Happy Birthday Trip

Grandma and Grandpa treated us to a quick trip to Big Cedar in honor of Michael Jr's birthday. We were planning to stop and see Aunt Jena at her parents' farm on the way down, but unfortunately she called as we were driving and warned us off because her dad was sick. So we sadly missed the chance to visit with Jena while she was close to being in town, but luckily the beautiful Spring weather cooperated at least! We had a day and a half chock full of hiking, swimming, paddle boating, mini golf, playgrounds, waterfall tours, climbing, wildflower picking, and general relaxing in the sun.

Mary proved to have quite the nose for treasure when they hunted geocaches with Grandpa.

But really, she would have been happy to just pick little wild flowers the entire day.

The property has a lot of man-made (but still beautiful) waterfalls and a lovely maze of bridges and paths, perfect for running and exploring, and stopping for a rest and a quick snack.

Oh, this girl. If you haven't hung out with her in a while, you might be shocked at how independent 8 can be.

Walking with Grandpa; maybe we were headed to the paddle boats? I don't have any pictures, because I was paddling a paddle boat. Catherine and Mary manned one of their own and they did great!

I think the favorites of the three big kids were the lake beach and the swimming pools.

These girls love the water! It wasn't warm enough to swim in the lake, but plenty warm enough for toe splashing.

Gussie wasn't tempted by the water at all, but he was happy to play on the beach and dig in the sand.

Baby toes and toddler chunk feet relaxing in our room after a long, active day!

Our last morning there was Michael's actual birthday and Grandma brought along some special glasses to use at breakfast. Yes, they're playing Trouble at breakfast. They would have been playing it a lot earlier but I made them wait until everyone was awake. That die popper is loud!

After breakfast we talked about what they wanted to do as their last thing before we had to leave and they all voted for swimming in the indoor pool. We swam in the outdoor pool for a long time on the first day (and have the sun kissed faces to prove it), but they wanted to swim again and they wanted to try a new pool.

Except for Gussie, who still was not tempted by the water. He opted to bring some cars and trucks to play with, and since Edie had just fallen asleep wrapped on me, I sat and played with him instead of getting in with the big kids.

Can you see how happy Catherine is? She declared swimming to be the most wonderful thing she's ever done.

Michael was even getting pretty brave in the water. The indoor pool didn't have much of a shallow area so he could only touch bottom near the steps and a little around the outside edge. He worked really hard to tiptoe his way around the edge!

Once he managed to snag an abandoned pool noodle (with an alligator head), he used it to kick his way from one edge to the other. And that's Olivia in the background, also sticking to the steps. I have no idea how I don't have more pictures of her, but she was there!

Meanwhile, one of Gussie's many story-telling faces.

[I missed pictures of a lot of our activities simply due to the logistics of doing anything with five kids. No pictures of the outdoor pool because I was either swimming with the kids or feeding Edie. No pictures of mini golf because I was feeding Edie and running various kids to the nearest building for the bathroom. No pictures of our golf cart nature tour because I was driving a golf cart with a sleeping Edie wrapped on me and one hand on Gussie because he looked like he was going to tip out the side at any moment (but Mary was snapping a picture every few seconds, so keep an eye on her blog).]

After cajoling Catherine out of the pool we loaded up and headed home, first stopping for a lunch of throwed rolls. All was going well -- even Edie did pretty well in the car with minimal protesting -- until Gussie threw up. I know I made somewhat of a promise about not whining, but I have to be honest: cleaning vomit out of the endless nooks and crannies of a car seat and its straps and buckles is very likely the worst thing ever. It's enough to make one contemplate how you might go about getting through eight or ten years without ever having to go anywhere in a car with children in carseats, and you have plenty of time to work that out because cleaning car seat buckles with wipes at a rest stop takes freaking forever. But thankfully Gussie's stomach seems to have simply been protesting lunch or riding in the back of the van or both, because as soon as I put him in clean clothes and he guzzled a bottle of water, he spent the entire time at the rest stop running around with the kids and has been fine since.

So we piled back in the van, motivated by the fact that Daddy was waiting for us at home, along with the brownie-mint-chocolate-chip ice cream cake we had made and stashed in the freezer before we left.

Michael blew out each candle individually, which was making the kids waiting for cake a little jittery! But he loved the cake and the trip and he is very excited to now be "a whole hand!"