Family vacation 2011

We recently returned from our first road trip as a family of four.

Really, it was two trips in one. Part one was a weekend with friends in the Black Hills. 6 families, 24 people, 13 kids aged 4 and under, all in one house. It was happy, beautiful chaos.

We went to Mount Rushmore and the Flintstones village. Mostly, we enjoyed one another's company and let the kids be kids. There were impromptu ballet recitals and games of tag, hide and seek, and hopscotch. There were hours spent drawing with sidewalk chalk, pretending to be horses, and putting rocks into little piles (most popular with the under-2 set).

Super Goonie's Adventures in Chanhassen

This is Super Goonie.

He belongs to a group of my friends who call ourselves The Goonies. We met on the Internet, most of us through a birth board for mothers with due dates in March 2007. Back then, we were a diverse and hormonal group of expectant and new mothers united by our interest in discussing our babies with strangers. Today, we're parents of four-year-olds - and many more children as well.