The Sandcastle: Craziness

This summer has been a little bit crazy. After school ended for me in mid-June, Kirby left for Boston on a 10 day work trip. During that time, we learned that Kirby’s Grandpa Sand was close to passing away, and the day Kirby returned home was the day he died. We had already talked about leaving the next day to go to Killdeer, North Dakota, and that’s what we did. Kirby got back from the airport, we started packing, finishing packing at about 1am, got up in the morning and took off driving east.

The kids were great in the car and we had a very good traveling day. We had made it to Coeur D’Alene so early that we decided to just go for it and get another 165 miles to Missoula. Well, we were getting close and I told Kirby to get on my Droid and find a hotel room. We called the hotel chain we like and they said, “Oh we don’t have any rooms in Missoula.” And when Kirb told me that I thought he meant at that particular chain of hotels. Oh no, it turned out there were no hotel rooms AT ALL. Not one. Nothing. We thought there must be something and so were calling all over the place, and Kirb was finally saying, “Got any rooms tonight? Or conference rooms, closets, anything we can stay in?” But there really was nothing. I think we just didn’t realize how busy the summer can be, because in the winter there is definitely no worry about getting a room, and usually in the summer, we camp on the way, or make it so we get to places where we have friends to stay with. I was upset, only because Jeff doesn’t sleep in the car very well, and it was already about 10pm and he hadn’t slept yet. I didn’t care about us, but the kids need their sleep. But there was nothing we could do, so we decided to try the next towns, which if you know Montana at all you would know there’s not a whole lot on that stretch. We called any and all small towns and there was nothing. We then called Butte finally, which is about 100 miles away, and there was nothing there either. I couldn’t believe it. We had to call all the way to Bozeman, and there were a few rooms left at a nicer place, so we got one. We ended up driving around 220 extra miles that night, and didn’t get there until after 3am. Yuck.

Also, in the mean time, at about 1am, I was driving along (as I had been the whole day, I drove 825 miles that day) and suddenly, up ahead, I see a silhouette created by one of those random street lights along the interstate. I incredulously look and realize: it’s a horse. A HORSE. A big, beautiful paint horse. Kirby was still awake with me so I swear I was not hallucinating, and I immediately tried to slow down as I see the horse start trotting out on to the road. It was on the right side, so I moved over to the left lane, and I just couldn’t slow down fast enough braking as hard as I could and at the last second I decided to try to go back to the left lane, because a person just cannot hit a horse with their car, they are too big, and all I could think was the worst case scenario of hitting that horse, and my kids and husband were in the car with me, and I knew my car was designed to handle steering while hard braking, so I did it… just enough to move but not truly swerve. I seriously swear that I swished its tail. They are so big, they can cause major destruction to the car and the people inside….I have a friend whose family member died because of that, and I just willed myself to not hit that horse. But I couldn’t believe I didn’t hit it. Even when I decided to move I didn’t think my slight movement was going to be enough, but thankfully it was. I pulled over for a few minutes to let the adrenaline whoosh through me and just settle down a bit. Needless to say, I had no trouble staying awake driving.

Jeff had finally fallen asleep, but the horse incident woke him up and he was up until we got to our hotel in Bozeman two hours later. We all went in and tried to get to sleep as soon as we could, but it was about 4am by the time the lights were out. They only had single king beds available, and so we tried having Jeff sleep between us. It might have been hilarious had it not been 4am after driving 825 miles, but it was not so hilarious that Jeff was so deliriously tired that he couldn’t fall asleep and he kept feeling around our faces, sticking his fingers in our eyes, rolling around, banging his arm into our faces (not on purpose, just thrashing around), pushing with his feet, saying “Why are your eyes closed?” and other things. Yikes. Finally, he fell asleep. We had asked for a late check out and they gave us a few hours extra which was really nice. We took advantage of them and even got some swimming in, and did some errands before we got going.

We decided to just go the rest of the way since we had traveled so much further than we had planned the first day, and we had another good travel day with the kids, and made it to Killdeer about 9pm that evening. The entire family was already there (besides us) and had been there for Grandpa Sand’s passing, which was very special to everyone.

The next evening, there was a memorial service for Grandpa Sand, and we did some music and Jenny had made a wonderful video. I loved hearing the stories people told, especially seeing the tough cowboy type men getting up there and just laying their hearts and emotions out there for people to see. And my favorite part was Jenny playing “Frankie and Johnny” on the harmonica. She did awesome, and that was a song Grandpa Sand used to sing all the time. His signature. I didn’t even know she was going to do it. It was so sweet! We got to spend some time with the whole family earlier during that day, and had some time out at “The Mountain” as the family calls the land outside of Killdeer where there is the cabin and bunkhouse that Grandpa Sand built himself, starting with a cookout breakfast over the fire, then a search for arrowheads and other treasures, and Jeep and 4-wheeler rides. We were definitely missing Grandpa Sand.

The next morning was the funeral, and the church was packed full of people whose lives had been touched in some way by Bob Sand. It was a very nice service and luncheon afterwards, and then most the family had to leave. We decided to spend one more night out at the mountain to just relax a little and have some fun. Unfortunately, both kids were having a hard time that day and it wasn’t the most relaxing thing in the world, but we still were glad we stayed a little longer. It was also the day Kirby found out he was going to have to leave in one week to travel to Italy for two weeks for work. We had planned to go to South Dakota for a little while and then make it back before my good friend Emily got married. I was in the wedding and singing for the wedding, and Jeff was supposed to be in the wedding. We decided that it would be good to be able to be with family while Kirby was in Italy, so I was going to stay in South Dakota with the kids, Kirby was going to leave for Italy from Rapid City, then return there and we could all make the road trip home, making our trip a month long. So I called Emily and we made a plan to just have me fly back out to Oregon with Cora for the wedding, and Jeff would not be the ring bearer, which was ok with Emily. She also picked up my dress for the wedding, and Kirby’s passport so I could get it to her when I came out for the wedding weekend.

Anyway, we left for South Dakota that next day and decided to go visit my Gramma and Grampa Swisher in Rapid City. We had a really nice visit! It was great to be able to have time just with them. Usually we see them at the big family get togethers and there never seems to be any quality time for catching up. We had a wonderful dinner of beef roulade and other yummy stuff (my gram is a GREAT cook). We then got to hang out and chat, and after the kids were down, we spent some time out on the deck just talking away until way after dark. The next morning we had a beautiful breakfast, and hung out for a while before heading to Spearfish.

(ok I have to write that I just got back to writing this post after a LONG time away, I probably won’t be too detailed and just post some photos. Sorry, just so behind!)

We had a wonderful time visiting family, and we didn’t return until a month after we left. I had a trip back to OR because of my friend Emily’s wedding, and Kirby went to Italy for 2 weeks. We saw lots of family, went to the lake, played outside in the hot weather, went to the festival in the park, saw friends, went to the rodeo and fireworks for the 4th of July, went to the fish hatchery, went to the carnival, went to Storybook Island, so much fun stuff.

Jeff muddy after throwing rocks into the creek.