Day 3

Well, it's actually Day 4.  But who's counting.  Logging on to record that I measured Will's height and he's officially just one foot shorter than his mom.  Twelve inches until he's looking me in the eye.  I guess it's time to start wearing heels around the house.  And little sister?  Just 5 inches shorter than her brother.  Uh oh.

Pictures from yesterday's post

I'm a lazy, lazy blogger.  Day 2 of this NaBloPoMo and I'm already resorting to a few pictures with captions.  I'm tired!  I stayed up way too late last night watching football highlights, and then a few minutes later, the game was being replayed and of course I had to watch it!  But tomorrow's a new day.  In the meantime...

This photo can be titled, "tired mom riding exercise bike with cat perched on her shoulder."  Coco hears me downstairs on the bike and comes racing in and if I'm lucky I can catch her mid-air as she leaps for my shoulder.  She's happy to hang out there while I pedal along.  Cats are strange.  But oh so photogenic. 

Just a couple of cousins hanging out watching cartoons. 

Reina's last soccer game.  The highlight for her was a clementine decorated to look like a jack o'lantern.  Of course it was.

The Day After Halloween

I'm sitting here on the sofa watching Broncos highlights (Broncos beat the Packers 29-10) while Baby Cousin snoozes on the couch.  Her mom and dad are driving back from the Broncos game. I think she had a fun afternoon/evening hanging with the cousins and our crazy household.  Her presence requires me to tone down my tv yelling and Broncos cheering, but I'll do it for her.  I'm sure Will, Reina and Coco appreciate it too.  More on Baby Cousin in later NaBloPoMo posts.  I have to stretch this one post a day for the month of November thing out a little bit.

So yesterday was Halloween.  Unlike previous October 31 in Wyoming days, this one was relatively mild.  The kids had their last soccer games in the morning, followed by a soccer pizza party.  In the afternoon, Glenn and I jogged in a crazy headwind and got enough of a workout to justify all of the Halloween candy later, although that was just me and I probably should still be jogging right now, 24+ hours later to justify all of my intake.  But anyway, back to Halloween.  We had some friends come over for chili before trick-or-treating. The kiddos climbed into their costumes and this year's weather meant we didn't have to put snowsuits on underneath.  Reina headed out the door with the friends for trick-or-treating and Will went with another friend.  I stayed home and handed out candy.  We had quite a view visitors this year.  Coco was a little nervous with all of the doorbell ringing but she eventually came out of hiding to watch the door. 

So pictures of costumes tomorrow.  They didn't look too different from the carnival a few weeks ago although Reina did get new boots and decided that free flowing hair was a better look for her than braids.  What else is new. 

National Cat Day (yesterday)

On November 1, I'm going to try the whole blog every day for a month thing, so you'll have to wait a few days for a proper update. In the meantime, yesterday was National Cat Day (it's a thing!) so let's talk about Coco. I know, she's hardly ever mentioned on this blog...

In honor of National Cat Day, yesterday morning Coco fished Glenn's sandwich out of his lunch box (which was sitting on the floor) and carefully carried it upstairs and headed for underneath our bed where I assume she was going to enjoy a nice snack.  After I took her picture, I used my mean voice which slowed her in her tracks long enough for me to grab her and the sandwich.  Glenn's lunch had tiny teeth marks in it but he still took it to work and Coco had to dine on boring old cat food. 

Coco is a force of nature around here.  In typical kitten fashion, everything is a toy and just about everything is fascinating.  She sleeps most of the day so when we are home, it's play time.  The dogs will wrestle with her and play chase but not as frequently as she would like.  Coco is still fascinated with the tub and shower.  She finally fell in the tub on Wednesday night, during Reina's bathtime. Coco had been sitting in the bathroom and when she jumped up on the ledge of the tub, she slipped and immediately fell in, fully submerged and came up dog paddling (cat paddling?).  I happened to be in there at when the cat swimming event occurred so I scooped her out and then annoyed her by drying her off, as opposed to letting her race around the house leaving wet cat-ness trailing behind her.  

Hey Glenn, let me help you carve pumpkins.  I'm quite talented. 

Hey lady, it's dinner time, or breakfast, or lunch, or snack.  Whatever you want to call it, just feed me. 

Yah Lucy, fill up her bowl with those little tiny crunchy things that I love to inhale when no humans are paying attention. 

Snuggle time.  Sort of.  Some of the snuggle participants are happy to be there, other's are going to jump off the couch the minute I say "it's okay." 

Coco, we are glad you found us, because I'm pretty sure that's how it worked. 

Stuff Reina and I did today

Coco is pretty ready for Reina to go back to school.  

Reina stayed home today. She's on the mend but if I follow the no-school-for-24-hours-after-a-fever rule, she wasn't ready to go back to school.  In fact the fever kept popping up today even though her energy level was similar to those of people who run ultra-marathons, or drive those bicycle taxi things, or Coco during her non-sleeping time, well you get the drift.  Reina had spent most of Saturday and Sunday on the couch so I guess I couldn't really blame her.  So, in mostly chronological order, here's a list of activities from today. 

1.  Watch cartoons together and talk about how Fluttershy and that other pony with the purple mane are partnering to solve a problem involving the little dragon thing or something like that.  

2.  Spend a few minutes in blissful silence whilst entranced by something (appropriate) on the internet.  

3.  Run a couple of errands and pick out some pumpkins for carving at a later date.  Marvel at mom's strength in carrying two pumpkins at once.  (Thank you, thank you very much.) 

4.  Discuss whether or not squirrels are affected by poison ivy.  This question came out of the blue, obviously. 

5.  Decorate the front door for Halloween.  Get a wild hair (Reina) and decide to take a piece of cardboard and draw a tombstone and R.I.P. which gets transposed to R.I.9. which makes it even more adorable.  

6.  Color for about 30 seconds before getting bored and deciding to make one of those rainbow loom bracelets. 

7.  Watch a video about how the rainbow loom thing works because the actual instructions were misplaced months ago. 

8.  Successfully make a blue and purple bracelet and immediately lose interest in making another one. 

9.  Snacks.  Lots and lots of snacks. 

10.  Watch videos of people playing with toys right out of the box.  Yes this is a thing and apparently very popular. 

11.  Act surprised when Will comes home because is it really late afternoon?  

12.  Cheerfully take your own temperature every 15 minutes or so and report on the results.  

13.  Snuggle the cat.  

All joking aside, it was a nice day with my girl.  When I stop worrying about multi-tasking or getting much else done, she's great company and I appreciate the fact that she was sick this week and not last week when I was up to my eyeballs with work work.  Now if we can just keep the rest of the family healthy. 

Stuff Will got to do today: 

1.  Go to school.

2.  Get a flu shot.

3.  See the full trailer for the new Star Wars  movie.

So not a bad day after all.  

Halloween Preview

Friday night was the Halloween carnival at the kids' school.  I needed these two more weeks before Halloween to work on costumes but luckily Grandma Hansen came to the rescue with Reina's and Target took care of Will's stormtrooper outfit.  Check out the Halloween fabulousness.  I think both costumes will be well-suited to a chilly Halloween night. 

Serious

Less serious

Cute!

Serious and cute!  Will wanted a scar under one eye because he's taking the movie previews pretty seriously.  He wanted the scar to be bloody but that's beyond my special effects ability.

If Reina looks a little peaked in the pictures, it's because she was coming down with a bug but dang determined to make it through the carnival.  The rest of the weekend has been spent on the couch but more on that later. 

Things Coco finds interesting that the rest of us don't and a bunch of pictures from soccer

The last few weeks have been crazy and hectic. I have a big work project coming up this week and I am counting down the hours until it's done.  We are in full October swing around here - sports, Halloween costumes, duck hunting, you name it, it's happening at the Pauley house.  So in lieu of a real blog post, enjoy these pictures of Reina, Coco and Will. 

Things that Coco finds interesting that the rest of us don't:
1.  the washing machine when it's running
2.  Tootsie's wagging tail
3.  cotton balls
4.  the shower, especially when someone is in it (also the bathtub)
5.  the dog's water bowl

Last week, I tried to capture the joy that was Coco running around the house with a Lego man in her mouth.  (Well 'joy' to Coco, Will say this picture and was not as amused as I was by it.  Maybe Lego men shouldn't be left so haphazardly all over the house hmmmm?)

Nom nom nom.  I didn't let her actually eat him. 

This is Reina's serious soccer face. 

Everyone run after the ball - it's somewhere up there!

This is also Reina's serious soccer face. 

While it was Reina's turn to sit on the sideline, she took a few pics with the camera.  This is the sky and something else. 

More serious soccer face. 

Will's "why didn't I bring a hat or sunglasses" face.

Reina took this picture too, I thought it captured the insanity that is 6 and Under soccer pretty well. 

Coco watching Reina take a bath.  What?  It's fascinating! 

So in a nutshell, mom's too busy to blog, everyone is healthy, Coco is still cute and both dogs are still tolerant of her.  October is off to a good start.