Hillary's 8th Birthday!

That's our baby, Hillary. Does she look eight years old to you? Because that's what she is as of today! (Compare.) For breakfast she requested doughnuts from The Donut Hole, so she went with Susan this morning to pick up a half-dozen (and frou-frou coffees for Mommy and Daddy). She opened a birthday gift, too--an outfit, complete with sunglasses, from her SC aunt, uncle, and cousin--and ended up wearing it today. Then she was ready to begin her busy day.

A few weeks ago when I phoned for a haircut, I learned that today at noon was the only available opening, so I took it. When I hung up the phone and Hillary learned that my haircut would be on her birthday, she started to cry! June 19 was supposed to be all about her, I guess. However, she handled it just fine once today--and the haircut appointment--finally rolled around. The whole family accompanied me to the salon, from which we headed afterward to Sanford's (Hillary's request) for birthday dinner.

Suzanna, Hillary, and Abigail pose with Daddy!

Hillary had planned to share a Buffalo chicken salad with me, but after a few bites, she decided that it was too spicy for her tongue--and ended up swapping her share of the salad for Susan's bowl of chicken noodle soup. However, the real reason for being at Sanford's, of course, was the complimentary birthday cookie sundae (the server led us in singing "Happy Birthday to You" when she delivered the sundae to Hillary): a plate-sized chocolate chip cookie covered with three scoops of vanilla ice cream, one covered in strawberry sauce, one in butterscotch, and one in chocolate, sprinkled in butterscotch chips and chocolate chips and decorated with dollops of canned "whipped cream" product and a maraschino cherry. Behold:

She shared, and we all gorged ourselves and left in time for the girls to stop at home and change into swimming suits (and for Hillary to open another gift: matching outfits from her NE aunt for Hillary and her Build-a-Bear Workshop teddy bear) before the next event in Hillary's day: a swimming party at the West River Community Center. I went grocery shopping while Susan supervised the swimmers (our three girls plus a handful of Hillary's friends), after which Susan brought them back to our house for the birthday party. They played games, they opened gifts, they ate tacos-in-a-bag for supper, they played more games, they ate birthday cake, and they got into pajamas and nestled into their sleeping bags for a movie before the sleepover.

One of the girls sleeping over is Madeline, Hillary's best friend and our neighbor. Madeline's younger brother was part of the swimming/playing troupe, but he's not spending the night, so his parents, Chuck and Reba, stopped over after supper to pick him up. Of course, they were here for quite a while visiting before hauling him away for the night. Hillary's aunts Cassie, Sandy, and Cathy all phoned today, too, although Hillary was too distracted by the presence of friends in the house to concentrate on lengthy telephone conversations with any of them today.

Love that expression on Hillary's face! She looks so much like her aunt Cassie. Anyhoo, Hillary is holding up a necklace with the letter "H" on it from her friend Madeline. Not coincidentally, Hillary gave Madeline an "M" necklace for her birthday a couple weeks ago. Reba told us that Madeline wanted to give a matching necklace to Hillary as a token of their friendship. Ahhhhh!

The flip-flops on Hillary's ice cream cake are appropriate considering her wardrobe and today's swimming activity. She also gave flip-flops to her guests as party favors today.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon and evening in the kitchen. We have a lot of venison in our freezer (from Susan's dad and brother, both of whom are hunters), and I was on a mission to use some more of it. I created a robust marinade (dark beer, red onions, fresh rosemary, and various seasonings) for some venison chops and set them in the fridge to soak up the flavor overnight. I will grill them tomorrow for dinner.

Then I assembled the meat grinder attachment for our mixer and made some hamburger out of equal parts of sirloin tip roast, various venison cuts, and smoked bacon. I stopped grinding when Chuck and Reba arrived, but now that they're gone and the girls are quieting down, I'm going to turn that into Swedish meatballs, fry them up, make some gravy for them, and refrigerate them for our enjoyment in the next couple days. Cooking at midnight! Woo-hoo!!

While I was in the kitchen earlier this afternoon, one of the party guests, Lita, came upstairs, sent on an errand from Hillary, and found me before anyone else. She started her question with, "Hillary's Dad, can you . . . ?" I thought that was cute. I went downstairs with her and helped Hillary with her request. As I left the room to go back upstairs, I heard one of the girls say, "Your dad is so nice." Awwww.

Also nice is little Hillary. We can hardly believe that our youngest child is already so old! We have eight years of great memories and are looking forward to decades more!!

Documentary on Northwest ND

Have you heard of a recent documentary called Crude Independence? I just stumbled upon some Web sites regarding it, and I'll bet that many readers of Pensive? No, Just Thinking would find it interesting. Its topic is the current oil boom in ND with a focus on how it's affecting small-town life in northwest ND, where I grew up and where my dad lives! Check these out:

• an interview with the documentarians, Noah Hutton (son of actors Timothy Hutton and Debra Winger) and his step-brother Sam Howard (son of actor Arliss Howard) [the executive producer is Jonathan Demme, famous director, producer, and actor]
• a press release for the documentary's showing at the Oxford Film Festival this past February
• another interview with them after their film won "Best Documentary" at the Oxford Film Festival (includes the trailer* for the documentary)
• the documentary's Web site (also includes the trailer*)

It appears to be a fair look at how the resurrection of the oil industry in western ND is affecting the quiet, rural lifestyle of those who have grown up in the region. I'd like to watch the entire documentary someday!

*The trailer includes an interviewee who uses crude (pardon the pun) language. Don't watch it in the presence of children or adults with delicate sensibilities.

Norwegian Camp, Day 4

Camp Trollfjorden ended today with a church service at Metigoshe Lutheran Church followed by brunch before we packed up and left. Metigoshe Ministries is getting ready to start summer camps, so all the camp staff were on hand today to lead music throughout the service. Some of them played guitar, keyboard, bass, harmonica, and drums while the rest stood on risers behind the altar and sang with the wall of clear and stained-glass windows behind them overlooking the lake--a lovely view. The floor of the A-frame church is made of pebbles covering the ground, and there are screen-covered vents along the sloping walls to let air into and out of the building. Being inside the rustic church and hearing the upbeat, modern Christian songs made me feel as though I were a kid at Bible camp myself!

Trollfjorden staff had set out cold cereal early in the morning to "tide over" those who just couldn't wait for brunch. After church, we had our final meal at Trollfjorden: vafler og pannekaker ["waffles and pancakes"] topped with bær saus og fløtekrem ["berry sauce and whipped cream"] or sirup ["syrup"], eppler og appelsiner ["apples and oranges"], blåbær banan brød ["blueberry banana bread"], yoghurt, saft, and kaffe. We resisted the urge to go back for seconds because we had plans for dinner--more on that in a moment . . .

It was a great weekend filled with learning and having fun (the girls had a blast and want to come back again next summer). We enjoyed meeting new people and getting to know better not only the other two attendees from our own lodge in Dickinson but also the two people attending from the Vang Lodge near Killdeer (remember their having hosted us for Syttende Mai?). Mange tusen takk for alt, Trollfjorden ["Many thousand thanks for everything, Trollfjorden"]!

View Larger Map

We were in no particular rush to get back to Dickinson, so we chose an unusual route home that would take us through towns and terrain we had never seen. We started by driving around Lake Metigoshe and then made our way to Bottineau. After a photo session with a gigantic snowmobile-riding turtle (see below), we went to Denny's Pizza Inn for some of their wonderful pizza (thus the light brunch, mentioned above). Five years ago, on our way back home from visiting my sister Cathy in OR, we drove through Bottineau on our way to visit the International Peace Garden. A friend had told me beforehand that Denny's in Bottineau serves the best pizza in ND, so we decided to try it out. He was right; it did--and still does.

The ladies pose in front of Tommy the Turtle. Here is his story.

Then we "took the backroads" to Minot and stopped at the Scandinavian Heritage Park (an appropriate stop for this particular weekend, no?), spending several hours perusing the gift shop (notable T-shirt slogan: "Norwegian Girls!"), wandering the trails in the park, touring the buildings, and posing for photographs. The park celebrates the five Scandinavian countries--Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland--and has buildings and statues to represent them all. It's a great (and free!) place, and the weather was perfect for being outdoors.

Notable story: When standing at the top of the waterfall in the park, Abigail stepped up onto the railing in order to get a better peek at the water below, and one of her flipflops fell off, tumbled down the waterfall, and lodged itself in the rocks and out of our reach. So she spent the rest of the afternoon hopping along on one foot, peeking into the buildings from outside, and crying over her lost shoe. We'll have to return someday when she is more securely shod and can go into all the buildings. In the meantime, some groundsperson someday is going to discover a bright yellow and orange flipflop either wedged between two rocks or else floating leisurely downstream.

This troll sits on an elaborately carved log bench in the Heritage Center.

Look! He's frightening the children!

Oh, wait, they were only kidding. Friendly troll!

The Norwegian flag flies alongside the flags of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, all of them flanked by the flags of Canada and the United States of America. They comprise the flag display just to the north of the Heritage Center.

This windmill represents Denmark but was built by a man from Powers Lake, ND--just a few miles from where I grew up!

This stavkyrkje ["stave church"] towers over the grounds of the park and is definitely the highlight--a beautiful building with a fascinating history. Read about it here.

This stabbur ["storehouse"] is decorated with some of the same kind of intricate woodcarving featured on the stavkyrkje. Note the grass growing on the roof! I wonder how they get the lawnmower (or the goat) up there . . .

From Minot we drove south to Washburn and then headed west for a pretty drive on curvy roads that took us over and alongside the Missouri River, past little lakes tucked between hills, and into a horizon of green grasslands and buttes rising in the distance. We stopped for supper in Beulah because we know from prior experience that the Subway restaurant there still offers creamy Italian dressing for its sandwiches. Sadly, we now know that it used to offer creamy Italian dressing. It has gone the way of the national chain and discontinued that choice of sandwich topping. Heavy sigh. Still, the subs were tasty, as were the ice cream treats from Dairy Queen on our way north out of town.

"But why north?" you wonder. Yes, going south from Beulah to the Interstate and then west to Dickinson would have been a more direct route home, but I wanted to go to Zap. I had never been there, but I had heard of the infamous Zip to Zap (read this and watch this) and wanted to be able to say that I, too, had zipped to Zap. So zip there we did. We drove through town (it didn't take very long) and then got back on the road, making our way to Richardton to glance at the beautiful Assumption Abbey there. We took Old Highway 10 from there through Taylor and into Dickinson.

What a carefree day full of culture and nature! But it's good to be back home, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again.

This guy waved to us from the north side of the road just outside Golden Valley (after we had zipped out of Zap).

Here's a view of the Assumption Abbey. We intend to take the girls to the abbey for a tour someday. Would you like an online tour? Then click here.

P.S. No, Susan did not get an uninterrupted night of sleep last night. Early this morning, Abigail made her way to Susan's room to announce that she had thrown up. Abigail was fine afterward and fine all day today. I guess she just felt as though she should do her part to make sure that our children interrupted Susan's sleep every night of our stay at Camp Trollfjorden. Mission accomplished, Abigail and Hillary.