Corner House

My parents have a project house out on the Willwood corner (appropriately dubbed the Corner House). It is quite possibly Owen's favorite place on earth, and there is rarely a morning when he doesn't ask if we are "doeing to Nana and Bampa's torner house?" (that's "going to Nana and Grandpa's corner house," for those of you who don't speak Owen)
It is little boy heaven there with dirt piles, tractors, tools, and ladders and a little tike-sized basketball court, and of course, an adoring grandpa who is at your beckoned call.
We spent the Saturday before last there. Chris helped with a shingling project and the rest of us just hung out and got dirty....even Ava.

Admit it, you want to steal her, don't you? She is scrumptious.

Doesn't Grace look thrilled? This is the kind of face I get most of the time when I pull out the camera.

Owen, trying his hand at golfing using a stick and a rock.

The highlight of the day for the girls was finding these 2 little toads in the grass after grandpa and Owen mowed the lawn. They really wanted to keep them as pets, but I convinced them toads don't live in captivity very well....besides we have 2 "pet" caterpillars and 3 "pet" crickets at the moment and I am feeling like that's probably sufficient.

My grandma's house is just down the road from my parent's house and shortly beyond that is her childhood home. This property is no longer in the family and the house will soon be torn down and a new home will be built in it's place. I ran over and snapped a few pictures before it is gone. I find houses intriguing, particularly old, run-down ones. I always wonder how they went from being someone's dream and labor of love to being abandoned and forgotten. I wonder what their story is. This home's story began with my great-grandpa. He lovingly built it for his family and my grandmother was born within those walls.

I can picture my great-grandmother standing at this very sink, maybe she even watched her babies play outside that very kitchen window.... and I wonder, as she watched them, if her heart swelled with joy and gratefulness for the miracles they were and if she hoped and dreamed of their futures while she watched them laugh and play......or maybe she stood at this sink to count to ten in an effort to not blow her top before calmly reminding them for the jillionth time to pick up their socks, or feed the dog, or stop teasing each other.

The view of Heart Mountain through one of the bedroom windows...

I think one of these trees was planted when my grandma was born, I really need to take some time to visit with her because as I was snapping pictures, I realized there is a lot I don't know about her.....

My grandma has spent her whole life near the "peaks" as she calls them, and nearly every time I visit with her she talks about watching the peaks....sometimes it's about how the evening light reflected colors off of them, or how recent lightening touched them and illuminated the sky, or how the snow blankets their curves . They are constant and she loves them and she misses them some years when corn is sometimes planted in place of sugar beets and it grows high at summer's end and blocks them from the view out her front windows.

Nesting

Waaay back at the end of April, before the craziness of having the kids out of school for the summer, I took time for thinking about things like seasonal decorating and creating blog headers (not sure why the heck I labeled my header May 2010....did I seriously think I would be ambitious enough to make a new one every month?)
.....anyway, back to the decorating, I was ready for something springy and I had these sweet little birds that my great-grandma made that I wanted to use somewhere. So I printed up a little quote and framed it and I dug a nest out of one of my At Home America surplus boxes and set them out on the buffet in our entryway like so....

except every time I walked by it looked like this.....

Someone at our house obviously believes that these birds belong in their nest. Throughout the summer I have repeatedly set them back outside the nest, but they always make their way back in. I am not sure who is responsible, but it has made me smile.

Sturgis

Chris's grandparents (Carla's parents) live just outside Sturgis. I was so surprised the first time we went to Sturgis years ago, I am not sure what exactly I was expecting, maybe something more Vegas-like with the lights, attractions and hotels.

 Billboards litter either side of the freeway as you approach Sturgis. Most feature scantily clad women and boast names like Kid Rock, Bret Michaels and some more that I had never heard of, but Chris informed me they are popular bands.

At any rate, it wasn't what I had pictured. In some ways, it is a rather quaint little town, dotted with historic homes and a sweet little hillside cemetery.  It has a Pamida, and a neighborhood grocery, a senior center and schools. Some areas seem a little run-down, there are a lot of bars, some of them are huge stadium size bars and most all of them are closed and boarded up whenever we're there, adding to the run-down appearance of things. I would imagine that if you visited during rally week there, it is a whole different town. The boarded up bars probably spiff up a little and open their doors in hopes of hitting it big and luring in a large crowd of bikers looking for a good time.
As for us, we'll keep planning our visits to Sturgis in the "off-season" and making our own kind of fun. This time we rallied our crew for a laid back barbeque with extended family we rarely get the chance to see. Our get-together included no scantily clad women and far less beer than the traditional Sturgis gathering. We simply ate and visited. The younger crowd kept themselves entertained with thumb-wars, card games, bubbles (courtesy of Aunt Traci, she's always got the babes in mind), a little baseball and a lot of haystack jumping and giggling in the barn. 

I think Chris may quite possibly have the cutest grandparents....
Grandpa Ralph....

There isn't much sweeter than boys and their grandpas(or great-grandpas).

He and Owen had a cute little exchange about swatting flies. Owen informed him that he missed the one he was going for.

Aunt Traci and Grandma Zelpha....

Chris's Aunt Kathy and Uncle Allen (sorry about the shut-eyes Allen). For anyone trying to keep connections straight, Carla's brother and sister.

Chris's cousin Holly's little boy, Trey. He practiced some baseball with Chris. He was quite the little hitter and so very cute.

Our kids absolutely adore  Kade, Tanner and Mikala, although I am not sure they realize just how lucky they are to have them as cousins, they are always so kind and patient with them.

Not sure about the face Lily was making....

We scarcely saw these three girls, they played and played in the barn, jumping in the hay and then taking turns burying each other in it.

Owen was a monster.

Thumb wars.

More thumb wars and lots of giggling.

There were many more people there that I never got pictures of, and in case I forget, and someday I wonder why I didn't get a better selection of pictures.....for the record, Ava was a mega-grouch and most of the pictures I did take were taken with her squirming and fussing on my hip. We thought maybe she was tired, but once we were in the car headed back to Rapid City, she was happy again and never napped or slept until after the waterpark closed and we were back in our hotel room. She is going through some separation anxiety right now and has decided she really only likes her family. So when we are out with a crowd, she will often get clingy and fussy and sometimes it's annoying, but babies are only babies for a blink so we just kiss her and snuggle her close and remember that in a blink she'll be one of the big kids leaping from haystacks in the barn.  

Swimming and Sliding

We stayed at a hotel with an attached indoor water park. It was perfect for our assortment of kids. It was big enough to be exciting for the big girls and yet small enough that they could be independent and we didn't have to worry much about them. We could easily spot them anywhere in the place. They swam their little hearts out and fell into bed at night completely exhausted.

I couldn't believe how many times their little bodies could lug those big tubes up all those steps. I went with them several times and it was quite a climb.

Their favorite slide was the Super Bowl, promptly dubbed the toilet bowl for obvious reasons....it swirled you around the bowl before flushing you down.

Ava loved floating with me on the lazy river. She snuggled in close and we floated around and around, just her and I. Pure bliss. We all swam till we were starving, then ordered in pizza for lunch. Owen crashed in the room and the big girls went back for more.

In the afternoon, Ava snuggled on the sideline while Chris kept tabs on the swimmers.

After the naps and the afternoon swim, we headed out to Sturgis for a visit. We came back later in the evening for another swim. This time Kade, Tanner and Mikala joined us.

There was a giant monkey bucket in the kiddie area that dumped water every so often, lots and lots of water. There is an alarm that starts sounding when it starts getting full and is ready to dump. It serves as either your warning to get off the stairs and a safe distance away, or if you are adventurous, it means line up and get pummeled by water.
Well, when we first arrived, we didn't know the sounding bell meant "run for cover," so Grace had Owen on the stairs headed for one of the slides when the monkey bucket dumped and he was terrified. He had done water slides several other times this summer when we had been at hotels and water parks and loved them. But after the water-dumping incident, we could NOT convince him to give any of the water slides a try. We forced him down a few times thinking he would settle in and love them. As you can see from this picture, he didn't settle in, so he spent the bulk of his time playing water basketball, floating the lazy river and soaking in the hot tub. Poor boy.


Grace wasn't afraid to get drenched...