Taylor's Wedding Dress

Yesterday Taylor described what her wedding dress will look like. It will be rainbow colored and say "I Love God" on the front. Think I should hold her to that?

Our Dog Tulla

While we were at camp, Tulla escaped. The last time she had been seen was Monday morning. We had lots of people looking for her and my dad had even stopped by the pound. The kids were really upset, especially Brittney. We've had Tulla since Brit was one. She was so devistated that she volunteered to go outside in the dark and look for her. Wednesday we received a call from Animal Control. They had Tulla and it was going to be over a hundred dollars to bail her out. Just what we needed. We were happy she was safe but we really didn't need the added expense right then. I piled the kids into the van and went to the pound. It was awful. She smelled so bad that the first thing we did after we got her home was to give her a bath. Next trip we're taking her with us!

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The upside is that now the kids have another game to play. I found Riley wearing one of Zeke's nurses shirts and a stethoscope. He was trying to pull our other dog Will with his leash into a box. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was Animal Control. I told him it looked more like the animal was controlling him :)

Leaving Rapid City

Tuesday morning we had breakfast at camp, hooked up the trailer to the van and loaded up all our stuff. We didn't have a lot of money for this trip but we didn't really need a lot since the church reimburses Steve for travel, lodging and his meals. I had set aside a $100 bill to use as our gas money to get home and we still had $27 for food on the way. As I was packing up the cabin, I had Steve bring me my purse and it was a good thing I did because the $100 bill and a $5 bill were gone! The short version is that our son Riley had taken the money from my purse. Needless to say, I was not very happy. Interesting side note is that our parenting class that I skipped this week was supposed to be about stealing. Perhaps I shouldn't have skipped it. Anyway, we hung around Rapid until noon so we could see some of my family for a few minutes. After visiting with them, we headed out of town. I let the kids eat lots of taffy that they got in Keystone and cookies that were the snack at camp. The first two hours of the trip were wonderful as most of the kids were sleeping and I could get some writing done. The next two hours were ok as the kids were playing car games together. The last two hours were probably two of the worst car hours ever. Six kids all very tired and ready to be home. They were fighting, crying, pinching, touching and looking at each other. We dropped Brit's friend Tia off on the way home and made it into Brookings around 8pm. I'm reminded why I think it would be a great idea to put in a window right behind the two front seats that runs from the ceiling to the floor just like they have in limos. They could fight all they want and I could sit peacefully in the front. I can't hear you.............

Van Trouble, Part 2

Monday afternoon Toby called and let me know that it was worse than we originally thought. The van had a pulley that had seized up and when it did, it put a lot of tension on the serpentine belt. The pulley finally broke and then shredded the belt, which is what caused us to loose power steering and gas. Fortunately, he had already fixed it that morning and we only had to cover the cost of the parts. Hooray for Toby!!! I told him he's my hero for the year :) Especially since he worked on our van on his day off two days before his wedding! He cautiously asked if there was a license plate on the back of the van when he picked it up. "No, we lost it on the way to Rapid." Then he asked about long scratches on the side of the van. "No, those were already there." Our van has definitely seen its share of the road. * Since we had our van back, we were able to meet Allen, Jen and David at their campground outside Rapid. It was raining when we got there but what's swimming for if not to get wet? Pretty soon the sun was shining anyway. We had one exciting moment when Zeke decided to jump into the pool from the edge and neither Steve or I had our suits on yet. Steve ended up grabbing him from the side but it scared both Steve and Zeke and it took a while for Zeke to feel comfortable in the water again. Zeke actually knows how to swim a little since he had swimming lessons this summer and passed level 1. * After that we headed back into town to let the kids play in the pool at Aunt Billie's house with her grandsons and Toby's girls. The kids always have fun playing with their cousins and the pool just added to the fun. After that we headed back to camp to put our really tired kids to bed. Thankfully, no more van issues after Toby worked his magic :)

Zeke's Glasses

After the kids had been on the waterslide, Steve grabbed all the clothes from the picnic table. Needless to say, when we looked for Zeke's glasses the next morning, they were no where to be found. We checked by the picnic table, with the lunch ladies, in our cabin, with the camp administrator and even lots of gravel road. No luck :( I wouldn't have been quite so upset but this was Zeke's third pair of glasses in about as many months. The last pair he broke on purpose when he got mad at school. I think we've probably maxed out the number of glasses that insurance will pay for this year so I wasn't sure what we were going to do. Add that expense with the car repair bill and it wasn't going to be pretty. I decided that we had done our part and it was now up to God to help us find the glasses or not. I just got the call today that they found the glasses at camp. Yeah God!!!!

Not Too Old For Adventure

The Monday of Family Camp, Steve's cell phone rang at 7am. It was my Uncle Toby calling to help us fix our van! He volunteered to come up to camp and get the keys so he could check it out. If it wasn't an easy fix, he was going to tow it to my Aunt Billie's and tear apart the engine there.

Steve had been elected by our church members to be a delegate at District Conference, so he attended the meeting from 9am-3pm while the kids and I hung out at camp. In the morning, the kids went back to the kids' sessions while I cleaned and reorganized the cabin and then read for a while. We all had lunch together and then Brit and Tia volunteered to take Anthony and Zeke down the waterslide. All 6 kids had fun!

I enjoyed some free time at the picnic table visiting with friends I don't see very often. Deb and I even convinced the camp groundskeeper to open the Zip Line for us. We had to walk around to the opposite side of the canyon, climb up a ladder propped against a tall, skinny tree and manuver onto a small wooden ledge. Deb took the plunge first but I was following right behind. Once I was hooked up and on the ledge, I simply sat on the edge and pushed off for a spectacular glide across the canyon. You can't really tell from the pictures but the line stretches across a rocky canyon that was really far down! It was awesome!!!

Van Trouble, Part 1

On the way back from Jewel Cave in Custer State Park just as we were cruising back down the big hill into Rapid City, our fan belt broke and we lost all power steering and gas. Fortunately, we were decending on a hill, so we coasted into town and started making phone calls. I took the kids into Wendy's for some supper while Steve tried to get a hold of someone to help us.

Our first two heroes were Amber and Gary, who came to our rescue and helped us push the van off the street. I'm sure we looked hilareous because Steve was actually parked on an uphill street so we had to push him until the van was turned around and pointed downhill. Then Amber and I ran to the street at the bottom of the hill to watch for traffic. There was a break in cross traffic so we yelled and waved for him to coast down the hill. We stood in the middle of the intersection to hold traffic if we needed to but Steve cruised on through! Then I got in the van and everyone else pushed the van - uphill - into a parking spot at a gas station. We locked the van and hopped in the two Hobbie vehicles and went back to camp. Thanks Gary and Amber!!!