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! 



Pirate Camp

Last week, Will attended Yo Ho Ho Pirate Camp at our local community college for a few hours every morning.  This should come as no surprise when I tell you that it was a big hit.  Glenn paid it the highest compliment when he said the agenda sounded like it was developed by a 5-yr old boy.  From sword-making (and fighting!) to a treasure hunt capped off with pirate snacks, I think Will enjoyed every minute.  And just like with Reina at dance camp last week, I think he enjoyed the chance to have a slightly different schedule for a few days.

Pirate Camp started at 9:30 a.m. so Will came to work with me for a little while in the morning.  On the first day, he sat quietly and looked at the few toys I have in my office.  By the second day, he was prepared to occupy his time, and my desk.  

Will and the 3,257 pieces of Lego's he brought with him each morning. 

On the last day of Pirate Camp, the parents were invited to a art show and demonstration of all of the pirate skills the pirates learned over the week.  Will insisted on wearing his hat at a rather jaunty angle. 

Mr. Serious showing us his treasure map. 

Capt. Will asked for a few takes before we got this picture just right.  He told me after Monday's class that they were going to get to have a swordfight the next day. I thought, "yeah right."  Who teaches a bunch of 5-7 yr olds how to fight with swords?  Well, Will was right. 

Swordfighting!  It was all very civilized with one arm behind his back and parre (sp?) and en guard and such.  The picture is blurry because Capt. Will's mom was giggling too hard. 

So Pirate Camp was a big hit.  Will's interests have branched out a little bit to include other people who battle: soldiers, ninjas, a motley crew of Star Wars characters, Kung Fu Panda and Puss-n-Boots.  But Capt Jack Sparrow and the gang remain a constant presence around here.

On Saturday, we braved the heat and went to Super Day for a little while.  Now I should note that to some of you, a 90 degree Saturday morning might not seems like a hardship, but let's face it.  I should've been born in the Arctic.  I'm melting.  Since we don't have air conditioning (in a "normal" Wyoming summer, there are really only a few weeks where it's really necessary), we don't have a lot of ways to beat the heat.  So instead of sequestering everyone in the basement, we decided to go to the park and get some ice cream, jump in a few bouncy houses, and watch Renaissance re-enactors (Will was hooked!).  The only item on Reina's agenda was to get a yellow balloon.  Not a pink balloon, not a blue balloon, not a yellow frisbee but a YELLOW BALLOON thank you very much.  Luckily we found one. 


She calls it "Balloon-ee" and slept with it tied to her bed last night.  This morning Balloonee had shrunk to half its size and I can't say that he's long for this world.  Poor Balloonee.





One quick final note.  Reina has entered into what I'm calling "The Naked Phase."  Maybe it's the hot weather, and frankly who can blame her, but the girl likes to take all of her clothes off.  After church this morning, I told the kids they could swim in the plastic pool out back.  Which by the way, used to look a lot bigger!  When it was just Will's little 15-month old body in that thing it looked like an Olympic-sized swimming pool.  Now with two kids and assorted dogs, it's the size of a cereal bowl.  I almost climbed in there today so we might be investing in something slightly larger soon.  Anyway, we come home from church, Will heads upstairs to get his swimming suit on, I start some laundry, peek out the backdoor to look for something in the yard and see a completely naked Reina casually climbing in the pool.  (I hope this is one of those phases that ends in the next half decade.) For the record, I made her come back inside, put on a suit AND sunscreen and then she proceeded to hear her swimsuit for the rest of the day and made a half-hearted attempt to sleep in it tonight.  3-yr olds. 

More dancing princesses and Tootsie

I don't know why I couldn't get these pictures to work in the previous post.  On the last day of dance camp, Reina's class did a little recital.  She knew some of the moves and it was so much fun to watch.  Plus, she looks delightful in layers of tulle and sparkles.  And the tiara, don't forget the tiara!  

A pirouette, Reina-style



She had the wildest hair of any of the other ballerinas, but maybe that will be her signature look.  The Feral Ballerina.  Glenn calls her the Savage Princess because lately she likes to run around shirtless with her hair all blowing in the wind.  Time for a haircut. And hey, it's been pretty hot.  I'd probably try the shirtless thing if it wouldn't scar all of the neighbors. 

Here's another picture of Tootsie.  She poses so prettily, although I'm pretty sure she thought she was getting some sort of treat.  She smiled at Glenn this morning.  That was always one of Canyon's signature moves.  It makes my heart warm to have that kind of dog personality back under the roof.  Even though she's probably smarter than us all. 

Stay tuned:  This week is Will's Pirate Camp.  When I dropped him off this morning, the teacher asked him his name.  His response?  "Capt Jack Sparrow."  I think he'll fit right in. 

Princess Dance Camp and Tootsie

Both of these topics should have their own separate blog post but what can you do.  It's been one of those weeks, again!  We had extra events in the evening last weekend (that were all fun!) and then we had a bbq on Friday (again fun!!) but I'm at loss to figure out how we can't anything done.  Oh and Glenn caught strep throat over the weekend and blahhhhhhhhh. I'm still gun-shy about any sentence with the word Glenn and strep in it but the antibiotics seem to be working their magic and he's feeling better today.  Here's a quick recap of our crazy, hectic, week. 

It was hot today and Glenn filled up the kiddie pool so the bathing beauties could cool off.  Happy Father's Day Glenn!  When I asked Will what he liked the best about his dad, he replied "Daddy goes hunting and brings back good things to eat."  I swear Glenn had a tear in his eye.  When I asked Reina she said "Daddy can ride horses with me someday."  Okay. 

We adopted a dog.  Or rather, maybe she adopted us?  I know SOME of you are thinking that another dog was right up there at the top of the list of Things We Don't Need but we've been talking about it for a while.  Trigger, bless his little bird-brained heart, is a very social dog.  He loves to play and wrestle and chase and frankly he has no one to do that with when we are all at work every day.  So after careful consideration and months of thinking about it, we applied to adopt a dog through a herding dog rescue.  We didn't get to meet this little cutie until the day we picked her up, but she was everything we were looking for on paper.  Good with kids, good with other dogs, 2-3 yrs old (she was a stray before coming to the rescue so they don't know how old she is exactly), friendly, and SMART.  I wasn't looking to clone Canyon because she was a one-in-a-million dog but I have been missing the quirky personality that comes from herding dogs.  So here's Tootsie. 

She's a red heeler and she's only been with us since Friday morning but everyone is really enjoying her.  Even Trigger.  They play and play and play and play and then nap and then play some more.  But she's also bonded with us.  As I type this, she's lying under the kitchen table with her head on my foot.  I'm sure there will be a period of adjustment as we all get used to the House of Two Dogs but so far so good.  I watched Reina 'wash' Tootsie with a piece of paper today and the dog just laid there and wagged her tail at the 3-yr old.  Good stuff. 

Princess Dance Camp can be summed up in one word.  Cuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttteeeeeeeee.  Reina often bounces around this house wearing a combination of princess dresses, tiaras and marabou-trimmed mules and she loves to dance so I thought we'd try a week of dance classes to see if it's something she might want to do in the future.  She was a little apprehensive at first (naturally) and she stayed shy throughout the week but she had fun.   

Seeing Reina (middle) in her little leotard was worth the registration fee.  Here they were practicing jumping - her favorite part!   

My computer is acting up so I'll have more pictures to load later.  Here's to a less hectic week!

A photo recap of our weekend camping

This is not the week for long, word-filled blog posts.  Too much going on!  Between princess dance camp (yes, that's a real thing that Reina's doing - more on that later), and errands and work and getting caught up from traveling last week (just me, well Glenn one night but more on that later too) and getting ready for a bbq this weekend, it's a little craaaaaazy around the Pauley house this week.  But I thought I would be remiss if I didn't post a few pictures from our camping trip last weekend.  We had a great time celebrating my mom and dad's 40th anniversary one week early and hanging out with Vicky and Uncle Matt.  The weather could've cooperated more but you can't get everything.  Here are some photos - detailed, overly drawn out descriptions later. 

Will was cold too but Aunt Vicky did a good job of warming him up.  He looks mad in this picture but he's probably just asking me for another marshmallow.  Please mom! 

What's eating our breakfast cereal?  Is it a troll?  A gnome?  Yoda?

Just Reina in her aunt's sweatshirt.  "I'm cold!"  That first morning I distinctly remembered telling Glenn while packing the day before- "Good grief, we don't need jackets!  It's going to be in the 90's!"  Those words would come back to haunt me the next morning while I was wearing Glenn's jacket (he's the only who brought one) and he resorted to wearing three shirts.  I know, I know - I'm a Wyoming girl, I should know better.   

Not to be outdone, big brother has to be filmed whilst eating fruit loops also.  The sugared breakfast cereal is one of the top 5 highlights of the kids' camping experience.  Also on that list:  s'mores (naturally) and sleeping in the camper.  Easy to please huh? 

Reina, Vicky and Bailey catching up on their magazines.  Reina preferred whichever one had a picture of a kitty in it.  I was glad that there weren't any articles about Muppets being carted off to the slammer. 

Swimming!  Both of the kiddos were hard to keep out of the water.  Saturday was pretty warm (mid 90's!) so we spent part of the afternoon playing on the swimming side of the lake.  Someone else in our party really enjoyed the water....

 

That would be Trigger!  Who knew Brittany's were actually water spaniels in disguise.  He retrieved his toy until we made him take a break and stop shivering.  He's not the most graceful of swimmers but he gets the job done. 



"You want that I should stay right here boss?  Because I'd rather run out there and see what that guys doing or if that other campsite needs anything retrieved or maybe there's some birds somewhere that need to be chased?"

  



During the first night of our camping trip, we were woken up by people having too much fun a few spots down from us and another guy who fired up his air compressor for what I can only assume was to inflate his air mattress at ELEVEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.  Sigh.  The second night all was blissfully quiet until we were awoken by the loudest windstorm in the history of windstorms.  (Maybe slight hyperbole there - I've never been in an actual hurricane.)  The camper was shaking, the lovely 100-yr old cottonwoods that surrounded our campsite were bowing and creaking in the wind and I for one was a little freaked out. (If Glenn hadn't been there, I would've thrown everything into the back of the truck and driven into town to find a hotel.  But sadly he wasn't in favor of that plan in the wee hours of the morning.)  After a few minutes, Will woke up crying and climbed into bed between Glenn and I.  But not after he worried about all of our stuff being 'blowed away.'  I refrained from saying "I know - me too!  Tell your dad that you want to go to town!" A few minutes after that, Reina woke up and came on over.  Shortly after that, Glenn and Trigger evacuated to the kids' bed and we all eventually fell back asleep.  The next morning, I saw this cute pile o' sibling and just had to get a picture.