North Dakota on my mind...

As I was planning our trip across country, whenever I told someone that we were going through North Dakota they would invariably ask "Why?"

It wasn't a why as in "why on earth would you want to go there?!"

in a tone that is generally reserved for New Jersey, third world countries and well... Seattle.

No... it was more of a question of "Why go there? What is there to see or do?"

They were curious, but...

Honest truth... I had no idea.

North Dakota seems to suffer from a lack of advertising.

I wonder if the people of ND prefer it that way, maybe it keeps all the riff-raff and obnoxious tourists away.

I did a lot of research to see what might be worth seeing in the great state of ND.

First thing on my list...

The world's largest buffalo statue!

Yeah, man... I'm going there!

I'm a sucker for cheesy and dorky tourist attractions and world's largest anything.

And... Grant's favorite animal for all of his childhood was a bison/buffalo.

He even had a stuffed bison that he had named "Adonis."  

(Gotta love that kid.)
So we had to go.

As I planned this little pit stop, a voice from blogland called out and said,

"I live just a few miles from that 'largest buffalo', let's get together."

(Or something like that.  I'm paraphrasing.)

To which I replied, "Great!  I'll have run out of clean clothes by then.  Can I do laundry at your house?"

Screech!!!  Hold on!
Did I just ask a total stranger (albeit a blog friend) if I could come to her house

and do laundry???

Who does that?

And who would let me?

Well, I did and Jess would. 

:)

(Grant getting ready for his first buffalo run.)

But... in an effort to ease into that activity, we both agreed to meet at the World's Largest Buffalo Statue.

(Large bovines make great meeting places.)

(see Jess back there?)

 The story of that meet up and the trip to her house where I didn't end up doing laundry
will have to wait for another day.

Fall back...

I don't really care for this whole daylight savings time thing. 

I kind of think that we should leave well enough alone. 

And as much as I appreciate the concept of that "extra hour" of sleep,

I never actually get it and generally just have an extra hour of daytime.  

(Also useful, but still...)  

What I don't like is having an hour less daylight.  Sad...

As soon as the clocks turned back, I found myself looking toward the winter solstice. 

It may be the shortest day of the year, 

but after that the sun gradually inches it's way back, bringing longer and longer days. 

I found myself anticipating the gradual lengthening of days until Summer finally rolls back around.  

Don't think I'm wishing away the wonderfulness that is Thanksgiving and Christmas and snow days.  

I like them too.  

For now, rather than looking so far ahead to next summer,

I think I'll look into the more recent past and remember, hold onto, enjoy 

the memories of our incredible summer adventure.

Oh, Hail! I'm forty...

I had a birthday yesterday.

A big one, I suppose.

Over the last year or so, I've wondered how I was going to celebrate the big day.

I never could come up with a great plan, so I just took the day as it came.

And it turned out to be a wonderful day.

One of the best parts of the day was simply going about my life spending time with so many great friends.

It's kind of what I've been doing everyday since we've moved back,

but I still find those moments precious.

I am beyond glad to have an amazing group of friends and neighbors to share my life with.

So my day was pretty special.

Oh... and it hailed.

:)

Apparently, I'm an overachiever...

So, slicing a  babgel wasn'g enough for me. 

I had gto keep going and slice my finagefr as well.

As cuts go... it's a prfetty big cutg.

As injuftries go... it's a fairly minotr injury

I think I'll live b ut typing has becomgte quite tgeh advengturfe.

Nonsense

Whenever the kids are stuck on a particular writing assignment,

I tell them to "just jot down their thoughts, be quick, write whatever comes to mind."

Later they can make those thoughts make more sense, become more cohesive. 

AND... when my son was stuck on a particular assignment because he had decided in his mind that it had to go a certain way, but couldn't make it work that way, 

I said to "think outside of the box, start at the end or just write the middle."

Guess I'm going to have to take my own advice.  :)

There's an awful lot of fun to be had when you write outside of the box.

 

As I mentioned yesterday,

November is National Novel Writing Month which has been shortened to NaNoWriMo.

It's a ridiculous group of syllables, and you won't find me writing a novel this month,

but here's what I am going to do.

I'm gonna...

Turn my NoMoBlogPoMoJo into BlogPoMoJo-N-Mo

 

(If those nonsense syllables don't make sense to you that's okay...

just think about it for a while, run it around in your head, lose some sleep over it...

I don't mind.)

;)