Most of June 2022

Efraim loved the fairy ring in our neighbor's yard.

Cute little mushrooms.

We went up to Kansas City to go to the temple.  Our friends, the Bodines, watched our kids for us.

So pretty!
On the drive home we stopped at a children's museum in Topeka, the Kansas Children's Discovery Center.  It was okay.  What was awesome about Kansas was that they had a program, Sunflower Summer, where you could get in to a ton of museums and different parks once for free during the summer.  So this was a free stop. 

The Bodines had a pet hamster, and it definitely made an impression on Efraim.

First zinnias of the summer from my garden!

New haircut.

Circadas

Cute Efraim!

And hideous wolf spiders that surrounded our house.

Even worse, brown recluses IN our house.

Yeah, I kind of descended into a year of just reading in 2022.  It wasn't my best year.  I really felt this summed me up, not buying books, but time spent reading.

Yep.

Also, this is SO true.
 

Arkansas Canoe Club on the Illinois River

On June 10th and 11th, Leo and I went to Arkansas for the Arkansas Canoe Club School of River Paddling.  I really wanted to learn how to canoe so I could go canoe camping with my kids, and was finding almost nothing but a bunch of very expensive options till I came across this.  So I signed us up and I'm so glad I did!  I might actually not remember anything, but it was a really fun time with Leo.  We stayed at Gypsy Camp and Canoe campground, which was a girls camp back in the 1940s to the 80s (I think, can't remember for sure now) but then it shut down and was flooded and this guy bought it, and basically does canoe rentals and shuttles from it now.  It screams the Ozarks.  The first night they provided pizza and we ended up hanging out by a group of campers who routinely met up at events hosted by the Arkansas Canoe Club (river runs, river clean ups, whitewater school, etc).  It was a very odd group--some from Arkansas, some from Texas, some from Louisiana.  One was a doctor, a real estate agent, an engineer, and I don't know about the rest.  But they were drinking moonshine with fruit in it and were super friendly.  Leo and I were laughing so hard as they got more and more tipsy.  It made me remember how the LDS therapist who taught the marriage class in Houston said it might help Mormons relax and have fun more if they drank some.  😂😂😂😂 Anyway, we did learn a lot of useful info and spent one day at a lake practicing different strokes in our canoe. And yes, I was the only person to fall/jump into the lake (I would have tipped the whole canoe if I didn't jump in cause I lost my balance.)  Then the next day we spent WAY too long learning river rescue techniques at Siloam Springs Kayak Park.  After we floated part of the Illinois.  I was ticked because we were supposed to go through the kayak park's rapids, but the guy was like we're out of time, so we carried our canoes past the rapids.  Ruff.  I actually really loved the Ozarks btw, if we had moved to Arkansas instead of Kansas, I would have been totally fine living and staying there.  

A lot of the former campers have come back and painted their names there.

Medora and Teddy Roosevelt National Park

On Tuesday, we headed to Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  It was a beautiful drive--we didn't do much hiking as we were on a tight schedule.

SO MANY bison.  Love it.

My original idea when planning this trip was to canoe/camp for three days on that river, the Little Missouri.  

Wild horses. 

So this was on the one hike we did go on, and it was so muddy, and I was trying to keep the kids from getting muddy because we had a dinner and show to go to that night.  

Isabel trail ran the whole thing (that's why she's never in pictures, she's off running), but this time she went around a corner and almost ran into a bison.  Can you spot it behind her? She backed up slow but then took off running to put distance between them and totally wiped out in the mud.  

Then since this bison was just laying in the middle of the trail, and we needed to get back (dinner/show), we hiked back around the loop the way we had come. But by the time we arrived at the part that went up the cliff, back to the parking lot, the bison had moved there.  There wasn't any other good options for going up the cliff, so us and a bunch of other hikers sat and waited for a good 30 mins for that bison to make his way up the trail.  

This was the bison that sat on our trail.  

Despite waiting for the bison, we managed to be early for the dinner, so then we went into the town of Medora and let the kids play at the park.  Seriously, we could have spent hours there.  It was literally the highlight of the younger boys day.  It was an awesome park! So yeah, pictures.  

Then we went to the pitchfork fondue.  They dip big old steaks into boiling vats of oil.  So good. 

I only wish we had piled our plates higher because while it was a buffet (besides the steak), you couldn't go back for more and we were so hungry.  I mean, it was filling, but definitely was a welcome change from my meals from the cooler. 

Met Teddy and Edith.  

And then we went to the amphitheater to wash the show.  It was a musical song and dance skit.  We all thought the best part was the comedian that was showcasing.  She was hilarious.  

And then the next day we drove home.  Nebraska is a boring state.  Also the kids were exhausted.  It was such a fun trip, one of the best.