First Day of School 2013

Today we sent a 6-yr old off to FIRST Grade and a 4-yr old to her last first day at Montessori.  This morning was definitely less tear-filled than last year (to clarify - I was the only one who cried last year).  In fact, we didn't even linger in the first grade classroom for very long, we just dropped off his backpack and then walked out to the playground and that was it!  Will has been excited to go back to school for weeks now, and I think the first day met his expectations.  We are really excited that he has a great teacher and he's in a terrific school. Reina was not as excited for the new school year but she was looking forward to seeing some of the handsome (her word) boys who were gone all summer.  And, it's amazing to watch her write her name and any other word she feels like copying.  She's interested in Egyptology of all things and cats, naturally.  Here's to another great school year!

Summertime and the living is peas-y and other stuff

Reina really likes to help out in the kitchen.  And by 'helping out' I mean, 'grabbing spoons and stirring like a whirling dervish and ignoring mom's pleas of - watch out, that's hot! or asking every 3.5 seconds, is dinner ready yet?'  But sometimes she really is helpful.  We've been receiving a bounty of fresh veggies from friend's garden and to prevent everything from slowly rotting in the vegetable drawer, I'm trying to cook something fresh every night.  I'm also getting ready to try to can on my own (!!) so we'll see how that goes.  Anyway, here's the little pea-picker-upper.  She took this job very seriously.  

 

I'm so behind on the blog and have a bunch of new pictures to upload but I'm tired and it's Sunday night and blah blah blah.  Weekend before last, we went camping again. 

Trying to capture just how packed the backseat of the truck is, while also trying to get a nice picture of sibling togetherness.  Failed on both accounts. 

The new favorite camping game - fold Reina up in the lounge chair.  Even Tootsie is trying to get in on the action.  

Speaking of the Toots, guarding our campsite. 

BREAKING NEWS!!  Glenn eating a marshmallow!!!  A toasted marshmallow that he will shortly smush together with chocolate and two graham crackers.  Glenn eating sugar!!! 

Hands down, my favorite picture of the summer.  A girl and her dad.  In all actuality, she's probably bossing him around or instructing him on his role for the latest episode of Baby, Pony, Princess starring Reina Pauley.  But for this moment in time, it's a sweet picture. 

Well, we officially have one more week of summer 2013.  As Glenn mentioned today, we've been "living large."  Not 'large' like spending lots of money and driving fancy cars around, but more of a doing something every weekend and hardly having any time to take a breath or do a load of laundry.  (His definition of livin large makes me giggle).  After all the camping and outdoorsy stuff,  I spent a few more days home with Will after he caught an influenza-like virus, according to the drive-thru doctor that we visited.  So far (KNOCK ON WOOD) none of the rest of us have caught it, but it's certainly thrown the last few weeks of our summer for a bit of a loop.  Side note, I took him to the doctor after the Rec Camp counselors called to tell me that instead of participating in that day's activity (party fun house with bouncy castles, carousel and giant outdoor playset), he was sitting quietly staring off into space.  And he wasn't hungry.  Someone call 911!  After a few days, he perked up and now he's feeling better and I'm hopeful that there won't be anymore sick days for quite a while. 

This weekend, we took a trip with the Pauley grandparents and we had a great time - more on that later.  I did realize this weekend, however, that Will has been walking around for the last few weeks with the belief that Reina was adopted.  Huh?  In the car, out of the blue, Will asks something like "How old was Reina when she came to live with us?"  It took me a few questions of my own to figure out what he was talking about.  A few weeks ago at Frontier Days, we ran into the woman who watched Reina before Montessori, and I introduced her to the kids as "the lady who took care of Reina when she was a baby."  Mr. Literal took that and ran with it.  Forget the fact that you have to look at the color of the clothing in their baby pictures to figure out who's who, AND for a while Will was convinced that he and Reina were in my tummy at the same time and he just got to come out first, he still decided that she was adopted.  I hope that I sufficiently cleared up that little mystery but who knows what's next.  He's reached that delightful stage were you have to watch what/who you are talking about because he's always listening.  And getting ready to ask some wierd questions.  Next time:  Reina and Papraham Lincoln. 

 I have a lot to write about but that will have to wait for another day this week. 

Frontier Days

Frontier Days was a few weeks ago and as usual, we had a pretty great time.  Mainly because Aunt Vicky and Uncle Matt live close enough to the Park that we can park in their driveway and then a few blocks to all of the fun.  It's amazing what a difference that makes to my level of enjoyment.  NOT having to drag two tired, sweaty, GRUMPY kids (and Glenn) 12 blocks back to the car or waiting in line for the shuttle bus makes me very happy.  This year, we had our usual afternoon at the carnival and then the next day we went to the parade and then Will and I went to the rodeo - a first for him.  More on that shortly. 

 

The carnival.  For a comparison shot, look at this picture from 2011 http://www.williamfrederick.blogspot.com/2011/08/frontier-days-2011.html.  (Side note - Where have all of the little Bronco Babies gone? They were so cute!  Now they are all long-legged and angular and even more opinionated.  Whimper.)

 

I posted this picture on my Facebook account with a lament about how that expression terrifies me for the future.  If that's not a "parttttttyyyyyyy!" face, I don't know what is.  And she's driving a pink, sparkly 4-wheeler.  Watch out, Sturgis.

On further reflection, the expression in the previous picture might be due in part to the giant bag of cotton candy that she ingested.  Even though this is most certainly not my first Frontier Days, I forgot that the ticket people couldn't take credit cards and so we had to wait for Glenn to show up with his wallet.  We killed time by eating cotton candy.  Because nothing's more fun than waiting for someone to show up, while you are trying to corral a bunch of hopped up kiddos worried about missing all of the fun and who have no time to listen to your reasoning as to why you don't have more cash in your pocket. 

Speaking of fun, Will finally graduated to the big kid rides this year.  You'd have to inject me full of opiates to even get me through the gate of this ride but there he is, all ready to go.  He had a big smile as he flew higher and higher in that little seat.  Brave big kid.  Later on, there was only one ride that he climbed into and then changed his mind before it started up and it was one that I was even more worried about then the Flying Swings of Mayhem (or whatever they are called) so I helped him shimmy off. 

"I'm not afraid of anything."  We think that's going to be Reina's first tattoo.  Thankfully her height prevented her from joining more rides but she scrambled through this fun house as many times as she could.  This spinning wheel/floor thing at the end had her a little panicked (not that she would admit it) but the nice carnival operator guy slowed it down so she could fling herself through. 

Let's not comment or linger on the fact that she looks so comfortable and happy clinging to that pole.  Let's just talk about what a natural she is horseback and how we need to get that cowgirl a pony.  Or a zebra.

The next day, we all trooped down to my office for our annual viewing of the parade.  Since we didn't have Grandma's house to entertain us beforehand, I had to take everyone with me and find things in my office to keep a 4 and 6-yr entertained for an hour and a half.  It looked like a bomb had gone off in there by the time we went outside for the parade. Once we got outside, we still had a few minutes to kill so I gave Reina my phone to take pictures in an attempt to keep her busy.  While this was happening, the wind blew up and Will got a boulder lodged in his eye.  Well, it felt like a boulder to him.

A birds-eye view of the parade outside of my office.  If the bird is approximately 36 inches tall and flightless.  There were about 10 other shots like this one except the proportion of her finger to actual picture gets larger and larger.  But hey, she was entertained. 

After the parade and the removal of the speck from Will's eye thanks to my awesome co-worker and her desk drawer full of eyedrops, Will and I headed to the rodeo.  Or 'the radio' as he kept referring to it.  You might be wondering how Reina took the whole change of plans and oddly enough, she didn't mind missing the rodeo because she got to go to the dentist!  Yeah, I don't think many people would view that as a fair trade-off but she does, and that's all that matters.

So back to the rodeo.  Glenn participated in a focus group a few months ago to give feedback on our annual Frontier Days celebration, which is ironic because as far as locals go, our participation is pretty light.  Every once in a while, we'll go to a concert and maybe one of the pancake breakfasts but we're usually laying low. But he received two free rodeo tickets as thanks for his participation so off we went.  Will was fairly entertained, even though this picture makes him look like he was asleep.  He was interested in the cowboys and the animals but his favorite part, unsurprisingly, was the snacks.  He started off with a sno-cone and a few bites of my candy apple, moved on to lemonade and then wrapped it all up with a big serving of nachos.  He eyed the ice cream cones on our way out but I wasn't too jazzed about sitting up all night with a queasy first grader so we passed. 

He was bored by one of the events to he proceeded to fill in all of the blanks of the program with random numbers and notes.  I remember thinking at the time, "he's a little tired today, I hope he's not coming down with something." 

Turns out, I'm psychic.  He missed most of this past week with a sinus infection/summer cold that moved into this chest and gave him one of those great seal barks that sound so healthy.  After a few days of medicine and lots and lots of couch time with his mom, he's feeling much better.  Just in time for Water World.