We're still here....

It’s been a long time since my last post, but mostly for good reasons. We had a really busy weekend with a garage sale, a picnic up at one of our favorite spots, and a Sunday spent pulling out the new camper and playing around with it while also completing a boatload of house chores. I left on Monday for a work trip to Wilmington, NC. While I missed the kids and Glenn terribly, I have to admit that it was nice to spend a few days at a conference on the beach. It’s easier for me to travel these days because the kids are in such good hands with their dad and I can talk to them on the phone at night for a few minutes. Well, I use the term “talk” pretty loosely. Will and I can talk but it mostly involves such questions from him as “where are you?” “did you get me a present yet?” “what is it?” I can still find out a few snippets from him about his day but he ultimately gets distracted, puts the phone down on the table and runs off. Reina’s conversations are a little more difficult at this age. I’ll get a cheerful, “hi mama” and then several unintelligible phrases followed by a lot of heavy breathing. I”ll talk to her and then tell her to give the phone back to daddy, which she rarely does. Thank goodness for unlimited nights and weekends on the ol’ cell phone.

I did have a really nice 'mommy' moment after I arrived home last night. I had a long day of meetings and then air travel that seriously did not look like it would ever end. After driving home from the airport, I checked in on everyone and then fell asleep. I woke up several hours later by Glenn bringing Reina into our room. She rolled on the bed, discovered I was there and said in a too-loud-for-3 a.m.-voice, "Mommy's here!!" We snuggled for a few minutes and then she attempted to talk to me for the next two hours. True story. She ask a bunch of non-English questions and then she'd launch into our game of 'list every member and ask where/what they are doing at that moment in time.' Frankly, it's a pretty easy game for me at 3:00 a.m. "Where's Pop-pop?" "He's sleeping." "Where's Wicky?" "She's sleeping." etc. etc. etc. Will was happy to see me at the respectable hour of 6:15 a.m. but he demand to know what I brought him back and he was not impressed with his new tshirt.

In the last month, we’ve really started to notice Will’s independence more and more. During those weeks that Reina was recovering from her tonsillectomy, I’d often let Will stay home from preschool or pick him up early so that he’d have the afternoon at home. He’d play for a while and then he’d inform me that he just wanted to play in his room by himself. I don’t think Reina gets in his stuff as much as he likes to just do his own thing and be independent. He’s starting to really pay attention to what he wears and he’ll often pick out his own outfit for school. This is a great development but the only problem is that he can’t reach the clothes hanging in his closet so when he comes out of his room fully dressed in the morning (like he did while I was gone), you can be darn sure that that outfit was pulled out of the dirty clothes basket. Ah well, details details. We are going to just be happy that he’s figuring this stuff out and I’m buying him a stepstool this weekend so he can reach the clean stuff.

As I mentioned, we headed up to Vedauwoo for a picnic last weekend. Our fearless kids and crazy puppy had a great time. We picked pinecones....

Sold tickets to the 'gun show'.....Demonstrated a serious need for a haircut and intense face scrubbing... but managed to still look cute while doing it.... Climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed.... Looked cute and taught Will how to pee on the fire, a skill which will surely serve him his whole life. Reina wanted to help too and we didn't quite know how to handle that situation, other than to physically remove her from the fire all the while explaining that 'girls don't really do that blah blah blah..." We have some nice weather on tap for the weekend and we plan to get out there and enjoy it again!