We went camping with some friends over the weekend! We were there a total of 24 hours, yet managed to experience all of hot dog roasting, bocce ball, soccer, frisbee, buffalos, hiking, wild turkey gobblings, a potato sack race, playing in the dirt, smores, a really cold night’s sleep, and a solid game of cards. Don’t you love it when the weekend seems to last a lot longer than it should and it’s all jam packed with a lot of good stuff? I love weekends like that.
North Dakota is all sorts of interesting. Like this national park right here, Theodore Roosevelt NP with all it’s rock mountain formations, canyon crevices, and buffalo– nestled just a few hours from us smack in the middle of the rolling hills and flat fields of the Great Plains. I love it! And I reeaally love the buffalo.Our friends were so prepared. If we didn’t have something, they did. Including all these neat tricks to making the fire change colors. So fun!Oh what a cozy night. (Not really.) Well kind of, if you count the way we shivered up to each other trying to keep warm. Actually that sounds a lot worse than it was. Jake and I just spent half the night trying the keep the blankets on the kids and our own feet warm. I was too scared of the howling outside to leave the tent to get our hand warmers, so I got into Jake’s sleeping bag to get warm. That didn’t work so great. My feet warmed up, but I couldn’t move the rest of my body. After an hour of cramping I retired to my own bag. And it was probably just a dog! haha.The kids didn’t care that it was 40 degrees outside and that they went to bed late. They were up with the sun anyway. It was ok though, we had a whole day to fill!Then this! I would have been alright with oatmeal for breakfast, but how great is this!
Hyrum, off to pick flowers for me.
…and stomp on a buffalo pie.Then this one here, she is definitely my child. The strangest things fascinate me.Then we went on a hike without our hiking backpack for Hyrum, and Jake gave him quite the ride in the stroller. haha! Never forgetting that backpack again (hopefully.)Love these great friends!
Jake was so patient with Hyrum when all he wanted to do was sit and play in the dirt. He waited for him to sit in it, roll in it, sprinkle it in his hair and throw it in the air. And after a good 10 minutes we had to catch up to the rest of them. Hyrum screamed and cried. He loves dirt.
Then the kids came back to the campsite and played in more dirt. Hyrum even found another buffalo pie! It was a good day.
Got these potato sacks at a garage sale the other day. What fun! Joslyn has the video of all the adults racing in slow motion–the one where Jake is leaps ahead of everyone and I tried to match his first leap and totally bailed. It was great.
24 hours of good clean fun. We decided we need to do it again soon.
A few weeks ago we decided it would be really great to see our families. It had been three and a half months since we saw them, but with winter it just seemed A LOT longer. And we missed them! So we packed up the car on a Thursday, spent three days PACKED with beautiful family time and packed up again for a LONG ride back to ND–for a total of 31 hours in the car!
And it was so worth it! Sometimes family time just is.
Now we’re over here cooking up eggs and really wishing we were cooking up eggs at Grandma and Grandpa’s or playing with the kitties at Grammy and Grampy’s (Hyrum especially. He LOVES cats. He follows them around squealing “puppy!”) Somehow both kids ended up with the stomach flu on separate days while we were there (somehow that always happens) but it was STILL an awesome trip.
We had a beautiful drive through Utah, Idaho, and Montana, and we made sure to stop and “run through a field,” “stand in the snow,” and “sit by a river” (Ava’s relentless requests.)
I don’t think we’d be able to do so many road trips if our kids didn’t enjoy them too. But of course we all get a little stiff being in the car for so long, so we reeaally appreciate our quicks stops, especially Hyrum. He gets all sorts of excited.
We LOVE being with our families. We both come from big families, and we feel like we can never get enough togetherness with them.
So why do we live so far away!?
It’s interesting how that works. We feel like North Dakota is where we are supposed to be, for now. We love being out on our own, exploring new places and growing together as a little family of four. We love our life here, AND we love being with our family in other states. Eventually we would like to live near them, but for now we can be just as happy.
With that said, we had a BLAST with our families in Utah. We packed our days full of Christmas parties, potlucks, game nights, lunch dates, late night chats, downtown lights, charades, dodgeball, basketball, settlers, sledding, backyard ice skating, and a whole lot of togetherness. It was such a good trip.
We love road trips. We love the time together, the hotel stays, the snacks, and the views. We took the route from North Dakota through South Dakota and Wyoming, following the sunset and greeting the sunrise along windy roads and dusty white fields. We loved it.
And as you can probably tell, if we ever stopped for me to take a scenic picture, we would probably arrive hours later. So thanks to fast shutter speeds and car mates that don’t mind an occasional winter blast through the window, we can remember the pretty scenes that graced our windshield on our trip.
