Vacation

Other things we've been up to:
We spent almost a week in the Black Hills area of South Dakota and survived (and even enjoyed) the experience. We actually weren't even sure we'd get there with 3 kids;) We had contingency plans to stop in Atlantic (my parents), Omaha, or Sioux Falls if we didn't think we could get clear there due to crying, complaining, fighting, etc.

We drove through the night, leaving around midnight. Christopher briefly woke up when we put him in his car seat but settled back down again pretty quickly. We reclined his seat just a bit to help him keep comfortable. Michael slept straight up in his full car seat. C uses a booster now so of course the back is just the seat of the van. William had no problems sleeping in his car seat. All of them awoke when we stopped to get gas around 4:30am, and Michael and Christopher were still awake until around 6.

The first day we ate brunch at Perkins when we got to Rapid City, checked in to our hotel, and went to Mount Rushmore. This was pretty much the most touristy thing we did all week. We didn't even go to Wall Drug;) Jeff & I would have liked to do the whole walk at MR, but it's 250 steps according to the sign and the kids were dragging by then. So we left to drive the Iron Tunnel Road, created specifically for views of MR and the surrounding terrain. When you exit one of the tunnels cut into the rock, there's a fabulous view of MR!:) Oops, forgot to mention Dinosaur Park, the first place we went that day...there's even a geocache there (see below)
To see more photos, check out these Facebook links: Dinosaur Park
Mount Rushmore

Jeff printed out info for several of the hundreds, if not thousands, of geocaches in the area (see THIS for more info). The tunnel road contained 3 caches, and we took turns staying with 2 sleeping little boys in the van pulled off on one of the convenient turnoffs along the road while Christopher and one parent hiked up to look for the cache. Christopher quickly got into the whole hunting for the cache thing, and also became a master junior geologist. He loved all the mica, pyrite, slate, and quartz in the area.
Geocaching

We spent the next 2 days pretty much geocaching from morning til evening, returning back to Rapid City in enough time to eat a late dinner and spend about an hour in the pool before tumbling into bed to repeat same the next day. William proved very pack-and-go-able:) Friends lent us their small hiking baby-backpack (we have a larger more unwieldy one of our own) and sometimes I'd use the baby sling. We protected him from the sun and used minimal amounts of sunscreen on his exposed legs and arms.

Our final day we checked out of the hotel, went to the Air and Space Museum (pretty small), and did the scenic drive in the Badlands. We spent that night at a hotel in Mitchell, then on to DeSmet to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder's homestead from her later childhood years. Then the mind-numbing 6 or so hour drive home. I had plenty of activities along so the kids wouldn't "have" to watch the dual screen DVD player too much, but by this time, there was no way we would have gotten home without a good dose of screentime;)
The Badlands
Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead

We got home around 10pm that night and let the kids stay up and run around and play to blow off some excess energy while we ran around putting away as much as possible as quickly as possible and start laundry. The kids were finally all asleep about midnight and we all blissfully remained asleep until 10am (well William nursed at 6 or so but went right back to sleep, lol).

Whew!