It started on Saturday morning at the end of June with the family driving out to Blue Mound State Park in Minnesota, where we hid out at the local restaurant after evening Mass while the tornado passed by the campground. Our camper got soaked, but we were pretty sure things would be able to dry out the next night when we camped at the Badlands. Unfortunately, we were westbound on I-80 when our transmission failed near Presho, South Dakota with no cell phone service on one phone. The local tow-truck operator was clear that the closest place to get our minivan fixed was Mitchell, 100 miles back the way we had come. With our pop-up trailer packed up tight in Presho, our vehicle was towed back to Mitchell, with most of the family riding with no A/C in the van on top of the tow truck bed (not enough seats in the cab). Jeri was quite upset and, when Mom told her that every trip will have some road bumps, claimed, “This isn’t a bump, this is a ditch!” Because this was a Sunday, the best that could be done was to find a hotel and wait for the transmission repair shop to open. We did what we could to maintain the summer vacation atmosphere (Hello, Corn Palace!) until our van was ready to go late Monday afternoon. At 6pm we were back on the road driving across South Dakota, to pick up our camper in Presho (around 8pm) and kept driving until we got to our reserved campground in the Black Hills. We managed to arrive before midnight (thanks to crossing into the Mountain Time Zone) and get our camper set up and dried out. It certainly had all the signs of an epic family trip.
Once we managed to shake off the effects of car trouble, things progressed much better. We drove around Custer park looking for buffalo, and found a herd of them waltzing through one of the other campgrounds, and briefly visited the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments. We spent a very long day driving out the Devil's Tower in Wyoming leaving ourselves wondering if it was worth the time commitment. We visited Jewel Cave and, took a tour inside Wind Cave, and spent some nice time walking around Sylvan Lake. The family went inner-tubing in a creek by one campsite in Hot Springs and finished up with some evening and early morning hikes in the Badlands. We drove back across South Dakota for the Birgen family reunion, which consisted of many relatives from Grandpa Birgen's side of the family, and nearly as many mosquitoes. After the reunion we drove back home to Iowa for laundry and shopping before heading out to Ohio for the Kill reunion.
As we drove across Illinois and Indiana, we became very adept at setting up and taking down our camper. The children enjoyed being able to quickly and easily find their parents, while the parents started taking more and more long walks for a little privacy. We stopped in Cincinnati to visit the Radcliffe headstones we had purchased five years previous, and visited the William Howard Taft House, using the National Parks pass we had purchased in Wyoming. Throughout the entire trip the family (mostly Brian) had been geocaching whenever the opportunity arose. This long trip gave us the opportunity to find caches in South Dakota, Wyoming, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio for the first time (we already had Iowa and Minnesota on our list). We made it up to Landeck, Ohio for the Kill family reunion, which consisted of many relatives from Grandma Birgen's side. After the reunion, we headed home with cousin Bry’chell along for the ride.
Back in Iowa things were still quite busy. Jeri spent a week at girl scout camp. Bry’chell stayed with us for two weeks helping manage the children while Brian and Mariah got work done. Grandma and Grandpa Birgen came and stayed with the family while Grandpa competed in the National Horseshoe Pitching Championship. We tried to watch one day, but the children found horseshoe pitching to be about as interesting as watching grass grow. Mariah headed off to Washington D.C. to review NSF proposals followed by a trip to North Carolina for another academic meeting. One week and a half after she got back it was time for Brian and Mariah to take a weekend trip to a Bed & Breakfast to celebrate their anniversary and the summer was over. One of the other big transitions was that the children were divided up into separate rooms. The three kids had been happily packed into the same room for quite some time, but there was getting to be too much bickering. Despite Jeri’s insistence that age was more relevant than gender, Zac was moved into the small bedroom (now known as the boy’s room). Jeri and Carrie have rearranged the girls’ room, with Jeri’s bunkbed/loft piled high with precious goods. You are still welcome to visit, but the reserved guest bedroom is no more.
Carrie’s exciting news was her first day of school. She started attending the Wednesday morning pre-school at St. Paul’s with her brother and sister. It is great fun for all three kids to walk in to school together one day each week. Carrie is developing into quite a character. It was funny the first time at church when Father Mike said “This is my body” and Carrie who saw him holding up the plate of bread announced, “That’s not a body. That’s a plate.” Unfortunately, she is a quick learner, and proceeded the say the same thing the next week louder, and louder the following week.
We have realized that Zac is a dangerously cute boy. Between his dimples, his sense of humor and his propensity to hug anyone who holds still long enough, he is difficult for little girls to resist. At his birthday party, while the boys were outside playing on his tree house, Zac was inside providing piano serenades to the girls. Zac in his second year of cub scouts, only this time Brian has been recruited to be the Den leader. Sadly, Brian is doing a good enough job that no one is likely to take the job away from him. Zac tries to be helpful with Carrie. Recently when asked to play a game with her, he brought out the Battleship game and tried to teach her the rules to no avail.
Jeri is now in fifth grade and has joined the orchestra. She opted to take viola lessons believing she would be more likely to get a college scholarship. She continues with girl scouts, tumbling and piano lessons, but her greatest passion continues to be reading. Her reaction to the latest Harry Potter movie was to remark, “That was a horrible place to end the movie. It is a good thing I have read the book.” Most nights she can be found reading in her bed long after everyone else has fallen asleep.
Brian and Mariah are still gainfully employed at Wartburg College. We did manage to get away for a Spring Break vacation to the Bahamas. It was our first trip in ten years without the kids that wasn’t work related We had fun horseback riding on the beach and driving up and down the island looking for geocaches. It turns out Mariah likes geocaching too, when the weather is nice.
All in all, it has been a good busy year. Our children are growing up, and we are doing our best to keep up with them and enjoy the wild ride. We wish our friends all the best in the coming year.