A Fine Establishment

If you've ever driven across South Dakota, you might have noticed 10,000 billboards every 20 miles advertising Wall Drug. The city of Wall, SD has a population of 800 or something and I think every last one of them works at Wall Drug or the close by National Park. I didn't get that many pictures of the grandeur of Wall Drug, but it's quite extensive for such an itty bitty town. It's a little odd, actually. Total tourist attraction. Food and gift shops for all. And talking beavers. And a dinosaur.

We ate some donuts. Well, Dave and I did. Miles had a little bit of a cold which brought on severe picky eating. When Dave laid the donut in front of him, Miles stretched his arms wide out in excitement and got his big eyes and open mouth smile like it was the coolest thing ever. At least he was excited to not eat it.

Miles gladly sat on a horse and we walked around and talked about how it was funny that there's such a big establishment in Wall, SD. I can't say that Wall, SD was on my bucket list or that I even knew about it before we went through, but I guess seeing places like that is just a bonus of moving/driving across states every year or so. Go ahead, be jealous.

Great Faces, Great Places

South Dakota. This was all of DAM's first time in the fine state of South Dakota. It's coming to you in three posts, because I don't feel like doing one super long one.

First up is:

Mount Rushmore. Super cool and a must see in your lifetime.

The weather was no good for us, though. It was pretty darn cold, windy and snowing. May.

Amazing workmanship:

This is my pal Chelsea who I was in Paris with. She's from South Dakota and was the first person I ever met from that state.

It's too bad it was so cold. We had to make it a pretty quick snippy visit, but it sure was awesome to see.

New things, new limits

This is a good one for the books and memories. Today I got the chance to vacuum some carpeted stairs that no doubt have not been vacuumed since they were laid 30ish years ago. It was an interesting experience. The vacuum I was using was a good little sucker (pun intended).

After I was done I was left with the following remnants of filth:

And looking like so. It was a pretty windy vacuum, so crap was kind of always blowing up in my face. I took a shower. Let this be a motivation to you to vacuum your stairs.

All for a weird blossom

I'm not totally sure what the deal is with the blossoms in Minnesota. Some were finally coming out right before we were leaving, so maybe we just missed it. Anyway, there were these funky looking sort of a blossom as you see below right outside our place:

They seem innocent enough, but going out to check out these blossoms led to a stupid and stressful situation.

It was a Monday, family home evening and we were probably using the Easter/resurrection, all-things-come-alive-in-the-Spring-just like-Jesus-did lesson for the third time. So off looking for blossoms we went.

For whatever reason, Dave and Miles decided to play with this marker thing.

And this right here is when Miles got fiberglass all over his hand. We didn't really know what was going on or why he kept complaining about his hand until we held it under a light and it shined and glimmered with a billion little shards of glass. We did all the fixes we read about: duct tape, washing with a nylon and Miles hated it all. Then I called a nurse to see what we could do to make him a bit more comfortable and she told me that Miles would have to go to the ER to be sedated so they could get all the pieces of glass out. I thought that sounded like serious overkill, but we wound up at the ER. That nurse was smoking dope. The ER nurse at the check in went and talked to a doctor for us who said they would just start by irrigating his hand. Call us crazy, but we decided to not wait for however many hours so Miles could get his hand washed. Moral of the story? Not much of one. Follow your gut, I guess. And fiberglass comes out over time. May you have good luck with all your fiberglass experiences.

A Blast from the Past

Well, it's been a while! We are in Oregon these days. It's beautiful out here. And, I'm not going to lie, it feels good to be in the West again. I'm a Westerner. What can I say?

I'm also a finisher. It can be both good and annoying. I have loads of pictures of stuff we've been up to that are more relevant to our life right now, but I can't get to that until I've finished up what's been on the back burner and neglected during our preparations and travels and settling in.

And so I give you some Easter-ish stuff. Grandma and Grandpa Lawson sent Miles some sidewalk chalk in the shape of eggs for Easter and they were a great hit and I took 10,000 pictures and that's that.

We leave you with a wink and a smile. Bye.

Frankenstein

I got my very fist stitches. On my face. I had a cyst in my cheek there so a doctor cut it out. The blob he took out to sent for a pathology report sort of looked like a tooth to me. But softer and weirder. Anyhow, I had a bit of a hard time trying to get a picture of my wound, but I managed a few for your viewing pleasure.

I showed Miles and told him he had to be real careful and not touch it and blah blah blah and he looked and was interested but that was the end of it. Then last night Dave pointed it out to Miles and was telling him to be careful and Miles took a good, long stare at it and then he didn't want much to do with me. Like it scared him or something. He was willing to take me back this morning though. Usually when he looks at it he kinda touches his cheek to his shoulder and makes a funny face. Maybe it grosses him out. And he has been ultra careful. Like, not touching me careful, and kind of checking up on it and talking about my "blue itches." He's looking forward to the doctor taking them out on Wednesday. And tomorrow I speak in church. And Friday we are out of here for Oregon via several stops and about a week. I'll be lucky if I can crank out some posts to be all caught up before we go. Do you believe in miracles?

And, just as a bonus, and to make this post all about gross type stuff, here's a beautiful picture of Dave when he got pink eye back in January:

Adios!

The Hidden Gem

I've mentioned the free zoo a couple minutes from my dwelling quite a few times. I don't know what to tell you-- it just keeps getting better! The last time we went, I noticed a little room for toddlers to play in and I was like, "Whaaaaaaaaat? How long has this been here?" Word on the street is that it's always been there and I'm just stupid and/or not observant. This little room is the most fantastic place ever. Maybe it's usually packed which would make it lose a lot of it's wonder, but the day we were there, there were about 3 other kids in there. I would say it's better than the children's museum because there are 1/1,000,000 of the obnoxious children and you can stay in one spot and see your kid the whole time. It's nearly relaxing for Peter's sake. And Miles thought it was great too. He played so content at the water spot and would have stayed for days. I so enjoy watching him play.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if all his lining up and straightening morphs into OCD. Until then, it's adorable.