The beginning of a new era

First, it was the fireman....

Then there were brief periods of knighthood, soldiering and all around ninja stuff before the pirate thing stuck.....

And now, we usher in a new era.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Cowboy Will! 

The trend started last week when I dug the two-sizes-too-big boots out of his closet in honor of Frontier Days.  He immediately put them on and insisted on wearing them for every waking moment of the day and probably a few non-waking moments too. 

For church today, Glenn put together the cowboy outfit and Will wore not only jeans but a button up shirt without a mumble of protestation.  He even took the hat off when we were inside church after I explained that cowboys are respectful and take their hats off when they are inside church.  He also removed a holster and pistol because he told me "we don't have guns in church."  True! 

I'll post more about Frontier Days later but yesterday we took the kids up to the park and watched some Native American dancing and walked through booths and a petting zoo with a baby wallaby (???).  Both kids came away with cowboy hats.  As we were walking back to the car, Cowboy Will was holding my hand and strutting down the street and talking my ear off.  He said "Mom, before we were born, you really liked cowboys, right?"  Put another check mark in the 'genetic memory' box because, yes, yes, Will, I did like cowboys.  And I still get a little swoony when Glenn wears jeans and a western shirt but that's clearly a story for another day. 

We're just crazy about Reina

A quick anecdote about Reina. Today as I was dropping the kids off at school, one of their classmates,Walt, was standing outside with his dad. As we pulled up, Reina announced, "I'm just crazy about Walt." I have no idea where she heard that phrase or that she was crazy about anyone or anything besides baby cats, yellow horses and chocolate milk. And her mommy and daddy of course. She comes out with these crazy statements that just remind me that she's not a baby or even a toddlers. anymore but a bright 3 1/2 yr old who has a million opinions and thoughts just her own. Reina is a force of nature around this house. She whirls through each room in a cloud of stuffed animals and toy dishes. She stomps around outside in a tank top and snow boots. She sleeps with 15 stuffed animals and 2 blankets when its 90 degrees out. The surest way to get her to do something is to tell her to NOT do it. But beneath all of the attitude and spunky-ness is a sweet little girl who's just trying to keep up with the rest of us. And loudly expressing her opinion each step of the way.

I figured he'd turn into a buffalo

Will and I have interesting conversations on a regular basis.  The 5-yr old brain is always thinking, pondering, analzying, and strategizing.  But today, he and I had a brief conversation that now I can't relate to anyone without laughing out loud so it must be blog material, right?

Background:  We are walking down a path to meet relatives at a lake in Denver.  Glenn stayed in Cheyenne for the weekend.  I'm not sure if that has any relevance to the story or not.

Will:  "Mom, it's okay, I know that Dad is going to turn into a fish someday."  (Note:  Will uses the "Mom, it's okay I know...." preface to let me know that he already knows some bad news, like "Mom, it's okay I know today is a school day" or "Mom, it's okay, I know we aren't having pancakes for dinner.) 

Me:  (Thinking "Huh? Because he fishes a lot?  Because he eats a lot of fish?")  What I said:  "Buddy, why do you think Daddy is going to turn into a fish someday?" 

Will:  "Because he eats fish food." 

Me:  (Thinking "Huh?  Will clearly has sunstroke!?")  What I said:  "Will, why do you think Daddy is eating fish food?"

Will:  "Because he has that medicine with a picture of a fish on the bottle." 

Me:  "Ohhhhhhhhhh!  Will, that's just a special kind of vitamin made out of fish oil.  It's not fish food.  Daddy's not going to turn into a fish. People don't turn into fishes." 

Will:  Okay.  Good. 

*********************
This story has made me giggle all day but also feel a pang for the little boy who's walking around resigned to the fact that his dad is just going to turn into a fish someday.  Will has definitely been more anxious in the last few months.Some of that we chalk up to developmental stages (heading to kindergarten, etc.), but we know now that he was also more concerned about Glenn and the whole hospitalization thing than we realized at the time.  Everything was so chaotic and a little scary and I didn't know what to tell him and probably didn't tell him enough.  So now we pay more attention to what we talk about around him and we also talk about more stuff with him when questions do come up.  Will comes from a long line of worriers, ponderers and over-analyzers, on both sides of the family.  When I was a few years older than Will, I remember going to a barbecue where the host was cooking hamburgers over mesquite.  I thought mesquite was the same thing as marijuana and I was worried that we were all going to get in trouble for eating the burgers.  I could picture policeman surrounding the house and hauling everyone away.  I remember my perplexed parents finally explaining that there was nothing illegal about mesquite.  I have no idea how I even knew what marijuana was.  Blame Magnum P.I.  Anyway, even I'm pretty sure that I can guarantee to Will that Glenn will never turn into a fish.  Unless the Buddhists have it right about that whole reincarnation thing. 

Boondocking it

Two weekends ago, the Pauley cousins were in town for a visit.  We fished, and played and wrestled (the cousins, not me, that would've been a little weird, watched it rain buckets and when we were tired of that, we headed down to Denver to go to Boondocks.  It's one of those of go-cart, mini-golf, arcade sort of places that we thought would have a pretty good likelihood of appealing to kids between the ages of 3 and 16. 

First up, the junior go-carts for the junior members of the party.  Will could drive his all by himself.  And he was pretty proud of that. 

 Reina needed a little help from the Boondocks employee who should win the title of most-patient-jr-go-cart-attendant-ever.  Reina couldn't master steering and accelerating at the same time.  She'd hit the gas, drive directly into the barrier, try to turn the wheel, get stuck, repeat.  Finally this nice young man just helped steer her around the course, lap after lap after lap.  Notice how she's in a yellow car?  Naturally! 

This is my favorite kind of picture of me.  Pop-pop and Grandma joined us at Boondocks because Pop-pop has been itching to go there for a while now and jumped at the opportunity to have an excuse.  So Grandma was holding Reina while I did the (senior?) go-carts with the big cousins.  As you can imagine, Reina was seriously unimpressed with this turn of events. I couldn't hear her over the roar of the go-carts but I could read her lips, "I want to go with mommy, that's not fair, I'm mad, etc. etc. etc."  So anyway, Grandma took a picture of us on the go-carts .... it's hard to tell but that's me in the middle getting lapped by Alena and getting passed by Ben.  I might be a speed demon in town but on the go-cart track I'm a 90-yr old driving a 68 Buick with my fluffy dog on my lap.  Slowly, very very slowly. 

In an attempt to appease HRH, Grandma apparently let her play with the camera.  I think it's a very artistic shot of the lovely blue sky, white clouds and the top of her pouty little head. 

Reina finally had her moment when Pop-pop took her and the whole gang on to the bumper boats.  Not only do these boats bump into each other but each one has a little spray gun on the front that you can shoot people with.  As you can imagine, this greatly appealed to certain members of the Pauley party.  "I'll do it MYSELF Pop-pop!" 

Let's file this one under 'reasons why 5-yr olds don't have driver's licenses.'  Alena did a great job of keeping the little daredevil in the boat. 

I wonder if this is what the Spanish Armada looked like taking on the English ships?  In this case it's Ben, Will and Alena ganging up on Pop-pop and Reina.  I'm not sure who won. 

My two favorite Nebraskans!

After we were all sufficiently soaked and sun-stroked, we spent some time inside the arcade.  Will and Reina both quickly caught on to the fact that the arcade games spit out tickets that you could then redeem for little tiny pieces of plastic at the ticket counter.  Unfortunately their mom kept stealing their tokens to get in a quick game of skeeball....but thankfully their generous cousin shared all of her tickets and the day ended well. 

Fishing (not catching) pictures

I'm stealing Meghan's title for these photos because that's the kind of blogger I am this summer, and it's actually a really great title because that's what we did.  Lots of fishing, little catching.  I know I posted a few of our trip pictures in the last post but Meghan is a great photographer and I wanted to make sure we shared them with everyone.   

Reina driving the boat with Rick.  She would've been happy to drive all day and Rick even let her steer.  He's a brave man. 

We think Reina might end up on one of those Deadliest Catch/Wicked Tuna shows as some salty female sea captain who drives her boat fiercely and bosses everyone around. She's halfway there. 

Reina loved just about every minute on the boat, big smiles around.  Until it was time to go home. 

  

Will wearing my sunglasses.  Fabulous.  

At the end of the day, both Will and little Jacob crashed on my lap.  My arms got a pretty good workout keeping both of those kids in one spot.  It's amazing what kids can sleep through.  The boat was loud and bumpy and they just crashed out. 

Back on dry land, devouring watermelon. 

We had another busy week but a great visit with the cousins and Aunt Maria.  I'll have some pictures to share shortly.  We did get some great rain and the garden is going gangbusters.  We had to fence off parts of it to keep two curious canines at bay but we have tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, sunflowers and one exploding pumpkin growing right now.  Okay, it's not really an exploding pumpkin but I was so worried that I couldn't it to grow that it's been a bit babied and now it's taking over the garden space.  But we'll have pumpkins! 

Reina's ear tube surgery went just fine.  The procedure was fast and she was home bossing around Tootsie and Trigger within a few hours.  Both kids are battling colds this week but we're trying to keep everyone healthy.  It's the middle of July already!  Where does the time go?! 

Idaho and summertime fun and a long-winded post

We left last Saturday for a little vacation to visit our friends the Wilkison's in Boise.  The kids were super excited to fly on an airplane and have ten stay-home days (we came back on July 4th and I've taken the rest of the week off) and see some new friends.  We hadn't seen the Wilkison's since Will and their oldest son were almost 2 and almost 3.  Since then we've collectively added three more kiddos to the bunch, so we had 5 kids under the age of 6 and it was a blast.  We saw the sights in Boise, played at a spray park, visited the zoo, boated and fished and didn't catch much, and played and played and played and played.

This picture was taken about 2 hours after we arrived in Boise.  You can see that the kids were really shy about making friends and getting to know each other.  Yeah. Right.  They went from "Hi, I'm Will" to shooting each other with giant water guns and epic battles with foam swords in about 3.5 seconds. 

Picking cherries.  Be forewarned, this is the first of many MANY pictures of the cherry orchard. I was just so surprised to see trees that actually have fruit on them.  Or have fruit when they are supposed to.  We have one poor little apple tree in our backyard that has yet to make so much as a blossom in the 3 years we've had this house. 

Cherries!  On trees!  I thought this was a lot of fruit until I found some other trees.  Captivating photojournalism, right?

Another example of awesome photography.  Who is it on that ladder?  Could be anyone since we can't see their faces.  I'm pretty sure this is Will and Glenn because I remember wanting to memorialize the moment in case Will tumbled off the ladder and we had to explain to the ER staff exactly how it happened.  "Well see Dr., my husband thought it was a good idea for a 5-yr old to stand on the second highest rung of a ladder whilst picking Ranier cherries that were only a $1.10/pound!"

Reina and her bucket.  She couldn't carry it by herself but darnit, it was her bucket. 



More cherries on trees!  We ended up picking about 20 pounds of cherries and this is one of the reasons why.  If you wander around the orchard long enough, you find more trees with really juicy cherries that are just begging to be picked and put in your bucket.  Never mind that even a group of 9 people can't eat 20 lbs of cherries in five days.  Well, they can certainly try but then ummm, certain stomach issues arise. 



This young man was banned from eating anymore cherries after the second day of our trip because, well, you know. 



We went to the Boise Zoo, saw lots of animals and fed some really friendly goats.  Reina loved them. 



Happy kids at the zoo. 



Reina disgruntled about something.  Shortly after this picture was taken, we lost her for about five minutes.  It was a small zoo and she didn't get far and when Glenn found her, some nice person was walking her to the lost and found because she told them, "I'm lost."  Hi Grandparents, we haven't told you that story yet, huh?  All's well that end's well. 



For an extra dollar, you could buy a handful of grub worms and feed them to this Sun Bear through a little tube.  Guess who did NOT participate in this activity?  Yep, the Bronco Baby's Mom.  Shudder. 



I should make a whole post out of pictures of Reina looking disgruntled about something. 



Our last day of the trip was spent boating.  It was a great day!  Not many fish were caught but not for lack of trying.  We all got to splash around and get some sun and it was a great way to wrap up the trip.



Reina loved the speed of the jet boat.

Will conked out at the end. 

(Most of) the Whole Gang.

So we're back in the real world and plowing through loads of laundry and chores and routine and blargh.  Reina is getting her third set of tubes in her ears next week. We saw the ENT a few weeks ago and he ordered some allergy tests and an x-ray of her sinuses to rule out any other issues besides multiple ear infections. I've told this story a million times but when Reina had her blood drawn for the allergy test, she didn't cry, she barely flinched and she just sat there and watched the nurses draw the blood. The girl is not scared of needles and apparently has a pretty high pain tolerance which means she's going to come back from her first semester of college with one of those sleeve tattoos. I'm going to have to come up with a strategy to prevent that. Maybe I'll tell her that tattoos are actually licked onto your skin by spiders? Maybe moths play a role somehow? Or tattoos are only applied in tunnels? Help me here!

Back to the ENT appointment. So her allergy tests came back negative, her x-ray was clear and the doctor said he was a little reluctant to a third set of ear tubes because sometime there can be scarring, blah blah blah. He said that if she came down with another ear infection this summer, then he would go ahead and do the procedure. The doctor wanted to a quick look at her ears before we left and voila she had another ear infection so her surgery is scheduled for next week. The risk of damage to the ear from constant ear infections is higher than the risk from the surgery so I'm on board. Hopefully this will be her last set and she'll grow out of it like her brother did.

In other news, Tootsie is such a great dog! She is really doing her job of making Trigger as tired as possible and also teaching him to be more obedient along the way. As my dad says, I'm like "that hippie who got her dog a dog." Yep. But she's turned out to be a great addition to our family. She's very sweet and great with the kids. Reina spent about 15 minutes trying to get Tootsie to wear a watch (I know.) and Tootsie just laid their patiently until Reina moved onto another project. She and Trigger really have fun too. Sometimes too much fun.

Dog wrestling and the innards of some poor stuffed animal strewn about in a gruesome scene.  Luckily, it was an actual dog toy that was the casualty and not one of Reina's prized collection.

What's going on with Will?  He's such a neat kid right now.  Not "neat" in the keeps-his-room-clean sense but he's growing up so much and coming up with the funniest observations.  His brain is working overtime to get everything figured out.  He's starting to read. How have I forgotten to memorialize this on the blog? At school, they have him reading "Bob Books" and he's working his way through each book. He brought one home a few weeks ago and listening to him read it made me a little teary-eyed. He's growing up! He's still 5 because toilet humor is funny and certain scenes in Pixar movies are still scary and require a nearby lap to sit on, but he's really growing up this summer. 

Another quick Reina story.  I wrote last time that she's in a naked phase.  Her current favorite thing to do after the bath is to wrap up in a towel and then come downstairs and find me and yell "Surprise!  I'm naked!"  And then I have to shriek and she giggles and does it about four more times before I finally make her go upstairs and get her pajamas on.  Glenn thinks that "feral" is a good word to describe Reina at this stage.  I agree. 

Finally, we are having a extremely hot and dry summer.  There are fires burning all around Wyoming and Colorado.  There aren't any super close to us but the smoke is present every day and it gives everything a very eerie quality.  We are supposed to have wet and cool weather this weekend that we hope will help get all of the fires under control.  Send all of your rain our way!