Rest of Fargo and Idaho Pictures

This weekend was perfection. Quiet, rainy, just-us perfection. Which made it incredibly boring to the rest of the world. So instead of telling you about how nice my weekend was with books, babies, and husband, I will do some pictures of our trip. I plan on putting a lot of trip pictures up this week. Like those people in the 1960's that came home from vacation with all sorts of vacation slides with which to bore the neighbors silly. A blog makes it possible to bore a lot more people at the same time. Except you all aren't such a captive audience... Do you want to come to my house? You could sit in my living room and I could show you our vacation pictures, carefully explaining each one.... No? Well just look at every picture. Note the details. Read my descriptions. Know they are fascinating. Even beyond what would meet the eye! 

We will start with a few leftover Fargo, ND pictures and segue into Idaho pictures with an idyllic (rainy) interlude of Montana. 

Music at the Douglas'

Gilbert at the piano

Talking

Aunt Geri and a snuggler

Tanya encouraging the kids in their plate art

Gilbert and Ryker

The kids made a delicously messy fort in our room. 

Looking at something on the computer, and Philip and Gilbert taking a nap.

Aren't they cute?

Leaving Fargo. 

Then we drove all night, through moonlight, into Montana. And daylight brought us this...

...still cloudy, but mountains. These pictures don't do Montana justice. It was beautiful. And slightly rainy, so very dramatic clouds and mountains. At this point though, we were sleep deprived and the thought of stopping the van to take pictures was too much to bear. So this is the best we could do at 75 mph.

We stopped in Billings, MT for breakfast. I was thinking we would go to a little diner or something, but we couldn't see one. So we went to McDonalds. (Tangent--McDonalds is unfairly vilified in my opinion. They do a good job of breakfast, and for a quarter the price of IHOP-like places. Which we stopped at later in the trip. IHOP was a complete waste of money. Just stick with McDonalds.) The McDonalds in Billings was a fascinating place to eat breakfast. It was filled with old guys. And since McDonalds replaced the little diners, I found this to be true across the country. Good ole boys and a few good ole girls that have a little time, getting into the habit of coffee and talk in the morning. Billing's McD was full of cowboy hats, basball caps, carhartts, talk of weather, cows, which year this happened, countered by "naw, that was the same year that...." Say what you like about McDonalds, it is definitely filling a place in the American sociological ecosystem. It might not be quirky, cute, or local, the profits are all going to some huge global corporation, but it maintains a vestige of the American diner it once was, when it fills up with locals. 

Cows, mountains, and low lying clouds.

A rainy windshield. 

Some moss. 

Arrowleaf balsam root. 

A plant I am not sure of.

Mountain Avens. Old Man's Beard

Water droplets.

Another white flower I don't know. 

Our view of Elsie. If she fussed, we gave her more toys. It wasn't always effective. But it bought us a few more miles.

This is how they grill in Idaho. With zebra print umbrellas. 

There was a sudden and quick hail and rain storm. 

Aunt Nila and Blaide

Cousins. Austin, Kyle, and Justin.

Sister-in-laws. Housten and Lindsey

Rainbow. With a very vivid purple.

Silly Blaide

Blaide is cute and Housten and Exeter crack me up.

Elsie, all tied up in a lei.

Austin with some chillun's. 

Lindsey was a big hit with the kids.

Nila and Exeter

Cousins. Kambric, Orianna, and Lily

Art project after the park. Lindsey is pretty great, letting us use all her things. 

Gilbert wanted to paint the Curious George that Lindsey drew. 

And then he got a little impressionistic. 

Kambric was into the big and bold strokes

Bob and Elsie

Kambric's masterpiece

Blaide looking cute

Kambric and Gilbert

Sorting out Blaide's paint. Which he was lavishly applying. 

Then we went to Couer d'Alene lake and resort.

It was sprinkling a bit, but oh so pretty.

While we were walking this (the longest wooden boardwalk in the world. Or something like that) Owen texted us that they are having a boy. Momentous stuff! 

The water was choppy, and since it is a floating boardwalk, it was moving a lot. The kids loved it!

These trees are maples. Really. They prune maples into topiary shapes. Ha!

A farmgirl store. With these darling calf pictures by Diane Whitehead. I am sort of kicking myself that I didn't buy one. But.... what were the chances that it would make it home intact? It seemed slim. 

More of the farmgirl store. These aprons hanging there, were $80. I kid you not. Clearly, farm girls in Couer d'Alene are wealthier than farm girls from NNY.

The candy store where we let the kids choose $30 worth of candy. Ooops! It lasted them several days.... 

But it was a fun store!

Aren't these absolutely adorable? 

The carousel in the toy store

Lindsey held Elsie through a spaghetti dinner and somehow did not get covered in spaghetti. She has skills.  

Then a night with Kyle and Jessamy. It was Kambric's last day of preschool. 

These cousins had a good time together!

Livie's graduation and thoughts about Northern New York

Livie graduated. Cah-ray-zee. But there it is. She is off to face the world. Well, in a metaphorical sense. She is going to get some per-requisites out of the way at the local community college, so she will be living at home at least for one semester, maybe two. All of us older siblings counseled her about student debt and the futility of it. So she is being sensible. And though she loves Northern New York, she probably would rather be heading off to the great unknowns of anywhere but NNY. I remember the feeling well. Feeling vaguely trapped because the local state university offered me a decent scholarship. I wanted out. And yet, here I am 13 years later, in NNY. And not to go off on a tangent (but I am going to), I have been thinking about Northern New York a lot lately. Coming home to it after seeing 7,000 miles of this country. It felt good to be back. It felt good to be back in the land of deciduous trees, dairy farms, and familiarity. When we were kids, we had this map of the United States that had this quote on it

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!

(Sir Walter Scott in The Last Lay of the Minstrel--I had to google it to see who said it)

And that is how I feel about NNY. I know it is economically depressed, I know it is in the middle of nowhere. The landscape isn't breath taking. There are drugs, problems, and some icky people. And it is currently 88 degrees with 71% humidity. But it is my home. It's my "normal"--the yardstick I measure every other place by.

Part of me feels like I need to defend my love for this place. I married a man from Colorado. We lived in Alaska for four years, one year in CO. How could I be content to settle down in a place with few mountains, little smack-you-in-the-face natural beauty and in the east for pete's sake?!?! I know I can be happy in other places. I loved Alaska. I loved Colorado. But this place fits me like a glove. Like slipping into my Teva flip flops after a long day of slightly uncomfortable, but beautiful shoes. Driving north from Syracuse last week, home songs kept coming to my mind. And John Denver's "Sometimes, this old farm, feels like a long last friend. Yes and hey, its good to be back home again." And while I don't live on the farm, it is all part of this place. It is home. It is part of me.

And so, I don't mourn Olivia's lost opportunities in not jetting off to another fascinating place. I know she will go to those other places. She will probably live in other places. But it isn't such a bad thing to be tethered here another year. At least not in my mind.

And to get back to the point here, I have pictures of this weekend. However, I was not the official photographer. For those pictures, check evanandclover.blogspot.com or livietess.blogspot.com sometime in the near future.

Friday was the kids last day of school. They just had two hours. Enough to get their report cards and go visit next years teacher, so they know who and where they are setting off to on the first day of school next fall. To celebrate summer vacation, we walked to one of the local gas stations to get the first ice cream cone of the season.

Gilbert

A neighbor's peonies. That I love.

Ice Cream face

Ice Cream girls

Reaching for leaves.

Northern woods

Walking

The gown, ready to be donned

It was a beautiful evening. This is a trailer of some of the first ever round bales of Full Circle Farm. Owen just got a baler. These were test bales, so not as tight and even as he liked, but he is getting the hang of it. Getting a round baler has been a several year long quest.

Graduates. General milling around. I remember this from my graduation. The route you take to your chair weaves hither and yon and then back again.

That is Livie Tess. Surrounded by black.

The whole lot of them

Pledge of Allegiance

Some tired little girls watching all the proceedings

More milling around to line up for diplomas.

Lined up

The very moment Olivia got her diploma

The National Honor Society people sitting down again.

Olivia T. Vaughan, recent graduate

Tassels switched. This poor guy was having difficulties.

Hat throwing aftermath

Filing out.

More filing

Everyone heading out

The Vaughan contingent leaving

Hugging Live-Tess

Orianna and Lily had fun showing their cousins their new classrooms to be

Livie and the decorations for her party

Foxglove. I love foxglove. I couldn't resist these ones.

BUT they were making me nervous sitting on the table. They are poisonous. They have tons of medicinal purposes, and as such, can be poisonous if eaten. You would have to eat quite a bit to get sick, so everyone told me to stop being silly. And no one died.

Pretty, pretty.

Lily's graduation and friends

When we set off on this road trip, I had all sorts of ideas of blog posts I would write after each stop, keeping everyone up to date and arriving home with just a "Home" post to write. I also had a notebook that was going to be a travel journal of sorts, where we were writing down how much we paid for gas here, how much toll where, when we stopped and ate, where we ate, and probably, what we ate. Brilliant idea! I am so optimistic.  (I have all this information for the first day, if you would care to see it.) And then we drove through the night to be in Fargo, ND for Sunday morning meeting. Something about driving through the night changes things. A meticulous travel journal faded into the back of my mind, while basic survival reared its ugly head. I hate driving at night. I hate Justin driving at night. Yet, we did it repeatedly on this trip. There is something so alluring about driving along while the kids are sound asleep. Multi-tasking. I am getting my kids to sleep and tucking 400 miles behind us. Super mom! And then daylight and stopping to let the kids play. While we stagger around in a stupor, grinning stupidly as our children burst around with pent up energy. If I were someone who didn't require sleep, it would be ideal. Unfortunately, sleeplessness is not my super power. And all thoughts of organization, blogging, and travel journals were discarded. Which is probably just as well. Do you care what we ate in Billings, MT or Waddy, KY? (In case you do, McDonalds to both of those.)

And so, here I am, with about 8 Gigs of pictures to upload to my computer and bore everyone to tears with. And if all else were well with me, that would be fine. Instead, I am huddled around my computer, with large stacks of laundry, toys, coloring books, pillows, blankets, and various other trip flotsam and jetsam towering around me. So today, I will just put up pictures of the day of Lily's graduation. Because I can squeeze that into about 15 nice pictures and sign off to stare stupidly at my to-do piles.

Pictures Livie took of the roses at Mom and Dad's.

Love this one.

And the proud graduate

With Mrs. Aubrey. Yes, I was in the wrong spot, so did not get the full smile angle. 

Lily's part in the class play "Spring Cleaning." Lily's line was "Throw away the old food so we don't get bugs." Deep stuff here. It was all very cute and funny.

And the class of 2013. Or, 2025. Wow.......

Doing something with rhythm sticks.

After graduation, we went to Mom and Dad's. We had some friends we knew in Alaska, Aaron and Janelle Gomez visiting us, so the kids had a high old time showing Paxson and Eloise the farm. The Gomezes are travelling around at this moment too, so they were merciful to my the-van-just-exploded-into-the-living-room house.  Awesome to see them after all this time. 

Gilbert and Eloise. Gilbert went upstairs this morning and came down asking where Eloise is. She made an impact. 

Checking out the calf

Sweet girl

The girls admiringly watching Paxson eat a cupcake

Kitchen full.