Prairie dogs are good for the soul

When I found out I was pregnant with twins I immediately turned to the the most trusted source for information guaranteed to scare the crap out of you. Google. I googled everything. Rates of c-sections with twins, weight gain with twins, risk of gestational diabetes with twins, morning sickness and twins, how to fit through the door when pregnant with twins, patterns for easy and attractive maternity wear made from circus tents. And on and on and on.

It occurred to me that I was going to make myself crazy if I didn't take a little break from Dr Google. Luckily we had a family trip to South Dakota. What a coincidence. (Sorry I didn't mention it earlier. I am a bit of a worrier and I didn't want any robbers to google "bloggers who are on vacation" and come across me.)

So for the past week I've been driving back and forth across South Dakota with my family. For that entire time the only moments we were more than an arms length away from each other was when the kids would run away from us at various national monuments. This happened a lot. At first we were pretty uptight about it ("No you guys! Hold our hands the entire time!") but over time we relaxed ("You guys, put on your shoes before you go running over to the edge of that cliff. Or don't. Whatever.")

Being that close to my family for a week was interesting. I am a person who needs her personal space, especially when I'm pregnant. Luckily my family is pretty awesome and we managed to have a great time in spite of my occasional desire to run screaming into the Black Hills. Luckily South Dakota has a lot of prairie dogs and I find them very soothing. Just watching them relaxes me.

Since I'm dealing with a lovely case of morning sickness I got a prescription of Zofran to help with the puking during the trip. It did it's job and it only had the barely noticeable side effect of making me unable to poop for eight days.* Every so often I would feel movement in my abdomen and I would think "The babies are kicking me!" but then I would remember I am only about 8 seconds pregnant and what I most likely was feeling was my intestines slowly and gently bursting.

So all in all it was an awesome trip. I'll share some pictures later (because I know you're on the edge of your seat) but don't look for any pictures of me because of all the pictures that were taken on the trip there is not a single one of me. That's sort of depressing.

One quick story. At one point we were driving through a herd of wild donkeys and Joseph yelled "Hey! Look at all the jackasses!"** Ok, maybe that's only funny to me. Actually, maybe it's not not even funny to me. I kind of get annoyed when people think it's cute when kids swear. On the other hand it was kind of cute because he didn't know it was a swear word, he just read it in a book and thought it was the right word to use. On the other hand maybe I've spent way too much time talking about this.

And one more thing. While we were gone my parents re-did Joseph's room. They repainted it and added custom build bookshelves and a desk and it's the most awesome room ever. And my mom cleaned my house from top to bottom. Coming home to that was pretty sweet.

And one more thing. Elle drew a picture of a buffalo that kind of looked like a cave drawing and it was so cute it made me cry. Now I have to go and google "twin pregnancy and stupid emotional reactions".

*I'm not exaggerating.
**This is my reaction when I watch Fox News.

One year ago today Joseph was in the hospital and he peed in my mouth.
Four years ago today I had stretch marks.