How to go down the giant slide: by River.

Climb the steps carefully; you don't want to fall.

 Make sure you have a good grip before you sit down!

Put your legs out straight. This is going to be fun!

Um, maybe lay your whole body down. It's kind of high...

Oh no, you've let go. Now you have to go all the way down.

 Ride down in terror for two seconds.

Yay! Lets do it again!

Elora's colorful 11 pictures

 I just KNOW you've been waiting for Elora's birthday pictures. Since apparently that's what this blog is all about: birthday pictures. We went to the art ally in Rapid City,  where we took Josh's pictures last year because those turned out so fun...and Elora has had the "fall trees" theme going on in her pictures for the last few years in a row.

The graffiti in the alley change all the time (and is rarely profane in nature), and even though there weren't as many murals as we've seen in the past (I'll talk about that another time) there were still lots of great places for pictures!

Elora loves red, so we planned on her wearing this outfit: the guitar shirt works great with the graffiti, the plaid shirt is always a good way to look cool (according to her mom at least, who may be stuck in the early 90's) and I made the patches on Elora's pants a few weeks ago when they were starting to wear out. I kinda wish they were mine, actually.

A.  I love these two, which show the whole alley. I love Elora's stance, her face, etc. I only wish it showed more cool artwork, instead of a corridor of garbage cans. Oh well, I guess that's what you find in alleys, right?



We were lucky to find several spots that had perfect colors to go with Elora's outfit. This is one of the first spots. There were tons of places with this red line going through the middle of the wall; I imagine the same person did all of them, and it worked perfectly for all of our pictures.

B. In this group, I like the layout of the top right one and the bottom right one best.
























C. This spot was perfect. I wish I'd taken some nicer, more creative photos here, because the colors and abstract wall were great. Note the red line again. It was Elora's idea to stand up on top of the wall. I also like the ones with the ground showing because there are a few fall leaves scattered about. I think the top left is maybe the best. (We took some serious pictures, just like with Joshua.)

D.  This was a fun spot, it's just a few feet over from the location of the photos in "C". I didn't even notice that Elora had a question mark right above her head, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. Oh well, she looks cute in them anyway!

 

We found a lot of staircases to sit on. This first one is one of my favorite places in the alley, but the staircase is blocked off by a little fence thing. So we took pictures on top of it! I love that there is a tree in the alley, so you can tell it's fall. Elora likes the top left one that shows the tree more, and I like the top right one because of the interesting angle. The bottom right is at a different spot.

E.

 

F. Another staircase. I like all of these. The top right is the best close up, but I also like the angle of the top left.

G. The top two spots here were cute, but I'm not sure the colors look good with Elora's clothes. The bottom spot was great, but I think she could have maybe posed different, like maybe standing behind the railing? Oh well.  Red line here again...

H. Another good sitting spot. I like the artwork here, but Elora thought it was a little weird. I like these pictures too, though it almost seems like we're trying to highlight Elora's shoes, as they are closest to the camera.

I. This spot was at one end of the alley, so the light was shining in, which could be good or bad. It was actually a cloudy day up until this point, which worked well so we didn't have harsh light like with some of Joshua's pictures. I liked all the colorful boxes here, and I experimented with the colors being bright, or faded. I like the faded one, but I know from experience that sometimes when I print these, the photo place tries to "correct" the picture, and it doesn't look quite how I'd like. Anyway. I like the layout and face of the top left one the best, but the blowing hair in the bottom left is fun too.

J. Finally, I thought this was funny. I loved this place because of the bright colors, the black fence, and the red line, but I didn't even notice until I was viewing these on my computer that the wall says "2016"  right behind Elora! Haha. I wonder if someone else was taking senior pictures or something and put that there? Either way, that's perfect for commemorating a birthday!

Which one do you like best?

in the garden

At our new house, we were delighted to discover that there were a lot of flowers already planted. We knew about the orange flowers that would bloom later in the summer, as we'd seen them before we moved in, but it was fun to see that there were other surprises that popped up in the spring!

 

There were some dark purple irises, some bright purple flowers that might have a relation to wild onions? There were some tiny hyacinths as well.

 
 


We had a few small trees with some spring blooms on them



 but nothing as spectacular as I saw in Pierre in April! Those trees were amazing. It was like St. George on steroids.





We also planted some flowers of our own behind our garage. For Mother's Day, Josh gave me a packet of seeds from school that had a wide variety meant to attract pollinators. They didn't grow that great (I think the soil isn't very good,even with the added soil we bought) but we had fun growing them! There were a few varieties of sunflowers, and several plants I'd never seen before. I hope some of them come back next year, and maybe they'll spread out more.

Joseph tried to grow a little garden too; he had some potato plants, an onion, and a handful of herbs. He spent a lot on new soil and they started out well, but in the end the plants died because there was some kind of grub getting at them- we think they might be June bugs. He got a small handful of potatoes in the end.


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Even though our little gardens weren't perfect, it was fun to spend some time outside this summer. Bonus: there were several birds nests in our yard early in the summer! These two were particularly easy to see.

Yay for summer gardens!

 

library time

Earlier this summer, we were able to have fun going to the weekly library time. It was one day a week, but it was a whole two hours each time! At first, I thought that sounded a little long, but they filled up the time with crafts, snacks, and outside time as well as reading. The kids all had fun and made lots of neat things, plus we checked out lots of books.

We have some cool Chinese dragon puppets, which are now hanging up in our toy room. (Also, this is our lilac bush!) We also had someone come talk about karate one time and the kids made cool headbands just like karate kid...Elora stayed an extra hour to make hers just right.

Another time everyone made some kites out of string and paper bags. At first Josh was being grumpy and didn't want his picture taken, but then he let me take one of him by himself. They flew pretty good! It just wasn't that windy when we took the pictures.




There was one week we had a fun pancake activity! The librarian made pancakes, then all the kids got to do relay races with them outside on the football field (The town library is also the school library, and is on school grounds.)

They all had lots of fun!

We even got to bring our cousins with us to the last two library days, and everyone got lots of prizes and even ice cream! We'll definitely be doing library time again next summer.

South Dakota Cemetery

 The other day, Elora, River and I stumbled upon the local cemetery! I'd always known what direction it was (vaguely) but had never seen it before. I remembered the times we enjoyed walking around the Logan cemetery, (click on the link to read the post about it) and observing all of the stories and interesting headstones that displayed the history of the area.
This cemetery isn't nearly as large and grand as that one, but I happened to have my camera with me, so we decided to do some exploring. There were no giant statues or sculptures, but it is interesting to see the similarities and differences in the styles of headstones between here and other places.
There were the regular, plain headstones, of which most seemed more simple than those in Utah:

I like the cursive writing on this one

We found a few that looked just like Utah headstones, except for the notable absence of the list of children on the back. When I searched for them, I found a few stones that listed posterity at the bottom on the front, but not one listed the kids on the back like the ubiquitous listings in Cedar City and Logan. River liked these ones that were covered in beds of white rocks (there were several). My theory is that it was probably in kindness to the visiting family: this may look like nice green grass, but there were small cacti hidden in the lawn every foot or so! I got pricked once or twice myself while taking pictures.





The most common adornments on the local headstones were horses (of course) and the brands the family uses on their cattle. Seriously, they have displays of these brands all over town, it's quite the popular decor.

















And the next most popular display was Masonic symbols. I guess everyone who's anyone is a Mason in these parts. (This is two different pictures put together; every time I look at it my eye puts it all together as one picture.)

I always like to look for the more unique headstones too, and decide which one I would like if I had to choose one. I decided this one was probably my favorite out of all the "regular" headstones. I like the butterflies, and love the scalloped irregular edges. Good choice, Doris!

 

There were several rough-hewn headstones, cut from granite and left more in their natural shape except for the flat, engraved side. These were neat too, though harder to read.

 


Then there were the truly unique-to-the-area stones. Remember the petrified wood park that Joseph and I visited in March, up in Lemmon? Well, apparently the pink quartz and petrified wood also served well as headstones! These were so cool; they remind me of the Rock Church in Cedar City. Each design differed somewhat, but they all consisted of fancy rocks held onto the stone with some kind of cement, and a small metal plaque denoting the grave's occupant. Also, they all seem to be dated around the 1930's and 40's, the same era when the place in Lemmon was built. Talk about American ingenuity in the midst of the Depression.

This one is my favorite.

 

 

Jonah likes this one best, because there are so many rocks

This one has a parent's grave, and two children.

I also found several of these small markers, and I'm not sure if they mark the resting place of unnamed children, or if they used to show a fence boundary or something, because they were somewhat regular in their placement:





After walking the whole cemetery (again, not that big) I decided this was the fanciest headstone. I wondered if it was completely carved of this white stone, or if it was only a layer of white over a different stone? Very pretty, either way.

 And like many cemeteries, this one also had a pretty view of the surrounding area.