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Wildwood Halls of Ivy: Let The School Year Commence
Hello school year. It has arrived. This will be the year I teach five children at our home. That’s a lot of one-room school house learning. (I’m sure there are homeschool moms who teach more.) On our first day we did a little pantomiming with friends. And there were costumes worn to class because, uh, homeschool. Last year, of course, our curriculum was based on The Little House on the Prairie novels. This year we’re moving to the Chronicles of Narnia novels. (Kevin keeps joking that next summer, instead of visiting the Laura Ingalls sites in the west, we are all going to Narnia. He should be careful with that…
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and speaking of …
Somehow I still feel like I’m catching up to myself after our trip this summer. Which wasn’t like two months long or anything so you’d think I should be just fine and all caught up. I still haven’t even taken the time to write a post about my second favorite stop on our trip – Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Mansfield home, where she actually penned (literally – penned) the entire set of nine novels. And I think all I’m talking about lately is how I am off track on all courses. I have felt some comfort in the fact that I am not alone. Maybe it’s just the season – it…
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Summertime Blues
I don’t have my act together. School begins this week and I’m basically prepared for that. But all the rest – you know, regular life details – I’m just not really on top of lately. Maybe it’s the return from such a happy, busy summer adventure. Maybe the lack of structure has me feeling plain lazy. Maybe I just don’t care for doing dishes or washing laundry or sweeping floors. Maybe I really want to just lie still for hours upon hours and play board games with my favorite six year old and read Charlotte’s Web out loud for the twelfth time. I don’t know. But I know I do…
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Prairie Adventure: Prairie House Manor Bed and Breakfast
I didn’t actually count how many nights in a row we slept outside. Kevin might have. I do know that in the first town we drove through that featured a large store of any variety, Kevin pulled the Tahoe over and went inside with cash and came back out with one self-inflating sleeping pad. (Yes. One. I guess after seeing my expression he turned around and came back out with a second one.) At any rate, we slept on the ground for more nights than we did not sleep on the ground. When we reached DeSmet and toured the surveyor’s house and the Ingalls’ Homestead, we visited the house…
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mid-week smattering
One week from today the Wildwood Halls of Ivy opens their doors again. This summer has been speedy. (Like they all are.) Sometimes our kids ask to paint their faces for no reason. Sometimes I say yes. This week we have a family portrait session scheduled with our lovely friend Jane. I wonder what level of mayhem will ignite. I think it might be time to cut Bergen’s hair. Just a little. When we hike with our friends we look like a commercial for Keen. Every time we get together to hike I think I’m in decent shape. Every time we finish the hike I remember that I am not.…
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happy anniversary.
Nineteen. If you’re talking about grains of rice or hairs on your head, that’s a little number. But I’m not talking about food or hair. I’m talking years. Years. And suddenly, nineteen is kind of a giant number. Nineteen. A number that sort of takes my breath away. Today marks nineteen years since I traded my last name for his wearing blue Chuck Taylors and my momma’s wedding dress. Nineteen years since I stood in a field by a stream on a farm in Virginia and said “I do”. It’s not a golden anniversary, I guess, but it’s a good solid stack of years we’ve piled up as Husband and…
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Prairie Adventure: These Happy Golden Years, a DeSmet Pageant
If it is a July weekend in the town of DeSmet, there’s probably a crowd of people gathered on benches in a wide open field in view of Pa’s Cottonwood trees waiting for the sun to set a little lower and the prairie play to begin. Nine nights each summer a cast of all-local, primarily high school students performs scenes from one of the four novels Laura Ingalls Wilder write that took place in DeSmet, South Dakota on the very prairie landscape these thespians are gracing. You’ll want to pull your wagon up early to the vast field of a parking lot so you can ride on a real wagon with…
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Prairie Adventure: The Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet
I think I might be about to set some new record for photos on one blog post. (It’s not a record I care to take the time to actually validate, but I think I’m right anyway.) On our westward journey each stop had its own treasures and surprises to discover. You can’t exactly compare one location to another – but, you sort of can. When we reached DeSmet, South Dakota and pulled up to The Ingalls Homestead out on the for reals prairie, we all felt like it was exactly as Laura described it in her last several novels. The Ingalls Homestead is only a few miles from…
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Prairie Adventure: The Wilder Pageant at Walnut Grove
Walnut Grove had lots to offer the Laura Ingalls fan. I’ve already told you about the museum and the sweet campground and the Laura Look Alike contest and, of course, one of my personal favorite stops – Plum Creek. But what I did not tell you about yet was the summer’s big evening event – The Wilder Pageant. The pageant is performed only six times every summer and the tickets for next year’s pageant nights will already be on sale this fall. It’s performed every weekend in July except the July Fourth weekend. The performance doesn’t begin until 9 p.m. to accommodate the sun being allowed to set – but…
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home.
You might think, from my sudden silence here, that I have fallen in the prairie grasses and am wandering aimlessly on some South Dakota dirt road. I am not. We made the trek home – we’ve been home all week actually. And it’s probably taken about that long to reclaim our days – we’ve been trying to catch up on sleep. Going to bed late and sleeping on the ground every evening makes for some tired kids (and grown ups). We’ve spent the week home reclaiming our jungle of a yard – apparently it rained non-stop here at home and the yard formed its own prairie to welcome us home.…
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Prairie Adventure: and other DeSmet offerings
There’s more. More DeSmet. I’ll try to keep this one simple. Just out of town is the tree claim Almanzo and Laura tried in vain to homestead. There’s just this simple marker to represent years of hope and heartache and hardship. Two babies born here. One baby died here. The highs and lows of love and loss on this speck of prairie that cost the Wilder family so much. And there are trees here that Almanzo planted. Trees here that he stood beside and hovered over and hoped against hope they’d survive. The prairie has taken so much of that back. And the land is living on. Being farmed by…
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Prairie Adventure: The Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society in DeSmet, South Dakota
DeSmet. South Dakota. In regular life, DeSmet is this one street, not much to talk about kind of town. In Laura Ingalls terms, DeSmet is a big deal. Like a mecca. I don’t even know where to start or how to wade through the two hundred and fifty four pictures I took while we were there. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote nine books. Five of the novels take place in or around DeSmet, South Dakota. See? A big deal to Laura fans. In DeSmet, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society offers guided tours of the four buildings they manage. I guess that’s a good place to start. And you guys, of…
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Prairie Adventure: running on the prairie
Would it be okay if I just share a handful of sweet pictures of my girls running on the prairie? Okay. Great. Thank you.
