FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, I THANK GOD I'M FREE AT LAST!

After a full day of wedding festivities Saturday, the herd was able to get going fairly well on Sunday. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA oh my, I just peed my pants that was so funny! =)
We were only 1 hour off pace when we left Minot (way to go f-troop!).
We slapped Mike around a little, force fed him some Burger King and told him to get us to Bismarck while everyone took a nap.
The Pope called while we were traveling and offered to make Mike a saint for his good deed of driving but we told him he was busy getting us to Bismarck then Msp.

When we reached Bismarck, we headed straight for the house Granny grew up in.

When we pulled up in front, the neighbor thought she had won the lottery. She came out and asked if we were from Publisher's Clearing House. All that cold weather must have really got to this ladies brain over the years.

We learned from her that the current owner of Granny's house is the Mayor of New Town, and only comes home every couple months. Granny wandered around back to see how the yard looked and found a back door that was left unlocked. To her that was an invitation to enjoy a self guided tour, but she couldn't get anyone to go with her. Add B&E to the list of things that happened on the trip, I say so what, par for the course.

After Granny's house, we drove by the McKinnon's and the community pool then headed over to meet John, Jeanne, Dan and Matthew at the capitol for a private tour. Because that is how VIP's roll. We were disappointed that there wasn't a band, color guard, fire works and the Governor. Don't they know who we are for cripes sake?!

We did get the VIP treatment from John and Jeanne. They showed us parts of the capitol building that NO ONE gets to see, even the room where the state officials go to smoke dope. We all tried to stay on our best behavior, with the way things were going on this trip someone could shut down the state government by accident. (I'm sure we would have figured out how given enough time)







We learned from John that the capitol burned down in 1930, and was rebuilt for under $2 million dollars! In fact, they were given a budget of 2 million dollars and they gave money back! Now that is what I call a working government. The most skilled workers only got paid 50 cents an hour! Ouch.

1st stop was the Senate. Being a family of power, the kids all ran up to hit the gavel and call the floor to order. Way to go kids, every senator present paid attention.

The House was the next stop on the grand tour put on by the wonderful Walstad's, John and Jeanne.

Each chair in the senate and house has the below buttons. The page button is used to alert the page to a congress member. As you can see on the next picture below is a entire light grid so the pages know who can't leave their seat and get something for themselves. The pages sit on the outside isles waiting for the board to light up to spring into action. I would think of it like a ball boy in a tennis game.

The great John Walstad's office was a stop on the tour. We got to see where the true magic of the state government worked. Chris Angel eat your heart out!

All of the books below John has given his stamp of approval that everything is accurate. We couldn't get all of his books in the picture, but this gives you an idea of what a magic worker he is. If you look at the very bottom of the picture you can see his last book, "How to make your family think you authored a bunch of government books".

Off to the last stop, the branch that over turns everything the house and senate does. The supreme court, also the place where Jeanne works. Mmmmm, the spot where the main answer is "no" is where John's wife works.........things that make you go mmmmmmmm.

Jeanne's office!

She does such a great job, the Governor gave her an award!

And that Governor happens to be someone Granny used to babysit! I guess he was quite the bed wetter.

Jeanne works with one of the Supreme Court justices. There are 5 justices. Together they read 30 cases each month, that's 300 cases per year (they don't hear cases in July or Aug, Jeanne says that's when she and her co-workers get caught up)! Each justice has to write 6 cases a month. They hear everything from traffic violations to murder, basically anything that gets appealed in the lower courts. We got to see where they hear each case. Each case gets 60 minutes, that's it. Not a place for, "if the glove doesn't fit. you must acquit". Each side is allotted part of the 60 minutes to make their argument, then the case gets a decision. Seems so much longer on Law and Order.

We also saw an area where they pay tribute to famous North Dakotans. If you look closely, you'll see Dad there on the end. There was a small sign saying that his frame was on back order from China. We continue to keep our fingers crossed for the Chinese to quit making lead toys and start making large wooded frames.

After the capitol, we hit the road again. While everyone else took naps, played blokus, or watched football, Dad read the paper...with a special contraption Donovan hooked him up with.

We arrived home safely in Maple Plain about 10:00pm, Lisa and the kids weren't too happy about it. What I was happy about was the world record luggage off loading process. I'm so proud of my in-laws. sniff sniff. They can move quickly after all.

HEY! GET OFF THE BUS AND START UNLOADING YOU FIVE! Chop! chop! Let's get to it! (great memories of my dad from our family trips)

The Wedding Day

Saturday was the day of the wedding. The ceremony began at 1:30pm. Since we didn't have any plans for the morning, many of us took the opportunity to SLEEP IN! After all the fun we'd been having, we all needed it!

At 1pm we headed to St. Leo's, which is the church Dad attended with Grandma Alyce as a child. While Grandma Alyce and Grandpa Harris had a lot in common, denomination was not one of them! Grandma Alyce attended St. Leo's, while Grandpa Harris attended 1st Lutheran church in town. St. Leo's reminded Dad of a funny story...when Dad was growing up, he spent time on the Farm with his Grandpa Tom who happened to be missing a swear filter. Consequently, Dad broadened his vocabulary to include a few words his Mother Alyce could probably have done without. Dad occasionally liked to practice using those words at St. Leo's. One day he was sitting through a rather lengthy mass when he leaned over to Alyce and said, "Mom, when are we gonna get out of this G#$ Da$% place??!!" That was a proud moment for Alyce I'm sure, as anyone in the vicinity was able to hear first hand how prolific Dad's vocabulary was at such a sweet, young age.

After the ceremony, we had a few hours to horse around, so we headed over to visit the house Dad grew up in for a photo op.



Five kids, two adults, one bathroom people. It was fun to see. It's still the same color. There were two big difference we all noticed right away. First, the single car attached cellar-type garage had been converted to a two car detached garage. Second, there used to be a big evergreen in the left corner of the front yard that is no longer there.

After that, Mike drove us down the alley by Heady's old house, the Chateau where Grandma Alyce, Heady and Isy all lived then over to Heady's current residence...Somerset.



Heady is a great entertainer! She had snacks, drinks and good conversation waiting for us when we arrived. She made us so comfortable, Scott felt ok to put on women's heals.

After a nice visit with Heady, we headed back to the hotel for the wedding reception where we visited with family and danced the night away!

There was a raffle for the bride's garter, and Dad was determined to win it.

and that he did...TWICE!

It was a wonderful night...and morning for some, eh hem. Did someone say Denny's delivers?? Minot IS the Magic City.

Our scheduled time of departure Sunday was 10am, which was quite a feat of strength for some. More about that in the next post!

The old farm

So this was the day to head out to the family farm. The circus got moving "early" i.e. 10am. To keep the tradition going of something going wrong right away Pat forgot her purse in the lobby of the hotel. Thankfully we had just started our trip and people in North Dakota don't steal.

Ok, the rig got moving for oh about 5 minutes before we had to stop again to pick up Bob. That of course required all people off the bus and a 15 minute delay to see a female lion! She was so tame the kids could pet her. Watch out kids she looks hungry!

Bob now is in the rig and we are rolling to Stanley, ND kind of. A giant roadster needs gas right? Of course it does, so we stopped again after 5 minutes of driving. General Patton would be so proud of our terrific pace.

We have gas, and we hit the road, no really we did.

We got to the farm and the everyone had fun exploring the old buildings. We found some old farm artifacts to bring back with us, then had some sandwiches and chili.

Mike pulled some wood off of one of the out buildings which he plans to use to frame pictures of the farm, pretty cool idea!!

After that, we headed toward the largest producing oil rig in North America. We stopped to look at the oil rig and it was a sight to see. The flame burning off the natural gas was towering.

We had a long day and headed home to celebrate Heady's 97th birthday early (it's in January). She wondered if we were celebrating now because we didn't think she'd make it to January. HA! Not gonna happen people, have you met/seen Heady??? She'll probably out live several of us!

The party, of course, was a good time. We had Sammy's Pizza, a Minot "must have", played games and sang karaoke. After some chit chatting, game playing, and singing Alex brought out his guitar. That little guy has some great talent and I think we might see him on stage some day. Keep it up Al!

Saturday is next and it involves a wedding.

Curling but 1st....

The road show had a tough time getting going yesterday morning because a motor home doesn't go anywhere if you can't turn it on. Yes folks the keys went missing and no keys means no circus. Ah but a stinky bathroom didn't slow us down missing keys wouldn't either. The spare keys were located and off we went to go curl! On the way to curling guess what we found.....ah yes the missing keys. Da ling ding ding ding diiiinnnnngg. They were tucked away in Kaylee's purse where Mike put them the night before!

Thank you Bob for taking us to your curling club. Bob gave us all a crash course lesson with props and everything. As he said, he gave us 5 hours of classroom in 15 minutes. The only thing that was missing was a video from the 70's. It was a big hit for the whole group. I think that granny has a good shot at the Olympics.

After curling we needed to eat....again. What better to fill our gullets than a Thanksgiving dinner. Bob and Eleanore hosted a Thanksgiving for 30 at the historic library in Minot, and no it's not the only library in town. The meal was fantastic, everyone had a full belly. If you have a full belly of meat, potatoes and stuffing you do what comes naturally....bust out a fiddle, guitar and the gift of song. For the small time frame of 5 hours we were entertained by Melissa and her Dad with sing along songs. It wouldn't be a Walstad function without some sort of karaoke.

Mary shared a funny story about Dick. He was an only child for 4 years before, as she says, s%$* happened...AKA Pep, Bob, and Mary, came along.