take a walk on the wild side. (i mean, a drive through the wildlife loop.)

One of our favorite things to do when we're up in Custer is to take a drive through the Custer State Park wildlife loop.

There are so many things to see - buffalo, burros, deer, sheep, prairie dogs, active duty military running drills in full gear.  You know.  But in the past we have typically driven through at sunset, when the animals are active but the visitor's center is closed.

This year, we went during the day, and had a blast.  Obviously, we saw plenty of animals, though Atticus was bummed there weren't any military drills happening this year.

But the biggest highlights were the two visitor centers within the park.

We even found a rock climbing wall, and the kids were seriously in heaven.  If anyone has any ideas of what it would take to install a kids' climbing wall in our basement, I'd be interested to chat with you.  I've been thinking for a while it would be a good Christmas gift for them, but once they were actually able to try one, it was obvious they'd love it.

The kids were doing awesome through the visitor center - curious, engaged, quiet enough.  Apparently it wasn't enough to deter a couple of people from making negative comments to me and Todd about the number of kids we have.  It was a true joy to get to justify our kids' existence to complete strangers.  But oh well.  In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, "haters gonna hate."  Shrug.


After the climbing wall, we were headed into the Imax theater room to watch a movie about Custer State Park.  (Narrated by Kevin Costner!  Honestly, I always get him mixed up with Kevin Spacey and Kevin Kline - the entire movie, I thought I was listening to the voice of Marcus Skinner from Orange County.  HOWEVER.  I would not tell the dear people of South Dakota these things - they dearly love their Kevin Costner, who seems to dearly love them in return.)

Since Team Negative Nancies headed into the theater shortly before us, I knew we could all benefit from a little powwow before going in ourselves.  ("Some people don't know yet that large families are great! Let's show them what a blessing we can be by behaving well - sitting quietly, watching the movie without wiggling or talking, and being respectful to the people around us.")  In all honesty, it sometimes stinks knowing that critical eyes are occasionally on us, expecting us to fail and then attributing our failures to large family choices at large.  It stinks being the 'face' of large families to some - we are, after all, just a group of intensely human people.  But at the same time, it's also a privilege that we get the chance to show people that children don't have to be stressful, chaotic burdens, even in large numbers.  (Go figure, right?)

Pre-game Pep Talk

Callista was apparently not listening during pre-game warm up, so she was benched.  She hung out with Todd outside the theater while the rest of us finished the movie.  She wasn't mad bout it.

After the movie, we all got to spend a little time doing our favorite things - the kids got to spend some time out in nature...

...and I got to get some tacos from a street truck back in town.

Does it bother me that the word "authentic" is intentionally scraped out of the lettering on the side of the truck?

Tacoooooooos.

Nope.  I may or may not have gone back out for more once the kids were down for naps.  And any day that ends with me getting street tacos twice is a good day, indeed.