kidding. One of the girls hurt their hand and needed a bandaid, so the other needed one to match.





Going to Mommy & Me.





The crown we made at Mommy & Me. Linnaea had so much fun being queen for a day.





Homemade popsicles. Recipe: 1 quart vanilla ice cream plus one can thawed orange juice concentrate.





Elise sports her new tennies, an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Arrival in South Dakota

So last week we packed up and moved from Colorado to South Dakota. That sentence sounds a lot simpler than the actual process, so let's back up a bit. The house in which we had been living in Walden had been for sale since a year before we moved into it. Our intention had always been to move into a rental that wasn't for sale as soon as we found one, but we didn't find anything suitable until this past April, more than a year and a half after we had moved to Walden. Kevin had applied for the South Dakota job but had been informed that he was ranked 18th on the list of applicants, so we were pretty sure he had no chance. We then made the decision to move to a new rental in Walden, fearing that our old house would sell this winter. We informed our landlords we were moving, they said they were going to work on the house and weren't going to rent it out this summer, and then Kevin got offered the job at Wind Cave. We took a trip up here to check it out and couldn't find ANYTHING available to rent that would accept a dog. So we called our old landlords and asked if we could stay in our house for another month, but lo and behold, they had rented the place out starting May 1. So we packed up and moved all of our stuff 3 blocks within Walden, then found a rental up in Custer and made plans to move here last week. Kevin and I loaded most of our stuff into the moving truck last Wednesday, skillfully arranging our boxes and furniture in the most perfect places in the moving truck because, as you may guess, we are now moving experts. Thursday morning we awoke to a drizzle, which turned to a steady rain, which turned to snow, and snowed heavily all morning while we carefully loaded the last of our possessions. For your information, when snow collects on the metal floor of a moving truck, it's really hard to stand steadily, let alone walk with various heavy items and boxes. Almost as soon as we crossed the state line into Wyoming the snow stopped, and we had dry roads all the way to Custer.

Now, if I didn't make this clear earlier, we had rented this house sight unseen. We had to rely on the description from the landlord, who made the place sound quite grand: carport, washer dryer hookups, fenced in yard, located at the end of a dead end road that backed up to the National Forest. Well, all this stuff was true but kind of in the worst way possible. The carport looks hand made, the washer hookup is in the kitchen, the dryer hookup is on the porch that smells of cat pee and has the only 3-prong plug for our microwave (which now resides on top of the dryer), the fenced in yard is basically just a fence around the septic tank, the living room is so narrow that sitting on the couch looking at our large TV screen makes you feel like you are sitting in the front row at a movie theatre, the hall closet reeks of the worst cigarette smoke ever, and the girls' room has carpet that looks like it's from 1981, complete with pictures of girls riding horses. The part about it backing up the National Forest is definitely the coolest part of the deal. Plus the road is nice and quiet since we're on a dead end. But we do have a cat problem, with at least 5 cats residing next door with our unsocial neighbors, and Taffy is terrified of all of them. If one of them comes and sits on our doorstep after she's gone out, she will not come near the door to come back in and will wait patiently far away in the front yard. Also, it has been so darn cold since we got here, snowing off and on ALL DAY the day we were unloading the truck, raining all day Monday and Tuesday, and snowing all day today.

On the plus side, Kevin is excited about his job. This is his 3rd day and he has great feelings about what he's doing. He gets to go to Badlands National Park next week for herbicide training.

The girls are really happy, except that they always ask to walk places and we are a few miles out of town, which is just too far to walk anywhere. Once the weather clears up we'll attempt to bike into town. The really great news is that we immediately found a Mommy & Me group and went yesterday. A lot of the moms have husbands who work for Wind Cave or the Forest Service. They meet every Tuesday, which gives us something to look forward to. I am already pretty bored without my day care job, but once the weather gets better we plan on doing lots of outdoor things.

I will post some pictures later, after we find the cable that connects the camera to the computer, whichever box it is in.