The rest of June

I've been too tired at night to write but we are having a fun and busy June.  Lots of baseball, a dance recital, gardens in bloom and work have been filling up our time. We've had a roller coaster of weather too - super hot days at baseball and then at the end of the week we are wearing sweatshirts and closing the windows at night. So here's the rest of our month in pictures.  

Baseball!  Will's team has had games a few nights a week with a few weekend tournaments.  The season ends on July 18 so we have some hectic schedules coming up but boy do we love watching this kid play.

Dance recital time!  I have enough pictures for a whole post but here's a picture of our girl in her ballet costume.  She also danced modern and hip-hop this year and more pictures of that coming soon!

Cousin time ! We had a summer kick-off bbq at Fry Farm with the cousins and Hansen grandparents.  Baby cousin doesn't want to snuggle like he used to but he's still pretty darn cute.  

It wouldn't be a summer picture without hail in the backyard.  We had a heckuva storm a few Fridays ago.  The good news is that our hail tent did it's job even though it collapsed in the middle.  Surprisingly, the fabric held and even with the center collapsed, the plants underneath survived.  The flowers and veggies that weren't protected took a beating but, as always, it could have been worse.  We also need a new roof and paint on the house.  Yah for insurance?!

Pauley men!!  Will is about two inches taller than me and as you can see, is creeping up on Will.  They wear the same size shoe now and I wear Will's shoes when I go out into the backyard and don't want to get mine dirty.  Shhh, don't tell him.  

First jam of 2021!  The weather was delightfully cool enough this weekend that I fired up the stove and made some strawberry jam.  Supplies are much easier to find this summer compared to last year so I hope to have a bunch of batches in the cupboard soon.  

Hail from the earlier picture.  Some of those pieces were annoyingly gigantic. 

Will headed off to football camp with the high school team (gasp).  Will traveled to Nebraska with his teammates for a few days.  He had a great time and informed me that he's practically ready for college now because he's stayed in the dorms and gone to practice without us there.  He might be ready but I am most certainly not.  

Charlie and his very favorite bunny slipper chew toy.  It's hard to be a tough guy when you really love chewing on a squeaky fake slipper.  

Day 103

Oh hail no.  

Our Friday afternoon was buzzing along.  Reina was finishing up her week of online art class (so much fun that I signed her up for two more sessions), I was getting work done, Glenn was getting work done, Will was doing who-knows-what and the skies darkened and giant balls of ice fell from the sky.  Okay, so maybe that's slight hyperbole but the hail was big.  Right as it started, I made a mad dash outside to cover my tomato plants with laundry baskets and I got pelted a few times and man it stung.  We stood in the house to watch the storm pass over but it hailed and hailed and hailed.  The size was anywhere from pea to slightly small golf ball but it was relentless.  Somewhere in our county, someone gets a storm like this every summer and I guess it was our turn.  The garden is shredded.  The laundry baskets have holes in them and the tomatoes are no more.  Some of the garden was protected by hail guards but one of those collapsed under the weight of the hail.  The new camper is dented.  But all of those can be fixed, replaced or composted for next year's garden.  We may have to do more shopping at the farmer's market but but with everything that's going on in the world right now, this ain't nothing.  (For the record, these were not the exact words I was saying a few hours ago while I was sobbing (SOBBING) about little baby beets but what can I say, I'm growing.) 

So that rounds out our week.  Will had two nights of baseball and his team went 2-0 the first night and 0-2 the second.  Reina loved her art class.  Glenn and I both had trips to the office but still not plan to go back full time.  Tomorrow we are doing some yard work and then piling everyone into the truck to go to a lake for the afternoon.  Picnics and swimming are just what we need.  

COVID update.  Wyoming's case numbers are up to 1368 but about 1000 of those people have recovered.  That's good  news but unfortunately the numbers keep climbing.  I just read that we might have some new health orders on Monday.  Wear those masks people!  

Day 85

Day 85 was another Monday, but at least this time there was no kid schoolwork involved.  I'm working on a project to collect resources for people who are very stressed and even suicidal so my work life has been a little heavy lately.  I did have kids coming in from time to time to ask about snacks, lunch options, how much more electronic time they had and hey-mom-check-out-this-dance-I-just-made so those were nice diversions. 

Will is digging school being out and he finds ways to stay occupied during the day (watching old sports highlights, reading about sports, looking up statistics about sports and practicing sports in the backyard.)  Reina is a little tougher. Once she ran out of electronic time today, she was as the kids say "all up in my business" or my little 'butt barnacle' as I fondly refer to her during quarantine.  I suggested art projects, reading, cleaning her room (oh mom, you are so funny) and she finally agreed to spending some time playing with my make-up and drawing.  I'll sacrifice a few eyeliner pencils if it means I get 30 minutes of total silence.  She spent her time drawing the character Cher from Clueless, a bonafide teen movie that she watched with her big cousin last week.  Since Clueless is in fact based on the Jane Austen book Emma and it's also one of my favorite 90's movies, this is a project that I can fully support.    

We had a good old fashioned busy (but lovely) weekend.  We got to watch Will play his first baseball games. He had some good hits and drove in a few runs.  When he was playing third, he had a liner glance off his glove and bonk his head but he bounced back up and stayed in the game.  I did not run on to the field after he hit the ground and I'm not sure he fully appreciates my restraint.  I did ask Glenn and the other people around us "did that hit his head" about 50 times but he's fine. The coaches and umps checked him out thoroughly and while he didn't appreciate me gazing at his pupils the rest of the day, he felt fine.  At the ballpark, ti was fun to watch some games with the grandparents in attendance and little cousins running around.  It felt like summer - especially when the weather went from chilly, to sunscreen, back to chilly and get out the umbrella.  Oh Wyoming.  (It's 37 degrees as I type this and so far we've had rain and hail tonight.  There's snow on the summit but let's hope it stays there.) 

Reina is back at dance class a few days a week, with social distancing and mask wearing.  She had a class on Saturday morning and then she played with the cousins during baseball. In the afternoon, she went to a little birthday for our neighbor's granddaughter.  She and Reina play about once a week and on Saturday, the other grandkids were there too so Reina had a gang of girls to run around the backyard with, it was good for her mental health and they all get along well.  

One of our on-going projects lately has been to paint the vanities in the kids' bathrooms.  We spent a big chunk of Sunday getting that done and hanging up new light fixtures.  I'm happy to report that Glenn and I did that (it was mostly Glenn) without arguing or electrocuting anything.  Victories! 

Besides tonight's hail, this has been a good start to another week.  

Reason #350 why this isn't a food blog

While finishing up dinner tonight, Glenn pointed out that just about everything in the soup pot was something that we had harvested.  With the exception of one Yukon gold potato, the carrots, onions, purple potatoes, tomatoes and moose meat were either from our garden or from Glenn's recent hunt.  Okay, the salt and spices were from the cupboard because we aren't that hardcore (yet?). 

Moose stew - by all accounts, it was delicious!  My food photography on the other hand.... 

This year, we had a lot of gardening ventures happening.  Besides our shared plot at the community garden, we also carved out more space in our backyard for a raised bed.  We had pots of peppers and tomatoes, too.  The community garden was one of the best ones we've had.  We had more cucumbers than we could handle, spaghetti squash, potatoes, beans, peppers, peas and tomatoes.  Oh and beets!  At home, we grew pumpkins, more cucumbers, beets, onions, carrots, two cabbages and one magnificent kohlrabi.  Our summer started off extra chilly but we had good moisture and heat as the summer wore on.  We finally hard our first frost last week, so the season is officially done.  

Pie pumpkins - I think they are called Connecticut field pumpkins?  They went crazy in our small spot.  Any that grew outside of the fence became victims of our curious chickens.  

I didn't thin the carrots and so I ended up with a bowl of pinky-sized carrots.  They are really sweet and crunchy but have a slightly-disturbing finger vibe. 

 I should clarify that while the gardening season is done outside, inside the house, we are still working away.  Vicky and I picked these tomatoes (and more!) a few days before the frost and brought them in to try to ripen.  Vicky has at least half this much at her house.  These are more tomatoes than we've ever grown but we needed just a few more weeks to get them ripe.  I checked on mine today and some are starting to ripen but I'm also looking at recipes for green tomato pickles.  Yum? 

Oh hail no

Last week, we had two major hailstorms that managed to wipe out TWO of my gardens in completely parts of town.  This may be the most boring blog post I've ever written but bear with me.  Weather is one of my less well-documented hobbies.  Apparently Cheyenne is the Hail Capitol of the World, according to people in my office and this article.  A rather dubious distinction especially since we have practically the World's Shortest Growing Season and it snows on Mother's Day.  

 

Snow, not hail. 

The first storm happened on Tuesday evening.  The weather radio had been going off all night warning us about thunderstorms, hail, damaging winds, etc.  Glenn helped me put all of our plants on the deck and I covered everything with lawn chairs and laundry baskets.  Classy.  The storm blew through town and our neighborhood didn't see a single ping of hail.  I breathed a sigh of relief until Aunt Vicky texted me "goodbye garden." 

This picture was taken on the Sunday before the storm - our slightly weedy but still well-cared for community garden plot.  We had more dill than we knew what to do with, broccoli, cabbages, onions, lovely potato plants and a brave little zucchini. 

Aunt Vicky's neighborhood and our community garden took the brunt of Tuesday's storm.  Leaves and branches and defoliated plants told the story.  

The community garden the morning after. 

So blah blah blah boring hail stories.  We also have a plot at our church garden, that was also spared from the first storm.  It's the first year of our church garden and I've had grand plans to share loads of fresh produce with the congregation and discover new and unusual ways to make kale edible.  Then Friday rolled around and the skies were black and I came home at lunch to try to protect the stuff in my yard again and this time I didn't do the whole laundry basket/lawn chairs and barely pulled things up onto the porch before it started hailing.  It hailed and hailed and hailed and our yard looked like it was covered in snow and the church garden was a giant, soggy, icy mess.  So now we'll have to see what bounces back.  We've replanted a few things and fertilized the heck out of everything and fingers crossed that two hailstorms in one week is good enough for a summer. 

Before the weather drama, we celebrated Wyoming Day by dressing up like soldiers and sitting in an Army jeep.  Will would've spent all weekend there if we'd let him. 

I don't think that's regulation uniform there, Driver. 

I've talked a lot about Will's baseball, but Reina is playing t-ball too and she's quite the slugger.  This year, the coach pitches to each kid three times and then they hit it off of the tee.  Reina's managed to hit the pitches and then stands there in surprise for a minute before dashing off to first. 

Her batting stance is a tad casual, but it works! 

I was digging through my phone and found this picture of Glenn and Will on the last day of school.   

Glenn and his clone.  We should've named him Glenn, Jr. 

Reina wants looooong hair and she's (im)patiently growing it out.  Mornings are usually a madcap rush out the door but I did take a few minutes to work on a Frozen braid a few weeks ago.  Reina was happy with my handiwork and I was happy to send her to school with a coif and not a giant ball of blonde craziness. 

Here's hoping for a hail free Fourth of July.

Cousins!

Over Memorial Day weekend, we traveled to Omaha to visit the Pauley cousins and celebrate Alena's graduation.  I can't believe she's a graduate!  I first met Alena when she had just turned 9.  She was visiting the Pauley grandparents in Florida for Spring Break and Glenn and I happened to be out there at the same time.  Alena would be the junior bridesmaid in our wedding in the fall, but during that first trip she was a little shy but very adventurous and giggled at everything her uncle said and did.  Since then, she's grown into a lovely young woman and I'm sure she's headed for great adventures in college.  Her cousins absolutely adore her, especially the little blonde one.



Reina threw her only temper tantrum of the weekend shortly after this picture was taken when she found out that she couldn't drive to graduation with the graduate.  I think Reina would've gladly walked with her to accept the diploma if that had been allowed too. 

Cousin Ben is also on the list of "Cousins that are Adored."  He is probably the most patient soon to be eighth grader that I know.  He hauled Reina around the Omaha Zoo and brought out his gigantic collection of Legos to entertain Will.  I tried to talk him into coming back and spending the summer babysitting his cousins but apparently he has more fun things to do! 

 

Reina's cute little feet hardly touched the ground on our afternoon at the zoo.  Between her cousin and her uncle, she had a chariot wherever she went. 

This cute orangutan escaped his cage and followed us around for a while. 

Graduation finery. I stole a few minutes to myself and shopped with Aunt Maria at an awesome outlet mall. I knew Will needed some new church clothes for the summer and I hemmed and hawed until I found orange shorts and a dark blue shirt.  Naturally, it was a hit! 

More graduation finery with the grandparents! 

We had a very nice weekend with all of the Pauleys.  Besides graduation and the zoo, we had a family bowling tournament,  which the author of this blog won in a shocking upset.  Okay, shocking is a slight understatement because no one else really seemed to mind but I'm still waiting for my handcrafted trophy.  The bigger kids and assorted parents played a not-necessarily-friendly game of laser tag and Uncle Mark took home that award.  Glenn claims that his gun was broken. I kept shooting the poor guy that worked there.  Not surprisingly Will is now a giant fan of laser tag and I think we've found the theme for his next several birthdays. 

I sound like a broken record, but everything in our world seems to be beyond hectic right now.  So much for the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, huh?  Summer officially starts around here tomorrow with Will's last day of school.  He and I are going to have a mom/son afternoon while Glenn works and Reina is at Pop-pop's house.  Her preschool was closed for a few days to get ready for summer and she was more than happy to spend that time tiring out Grandma and Pop-pop.  Speaking of the end of the school year, Will brought home his report card today and I am one tickled mom.  He's made great strides this year and he's quite the smart kid.  He's rocking the math and reading and he also got an "A" in art which will make Grandma H happy.  I guess his art teacher must've liked detailed battle scenes.  And Star Wars.  Watch out second grade, we are coming for ya!

Last weekend we hosted a garage sale and officially sold the last of all of the baby stuff (sigh).  Will has baseball games a couple of times a week and Reina starts t-ball on Monday.  Glenn and I are both busy training for an upcoming half marathon and the biggest benefit of that is that we have two very tired dogs.  We have a few rows of cauliflower, kale, cucumbers and zucchini at our church's community garden along with pots of tomatoes and peppers at home.  I'm also helping with Aunt Vicky's community garden spot and if we don't get any HAIL we'll have a great bounty this summer.  In the past month, Glenn's been treated for an infected tick bite (not Lyme's disease) and had an allergic reaction to a bee sting.  The insects love him. Our insurance company probably does not.   I've stayed healthy but my allergies are in full swing with all of the green stuff growing out of the ground.  Reina has a pet beetle in her room and is a whirling tornado of activity who frequently shouts out "Let's go kick some honey buns!" which is her favorite line from the movie Mulan. I miss writing here but there haven't been very many spare minutes to sit down and type it all out.   I think that about sums it up.  Let's get this summer started!


Ima Inja Ghel

Is it taking you a few minutes to decipher that title? It took me about five minutes and asking Reina to repeat herself about twenty times before I figured out she was saying, "I'm a ninja girl.". Of course she is. Reina wakes up in the morning, starts talking, talks throughout the day and then falls asleep mumbling something. She has opinions on everything from what she's wearing to what I'm wearing. ("I don't like your scarf, mom. It has writing on it.") and everything in between.  Remember how I was so worried that she wasn't talking? 

So not many photos from the last few weeks because the camera was out of batteries and I didn't have time to walk downstairs and get some fresh ones.  Yeah, I know.  Things are wild around here.  I had some day trips out of town this week, Glenn has some traveling coming up and we are both incredibly busy at work.  Will's last three days at Montessori start on Monday and then the kids have a few days off

before the new school year starts.  We have an ice cream social at the elementary school next week so we can meet Will's teacher and drop off his school supplies.  It's all very exciting and oh so very bittersweet.  But that's a post for next week.

In the meantime, here's Trigger and Tootsie.  This was the third picture of them I attempted.  Shortly after this picture was taken, they were banished outside because of extremely loud and furniture rearranging wrestling.  These two are my faithful jogging partners and if I make the mistake of putting exercise pants for non-exercise reasons, I have to listen to Tootsie whine excitedly until she finally realizes that I'm just loafing around in exercise pants instead of exercising in them.  She's a smart one. 

 Here's a quick photo of our crazy garden this summer.  For the first time since we moved in to this house, we've actually had a little time to put into yard work.  We have some giant hollyhocks that we transplanted a few years ago when we were too lazy/busy to do anything else.  I thinned them out a little this year to make room for other stuff but they are pretty tenacious.  We also have tomatoes and peppers in pots because I'm paranoid about hail storms and want to be able to move expensive plants into shelter if needed.  With this drought, we haven't had to worry too much about hail this year.  I planted a pumpkin at the beginning of the summer with the thought that I'd probably kill it off, as I've done with all of the other one's I've tried to grow, but this was a hearty pumpkin and you can see that it's taken over the backyard. 



A close up of a little baby pumpkin nestled in the pine tree.  I wonder how that will turn out?  So far so good.  You can also see another vine growing up through the pine tree. 



 It's been another smoky week in Cheyenne.  We don't have any forest fires close by but smoke from other western states has been moving through our area.  The sky was so red tonight that I tried to capture it with my little amateur camera.   

 Last Saturday, Reina had Tootsie hooked up to a leash and was walking her all of the house.  Patient Tootsie just followed Reina around but kept throwing me "save me!" glances.  I tried to take a picture of Reina pounding on the piano with one hand while holding Tootsie with the other, but that's when the last battery in the camera gave out.  I did "save" her shortly after this picture was snapped when Reina was yelling "SIT TOOTSIE" while she was trying to play the piano. 

One last highlight from the week.  Last weekend, the kids and I went down to the Farmer's Market.  On the way home, it was quiet in the backseat.  Out of the blue, Will asked, "Mom, how does the baby get in your tummy?"  I froze like a deer caught in the headlights, thought for a minute and said, "You know what Buddy?  It's complicated.  Hey look - is that a slug bug?"  Yep, total parenting fail.  But it worked.  He was sufficiently distracted and the next time the subject comes up, hopefully I'll have a better answer.  Like "Ask Daddy." 

Choot* kids

I sat down today in an attempt to capture the essence that is Reina, but as usual, time is getting away from me.  Dinner needs to be cooked, laundry put away and I'm sure Trigger needs to be scolded about something.  Glenn has spent a long weekend in Kansas turkey hunting and he's due home in a few hours and since it was his birthday yesterday, I should really have a little bit more of a celebration planned than I currently do.  BUT I'm happy that Glenn could turkey hunt.  In February, when he was still in the hospital, the doctor told Glenn that his hope was that Glenn would be 80% recovered by his birthday.  I'm so happy that he appears to be at least 80%, if not more.  Hooray!

Okay, so back to Reina.  She's been a little bit of a handful recently.  She came down with an ear infection week before last, stayed home for a few days last week, made a repeat trip to the doctor for a new antibiotic and is still fighting something off today.  I've said this before, but some kids get quiet or droopy when they don't feel well.  Reina just gets well... mean.  Her hair trigger temper becomes even shorter and while she's very affectionate and wants to snuggle a lot, in a minute it can turn to "You are giving me too many kisses mommy!"  Sigh.  *It's a good thing she's so choot (Reina's word for cute.)  It's become a part of my vernacular now.  One of Reina's most common refrains besides STOP DAT BOBO! is "I'll do it myself."  Whether it's getting dressed, putting on shoes, picking out a bandaid or taking her medicine, she insists on doing it by herself.  She's also not a big fan of delayed gratification.  Glenn brought both kids fishing poles from his trip this weekend and Reina proceeded to grab hers, match out the backdoor and want to fish.  "Iwanttofishrightnow.  Can we go to a pond after dinner?  Can we go to a pond right now?"  One of her other Reinish characteristics right now is "I like you shirt Mommy."  "I like you book Bobo."  You instead of 'your.'  It's contagious. 

Reina, modeling her Minn Twins dress from (great) Aunt Mary.  I was trying to send a picture to Aunt Mary and this was as good as it gets.  Reina adds a very Top Model quality to this picture that scares me beyond belief. 

The Force is strong in these two (below).  Saturday night the kids and I went to a benefit dinner at church.  It wasn't completely altruistic on my part.  I figured for a few bucks, someone else could feed all of us dinner and it wouldn't be McD's.  Win-win-win!  The dinner was good and there was also a pie auction.  Will kept raising his hand and bidding on apple pies, banana cream pies, chocolate pies and one tin of brownies that he was very disappointed not to get. I finally let him "win" a peach pie, but I was really the winner because neither of them liked it.  More for me!  They were distracted towards the end of the auction by taking turns wearing my sweatshirt.  Will was pretending he was a Jedi.  Reina was pretending she was me.  She had all of us in 'time out' rather quickly.  Apparently that's how I sound to her. 

 Look!  I have tulips that Reina hasn't picked yet!  She finally seems to understand that the flowers are prettier when they stay in the ground.  Except for dandelions and a few grape hyacinth that she insisted she didn't pick but no one else was there and (maybe it was the rabbits mommy?), she has left these pretty tulips alone.  We've had an usually warm but DRY Spring.  Usually these bulbs don't bloom for a few more weeks but instead of worrying about drought, I'll just enjoy the pretty flowers.  And look, smirking pirates enjoy tulips too. 

We really need to do something about the pirate outfit.  In this picture, he's wearing two shirts, plus that fleece thing, long pants and snow boots.  Luckily this was one of the cooler mornings, it was probably only about 59 degrees.  Yeah, I know.  Reina was probably a little chilly but you tell her to put a jacket on.  I dare ya.  So back to Will.  The kid has a tendency to barf when he gets overheated.  It's happened a few times now, most recently a few weeks ago when we just happened to be in the drive-thru for McD's.  We try to explain that pirates can also wear short sleeves and shorts but he's not buying it.  However, he is starting to make the correlation between being too warm and that gurgling feeling in his tummy.  Maybe in a few months, he'll be obsessed with southeastern Native Americans or Olympic swimmers or other people who around in summer-appropriate clothing.  We can only hope.  

What's growing out of our compost bin? 2011 Edition.

It's time for that annual game of "what's growing out of Lucy's compost bin?" This year's contestant is not as big as the squash/pumpkin/gourd thing that we grew last year. So I'm thinking potato? I know I've seen these leaves before. Maybe canteloupe? Whatever it is, it probably doesn't stand a chance of seeing fruit or veggie bearing age. This morning was already crisp and cool and I'm actually a little chilly tonight. Is this me complaining about the weather again?! Gardening friends and family, tell me what this is!!

The best *thing* I've ever grown

As the summer winds to a close, I have to take a break from the baby blogging and talk about gardening for a few minutes. For several years now, I've tried to have a little garden and we've had varying levels of success with tomatoes, rhubarb, a couple of tiny strawberries and one very robust zucchini plant. At this point in our lives, neither nor Glenn nor I have the time to devote to a large garden so we make do with some veggies in pots and flowers who can look after themselves. This year was no different, except for one notable exception. Meet the biggest plant we've ever grown.

Looks good, yes? Full leaves, dark green fruit, errr... vegetable... errr squash? Maybe its a watermelon? Even better? It's growing out of our compost bin. It's self-sufficient, doesn't need watering, clearly gets nutrients from watermelon rinds and moldy peaches. At last count, it had about 12 blossoms and two fruit. We've had a few cold nights this month but it keeps going strong.
The only problem? WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS!