Well, hello! Yes, I still have children and, yes, they are still doing and saying cute and funny things. I'm just not writing about them. Bad, Mommy Blogger, bad!!
So here we are in South Dakota. I can honestly say I never expected to be living in South Dakota!! As lovely as it is and as comfortable as we are, I'm still glad it's only a temporary move. (If you have no idea why we're in South Dakota, read here.)
We drove up on a Wednesday, stopped in Omaha on the way to visit the awesome zoo, and arrived in Chester, SD at around 5:30pm. We met our fabulous hosts and they took us out for dinner at a restaurant overlooking beautiful Lake Madison. Timber started the meal by throwing a screaming, crying fit over his drink which caused the whole quiet place to stare at us for a while. I calmed him down and we had a pleasant dinner until Timber capped off the evening by gagging on some food and throwing up a little on his plate. Check please!
The next morning (Thursday) the kids and I drove the 35 minutes to the Sioux Falls Walmart to stock up on food. We spent too much time and too much money in the store and just as I was unloading all of our groceries into the back of the van Scout tells me he needs to go poo-poo. I told him to wait. It's a risky little game but I was betting that it wasn't urgent. I preferred to take my chances on him pooping his pants than take all three kids back into Walmart to use the restroom. This story has a happy ending. Scout made it through playing at the mall, playing at the park, eating lunch, and driving all the way back to our house before he remembered that he had to go.
Unfortunately, lunch wasn't exactly a lovely experience. We met one of the local pastors that Chris will be working with and his wife at the mall food court for lunch. There was a fountain and our first mistake was sitting next to the fountain. I thought Flora and Scout would enjoy looking at it while they ate -- and they did -- but Timber also enjoyed looking at it and felt like he needed to really experience the fountain with all his senses. After throwing another screaming, crying fit over his drink he spent the remainder of lunch leaning as far into the fountain as I would allow. He was pretty soaked when we left the mall. I didn't think Flora and Scout needed too much supervision around the fountain since I was confident they wouldn't try to get in it. My bad. I looked over at one point and saw them both with their drinking straws IN the fountain. Who knows if they actually drank fountain water. I prefer not to think about it. Not exactly the first impression I was hoping to make on our new friends....
Thursday afternoon was fairly peaceful and calm and I was able to finally get everything unpacked into our cute little basement apartment. Friday I got to sleep in and take care of a lot of computer stuff on my morning off (yes, my Fridays off are still enforced even in South Dakota). I was ready for a good day and a fun weekend......and then Flora threw up. And then Scout threw up. And then Timber threw up. We had at least one child throwing up Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. So much for meeting new friends, visiting new parks, and attending a new church. Some crazy severe weather came through several times during the weekend too. When it rains hard we have to lower the window coverings on our screened-in porch -- basically converting our house to a dark cave. The kids and I were like little moles living underground for a few days. Haha, it wasn't really that bad. It felt cozy and safe and warm -- but I think if it had lasted longer than three days I would have had some cabin fever symptoms! The silver lining to this cloud of vomit is that Chris and I avoided the bug and all of the furniture and carpets in our apartment were spared. The bad part is that I actually took Scout to the doctor Monday afternoon because he had been throwing up for 3 days. She took some blood to make sure it wasn't bacterial and deemed him "very viral" and told me to keep him hydrated. And, of course, he was fine by Monday night. The best way to cure a child is to make a doctor appointment. Not that the doctor does anything.....it's kind of like how the best way to make it rain is to wash your car.
So, now it's Tuesday and everyone seems to be feeling fine as we approach the one-week-in-South-Dakota mark. Flora is a little bit homesick (she drew a picture of home this morning) and they're all already bored with the toy/book/puzzle selection I brought. But right now they're dancing and twirling each other so maybe being bored will inspire them to be even more creative in their play! We ventured out to the yard today even though it was cold and very windy. I definitely should have packed more long-sleeve shirts and pants....
