bluegills, bikes & mammoths

I am wound so tight right now, my To-Do list would empty a pen's ink cartridge.  When it seems I couldn't get any tighter, I crank it up a notch.  Any day now, the dam will bust and everything will go flinging into summer.  Oh, summer.  I feel like a maple leaf bud just before it unfolds, all wound tight with several fingers getting ready to spread in every direction.  (The Mr. just read this and said, No, you're more like a firecracker about to explode.)
We've been home for over a week (a week and a half? two weeks?), we were sick and moving slow but now, now!  Plant fruit trees, order chicks, buy plane tickets, reserve llamas, finish building garden beds, hand-fork garden beds, plant garden beds, build fence, set up watering system, build chicken coup, fence chickens out of garden, set up trampoline, build sand box, build green house, build green house beds, potty train Juniper, move dirt, find chicken sitter, re-read Hemingway before next book club, get a dog....  This summer already feels like a pre-planned Choose Your Own Adventure, the chapters are already written, we just have to choose.  Right now, we choose garden beds over clean bathrooms.  We choose hand-forking dirt over folded laundry.  It's spring.  Summer is within arm's reach.    
The only photos I took this week:

I hate to post so many photos from our vacation because in the end, home is where the real magic happens.  But I will anyway because, you know, this is my blog and how often do we get to see our Montana family?  While it may seem that we were vacationing for several weeks, it was only one.  We turkey hunted the first half, then found cool stuff to do with the kids the second half.  A perfect balance.

We left turkey camp to stay in a nearby state park, complete with playground and fishing ponds.  The wind was torrential, grey skies ominous and the robotic weather service guy kept saying, "Extreme weather warning.  No unnecessary travel.  Underground shelter advised."  That didn't stop us from taking the kids fishing, even though Sam couldn't stand up in the wind.  My man dug up worms, the kids hunkered down on a dock and actually got to catch fish, over and over and over again, then toss them back.  It gave new meaning to Juniper's current favorite mother goose rhyme:
One, two, three, four, five...    

Once I caught a fish alive...

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten...

Then I let it go again...

Why did you let it go?

Because it bit my finger so...

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.  


As my husband--the fish biologist--said, little bluegills are the best kid's fish.  They're easy to catch and tough as nails.  Juniper actually got to catch and reel with her own fishing pole.  She was ecstatic.  (Owen was trying to get over his fear of the hook, which really did bite him in the finger last time he went fishing.)

:: The great thing about tempestuous weather and tick season: we had the campground entirely to ourselves.  Lots of hardtop loops for the kids to bike.

Despite five members of our family trying to show her otherwise, Juniper insists on holding the handlebars like this:

Which may or may not be related to her first face-plant:

Owen's tumbles were more closely associated to the container of pink bubble gum he was trying to carry around.

:: Our last day and night, we headed up to Hot Springs, South Dakota to visit the mammoth dig site.

The theory is, this site was a big sinkhole where mammoth's were lured to drink, fell in, couldn't get out, then suffocated or starved to death.  (Fun!)
Lately, Juniper has been in a more aggressive stage.  (She frequently says things like, I wanna STOMP on it!  Or, I wanna EAT it!  Or, I wanna SMASH it!)  When she saw one of the big mammoth skeletons she said, "I wanna RIDE it!"

Can't wait to see what next year brings.  

P.S.  My head's not there yet, but Happy Mother's Day!  You know who you are.