July's random tidbits

Glenn whispers to me after getting the kids out of the bath, "I washed Reina's hair with the dog shampoo.  Don't say anything to her."  That's the kind of month we are having, folks. I wore sunglasses to work on Friday morning that had the left lens missing completely. I remember wondering why the glasses weren't as dark as they usually were as I drove to the office. I didn't notice until I went to put them on before leaving for lunch.  But Reina's hair looks shiny and we won't have to worry about fleas anytime soon. 

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Will and I went to the rodeo last week for Frontier Days.  He kept (and keeps) calling it the 'radio.'  Now I do, too.

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Someone close to us is expecting a baby in the fall and the kids have naturally been curious about the whole situation.  They've seen her tummy growing over the last few months.  They've talked to the baby (well, Reina shouted HELLO BABY!) and expressed excitement (and dismay - Will) when we found out that the baby is a girl.  A few weeks ago, I had picked Will up from rec camp and we were driving to pick up Reina.  It's our few minutes of the day to chat alone and he usually gives me the highlights of whatever adventure he was on that day.  So, we're in the car and he's a little quiet.  He finally pipes up, "Mom, I want you to tell me how that baby got in Blankety Blank's tummy.  I know you know and I want you to be serious."  I respond with deafening silence and then, "Well, buddy. I know you are curious but it's hard to explain" BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNNNNNGGGGG I am interrupted by the sound of my cell phone ringing (safe driver note:  through the bluetooth in my car) and I answer and by the time the call is finished, Will's on to another topic.  Saved by the bell!  But I'd better come up with an answer that is age appropriate (for both me and him) and I'd better come up with it soon. 

More Wyoming summer fun

We went camping last weekend and it was so fun to get out of the heat and away from the (mild) bustle of town.  It's Frontier Days this week so traffic is double (which means it takes me 15 minutes to get home instead of just 7, plus we hadn't been camping since June's lake trip so off we went.  On a recommendation from a very trusted source (sis and bro-in-law), we headed to campground high up in the Snowy's and it was lovely.  We managed to secure the last camping spot and we had a great time.  We hiked and fished and cooked stuff over a fire.  We also came close to freezing because we (okay, I) foolishly didn't pay attention to what we might need for camping at 9000 feet.  We had just about everything we needed except for a jacket for me and one more sleeping bag for the camper.  But we made it home without losing any fingers or toes so yeah! 

Hiking with swords.

 

Sunday morning breakfast.  Reina says "look mom, I'm drinking coffee!"  She looks pretty natural, huh? 

 

Not coffee, just milk.  Because the last thing Reina needs is a big jolt of caffeine.  Okay, that's really the last thing the rest of us need is for Reina to have a big jolt of caffeine.  She might feel differently.

So the adventures in learning how to ride a bike continue.  Will is sooooooo close.  Glenn let go of the seat a few times.  And then Will would veer dangerously horizontal to the ground.  But he's getting there. 

I don't know that we'll have too many more summers of the green John Deere truck.  Both kids are getting so big and the truck seems to be shrinking.  Whimper. 

It's mid-July already and summer is slipping away.  We will try to squeeze all of the fun that we can out of this last month and a few weeks.

T-ball and a sleepy girl

It's been a hectic few weeks at the Pauley household.  Do I always start blog posts off with that sentence?  Anyway, we've been busy, blah blah blah.  Glenn and I ran a race this past weekend.  He did great. I survived the 13.1 miles, barely.  It wasn't my slowest race but it was darn close.  The kids have had a few sleepovers with both sets of grandparents and everyone survived that experience. 

We're finishing up the last week of the kids' t-ball season and can you believe that it's the middle of July?  How did that happen? 

Here's Will lining up to knock the ball out of the park - or at least over the infield's head.  On his next up to bat, he actually hit the first pitch and it was awesome!  (The coach pitches three teams to each kid and if they can't hit the pitch, they get to use the tee.  Incidentally, for each of Reina's turns at bat she just tells the coach that she wants to hit it off the tee.  Girl knows what she wants.)

Not bad form although it's looking a little golf-y, which will probably make the Grandpa's excited.

I included another shot of Will batting but I want to direct your attention to the little blonde in the red shirt in the background.  That's the Bronco Baby sister who's paying zero attention to the game (she's on second) and instead is directing all of her attention to the (older) second basemen on the other team.  Sigh. 

I was cleaning off my camera phone and found this picture.  I'm not sure when or why I took it but I love it.  It completely captures Reina right now.  She goes and goes and goes and goes and says "I'm not tired!" and upon waking up in the morning announces "I don't think I'll take a nap today" and fights and fights and fights it, but when she's sleeping, she looks
like this. 

The kids have been a lot of fun, if a little crazy, lately.  Summer is in full swing and we have nightly negotiations/fights/tantrums/battles over bedtime and the (perceived) agony of us pulling them away from all of the seasonal fun that is surely happening outside. At day camp,  Will is swimming like a fish and sporting a tan that would be the envy of many a teenage girl.   And his pasty mom.  I'm also jealous of his schedule.  He swims on Monday, roller skates or bowls on Tuesday, visits a park on Wednesday, sees a movie on Thursday (more on that in a minute) and goes to another park on Friday.  In between are lots of snacks, an art project every once in a while and lots and lots of sunscreen.  Reina goes to the park, has gymnastics on Friday (she does somersaults until she topples over with dizziness), colors 100 pieces of paper a day and lectures me on the rainforest and tree frogs on the car ride home. 

Last week, Will saw the movie "Chimpanzee" at the theater.  Glenn and the kids watched it on a cold Saturday last winter, but I was doing something else that day and I was also worried about anybody watching it because (Spoiler Alert) - the mom chimpanzee dies at the beginning.  In fact the whole plot of the documentary is how the baby chimp is 'adopted' by the alpha male.  In a further tangent, I actually tried to watch it later by myself but couldn't make it to the part where the mom is killed.  And people wonder why I don't hunt?  Anyway, I asked Will about the latest viewing when I picked him up afterwards and he reminded me that he'd already seen it, but that he liked the movie.  He talked about the mom chimpanzee getting killed but that the little baby had a new stepdad at the end.  I love how Will's brain works. 

Boys' Camping Weekend

Last weekend, Glenn and Will headed up to the mountains for an overnight backpack trip, no girls invited. (Which was pretty fine with us girls because the thought of backpacking one of us into the backcountry makes me twitchy and I have flashbacks of carrying Reina all the way from the far end of Disneyworld to the front gate.)  But I digress.  So the boys filled a backpack with the necessities (doritos) and headed out. 

 

An awesome self portrait that is my new favorite picture of the two of them.  Yes Will looks like a professional basketball player but hey, he's out in nature and enjoying it. 

Guarding the campsite, naturally. 

Fishing!  And now, that's not a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth, just a granola bar.  He's a multitasker. 

Home sweet campsite.  Glenn says that a big thunderstorm rolled through in the middle of the night and it rained and thundered for a few hours.  But Will slept through the whole thing.  Glenn did not. 

Armed and dangerous?  Dangerously adorable! 

By all accounts, it was a successful first backpacking trip. Nobody bled, nobody complained about wanting to come home.  There was a lot of hiking and wildlife watching (a moose and her calf!  But from the safety of the truck for that one!) and bone collecting.  We have the scapula of something currently sitting on the end table downstairs.  There was a lot of the aforementioned dorito-eating along with freshly caught fish for dinner.  Will slept in the truck all of the way home so that's surely a sign of a good weekend. 

For the record, the girls had a nice time, too.  We gardened and napped and went to the movies where we didn't eat doritos but a big box of Skittles instead.  On Sunday we went to church, bbq'd at a friend's house and painted our toenails.  We don't have any pictures but we do have sparkly feet. 

Road trip!

Last week, the kids and I and Grandma H packed our bags and drove to the Midwest. I had a two-day meeting in Des Moines so the rest of my traveling companions swam in the pool and played in the hotel room (true story - they liked just hanging out in the room, playing with toys and being somewhere new.  I love that they are still at that age).  After the meeting ended on Wednesday, we drove a few hours north to visit the Dunlap side of the family in Minnesota.  While I had been in my last meeting that afternoon - this happened: 

 

The First Lost Tooth! 

According to the witnesses, they were at a local swim park, splashing around and Will walked up to Grandma with his tooth in his hand.  He just pulled it out himself.  It's been disgustingly loose for a while but I'm so proud that he did it all by himself and with very little drama.  The tooth was one of the two that he was born with so it was tiny which made it difficult for the tooth fairy to find it under the hotel pillow later that night, but it's out! He looks like a real first grader.

 

The rest of the week was spent hanging out with family in Minnesota.  It was a really nice few days.  We spent a fair amount of time on Aunt Mary's porch, blowing bubbles, fighting swords in the backyard and paying close attention to Sammy the Cat (not pictured because all of the photos just show a brown/beige blur as he decides whether or not to stay in one place before the 4-yr finds him again.)



We spent one morning visiting the tiny town where the Dunlap girls grew up.  We stopped at a bakery and ate delicious cupcakes.  It was bizarrely cold.  Minnesota weather is almost weirder than Wyoming weather.  One minute I'm sweating through my shirt while jogging because it's so stinking hot and humid and then the next day I'm wishing that I'd packed jeans and an extra sweatshirt.  Good thing we had chocolate to keep us warm. 

 

One Friday night, the kids attended their first Major League Baseball game.  We watched the Twins play the Royals.  The game started off with a rain delay so we had to kill time taking baseball-like pictures. 

I just told him "Smile for the camera!" and this is what I got. 

Followed by this.  I love the serious baseball face.  "I'm just happy to be here, hope I can help the ball club...." 

And now the sad/serious, I'm-just-holding-a-hot-dog face. I really did say "smile"!!

Rain delay over - and now we are in our seats. 

We didn't last long enough at the game to sing "Take me out to the ballgame" but we sang that enough in the car and in a visit to my uncle who's in the hospital to make up for it. The kids know every word to the song which makes me happy. I think their Great Grandfather Dunlap would've been tickled that their first MLB experience was a Twins game. The last conversation I ever had with him was about the Twins winning the World Series in 1991. I hope he can forgive our National League sympathies today. 

On Saturday night we bid farewell to Minnesota and headed back to Des Moines.  We spent the night and woke everyone up early to head to Omaha for breakfast with the Pauley side of the clan.  We had a nice (but too short) visit and headed home. 

 

There's always enough time to wrestle with cousins! 

The rest of the drive was looooooong and painful at times.  A 4-yr old running on pancakes and syrup, 6 hours of sleep and an 8 hour drive is a bit of challenge.  But we made it home in one piece and we already planning our trip back next summer. 

Who me cause trouble?  Never!