I don’t ordinarily do this sort of thing, but I’m figuring that if it annoys you, you can just ignore it, and if you are willing to help, you’ll take two seconds to click a few buttons.

In July of 2010 we had an epic family vacation: two weeks of adventures that took us through Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (and then back home through Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri). As I look back through the blog, I see that I never got further than posting about the very first part of the trip, through Rocky Mountain National Park.

Which is too bad, because the days after that were really amazing: we had splurged on an adventure with a company called Western River Expeditions. We got to visit Arches National Park, take an off-road Hummer Safari, and then spent 2 days rafting on the Colorado River, which included camping overnight under the stars.

It was totally worth every penny, and we had talked about making plans to do another, longer trip this past summer. Only, life intervened, and our vacation plans had to go by the wayside…

I still get e-mails from Western River Expeditions, and the most recent was an invitation to join a contest to try to win a trip: It’s a photo contest, and the person with the most votes WINS.

We are all over this. At least, I hope, that with YOUR help, we are…

I mean, look at these guys:

Who wouldn’t want to vote for them???

The contest is on Facebook, so if you don’t “do” Facebook — you’ll have to sit this one out.

Here’s the link:

Vote for the Earleys

Thanks in advance for your vote…if we win, I promise we’ll share lots of pictures…

p.s. Yes, the prize is for two, don’t worry, if we win, we’ve already promised the boys we’d pay to bring them along with us…

The boys each have a laptop, an iPod, a Nintendo DS, and our family has a Wii and a PS3.  They are so far away from deprived, they wouldn’t know deprivation if it came up and punched them in the nose.

They are not UNgrateful, but we could all work on being more thankful for what we have, and understanding how lucky we really are. Mark and I have talked about finding volunteer opportunities for the whole family, but sadly, that has been more talk than actual action. The boys have had a few opportunities lately to be useful to other people, and it’s been good for them. We’ll keep working on that.

If you really want to feel sorry for someone, pity this guy:

He crawled under the covers and started attacking my legs and feet. I pulled him out and wouldn’t let him back in. Talk about a meanie.

Tonight was the first Junior High Boys Basketball game. Well, gameS — a 7th grade game and then an 8th grade game.

Everybody’s always asking me which is which, so I try to come up with some association with their name and number so I don’t have to keep answering. We have talked to Will before about getting 11: 11 equals double L’s, and I was pretty pleased when he came home the other day having chosen that. We’ve tried to get Joe to get something with a Zero in it, but at least his is not at all similar (he’s 31, and has the ball in the picture). It was hard the year they were 52 and 54 in football: those numbers are just too close together and didn’t have any good mnemonic that I could teach people.

The 7th graders did pretty well for their very first junior high game. It was a loss, 31-18, but they played hard and were trying. Mark said the team actually took about 40 shots, so they were taking the opportunities, but now they need to work on actually MAKING all of the baskets…

Mark is helping coach this year, and I hope he is having fun. He and the boys have to be at school at 6:20 AM for practice every morning. Better them than me. I am NOT a morning person. Unfortunately, I’ve been too much of a night owl lately, and even my 7AM wakeup call has been giving me trouble. I need to figure out how to get the stuff done I want done, AND exercise AND get to bed at a decent hour. And no, I’m not even talking about trying to get the house cleaned and the laundry done…

For Christmas, I would like a few extra hours per day. What do you guys think? Any chance Santa will help me out?

While I was eating my breakfast, I thought Miles was just batting at one of the low-hanging ornaments. I went over to move some things that were dangling off the bottom branches, only to discover that the tree’s movement was actually the cat climbing into the tree.

I pulled him out, but of course he climbed right back up. I left him there, partly because I had to go and partly because I realized that it didn’t really matter what I did, he was going to do whatever he darn well pleased.

By the time I got to school, I had started to worry that he was going to topple the tree over. I said this to someone and they thought I meant that I was worried that he was going to get hurt. Ha. I was fearful for my fragile ornaments!

I resolved to go home at lunch to pull said ornaments off, and told my boss, who promptly said “Maybe you should just go now, you’d feel really awful if something happened before you got there.”

I felt a little foolish running home right away just to check on it, but he was right. I would have sat all morning wondering if everyone and everything was safe.

Luckily for the cat’s continued existence, the tree was (and is…) still standing. Hopefully in a few days, the novelty will wear off. He is endlessly entertaining, at least.