gallivanting

I inevitably forget my camera when we go out, but thanks to our cool new phones, (we got the most amazing deal on a new phone plan which was very exciting because some kids wanted phones, some kids wanted texting -- can you believe we made it so long without it?  And it is already causing trouble...) I was able to take some pictures while we were out last weekend.  They're not the best, but they will do.

We went down to Springfield to see Charles run in his third cross country meet.  He is doing really well and got 13th out of over 90 kids.  He was very excited because they gave the first 20 a medal.  I have no pictures of him, not that he would've let me, so I suppose since I didn't even think of it he obviously has conditioned me.  He rode home on the bus so we took the three youngest over to New Salem.  It is so beautiful there and they happened to be having a bluegrass festival.  Matthew sat and listened to some great music while the kids and I visited some of the little dwellings.  And by little I mean minuscule-y tiny.  Some of those families had 9 or 10 kids with only one room!  We think we have it so bad sometimes and we in all actuality absolutely do not.  We came home and thought our house was so spacious and had a lot more rooms than we actually need.  A separate kitchen and indoor toilet are merely luxuries.  We also decided that what we do need is a family bluegrass band, doesn't everyone?  There were people playing the banjo, the ukulele, the dulcimer, the bucket (?), apparently anything goes -- now I know what we're getting for Christmas...

After New Salem we missed an important turn, but decided that we were perfectly capable of finding the freeway by taking country roads in the correct general direction.  Normally our rule is to never turn around or backtrack, but  we ran into this:

And a whole lot of this:

And had basically decided that the new rule was that yellow lines on the road were mandatory when we ran into this:

Can you see that rusty car in the silo?  It was amazing and must have happened during a tornado years ago!  And to think that we might have gone through our whole life without seeing it just because it is on an extremely remote Illinois back road -- that was a close call!