Wordless Wednesday: Vacation Adventures (Part I)

I did manage to rescue him and get him home safely. More pictures later, I'm sure.

Wordless Wednesday: Ingalls Homestead

Wordless Wednesday: High Tea at Anne Hathaway's Cottage

While visiting family in South Dakota, we had an opportunity to have High Tea at the Anne Hathaway Cottage in Shakespeare Garden, Wessington Springs, SD.

Even the men attended! (We needed seven of us for the tea, and one of the ladies who volunteers there - and is friends with Travel Man's grandparents - completed our party of eight.)

Seven Quick Takes: What I Did on My Summer Vacation Edition

Jennifer is our lovely hostess for Seven Quick Takes Friday! Head over to her blog for lots of Quick Takers, including much more interesting writers like Simcha, who has a themed list that is pretty much Made of Awesome.

Here we go, with my list of seven neat things we saw/did on vacation!

1. No vacation of ours would be complete without me taking at least one picture of clouds and/or fog. I have dozens. This is the first picture in our vacation set on iPhoto, so you see I did not forget just how important the fog pictures are.

2. We were with my mother-in-law for this vacation, and spent Independence Day with her. We sat up on her little rooftop balcony and watched the fireworks over the trees.

(Big Girl is at an age when this is the face she makes in every. single. picture. I take of her. Just wait until she tries dating! These babies are coming out again. She'll regret her constant photoboming!)

Inexplicably, the finale took place low to the ground, and so this is the best shot I have of the fireworks finale.

3. For Little Girl's birthday, Travel Man's grandmother arranged for us to have high tea at the Anne Hathaway Cottage at Shakespeare Gardens in Wessington Springs, SD. The garden was in full bloom, which only adds to the quaint charm and beauty of the cottage. I did not get lucky enough to snap any pictures of the three garden snakes that were there. I was nice enough not to snap pictures of my mother in law when she saw them, either. And Big Girl was smart enough not to try to pick them up - even though they are non-poisonous - in front of her grandmother.

4. We went to De Smet, by way of Huron. There we saw the World's Largest Pheasant.

Travel Man quipped, "I want to build a pheasant in our yard 1 inch bigger, then set up a sign that says, 'Huron is lying.'"

I love my family.

5. Did you know that De Smet is the last place that Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother and father lived? It's the tiny town's Claim to Fame. EVERYTHING there is connected in some way to the Ingalls family. We went there to see the Ingalls Family Homestead and all of the other neat stuff connected with the family. It was interesting and worth the price of admission.

We saw a sod house.

It is not like a Hobbit hole.

We saw Ma's House.

I was surprised that the volunteer (college boy) did not have the answer to a teenaged girl's question as to why it's called "Ma's House." She asked if they had separate houses. (Ah, the Divorce Culture's effects!) Neither really "got" that it's Ma's house because Pa built it for her: everything in that house was made to make her life as easy as he could make it. He built it out of love. He built it with his own hands. It was for her, and it was hers.

These days, that doesn't happen much. You go and buy a house that someone else built. Not quite the same effect.

By the way, have you ever thought how soft we are these days? Could you live like the Ingalls Family? I couldn't.

6. Did you know that De Smet is named for a priest? And they have a big statue of him in town!

7. Travel Man had a business trip to Indianapolis the week after we were scheduled to be in South Dakota, so we decided to tag along and be tourists while he worked hard to supply us with all of our comforts at home. (He's my hero!)

The girls and I had a walkabout in downtown Indy one day and went to the Children's Museum on another day. (I posted a couple of other pictures here.) Here are some neat things just from Indianapolis.

St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church: oldest parish in Indy. Former proto-cathedral. Not wreckovated. Full of Awesome. (And the Real Presence is the main Awesomeness, but this church has Confessionals. The old kind with the curtains. I was in love.)

Outside the Indiana State Museum was this sculpture. RUN, GIRLS! RUN!!! RUN AWAY!!!

*ahem*

And, finally, one more picture from the Children's Museum. Van Halen fans (and David Lee Roth fans, as well) might recognize this car:

From these videos:

Happy weekend, everyone!

Wordless Wednesday: In Which I Reveal I Can't Sleep Late on Vacation

I was up for the sunrise most mornings on vacation. I don't know why. I can't get up early if I try most days at home, especially if I need to be up.

Ah, well. Here are a couple of sunrise shots, taken from our (screened-in) balcony in our vacation unit. Others can be seen here, at my MobileMe gallery.

Soupy Day

On our vacation, we took a drive on the Shenandoah Parkway and even went on a hike to Dark Hollow Falls.  The day was, well, soupy.  I found such beauty in the fog and misty rain that I begged Travel Man to pull over to the many overlooks along the way.  There are a lot of pictures (you can see bunches here), but these are a few of my favorites.

There and Back

Ah, yes! Home, sweet home!

We really did have a lovely time in Myrtle Beach for my dad's 60th birthday, where we also celebrated my aunt's birthday (yesterday) and Big Girl's birthday (today). We went to Dixie Stampede, where my girls got to show off how well they can chase chickens and my father got to show off his horse-shoe tossing skills - with toilet seats. We got to see Dad's older brother, who now lives in Wilmington, NC, and my sister and her family - hard-working husband included! - were able to join us for the entire week. Her husband watched one morning as their three-year-old dynamo ran in figure eights through our unit (through our bedroom and bath, back into the kitchen, into the second bedroom, through the bathroom connected to it, through the third bedroom, back to the kitchen/living room area, back into bedroom #1...etc.) and asked, "When does she slow down?" Little Sis answered him, "She doesn't slow down until she is asleep. Why do you think I'm insane when you get home??"

"Sign her up for soccer next season and let's burn off some of that energy!" was his response. (Middle Niece really does need some physical outlet!)

I managed to resist the urge to show off my girls to my doubting uncle, but they did fine on their own. ("A pleasure to be with," cooed my aunt as they were leaving.) Big Girl was excited to know that my godfather, the uncle in question, is older than her Pa Pa. If Pa Pa is as old as dirt, we said, then the uncle is...

"Jurasic Dirt!" cried Big Girl. (When I asked where she got that one, she said her usual line. "From my own head.")

My mom's sister and her husband, both devout Catholics now, loved our girls' devotion, too. The girls got to show off some of their schoolwork to grandparents and aunts and uncles (though not the doubting uncle), and were just plain wonderful.

Oh, and Mass! Good golly, if you are ever in North Myrtle Beach, be sure to go to Mass at Our Lady Star of the Sea! I was in tears throughout the Mass, and barely controlled myself enough to answer "Amen" at Communion! They used LATIN and GREEK! They used Gregorian Chant! The choir was in a loft above us and they chanted something truly beautiful as we received Communion, so that I didn't feel that my prayers were a competition to the music. The priest spoke on respect for human life (since it was Respect Life Sunday), and he mentioned birth control, abortion, stem cell research and euthenasia!!! Holy Cow! Can I adopt this priest? Can we make exceptions for cloning here???

After Mass, I turned to Soccer Dad and said through tears, "That was all I wanted. Some Latin prayers, holy music, a tiny bit of chant. I don't need the Tridentine Mass or everything in Latin. I don't need everything to be Gregorian Chant and ancient. Just some of it. Just the old prayers."

I nearly stole the music aid paper thing to show to our music minister.

It is absolutely unbelievable how differently you can feel at a Mass when you have just a little bit of the ancient and holy around you. It makes you really understand that you are walking to Calvary and receiving the Lord of lords - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Anyway...

So vacation is over, and we have no plans to go anywhere for months and months. I can just be my little Hobbit self and sit home and bake and get ready for Christmas. I think the next time we go anywhere will be for the March for Life, which we will probably attend as a family this year.

Thank You, Lord, for bringing us safely there and back.

Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, Savannah, Georgia

In a last post before I take off for the weekend, I leave you with pictures of a stunning Cathedral that was recently renovated. It's the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia.

Enjoy, and I'll see you kids on Monday!

There are actually more pictures, but I'm out of time!

Christine