Baby Cousin birthdays and a Halloween Preview

Once again, I find myself woefully behind on blogging duties.  But I'm also behind at work and the house is clean-ish but there are giant stacks of paper needing my attention and the giant cupboard in the bathroom is leaking with expired cough medicine.... so what I'm saying is that at least I'm consistent, right?

 

Anyway, we helped celebrate Baby Cousin's FIRST birthday a few weeks ago.  Her mom and dad hosted a lovely little Broncos themed birthday party - what else could it be, really?  We had such a great time helping the cutest little niece on the planet to celebrate her big day. 

I volunteered to make the cake. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to make a bundt cake into a Broncos helmet but the look Glenn gave me when I shared that idea convinced me to just add some blue and orange sprinkles and call it good.  Oh ye of little faith. 

We'd barely set foot in the house before someone had somebody else sitting on his lap.  For posterity's sake, I have to point out Ainsley's blue and orange tutu and football leg warmers.  I'm putting those on my Christmas list - if they have them in adult sizes I really need a pair. 

 

We sang "happy birthday" and waited to see if Baby Cousin would embrace frosting and sugar or if she'd calmly ask for a veggie tray.  While it's hard to tell in this picture, the cupcake and frosting was a hit.  See, she is related to me! 

Reina encouraged AP to tackle that cupcake already. 

The great costume dilemma of 2014 finally ended when Will decided to be a Union Soldier.  Have I mentioned that already?  Glenn and Will found a blue button down shirt at Goodwill, I spent a few bucks on brass buttons and yellow ribbon, and Glenn took it from there. 

This sounds a little weird to type, but Glenn has some serious costume skills.  He has a vision and it's usually much clearer and more specific than my vision and he has way more patience to painstakingly glue yellow ribbon. 

The kids' school hosted their annual Halloween carnival last Friday and both kids were a hit.  There were probably 25 other Elsa's but Reina's homemade costume stood up to the Disney creations and she definitely had the Elsa attitude down pat.

I managed to wrangle Reina's hair into a side braid and check out Will's ammunition pouch.  We don't mess around at the Pauley house. 

Ignore the giant mess exploding out of the kitchen in the background and just focus on the sibling affection.  It lasted for a good 10 seconds. 

Happy Halloween! 

A collection of food related items that should be immortalized and a picture of football

The Halloween costume dilemma of 2014 has been resolved.  Will has decided to be a Civil War solider.  I've already ordered a nifty Union cap (I did lobby for him to be a Confederate soldier like his great, great, lots of greats grandfather but we'll go with Union this year) and I think we can do the rest of the costume with stuff we have around here.  Will has requested that we purchase a new gun and knife to go with the outfit but I'm not sure that Target sells muskets. I was lulled into thinking that I still had two weekends left to put all of the costumes together but the calendar reminded me that the school carnival is actually on the 24th so Bronco Baby Mom needs to get her you-know-what together. Yikes!

 

So here's a collection of weird photos that I uploaded to the blog last month and then promptly forgot to do anything with them.  Life is so full and interesting right now and the kids are so darn entertaining.  Instead of writing stories about potty training and other bodily function related milestones, I have hysterical conversations to transcribe and all of these funny little remarks that Reina's makes (did you know her 'boyfriend' is a 5th grader?  That one stopped Glenn in his tracks).  But the problem is I'm either too busy to carve out time to write, or I sit down at 9:22 p.m. on a Tuesday and can't remember a darn thing.  So instead I memorialize random photos from my phone.  And here you go. 

 

I made hardtack. Do I need to say more about that?  Isn't everyone making hardtack these days?   Because Glenn does not like to do things halfheartedly and if one is going to spend 5 days backpacking in the backcountry while elk hunting, one might as well have some hardtack to eat.  It was edible, and not as weird tasting as it looks.  A cross between a flat biscuit and a bland tasting wafer (those are Glenn's words just now.  I asked him to describe the hardtack and he said "a bland tasting wafer but it was really good!"  Nice attempted save, buddy).  The ingredients for hardtack included shortening and flour and frankly that might've been it.  Glenn took it on his trip and didn't starve so mission accomplished. 

Coming to a supermarket near year, "Glenn's bland tasting wafers."  Delicious! 

 

While Glenn was gnawing on a hunk of hardtack, the kids and I were home braving the first real cold snap of the fall.  This was right around Sept 11 and I had 8 pots of peppers and tomatoes and I wasn't ready to say goodbye.  I dragged everything into the garage and crossed my fingers.  The plants did well and we're still eating tomatoes this week. 

I almost turned a space heater on for my plants but even I thought that might be a little excessive. 

This was one yellow tomato plant.  Almost as tall as I am but thankfully not as heavy. 

First snowfall of the year - insert lukewarm yahhhhhh here.  I wasn't ready in mid-September.  I'm a little more ready now but just because I'm tired of doing yardwork. 

Vicky planted these colorful carrots in the community garden plot which we also frantically harvested before the snowfall.  They were delicious! 

Will's football season wrapped up and the Cheyenne Vikings ended with a near perfect record.  Will's already talking about the next sport - basketball - and the one after that - baseball.  He'd like to fit soccer in there somewhere but it might come down to choosing soccer over baseball, or vice versa.  The only thing I know about spring soccer in Cheyenne is that it often involves a lot of snow.  I vote for baseball! 

Reina took this picture, along with 15 other shots similar to this and also super closeups of my face.  She's not as entertained by 7-yr old football as I am so she turns her attention to other pursuits.  Like photography.  With a really old cell phone. 

I'm signing off to go figure out how to make a replica Union uniform out of long johns and sports pants.  Did the soldiers back then wear Under Armor?  I hope so. 

A list of the costumes that the kids are considering for Halloween

Will
1.  A soldier
2.  A policeman
3.  A baseball player
4.  Anakin Skywalker before he becomes Darth Vader
5.  Anakin Skywalker burnt by the lava and soon to be Darth Vader (a bit complicated, that one)
6.  Darth Vader

Reina
1.  Elsa (For the 2 of you who haven't seen Frozen yet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_(Disney)

With Halloween just 3 1/2 weeks away, I told Will he needs to decide by this weekend so that I can frantically consult the internet and figure out a way to make a Darth Vader costume out of duct tape and jogging pants.  Reina's already suggested that we take her ballet costume from last spring and add a large cape, so aside from figuring out how to make a gauzy, ethereal cape from the sale bin at JoAnn Fabrics, we're pretty good to go on that one. 

Wish me luck. 

Months that end in -ber, part 100

Out of respect to the doves, I didn't label this post "dove hunting" so instead let's just reference all of the events that occur during months that end in -ber.  Hunting, hunting and more hunting.  It's been well documented on this blog that the Bronco Baby Mom doesn't hunt, but I've birthed a couple of people who do.  On Labor Day, Glenn took the kids, Pop-pop and Trigger to a farm east of town and dove hunted for the afternoon.  It was the first time I've been at home by myself with just Tootsie in a long time and let's just say that I had a very nice afternoon. 

 

While I was cooking dinner for one and trying to explain to a red-heeler why she doesn't get to chase birds, the hunters were also having a fine time. 

Brother and sister in camo. 

Watching daddy wait for birds. 

Reina, Will and Pop-pop.  With a very tried Trigger in the kennel.  And a bunch of birds on the tailgate. 

Pop-pop took this picture and labeled "a game involving doves."  You can bet that it was bath night after all of the hunting. 

Someone should be on the cover of a bird hunting magazine.  Hubba hubba.

One more with a very serious 5-yr old who's helping daddy scout. 

September

School is in full swing, we are cramming in whatever little bits of summer we still can, and it snowed a few days ago.  That about sums up the month. Here are a few items of note:

Football:  We are a football family!  Will is playing flag again.  He's on a team with 7-10 year olds but he's holding his own.  He's a Viking this year and his flag football team officially has a better record than the professionals.  We all went to the Wyoming game a few weekends ago and watched the Broncos on tv last Sunday.  Will watches some of the games on tv with us but Reina is mostly disinterested.  Her current favorite sporting event to watch is America's Ninja Warrior.  She yells "that's not fair!" when anyone of them fails to complete a challenge.  She's cheers loudest for the few girl competitors, naturally. How did she become an ANW fan, you may ask?  I take the credit/blame. I was folding laundry on a slow Saturday afternoon and was watching it mostly because there was nothing else on and also because I've become slightly intrigued with the whole competition even though most of it is just ridiculously bizarre.  So Reina came in, saw one of the female competitors complete the challenge and was hooked. 

Weather:  It snowed Thursday night.  Yep, Sept. 11.  That was our first frost, followed by our second frost the next night but the forecast looks nice for the next week. I still have many vegetable plants in various stages of harvest that I tried to protect from the snow.  We'll see if it worked.  We've had a strange gardening season.  Two hailstorms wiped out a lot of what we planted but lots of rain and sunshine helped give us bumper crops of zucchini and tomatoes (if I can keep the plants alive for a few more weeks). 

School:  Both kids are having an excellent school year.  Reina is brimming with kindergarten knowledge and happily points out all of the ways that Mrs. Teacher does things and all of the ways that I do those things wrongly.   She's building on the learning she started at Montessori and is just so ready to start reading.  As I mentioned before, she fills me in on all of the many details about her day.  At the grocery store the other evening, out of the blue she announces that her gym teacher always has a mad face.  Reina's very sensitive about facial expressions and she frequently asks if I'm mad, when I actually just need more under eye makeup.  So I asked her if Mr. Gym Teacher also sounded mad, or if his face just looked mad.  She thought about it for a minute and decided that he sounded mad too.  Frankly, if I taught kindergarten P.E., I'd probably have a mad face most of the time too!

Will has a great teacher again this year and while he's not enthusiastically recapping each day during the drive home, he's doing well.  He and I are reading "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" together and I'm amazed at his reading skills.  It sounds like his class is also starting to tackle multiplication.  Wow! 

One milestone of note this week - Reina told me to "chill out mom."  I've been worried about the respiratory virus that's running around the country.  Between Croup Girl and mildly Asthmatic Boy, respiratory bugs make me a little nervous.  Will caught a cold last weekend and had a cough for a while that was making me nervous.  He felt much better by the middle of the week and I was asking him how he was feeling (for the 50th time) when Reina told me to chill out.  Sadly, she was right. 

The grown-ups in the Pauley family are working, hunting (well one of us) and trying to keep the chaos to a minimum.  September is one of my favorite months and I'm trying to enjoy as much of it as I can.  Those cold, dark winter days are right around the corner. 

Kindergarten chatter

Reina is still all aglow with love for Kindergarten. I realized late last week that two years after the fact, I'm finally finding out all of the little details about a kindergartner's day.  Who teaches what, when they have art class, what kind of questions people ask. See Will was pretty tight-lipped about general activities.  I'd get a lot of "I don't know" or "I don't remember" when I'd ask questions.  That's still true today but the good news is that in two years, I'll find out about second grade activities!  But back to Reina.  On just the 10 minute drive home today, I found out the following:

1.  Reina got a cut that required a bandaid.
2.  Someone ate a snack on the bus and that's against the rules.
3.  Someone was swinging on the playground and thought they were going to barf.
4.  Someone in Reina's class likes the color pink and has two dogs.
5.  We used to have three dogs but now we just have two dogs.
6.  Will did not sit by her on the bus and on the playground he was walking backwards and accidentally ran into her which caused her to bleed.  (The walking backwards part is not disputed by Will but he does argue that she didn't actually bleed, her skin was just a little scratched.)
7.  She got a book from the library about a baby who can do a cartwheel on the back of a unicorn.  Isn't that crazy?
8.  Today's letter was "e" and both elephant and eagle start with the letter E. 

There's a lot going on in Reina's big, beautiful brain. 

First Day of School

Kindergartner and second grader!

From the last day of preschool to the first day of school in a matter of days.  Reina's only a few days older in this picture than in the last but it sure feels like a lot more than that.  We had one last jampacked summer weekend (pictures from that later) and then Tuesday dawned bright and early.  Reina asked for "Elsa hair" (a braided crown that I've just barely mastered) and Will was incredibly excited to wear his new Nike shoes.  Outfits were picked the night before and backpacks packed so the morning was probably the easiest one we'll have all school year.  I cried when I took their picture on the front steps but those were the last tears that anybody shed for the rest of the morning. 

 

Drop off went smoothly and we met both teachers and got everybody settled into their classrooms.  Will didn't want/need much hovering but Reina let me stay in the class for a few minutes along with all of the teary-eyed moms (I was feeling a little smug at this point).  We are excited about the teachers that both kids have and I think it's going to be a great year.

 

For posterity purposes, I want to jot down the following:  Both kids have brought home pages for the parents to fill out to help acquaint the teachers with our little snowflakes.  We've had to describe our kiddos in three words. 

Will:  Thoughtful, kind-hearted and active

Reina:  Independent, smart and empathetic.

 

Now for the record, we should've put 'smart' in Will's 3-word description too but I think those other words very accurately describe him right now.  He's thoughtful in that he thinks of other people's feelings but he's also a ponderer and he'll pop up with a question pertaining to a conversation you had with him weeks ago or a comment about a tv show that we saw last spring.  There's a lot going on in that brain of his.  He's genuinely kind to other kids (and his sister most of the time) and he's always on the go. 

 

Reina heard us talking about the project and she suggested that we describe her as a snugglebunny too, which although it's a lovely trait to have, may not be the exact type of information that her teacher is looking for.  We also considered "devilish" but we're pretty sure she just saves that for the people closest to her at home.

We're off on the adventure of a new school year and I can't wait to see what's around the next corner.... which will probably be Halloween parties and two costumes and two parties to go to and a million cupcakes to make.