Medora

Way back in August, we made a day trip out to Medora. This is one of our favorite traditions of summer.

 

 Early into our drive in the park, we came upon a whole lotta buffalo.  We made our usual jokes....made comments about the ones that were, um, obviously male, made fun of the "Eric"  buffalo (off on it's own), commented on the buffalo droppings on the road, etc.  This one above was right outside my window.  If I had reached out, I probably could have touched it, but there are many signs discouraging such actions.

 Once we got through the buffalo, we pulled off at the Skyline Vista trail.  We could see many of the buffalo that we had just passed working their way towards the area.  I did ask Don if he thought we should take our hike, since to me, it looked like the buffalo were heading our direction, and I wanted to be sure we followed all recommended safety precautions and NOT approach any buffalo.  He said they were heading the other way.  I believed him.  He is an information systems audit manager after all.  Predicting buffalo movement is one of their required skills.

 This is the boys' favorite 'climbing' rock on the Skyline Vista trail.  We made our usual oohs and aaahs over the view.  It is pretty spectacular.

The kids saw a snake slither under this little shrub.  They said it was orange.  I am thankful that I did not see it.

 Turns out information system audit managers are not very skilled in predicting buffalo movement, as this is just one of the buffalo that were now in the parking area of the Skyline Vista trail.  The Silver Bullet is just ~20' behind this cute little creature.  I did not take any pictures of the much larger creatures that were further away, as I didn't want to anger them.  I think one of them was staring us down.  We chose, per my paranoid suggestion, to enter the Silver Bullet via the passenger side so as not to approach the baby buffalo. 

 This is at the base of another one of our favorite hiking trails.  We were beyond all buffalo traffic at this site.

All in all it was a great day!  While Don and the kids played on the playground, I picked us up some salt water taffy.  When we got back to Mandan, we dropped the boys off at their best buddy Ryan's house for a sleepover, where they broke their all time staying up late record of managing to stay up until 4 am.

more from the Pumpkin Patch

 Megan did not bring haystack friendly shoes, and had to make many breaks to dump the straw out of them

Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #1

 Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #2

 Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #3

 Bringing in the corn harvest

 Isn't this sweet?  Big brother helping little sister on the zip line.  What the picture doesn't snow is the velocity with which Jonathan flung her, causing her to crash into the big tree at the end of the zip line.  She was less than pleased with him.  Still, she let him push her again, which had nearly the same result.

 Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #4

 Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #5

 They are using the squash for their smiles...get it?  Jonathan thought of it.

 This reminds me of the pic of them walking at the Patch in their flannel plaid shirt, cowboy hats, and cowboy boots

 Cheesy Pumpkin Patch pose #6

This was in the corn maze.  The corn maze creeped me out, but the kids had fun.

 Eric was a good helper to Megan.  He at no time slammed her into a tree.

 The kdis loved the gourds!  They each picked out a few to bring home

Football

Pumpkin Patch

Took the kids to the pumpkin patch yesterday.  More pics to follow

Tooth fairy

Megan lost her first tooth last week! She lost it during recess at school.  She was so proud.

Lowes

 

We have helped keep Lowes in business the past week.  Our dishwasher died last weekend, and we finally bought a storage shed for the backyard.

Soccer

Megan is so excited to finally be able to play soccer like her brothers do.  We started practice on Wednesday, and this morning had our first game.  Our team only has 4 players, and our opponents had 6.  Their coach shared one of their kids with our team so we could each have five.  Our highest scorere was their player.

Megan has a passive approach to her soccer play.  Her highlight of the game was giving her teammates a silly band bracelet and passing out snacks.  She had fun.  She is wearing the yellow and blue striped sweatshirt.