On the Plains of North Dakota...

 A couple of weeks ago Match, Papa, SuperFan, Sissy, BIL, Biggie, Tiny, and SisterSmalls headed to North Dakota. BIL grew up in North Dakota and his parents have a house on Lake Audubon, so Sissy decided that we would baptize SisterSmalls there and make it into a little mini vacation.

That is if you consider staying in a house with 12 adults and 12 children a vacation...

For the sake of this post, let's say I do.

So at the crack of dawn, we set out...

Match, Papa, SuperFan, and I arrived to the airport to find that Sissy had backed up the entire lives of the Smalls family. (To be fair, they were staying for 10 days...)

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I did have some concerns about flying with three children, but lucky for me, I got the seat next to SisterSmalls and she was easy-peasy!

Match was lucky enough to get both boys in her row. Luckily, Aunt Airplane had Goonies downloaded on the iPad and Biggie kept busy hunting treasure for the two hour flight.

Tiny required a few seat changes, a lot of tractors, a Nintendo DS, and an iPad.

But, kudos to those babies, because they were very well behaved for the entire flight and people even complimented us. 

Sissy and SuperFan enjoyed their childless row.

Biggie's future is so bright he has to wear shades on the plane.

We finally made it and as I posted on instagram - if I pretend like there aren't twelve children running around the part of the yard you can't see, this is a very peaceful view.

That pretty much sums up our first day in North Dakota, and on our second day, when we were supposed to do all of the fun things like ride jet skis and tubes, the skies opened up and the angels cried.

It literally rained all.day.long.

Around 2:00 or so, SisterSmalls started crying and Sissy thought she might be ready for her afternoon bottle.

What a coincidence, I was also ready for mine...

The most important thing was that the sun came out on Sunday. The day that SisterSmalls and her cousin were to be baptized. Followed by a massive party at the lake house.

The food was delicious, the company was great, and I got to ride on a helicopter!

Yes, you read that right. BIL's cousin has a helicopter and he flew it over to the house and gave some rides to the partygoers. 

So fun!

Then we went on a boat ride and Match turned into MamaKennedy.

This is the view of the house and helicopter as we were floating back to the boat dock.

 All in all it was a great trip. Shorter than I would have liked, but we had a lot of fun and I would certainly go back. But only in the summer.

Here is a random picture of Tiny on the Gator. This kid loves him some John Deere products!