We finished up our western rotations with wonderful weather and morning sickness, which sort of sapped all the joy out of 3000 miles of cross country travel and our return home. As I was loading these pictures I realized that since our return to Pittsburgh, the lack of activity caused by constant nausea, and constant nausea has resulted in me taking 2 pictures, an average of 1 a month. My summer average? about 1000.
While in Wyoming we would see Tyler on the weekends, he lived in Riverton, WY during the week and would return to us on Friday night. This particular Friday he got off work early and came home to us bearing pumpkin carving tools and the Halloween spirit! He took the girls outside and gutted and carved pumpkins with them all alone, even helping Alex pick out seeds to roast later.
We came out of it with a pumpkin for everyone! Alex's was the 3 pumpkins, Heidi's the cat pirate, Tyler's the gnome and Quinn and I went traditional with plain faces.
Everyone thought I drew Quinn's into a bunny. It is not a bunny. The girls were obsessed with ice dispenser on Grandpa's fridge. They would ask for ice for desert every day and just carry it around in cups and suck on it.
By our last weekend there the girls had the farm chores down pat. I would park the truck and they would run off to get the buckets and feed the cows and do whatever else needed to be done. I loved when Heidi took control of things and taught Daddy the ropes one Saturday.
We took an opportunity before we left to drive up and spend a few days with Grandma in Billings before we returned to Pittsburgh. One of the girls favorite places was the Western Heritage Museum where they got to dress up and play with a log cabin doll house and all sorts of stuff.
There were old typewriters and an old post office, we didn't make it past the first floor.
The girls each got a one on one date with Grandma, and we watched Dr. Quinn and visited the farm to hunt for fossils, it was a wonderful time.
When we got back to the farm there were 4 kittens that had been dropped off and the girls immediately adopted them. Alex was allergic so we had to cut finger holes in a pair of Daddy's socks to cover her arms so she could pick them up and lug them around everywhere with her. And she did.
Quinn was pretty enamored herself and the cats were incredibly patient and kind to her, with the tail tugging and hair pulling and all.
Everyday the kids just wanted to go to the farm and play with the cats, for hours. Since I was reaching the "curl in a ball all day" stage of morning sickness, it worked out that I would lay in the back of the truck and watch as they tried to herd the cats all day.
It was so funny.
During our stay there Grandpa spent every single day except Sunday pregnancy testing cattle. Usually he was a few hours away, but finally at the very end we got to drive to Thermopolis and see him in action!
It was a double bonus because the operation was right at the head of the Wind Rivier Canyon, one of my favorite spots, and it was beautiful.
Everyone was really nice to the car full of kids that showed up out of the blue to watch the cowboys work.
We got to share in lunch (the kids got an entire soda to themselves and were over the moon about it) and explore.
Quinn wasn't quite sure about all these cows.
When things started going, we had front row seats.
The poop part really grossed them out.
We got permission to drive up on the mountain a bit to catch a picture of the whole operation. It was on an Indian Reservation.
We drove up the canyon a ways when the girls were done with the cows, poop and dust, and enjoyed the views for a bit.
Our last cat day was a sad one for te girls.
Nothing like a common goal of collecting cats into a bucket to unite 3 sisters.
We also got to stop by "Uncle Mark's place" a couple times to see all the taxidermy creations.
We left Worland on a freezing Wednesday morning and headed toward Devils Tower! It was sad to go but we were excited to get the driving behind us before the snow came. It never did and we had great traveling weather the whole time.
We were antsy about time and didn't stay at the tower as long as the girls would have liked, which probably would have been forever, they loved it there.
We took the trail part way around and had lots of rocks to climb on and jump off of.
Everyone got to explore at their own pace.
Heidi and Daddy were on a trust fall kick and kept finding bigger and bigger rocks to jump off of.
Fearless.
Thankfully Quinn didn't quite grasp the concept.
Everyone was sad when it was time to leave.
We made it into South Dakota a ways before stopping for the night and the next day we pushed through to Rochester, Minnesota where we got to spend the entire day of Halloween with our old neighbors and great friends from Pittsburgh who had moved just before we left on our trip.
It was a FREEZING Halloween but that didn't stop the kids from trick or treating and we had homemade rootbeer, cookies, taco soup and a move afterwards. It was a lot of fun especially for the kids!
We made it back to Pittsburgh Saturday November 1st and the real nausea hit. Since then we have been trying to find a "normal" routine which has been terribly inconsistent. Tyler started his bariatric surgery rotation when we got back and once again was getting up early and coming home late. This was pretty hard on a Mom on 3 who just wanted to lay on the couch all day but had to wrangle kids into chores and homeschool. He was amazing though, and did the grocery shopping and plenty of the cooking, cleaning and parenting while I was out. Also I was super lucky Alex stepped up to the plate and made dinner more than once, did dishes, mothered Quinn, mopped floors and generally helped me and her sisters survive the first trimester. Heidi was a wonderful help as well, and was great at entertaining Quinn whenever I needed her to be distracted.
We had Thanksgiving with friends in the neighborhood, the Lunt family, the girls love their little boys. It was nice to be with people and not have to cook, although of course we did because we had to bring all our favorites!
Now it's nearly Christmas and this has been the least festive holiday season ever. It's somewhat disappointing because I'm a BIG party, fun, make festivities out of everything person, but the nausea is still lingering now at week 16 and i'm not back to full mothering capacity yet. Tyler finished his rotation last week and passed his test so we have had him no strings attached for 7 days now and it's been wonderful!
