Glamorous Embarrassing Moments

So Friday we hopped on the extremely cramped bus and drove a little over an hour to a little town called Sandborn. There we traveled to a farm place where the guy authentically built sod houses (using the actual tool and everything) with the exception of adding a rubber inlay so as to save himself the trouble of having to rebuild them every five years or so.

These houses were insanely small. So small that I don’t think I’d be able to get all of my clothes inside of it and still have room to move, let alone live there with four other people who only bathed once a week. There is also what’s called a “soddie”, or a rich person’s version of the sod house. It’s a bit bigger, and you can actually stay in it. Seriously, they’ve set it up as a bed and breakfast! People actually pay money to dress in pioneer clothes, have no electricity, and no running water. Crazy, I say! But it was done up really nicely and unless you looked up and saw all the branches holding the roof together, you’d never notice that you’re in a house built out of dirt. Needless to say it was a very educationally awesome stop.

The next stop was a town called Walnut Grove. This was evidently one of the multiple places Laura Ingalls and her family lived whilst she was growing up. Her book On the Banks of Plum Creek is set along a pretty little creek (Plum Creek, if you can believe it) just a mile or so outside of the town. We started out there, walking over to where Laura’s dugout was located and where the table top mountain is, then down to the Big Rock where she’d watch the cattle go by (if you’re a nerd like me and have read the books a frillion times, you’ll know just what I’m talking about.).

After that, we headed back into town where the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum is. They have all sorts of fun things like replicas of the school house, another sod house, a church, and Grandma’s House. They also have the actual mantle that was inside the Ingalls residence on the TV show.

Inside the gift shop they had cool things like pioneer clothes you could by, old TV memorabilia (including a Bionic Woman lunch pail thermos. I have no idea what that has to do with LIW, but it was a cool find nonetheless.), and authentic toys and candy. CJ bought himself and Diva some marbles, a little toy where you try and get the ball into the cup, and a rock candy sucker.

We headed back home and CJ was sufficiently appreciative of how easy we have it now. He had no idea how kids managed to survive without Play Station 2.

But the best story happens to come from the sod houses at Sanborn. CJ’s teacher informed all of us chaperones that we needed to walk in front of our group of kids. I had been walking behind because I figured this would be the easiest way to keep an eye on them all. So, when she said to get in front of them, I stepped off the little gravel path to try and sneak up in front of them. However, I tripped over something in the grass. While I’m usually pretty good at recovering from a trip (I do this quite often), I couldn’t recover from this one. So three stumbling steps later I landed with a big ol’ THUD and my face in the grass. The kids all thought it was funny and I hurt nothing but my pride. The rest of the day my little group of kids kept making sure that I was in front of them. I told them I was just trying to prove why it’s so very important to STAY ON THE DAMN PATH!!!

So there you have it, a Glamorous Redneck embarrassing moment. But hey, I never said I was Graceful.