Vacation

Well we have been home from vacation for a week now and I think we are finally all well enough to say we enjoyed it. From these pictures you will see if I was a single parent my children's lives would remain fairly undocumented but luckily they have 2 photographer uncles that came on the vacation with us, I'm just not going to sort through the other 1000's of pictures they each took to find some of my kids right now. (Which means not all the events are even documented here since I missed 2 due to sick or grumpy kids.)

Brian wasn't able to go with us but everyone else in my family went on a week long trip to Rapid City, South Dakota. Which for some may sound boring but we had a blast because we lived there for 6 years and we had fun showing our families all the things we did when we were younger. We all arrived on Wednesday the 1st and just hung out and relaxed after all the super long car trips.

Thursday we went to Reptile Gardens. In case you were wondering there were..... My parents, My Brother Shawn his wife and 5 kids, my sister Shelleen her husband and their 6 kids, my brother Shad his 7 month pregnant wife, and their 4 kids, my sister Shannon her husband and 4 kids, me and my 3 kids and My little brother his wife and their little girl, that equals 11 adults and 23 kids ranging in age from 17-9months. Yeah it was quite a site to behold. But we had a lot of fun at Reptile gardens, petting snakes, crocodiles, alligators, giant tortoises. and seeing all kinds of birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. We all came home hot and tired but had so much fun.
Notice that those are not MY children but my nieces, nephews, and brother petting the crocodile, but yes my children did pet, I just have no picture proof.

This is the same one I have pictures with at Tyler's age

Funny Mirrors at Reptile Gardens

Friday we went to the Maze (most of us; not 2 babies, 1 grandma, and 1 pregnant aunt). There are 4 towers you have to find to get the 4 presidents stamped onto your card. I remember it seemed impossible as a kid and lets just say my sense of direction in the maze has not improved in the last 20 years. Connor really did have fun he just was mad I made him sit by his brother for some reason.

Saturday was a "free day" where there was nothing specific planned for the group so we got to do whatever we wanted. My brother Shawn, sister Shannon and my family decided to miniature gold at Pirate's Cove. My kids have never been miniature golfing for real so they were pretty excited. I didn't golf just ran back and forth between the potty and the 4 groups we had golfing to help kids gold and retrieve balls that went astray and other such motherly tasks. It was SUPER fun. We then took my parents and sister Shannon to meet my sister Shelleen at Cabelas. My parents and Shannon and fam had never been. I'm used to a slightly more impressive store but my family was still impressed and the highlight was watching them feed the fish live smaller fish and worms, I know cool huh. We then went to the mall and looked around mostly for memory sake.

Made it here in 1 shot.

When you turned in your putter you got

a bag of pirate themed loot, pretty cool I thought.

My kids were a little small for the stocks but thought it was cool none the less

Sunday we went to church and doubled the size of the primary who my sister's best friend happened to be in charge of so Shad and his wife got to sub for sunbeams and Shawn played the piano until the normal person arrived. After dinner that night we visited the grave sites of an adopted grandma and one of my parents foster babies that died of SIDS. It took FOREVER to find the headstone for the baby because grass had grown over it and it was VERY small to begin with. After about 20-30 minutes looking, and digging and removing the grass from around multiple headstones we found it and decided we need to get him a nicer headstone than the one the state paid for. It was also Bailey's birthday which we didn't do anything for because we had plans for later in the week which was good since when we got home from the cemetery she threw up like 8 times. Yeah not so fun. She was sick again the next morning so my mom decided to stay home with her while the rest of us went to Mt Rushmore.

We hadn't been there since they actually built tourist informative buildings so we had fun looking at all that had changed since we were there 17 years ago. We took what we thought would be a relatively easy stroller friendly hike, boy were we wrong. We got to carry the strollers, do about 300 stairs and keep 10-15 kids going where they were supposed to be going and allowed to be. And it was pretty hot that day so we were EXHAUSTED when we got home. I of course took no pictures of the Monument of my kids with anything that proves we were actually there, but before we left we got ice cream and I did take a picture of Connor eating that:)

Tuesday we went to Dinosaur Hill and reenacted some pictures from when we moved to SD 23 years ago. Some are a little less than flattering of me but oh well. Connor kept telling me his tummy hurt, which has become his mantra of late when he doesn't want to do whatever we're doing so I didn't think much of it but my niece skinned her knee so I did let him and her sit in the car til everyone else was done. We were headed to Storybook Island and Connor threw up all down the front of himself. So I dropped Ty off with my sister and took Connor and Bailey back to the lodge we were staying in so he could sleep and puke. Yeah super fun day for us. I did get a little break when he slept for real for a couple hours so I ran to get the rest of the stuff I needed for Bailey's party and show Tyler where I used to buy my candy when I was his age. I of course was in charge of dinner that night and we had so much leftover on other nights I made half of what I had planned to make and told everyone to bring all their leftovers they didn't want to take home. I did take lots of pictures of Bailey eating her cake but I'll do a separate post for that. Connor was feeling better by that night and I thought we were home free til Tyler started throwing up. Bailey threw up at 3 in the morning that night but after that no one threw up.

Dinosaur leg

this was about the only smile Connor gave us

All 23 current grandchildren on the tail of the T-Rex

All my sibling in order from youngest to oldest

Tuesday after dinner and before Tyler started puking we went down to see about renting paddle boats. We of course were too late to really do it but when the lady told my niece she was closing she burst out crying since we had told her since we got there we would do it one night and this was our last night. Well the lady said we could take them our for 10 minutes or so. Well I have a DEEP DEEP DEEP fear of water and Connor still couldn't get his arm wet so we just sat in a boat that was still anchored to the dock. But Tyler got on with my brother in law and thought it was super fun. Connor was pretty good natured about not being able to do as much as everyone else but still a little bummed.

Oh and we had just done our family picture so if you look close you can see everyone is in brown because we had matching shirts made that had a picture of Mount Rushmore and said

"KIDD FAMILY REUNION 2011" on the back

My niece rode there and back with me to help with the kids and keep me awake on the 12 hour trip. Which was good because I didn't sleep much for days before or any of the night we there since I was with my parents (who were sick or snoring or both) and my baby who was sick or not sleeping or both. But it was still a lot of fun and totally worth it.