Kevin got to talk to my dad on the phone last night before he went to bed, and he had a lot to say. He told him all about TV shows and movies he has seen lately and places he has been. Ryan and I were cracking up at some of the things he was saying. Then came this gem:

Kevin: So, we have a new vacuum. Yeah, it's a white vacuum. It's just so we can vacuum the poo off the floor.
(Ryan and I burst out laughing at this point.)
Kevin (to us): Guys, stop being silly. Don't . . . just stop being funny, okay? Sorry, Grandpa, they're just kidding.
My dad: They're kissing?

memory lane: my baptism dress

When I was in Junior Primary I probably looked at pictures of children being baptized many times. The girls were always in pretty white dresses. So when I imagined myself being baptized at age eight, that was how I expected it to be.

When I was about to turn eight, I was talking to my mom one day about how excited I was to get baptized. I told her, "I can just see myself stepping into the water in a beautiful white dress . . . " At this point my mom interrupted me to clarify that nowadays everyone gets baptized in white jumpsuits. I didn't know what that meant, but from her description I concluded that it was plain and not especially feminine (they're basically white one-piece shirt/pants things with a zipper on the front). The idea was pretty repulsive to me. I was troubled because I really wanted to get baptized, but I also wanted to look beautiful like the girls in the pictures. Years later, my mom told me she wasn't sure if I would consent to be baptized if I had to be baptized wearing one of these jumpsuits. (I'm pretty sure I would have wanted to get baptized anyway, but at the time the idea of the jumpsuits was a little disappointing to my romantic mind.)

My mom ended up making me a lovely white dress to be baptized in. I felt beautiful in it. It was a sacred and happy experience. I remember that after my dad baptized me I was filled with a sensation of joy and light. It was a feeling that I experienced again after I received the Endowment at the Ogden temple.

Oh, and since then I have worn white jumpsuits many times when I went to do baptisms for the dead at the temple. It's true that they're not very feminine, but they're sturdy, versatile, and functional.

The Poky Little Puppy--What Really Happened

Five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world. They wandered far away from home and climbed up a hill. When they got to the top of the hill, they counted themselves: One, two, three, four. One little puppy wasn't there. They looked all around the sides of the hill and couldn't see him, although they saw all sorts of other things like lizards and caterpillars. But when they looked down at the bottom of the hill they saw him running around and around. So they ran down the hill, tumble bumble, and asked him what in the world he was doing. "I smell something," he said. Then they all realized they could smell rice pudding cooking. So they all ran home.

As they approached the fence, the first four little puppies slipped under the fence as fast as they could because they were so excited about rice pudding. The poky little puppy was more cautious, and he noticed that he could see their mother's fur through the fence, so he held back so that he wouldn't get in trouble for digging the hole. He stopped and chatted with the neighbor dog for a while.

"So you're the little puppies who dig holes under fences!" their mother said. "No rice pudding for you! Go straight to bed!" So the four little puppies went to bed hungry.

The poky little puppy finally came home and slipped under the fence. He didn't know that the other puppies had been denied their rice pudding, but he did notice that there was plenty left, and he was very hungry, so he licked the bowl clean and went to bed, happy as a lark.

The next day the hole in the fence had been filled in, and there was a sign that said, "Don't ever dig holes under this fence!" But the five little puppies dug a hole under the fence just the same and went for a walk in the wide, wide world. They decided to go back to the hill since they hadn't spent much time there the day before.

When they got to the top of the hill they counted themselves: One, two, three, four. One little puppy wasn't there. "Now where in the world is that poky little puppy?" they wondered. They looked all over the hill and saw some interesting things like spiders and grasshoppers, but they didn't see the poky little puppy. Then they saw him at the bottom of the hill, with one ear cocked up. So they ran down the hill, tumble bumble, and asked what he was doing. "I hear something," he said. "Chocolate custard!" they all cried. "Someone is spooning it into our bowls!" So they went running home, and apparently they hadn't learned their lesson, because the four little puppies dove through the hole in the fence without looking where they were going,, and there was their mother again. "So you're the little puppies who dig holes under fences!" she said. "No chocolate custard tonight! Go straight to bed!" So the four little puppies had to go to bed hungry, and they were very sad.

The poky little puppy figured their mother might be waiting again, so he held back and approached the fence with caution. He had to wait a while because she was standing at the kitchen window washing dishes and would see him slip under the fence, but when he had a chance he snuck into the yard and came inside. He saw the big bowl of chocolate custard and just couldn't help himself--he ate it all up, and went to bed, happy as a lark.

The next morning there was a sign by the fence that said, "Don't ever, ever dig holes under this fence!" But the five little puppies dug a hole under the fence just the same and went for a walk in the wide, wide world. Once again, they ran to explore the hill. When they got to the top, they counted themselves: One, two, three, four. One little puppy wasn't there. "Now where in the world is that poky little puppy?" they wondered. For he certainly wasn't on top of the hill. They looked around on the sides of the hill and saw some other stuff, but no poky little puppy. But then they saw him at the bottom of the hill with his nose to the ground, and they ran down the hill, tumble bumble, to see what he was doing. "I see something," said the poky little puppy. Then they realized he was looking at a wild strawberry, and that reminded them that their mother was making them strawberry shortcake, so they ran home as fast as they could.

When the four little puppies slipped under the fence, their mother was there waiting again, and she said, "So you're the little puppies who dig holes under fences! No strawberry shortcake tonight! Go straight to bed!"

The four little puppies were getting desperate because they hadn't eaten anything for three days, so they snuck outside while they thought their mother wasn't looking and filled up the hole in the fence. They turned around and found their mother standing there, watching them proudly. "What good little puppies!" she said. "Come have some strawberry shortcake."

As usual, the poky little puppy took his time. He got pretty nervous when he realized his brothers and sisters were filling in the hole. He had to squeeze under a gap in the fence to get back home. He arrived home just in time to find his siblings licking up the last of the strawberry shortcake.

"Oh, dear! What a pity you're so poky!" their mother said. So the poky little puppy went to bed with no strawberry shortcake, feeling very sorry for himself and rather hurt that nobody thought to save any dessert for him. (Years later when he had puppies of his own he realized that his mother probably knew all along that he had secretly eaten the entire pan of rice pudding and the entire bowl of chocolate custard and therefore didn't need or deserve any strawberry shortcake.)

The next day there was a sign that said, "No desserts ever unless puppies never dig holes under this fence again!"

And the moral of the story is:

• Avoid doing sneaky things with siblings who aren't old enough to be sneaky without getting caught. If you do decide to do it, know how to bail out before it's too late.
• If you have a chance to eat dessert, do it, because they might decide to eat it while you are gone and forget to save some for you.
• Sometimes it's advantageous to be sneaky by yourself because then you don't have to share.
• In most cases Mom really does know you did it, even if she didn't actually catch you in the act.

Right?

(P.S. I still love the book, especially because of my childhood memories of reading it with my parents.)
(P.P.S. I was the poky little puppy.)

Psychic

The kids helped me make smoothies. We like to drink smoothies with straws, so everybody got a smoothie in a cup with a straw. I noticed that Heidi was having a hard time drinking from her straw because from the height where she was sitting the straw was too high, so she had to bend it when she sucked on it, which made it hard to get anything out. Then it occurred to me that I could just cut her straw to make it the right height for her. But then I realized that if I took her straw away to cut it she might get mad at me, so I decided to cut a different straw and give it to her, figuring that she would see the advantage of the shorter straw.

The idea was perfect, except Heidi was perfectly satisfied with her first straw and saw no reason to use a different one, so she handed it back to me. However, Kevin thought the straw was great and took it away. I gave it back to Heidi, still hoping that she would change her mind since she was now using her old straw like a spoon, which was really messy. She still wasn't interested.

So Kevin took the smaller straw back. Then he asked me to cut his original straw small as well. I knew that if I cut his straw he would probably throw a fit and say he didn't want me to cut it, so I said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I want you to cut it."

Snip.

"NOOOOO! I don't want you to cut my straw! I want it bigger! I want you to make it bigger!"

I knew it.

The problem, of course, is that my psychic abilities don't always work. If Heidi had been excited about the functionality of her new, small straw, like I had predicted, things might have happened differently.

abandoned quarry Occoneechee Mountain State Park

Here are some of the pictures from when we visited the quarry. I will be studying the quarry in greater detail for a group project in one of my classes, so there may be more to come. They're not in any particular order.

Heidi rode in the backpack on Ryan's back while we walked out to the quarry, but once Ryan started boulder hopping he decided to take her off and we took turns keeping the kids out of trouble.

Kevin did a good job walking the whole way himself.

Here's a view showing most of the quarry. All of the boulders fell off the mountain in a landslide in 2001. Some of them are huge--like a couple of feet taller than Ryan.

Yes, it really does look pink. If you pull a piece off (which you can do with bare hands because it's so soft) you can see that it has white, red and black layers. The white is probably pyrophyllite and the rest probably has a lot of iron.

Here's a hand sample of that pink stuff. This is the broken off part, so you can see all the black and red that's inside.

Some interesting artwork.

Heidi was pretty excited to get to walk back part of the way by herself. Kevin had been pretty slow on the way down to the quarry, but by this point he got his second wind and we could barely keep up with him.

Did I mention Heidi was having a good time when we let her walk instead of ride?

Kevin and Heidi love rivers. Their favorite part was when we let them go up close to the Eno River, which flows past the bottom of the quarry, and throw sticks and rocks in (with close supervision).

cute pictures of Heidi

Recently I've gotten some cute pictures of Heidi.

She was having a fun time putting gas in Kevin's train while sitting inside this big plastic bin.

I love these last two. She has such sweet expressions on her face.

on the adorableness and cleverness of my dear children

There are cute pictures at the end of this post.

Kevin
"Oh, come on."

He loves describing things as a "BIG, FAT ______."

"Hardly." (He got this from Ryan.)

Kevin is making slow progress with learning to use the potty. For the past couple of weeks he has been wearing underwear except during naps and at night. The main problem we are encountering is that he has such a strong bladder that he can hold it in until nap time when he's in a diaper, and then after he gets up and we change him out of the dirty diaper he can hold it in until bedtime, which just doesn't seem healthy to me. It sounds like a recipe for a UTI. To give you an idea of how strong this kid's bladder is, today (4/1) he went at least eight hours without using the toilet at all, and finally Ryan nagged him enough that he said, "Fine! I'll just go in your bathroom." Ryan timed him and he peed for a whole minute. Not an exaggeration. Hopefully that will happen less and less, but I am slightly concerned. That's the main reason why I don't feel like I can declare that he is potty trained. We're trying to implement a sort of schedule so that we can say we always use the potty after lunch and before going to bed, and that seems to be helping somewhat. He has also apparently figured out simple addition. He gets one marshmallow for going #1 and two for going #2, so one time when he did both at once, he looked up at Ryan and said, "So I get two marshmallows for going poop and one for going pee. That's three marshmallows." (Apologies to my readers who are not moms and therefore may think this is way TMI.)

Kevin has been very interested in the story of the Atonement this Easter. He gets out the gospel art book and asks us to tell the stories that go with the pictures. It's been pretty neat to teach him about Christ's love for us and the hope that we have because of the atonement. He also likes to hear the story about Jonah.

Hoping to make tooth-brushing a little more pleasant, I told Kevin that we brush his teeth so we can find creepy-crawlies. So when I brush his teeth I do things like tell him I'm going to check in the back or under his tongue, and after brushing there I pull out the toothbrush and we check to see if we got any creepy-crawlies. I think he sort of enjoys it.

I also started telling Kevin some fairy tales. He loves Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs. Sometimes I hear him telling the stories himself. I attempted to do this a year or so ago and it was not received well, so it was a relief when this time he was delighted with hearing stories. But then I forgot about the part where they want to hear the stories again and again and again and again and again. Still, it's fun.

Heidi
Heidi is also very interested in the potty, but unfortunately right now she has the order backwards. She forgets that you sit on the toilet before you go. She desperately wants to switch to underwear, but I just don't feel ready to take on potty training right now, especially when she's only 21 months old. Maybe this summer after classes are over. Her personality is very different from Kevin's, so maybe we'll be able to potty train her a little earlier. There is also a strong motivation to get her potty trained so the horrible diaper rashes will stop. The doctor prescribed nystatin for a couple of weeks, and it seemed to help, but there must be another problem because now the rashes are back.

She can climb out of her crib if it's next to Kevin's dresser, and she has successfully climbed into and out of the pack n play. She can also climb up onto the top bunk of the bunk bed at the ends--i.e. without the ladder. Recently one of her favorite games is to use the drawers to climb onto the counter in the kitchen and then pull all the spices out of the cupboard. I honestly think we're lucky she's never had a concussion. She loves to copy Kevin.

She repeats what we say when we help her with her prayers at night. Even Kevin still refuses to do that sometimes these days (and actually he is perfectly capable of saying his own prayers [or helping Heidi with her prayers]--he just insists on help).

Heidi can be very sensitive and dramatic. She has mastered a cry that will melt your heart. She rubs her eyes and whimpers or sniffles softly and puts out her lower lip. Sometimes she even sinks to the floor face down because she is so devastated. The thing is that it's usually an act, which means we generally stifle laughs when she does it.

The fire alarms in our building are really intense. They are really shrill and loud and set to the perfect frequency to make your body shake. It's quite awful. There was one day a few weeks ago when they decided to test the fire alarms (as we found out later--at the time I didn't know), and I was alone with the kids. Kevin was in a t-shirt and underwear and Heidi was in a t-shirt and diaper, so we weren't exactly well-equipped for going outside. As soon as the alarm sounded both of the kids freaked out and grabbed me and wouldn't get out of my lap, and the fire alarm was also having an awful effect on me (I'm not kidding when I say it makes your bones shake). So I was frantically trying to hurry and grab pants and socks and shoes and jackets and get the kids outside and meanwhile both of the kids were sobbing and wouldn't let go of me. Then just as we were about to go out the door it stopped. But the kids wouldn't get out of my lap for a good 20 minutes because they were so shaken. I kept repeating, "Yes, the fire alarm was scary, but it was just a test, and it's off now." Heidi still will often (a couple of times a day) stop what she's doing and look at you very seriously while saying or whispering, "Fire alarm. Scary. Test. On. Scary."

Kevin likes to use his duplo train set to make diggers and street sweepers. He made this street sweeper all by himself and asked me to take a picture.

In March I also became a quarter of a century old. Ryan made me a cake and bought me a Costco bag of pistachios. It was awesome.

We don't really do a lot of crafts or activities for most holidays, but this year Ryan decided to make the Easter chocolates that his family always made together for Easter when he was growing up. They didn't turn out pretty (we probably should have added more powdered sugar and frozen them before dipping in the chocolate), but they tasted amazing. I'm giddy just thinking about them. Try this recipe and make sure you have lots of friends to share them with, because the recipe makes about 3 million chocolates.

ramblings about school

Just a few weeks more and I will be done with classes. I don't think I will be taking any more classes before I graduate. In the fall and possibly also next spring I will do research for credit, which will count as my experiential education and my field component (they're nice enough to realize that leaving my family for six weeks in the summer to go to field camp wouldn't really work for me), but I won't be taking classes. I feel drained. I am tired of worrying about grades and stressing about tests. I can't handle any more classes. But research is fun.

My advisor got a new job. I was aware that he had been offered a new job, but he never mentioned to me that he was starting his new job on April 1st. I stopped at his office and he wasn't there, so I asked another professor if he had seen him around, and the professor just stared at me and said, "He's gone. Like . . . gone, gone. He started his job on April 1st. Didn't he tell you?" Nope. I am slightly miffed. I would have thought he would have mentioned it to me. Fortunately this other professor was planning to help me with my project from this point on, so it will work out okay, but it seemed really weird to me.

I'm also going to be working on a group project in my field methods course. We will be studying the abandoned quarry that is on the side of Occoneechee Mountain. We're planning to map the rock/mineral types. Ryan and the kids and I went and did a preliminary exploration to see what was there, and it was pretty cool. We have hiked there a couple of times before, but we never took the path that goes down to the quarry, so that was fun. Check back in a couple of days because I have another post scheduled that has lots of pictures of us and the quarry.

This is a video we made to show how easy it is to crumble the rock that the mountain is made of. Apparently the mountain is supported by a granite dike and the rest is this stuff (largely pyrophyillite). Our project is to explore this idea and map the rock types.

Sed/Strat field trip

Here are some pictures and details about my field trip two weeks ago.

We left on Friday, March 22, around 1:30. Ryan and the kids dropped me off at Mitchell Hall. I was sad to leave them.

We drove through Virginia and then West Virginia and then Kentucky. As we got to the western border of West Virginia we started seeing signs saying that there had been a rock slide on the other side of the East River tunnel, which was along our planned route. Traffic was backed up for a mile or more behind the tunnel and the left lane was blocked. I'm sure you can imagine how excited we were to drive through a tunnel under a mountain where there had just been a rock slide. And of course the painfully slow speed was just lovely too.

Here's our view just before we entered the tunnel:

Inside the tunnel:

Obviously we didn't get crushed and we got out okay. We never saw the rockslide because they detoured traffic. To us it seemed like there was no reason for the left lane to be blocked for so much of the interstate. The detour cost us a lot of time and was the main reason why we got to our hotel in Kentucky really late that evening.

Here is a video of the rockslide:


I totally scored when it came to rooming arrangements. We were supposed to have five people to a room with one person sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. I had arranged to sleep in the same room as three other girls who seemed nice. But when we got to the hotel I found out that my teacher had put me in the same room as my TA because my teacher's wife said that I should get "the full mom treatment"--i.e. a bed all to myself. So my TA and I got a room all to ourselves. That was pretty nice.

On Saturday we spent most of our time looking at outcrops. Lots of bedrock is exposed in Kentucky because they cut into the hills to make the highways, so there were a lot of cool things to see. We followed the formations from younger to older through most of the Paleozoic era.

In a lot of places you could see where water was flowing between rock layers and had dripped out of the rock to form these icicles hanging from the rocks. The dark flaky stuff in the middle is mud with a lot of coal in it.

These are some ripples:

This is a chert nodule in limestone. They are formed when the limestone is lithified--the chert forms by replacing some of the rock. Across the street from this you could see an unconformity (a gap in the geologic record where layers have been eroded away and new layers were then deposited on top). There were a lot of chert nodules in the unconformity. Speaking of limestone, I'd really like to get some hydrochloric acid of my own. It's so annoying to see an interesting rock and not be able to tell if it's sandstone or limestone because I don't have any hydrochloric acid to test it. (Limestone effervesces when hydrochloric acid is dropped on it.)

This is cross-bedding.

We stopped at this place at the side of the road that was basically a huge pile of broken up limestone. It was full of fossils. Every single rock I picked up had many fossils or fossil traces in it.

This rock shows burrows or tracks:

I thought the circular fossils at the bottom were really interesting. They have these perfect little flower shapes in the middle and seem to be shaped like tubes.

The Fifth Third Bank. I just thought that was a funny name for a bank.

Saturday night we stayed at another hotel in Kentucky. It was nicer than the first one (which had smelled like a combination of stale cigarette smoke and gross incense). In the evening everyone ended up going to sit-down restaurants, and even though I had brought food for dinner I decided to use some birthday money to get Chicago pizza with some other girls in my class. We had a nice time and the pizza was great. (I mentioned this in a previous blog post, if you remember.)

On Sunday the weather was not that great. It was pouring rain so hard that it was still dark when we left the hotel. We still ended up stopping for quite a while at some stops even though it was muddy and miserable. It did get nice for a while around 11:00. We stopped for quite a while at an outcrop that was mostly coal-ey mud. It was full of big concretions and my teacher wanted to get a good one to take home. Concretions happen when the minerals from limestone are carried in groundwater from limestone to a mud deposit, and then the minerals form around round, hard centers to make big balls of limestone. Then when the mud is lithified everything gets squished, which makes the concretions look like UFOs instead of spheres.

Here's a rock we found there with ripples:

There were a few guys in the class who worked really hard to get this concretion for our teacher. That slope they were standing on was very loose and unstable, but they were really determined to get the concretion out. They were hammering the crowbar in to get the concretion loose. They literally worked at it for at least half an hour before it finally tumbled down.

Here is the concretion in my teacher's hands. He was really excited about it. There were many concretions that were much bigger than this one.

After that we just aimed for home, just stopping for meals and bathroom/gas stops. Western Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia) was rather depressing. Think enormous black cliffs of coal, double rows of mile-long trains full of coal, refineries, and lots of poverty. And this went on for a couple of hours. It was basically like District 12 from the Hunger Games. (Coal is great for the economy, right?) As we got further into Virginia and out of coal country it was snowing.

We got back to Mitchell Hall at around 7:45 pm and I borrowed a cell phone to ask Ryan and the kids to pick me up. I came home long enough to help get the kids dinner and mostly ready for bed, and then I hurried to the church for the last bit of choir practice. We had the Easter program the next week and I needed to be there to practice (we still needed a lot of practice), so even though I was sad to leave my family right after getting home I decided to go.

Oh, and apparently I had signed up to feed the missionaries that Saturday and then forgot about it. Fortunately they called Ryan the day before, so he made them pizza. He's awesome like that.

"I never want to let my sisters down spiritually."

"Recently I participated in a pioneer trek with young men and young women in our ward. Each morning I asked myself, 'What is my sacrifice? How do I come after them?'

"On the second day of the trek we had pulled our handcarts eight miles (13 km) when we came to a place on the trail called “the women’s pull.” Men and women were separated, and the men were sent ahead up a hill. As we started to pull our handcarts, I looked up to see our priesthood brethren, young and old, lining both sides of the trail, hats off in respect for the women.

"The path was easy at first, but soon we were in deep sand, and the hill grew steep. I had my head down and was pushing with all my might when I felt a tug on the cart and looked up to see Lexi, one of our young women and my neighbor. She had pulled her handcart to the top and, seeing our need for help, ran back. When we reached the top, I wanted so much to run back to help those following me, but I was breathing heavily and my heart was pounding so hard, the words heart attack entered my mind more than once! I watched with gratitude as other young women dropped their handcarts and ran to help.

"When everyone reached the top, we took some time to record feelings in our journals. I wrote: 'I didn’t prepare well enough physically so didn't have the strength to help those following me. I may never need to pull a handcart again, but I never want to let my sisters down spiritually, never!' It was a sacred experience that awakened me spiritually to my duties to my family and others."

Carole M. Stephens, Wide Awake to Our Duties. October 2012 LDS General Conference.

Croatan National Forest, Trip 3

I am moving forward on my research project this semester. My adviser and I decided that it would be a good idea to get more samples in the area so that we could figure out how much the water in the forest is mixing with the Neuse River, the Trent River, and the White Oak River. So I used Google Maps to find some more places to sample. This time I focused on getting more samples from within the forest and more samples in between the forest and the rivers. After our last two experiences driving around the area, we knew that it would probably take more time than I thought, so I planned out our route carefully so that we could get as many samples as possible and get it all done in one trip. We also got everything ready the night before and worked really hard to leave earlier in the morning. There were several places that I really wanted to sample, but it turned out that we couldn't access them because they were gated off, so that was disappointing, but overall we did pretty well. Hopefully the samples I got will give me some useful information. I also have a sample from last semester that failed in the mass spectrometer, so I'm going to try running it again. We got twelve samples in one day (the other two times we went we only got six or seven in a day) and we were done early enough that we decided to just drive home for dinner instead of stopping at Chick Fil A like we did before. We got home at around 8:00 or 9:00 pm.

We did have a minor complication with the van. As we were driving down the highway we heard something bang against the van, and then we heard it again a minute later. After a while we stopped and discovered that the left tail light had fallen off and was hanging by the wires. After a lot of fiddling Ryan managed to take it off and stick in the back of the van so it wouldn't be banging around the whole time. We tried several auto parts stores in the area to see if they had a tail light we could buy, but none of them had one. Fortunately we never got pulled over. When we got home, at the suggestion of a friend we called the dealership where we bought the van and asked if they could replace the light since it happened just a couple of days after we bought the van from them. They happened to have one there, so they replaced it and we didn't have to buy one. Other than that, the van did great. We actually made the entire trip on one tank of gas, and on the highways we were getting pretty decent gas mileage (yes, the van can tell us what kind of gas mileage we are getting).

Mostly these are just pretty pictures that Ryan took at various stops.

 This was a huge tree that was upturned. Kevin is standing in front of the roots at the bottom of the tree that were pulled out of the ground.

On this side of the bridge the river had been dammed. The water was kind of gross because it had a lot of green scum growing on top. There was a funny man in a white pickup truck who stopped for a second while I was getting some water here, and he asked in a very slow southern drawl, "Are ya fishin'?" When I told him what I was doing, he just said, "Oohh. I thought you mighta bin fishin'." And then he left. Maybe you just had to be there to hear it, but his soft drawl and the way he talked so slowly--almost lazily--were kind of amusing to me.

We thought this sign was kind of funny.

The kids are pretty good car travelers (car seats are quite helpful too). They didn't get to get out of the car as much this time because most of our stops were just on the side of the road (unlike last time when we usually were able to park in parking lots), but we did let them get out for a while on a quiet dirt road. Ryan took Kevin exploring a little ways into the woods, and then they threw rocks and sticks into the river, which made them pretty happy. The string cheese and crackers were also an exciting treat.