Tim, Barb, Merida and I celebrated Wendy's birthday in Rapid City, SD. As she said, this is the most brothers and sisters who have celebrated her birthday in years. It may have been five years or more when there were a lot of siblings to share her birthday. It seems that I may not have celebrated her birthday since 1971. After I started college, I came home only for holidays and summer vacation.

Mike cooked the steaks, which by now he has become a master chef. After dinner we watched the Yankees play baseball on TV.

Wendy had minor surgery earlier in the week, but was feeling much better by the time we celebrated her birthday.

The next night we went to an Italian restaurant in Rapid city which was very good.

 

October Birthdays

We began arriving in Chamberlain on the last Friday of October (2012), and by early evening seven of us were having pizza and beer at Steve's place. The "girls" wanted to camp out at Steve's new office, but we decided to sleep at Steve's house (spare beds, couches and recliners were the beds for the evening).

Wendy had to go back to Rapid City for a medical procedure on Saturday morning. After her father in law came to pick her up, we made our way to this large auction. There were quite a few guns that were being auctioned off, and many went for around $100. After seeing what else they were selling, and not finding anything worth staying around for, we made our way to Kimball, SD.

In Kimball, we went out to the Irish John Smith farm, took a tour through St. Margaret's church, and spent some time with Aunt Irene. She is still "one sharp lady." Before we left, a few of the siblings went into the grocery store. While in the store, they ran into the owner of grandpa and grandma's house...yes, grandma's ghost is still washing dishes at the kitchen sink, and he thinks that Neil is in the house as there is a lot of noise coming from the basement. As he said, "Neil used to say there were dead people buried in the basement." He did say that there had been a lot more activity in the house recently...I wonder if it had something to do with Mark Ryan's recent passing....hmmm.

Tim "mountain man" and Wendy. Tim is trying to fit in with the "regular folk" who live around Lead, SD.

VJ, Merida, Terry, Ann, Barb, Irene and Tim

Barb, Irene and Tim

Irene and Jack in the 60s.

 

Smith Reunion "Amazing Race"

By now, many of you know that our family is very competitive. We like to win and can't stand to lose. Each reunion we hold involves some type of competitive event. This year was no different.

Steve had created an "Amazing Race" in Chamberlain. While its not the first such race we've undertaken, it probably was the most notable. It began at the golf course in Oacoma - with a putting event. Each time your team made its puts, you could pull a card from the jar. Once you had two different sets of numbers, you could advance onto the next clue. This took us to an antique store where we had to find something "that reminded us of our youth". From there we made our way at the Silver Dollar bar (see photos below). It was a planned detour as we had to drink beer from this very large glass boot and eat a dozen "rocky mountain oysters". I haven't had these prairie oysters since my high school graduation night...yuk! Then we made our way to the campground to retrieve flags by riding these adult tricycles...my legs were hurting afterwards. Our final destination was St. Joseph's Indian School. The clue was easy - a place that dad would have taken us when we were kids. Because he had so many children, he had to look for free places...and the museum is free. But it is very cool and worth the stop.

Tim and Merida

Barb and Ann waiting for the Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Terry drinking his "fair share"

 

Yum, yum!

Ryan (L) and Terry (R), winners of the Amazing Race 2012. Steve in center.

 

Golfing on the Missouri River

One Sunday morning, we found ourselves hitting golf balls into the Missouri River. The objective was to see who could "hit" or "get closest" to a buoy floating in the tributary feeding into the river. By the way, the balls we were hitting were retrieved from lakes in Rapid City golf courses. They were water-logged anyway.

 

Everything you see on this cake is edible. The edible photo is one of our family taken in 1975. Mom, Wendy, Ann and Steve are the "October birthdays".

Getting ready to golf. See the bag of balls? By the way, any photo on this page can be enlarged.

Steve aiming for the buoy

 

 

Steve's New Law Office

Steve's new law office is the old Brule State Bank building. Inside is very modern, and much more roomier than his old law office. I am not certain how long he worked in the old law office location - maybe 25 years or so. Recently Steve went back to Eureka to pick up dad's old office desk and chair. These are shown below.

 

 

Copyright IrishJohnSmith.com