Pipestone

At the end of June, we traveled to southwestern Minnesota to visit Pipestone, a small town at the edge of the prairie. Have you ever been to the prairie? It is wild - long grasses blowing in the wind like waves on the ocean. Weather you can see coming in from miles away - huge, dark clouds building higher and higher, bolts of lightening crashing to the ground. Then, suddenly, the sun breaking through, bright and hot. The storms never actually got near us, though, just threatened us from the distance.

This was our first vacation together, just the four of us. Traveling with small children is never going to be relaxing, but I didn't realize how hard it would be to be in one hotel room. There was a lot of this going on in the middle of the day:

At night, when the kids finally fell asleep, Ben and I opened a bottle of wine and sat in bed with our tablets. It was all we could do - we didn't dare turn on the lights.

We visited Pipestone National Monument. If you're not familiar with it, the national park is a sacred site for Native Americans, and is still used as a rock quarry for people to mine the red pipestone used to make peace pipes. It is a beautiful place.

Christopher was really into it, too.

We had fun, though, our little family. Hikes, pizza, the hotel pool, the public pool in Pipestone (Clare kept screaming that she was SO EXCITED to be at the pool), and a diner with the best pumpkin pie in the WORLD. It was a good trip.

Yeah, I don't know how Christopher slept like that either.