Making Lists and Checking the Score

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Suzanne

Hey Look! It’s Joe with a dirty look on his face. And yes, that’s Katie in the background perched in “her” spot.

Joe was working on his Christmas Wish List. I gave him permission to give me an annoyed look, I figured I was going to get one anyway, might as well roll with it.

I love how you can see Will’s hand in motion in this one. (In case you are wondering, the t-shirt he is wearing has a picture of a Twinkie on it.)

They were informed that no more than 30% of their list could be video games. I should have specified that no more than 10% could be toy weaponry. They want Nerf Guns and these AirSoft pellet gun-thingies. My family has no interest in hunting, they just like things that go boom and explode and make loud noises. One of their favorite things to shoot with BB guns? Apples. Apparently they explode in a gratifying manner.

They are also aware that they really aren’t getting much more from Mom and Dad for Christmas, since they have already gotten the PS3. This list is more for relatives, and no, they aren’t writing to Santa this year. Santa will still deliver their stockings, but that’s it. When I was growing up, I had younger siblings, so I got to continue to help keep the secret for a number of years, I was told by rotten older kids when I was 7. It makes me a little bit sad that they officially figured it out, but at the same time, I can’t but think that as smart and skeptical as they are, they maybe ought to have figured it out sooner…of course, they probably did, they just didn’t want to admit it, worried that they’d cut themselves off from a good thing.

Last year, though, Joe started dropping a lot of snarky comments, and finally we just had it out. It has taken a lot of the anticipation out of the season — there’s not a whole lot to “count down to” around here, but I don’t think it has really taken the joy out of the season. THe boys still need to work on the whole “grateful for what they’ve been given” thing, though, which is surely a failure on my part. This parenting things is HARD.

I just love the looks I get from all of my boys when I try to take their pictures. Mark was listening to his iPod and checking the Cyclone basketball score in real time on some website. I have to say that at time of night (about 8:50PM), it’s a miracle he was actually awake. Usually when he’s on the couch or in the big comfy chair, he’s out like a light.

Because of the low light situation, I used the Seventies action from The Pioneer Woman on the photos again. The pictures are not great, and I figured that rather than not use them at all, I would continue to just “go with” the graininess and grunginess of the pictures. I’d rather have the nice clear photos, but I’m apparently unable to actually take any of those lately. I’d like to blame my tools, but I know that’s not appropriate. Taking pictures in daylight would help. Figuring out how to set my camera up would also help, too.

I need to be making my own lists, I have gifts to buy, quilts to quilt, bookkeeping to do, a dozen orange fleece hats to make by Saturday. It’s always something, isn’t it?

Summer Vacation 2010, Part 4

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Suzanne

I meant to get another post done yesterday, but didn’t feel great…but I’m mostly back in action today. Mostly.

So. July 6. We all JUMPED out of bed ready for action:

And headed back into Rocky Mountain National Park for a little bit more hiking before we hit the road.

We decided on taking part of a trail along the Colorado River. Before we could get started, though, the boys found sticks to use as walking sticks:

They’d gotten pocket knives at the gift shop the day before, and they desperately felt the need to USE those knives.

It was so beautiful and peaceful — there were hardly any people. The day before was a more popular trail, and a lot more people (and every 3rd or 4th group seemed to be from Iowa. Mark had on an ISU shirt, and lots of people commented…).

Every time someone stopped to catch her breath, she’d turn around and find a boy working away at his stick.

Hey, it kept him happy!

This part of the park was quite different from where we’d been the day before — the trail we were on was almost completely flat, with hardly any elevation change. It was almost entirely forest, with just a few open meadows. It was also kind of fun to see the river near its beginning. It was quite narrow and shallow, but moving swiftly. And so very clear!

We also got to see several areas of rock fall, the boys climbed part way up one of them. The sun was in the wrong place for me to get very good photos.

Mark is taking a picture of me in this one:

And here I am, smiling up at him.

I was grateful for my sweatshirt and jeans. It was really cool, except for when we’d step out of the forest and be hiking in the sun, of course.

Not much in the way of wildlife on the walk. We did see several deer and elk on our drives, and some of the pictures from the day before show the marmot we saw way up on the arctic tundra.

We didn’t follow the trail all the way to it’s measured end, so we don’t know exactly how far we went. Crater Creek is where we turned around, we estimated that the round trip distance of this particular hike was about 3.5 miles.

And no, I did not get the memo that day about wearing a red shirt. It would have been nice if they’d said something, don’t you think?

We said good-bye to RMNP and headed south and west. We had an absolutely gorgeous drive in I-70. It follows the Colorado River quite a bit and the drive through Glenwood Canyon was particularly spectacular. It was fascinating to see the landscape change — drier, and eventually MUCH emptier. Nothing but dirt and scrub as far as the eye could see, with the mountains off in the distance.

We made it into our 3rd state, the second “new” one for the boys. This was taken at the rest stop, I also have a picture of the “official” sign on the highway. We finally made it to Moab around 7, checked into our hotel, ate some supper (Pizza Hut, terrible service…) did some shopping and headed for bed — we had an early start the next morning.

The rest of the days photos are on Flickr. Well, almost the rest. I am vain enough to not share the ones that are supremely unflattering of me…and with that exception, it is all of them, the good, the bad, and the fuzzy. We’d be driving and Mark would say “take a picture of that mountain for me” — so lots of through the windshield photos, with unfortunate reflections. Still, some good stuff. Thumbnails below:

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Summer Vacation 2010, Part 3

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Suzanne

And now, July 5th.

Before I get to the main event, I have to show off how far I’d gotten on my travel knitting project:

The pattern is Pink Ribbon Socks by Laura Spradlin. (that’s a Ravelry link to my project). My first cables. I have really enjoyed making this pair of socks. Pretty proud of myself!

OK, now to the actual vacation:

Actually, on the way TO, Rocky Mountain National Park, we enjoyed the drive from Loveland. We got to go through Big Thompson Canyon, which Mark remembered from when he was a kid. We were glad we had stayed in Loveland, and made this part of the drive in the morning, rather than at night, because we wouldn’t have appreciated it nearly as much. Plus, the weather was nicer.

OK, the park. We had beautiful weather for our first day at the park. We stopped at the visitor’s center, and the Ranger pointed us in the direction of Bear Lake. We started with a half mile hike around the lake itself. Well, I walked half a mile.

The boys were up and down rocks and side paths and probably went an extra half mile, at least.

Joe met a relative:

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Next, we headed for a series of lakes: Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and Emerald Lake. It was quite a hike to get all the way to Emerald Lake. Lots of really amazing views, interesting dead trees to hide behind, rocks to climb on, even some snow to throw at each other.

That last one was taken at Emerald Lake. The elevation at Bear Lake, was 9475 ft, Emerald Lake was another 605ft up. We were sure feeling the effects of the thin mountain air. Round trip, the hike was 3.6 miles, and it took us longer than expected. Everyone (read…Will and Joe…) got hungrier, too. After our hike, we decided to go back to Estes Park for a late lunch.

Holy Hordes of People. And cars. Estes Park had been practically empty when we drove through at 8:30 in the morning! We did end up finding food, and then we headed up Trail Ridge Rd. We stopped several times for phoot ops and did some shopping at the Alpine Gift Shop.

We took the obligatory Continental Divide photo, and then drove down through some hairpins that had me scared to death…and then off to Grand Lake.

I had a hard time looking out the windows during a lot of the drive. In many places there is NOTHING between you and a very long drop.

The Inn at Grand Lake was OK — nothing special. Kind of loud, actually, and none of us slept particularly well. We did check out the tourist shops in town, but I forgot to walk back far enough to check out the quilt shop. Oops. We ate a late supper at the Sagebrush BBQ place and the boys were introduced to throwing your peanut shells right on the floor. Will didn’t eat any, but he was happy to help his Dad get them out of the shell so that he could toss shells.

I’ve just shared some of the photos that had my people in them, we also took lots of scenery pictures. I’ve uploaded everything from July 5th to my Flickr Account, you can view the set below on my website or directly at Flickr.

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Summer Vacation 2010, Part 2

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Suzanne

Continuing on from yesterday, July 4th was pretty much just a travel day. We had to drive across Nebraska, and I hate to say this…Nebraska, you are really boring. You are home to a lot of really nice people, but the drive on I-80 is just…boring.

We did finally hit the next state on our travels:

And you can be sure that we commented on the irony of a brown and white sign that proclaimed “Welcome to COLORFUL Colorado.”

Mark wanted to see MOUNTAINS in the worst way, and from the second we crossed into Colorado, he started asking:

“Is that a mountain?”

No, that’s just a hill.

“Is that a mountain?”

No, that’s also just a hill.

“Is that a mountain?”

No, that’s a COW.

“Is that a mountain?”

Yes, that was finally a mountain. Waaaaaaay off there in the distance, above the treeline at the horizon, those are mountains. I know. It just looks like clouds, but it really was mountains. Or foothills, anyway. Something that was taller than the stuff around here.

What, you can’t see it? How about a different view.

Oops. Stupid camera. Focused on the bug guts instead.

How’s this:

Or this:

We stayed in Loveland, the hotels in Estes Park (30 miles closer) were either full or awfully expensive. We were in a Fairfield Inn, which was perfectly adequate — exactly what you’d expect for that kind of hotel.

We had supper at IHOP — kids eat free, so we ordered 2 kids meals, and us adults ordered larger meals, with the plan that we’d share our extras. I know I said “They’d both like the Silver 5.” She brought one. And when she asked if there was anything else, I said “Well, how about HIS meal,” and I pointed at Will.

“Oh, I thought you only wanted one.”

Uh. Yeah. They may be twins, but they aren’t Siamese and they don’t share a stomach.

Luckily, it didn’t take long and Will had his half of my pancakes to tide him over.

The next excitement was back at the hotel. Mark went to exercise, and I started to get the boys ready to go to the pool…only…we couldn’t find their swimming trunks in their suitcases. I trotted out (in the pouring rain…) to the truck to check if they were magically in one of the Rubbermaid totes. Nope. The boys apparently PUT THEM AWAY instead of packing them in their suitcases.

That got a major eyeroll from Mom. The only time they put their laundry away is when they aren’t supposed to???

Luckily, there was a Target just around the corner, and they found some cheap trunks. I let Mark handle that excursion. I went and Ellipticized. Don’t be too impressed, it was the only time I officially exercised the whole trip. But that’s partly because a lot of our trip was spent hiking…

Summer Vacation 2010, Part 1

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Suzanne

I mentioned that part of the reason I was taking a blog break was because of our family vacation…that vacation is, sadly, now over, and now it’s time for the reminisicing. Oh, and the getting back to working.

I’m going to be posting about our vacation, and this is going to be some of that self-serving navel gazing that I’m sure some haters of personal blogs abhor. I’m mostly doing this for me, and to share with remote family members, but anyone is welcome to come along on our Summer Vacation Extravaganza recap — you just have to remember that you’ve been warned that it might be boring. Especially because it’s probably going to take me about 2 weeks to do all of it: we have almost 1300 pictures to get through.

Our vacation started on July 3rd.

The hardest part about going on vacation is leaving these two behind:

By this point, the suitcases have alerted the doggies to something of a foreboding nature, and their fears are being realized. Their people are piling into this:

And are getting ready to leave.

Packing for a 2 week vacation and having that entire truckbed was like a miracle compared to previous trips, in which we crammed into my Honda Accord. We had all kinds of stuff with us, and it was awesome.

The truck also rode pretty nicely with the weight in the back.

The boys spent a lot of the trip like this:

(That would be…plugged into one electronic device or another. Playing games or watching movies or listening to music…). They did also spend a lot of time reading, but the electronics made the 3770 miles in the truck much more bearable than any traveling I remember doing as a kid. Plus, we don’t put up with the “are we there yet” questions: we point at the GPS and the GPS tells them if we are there yet or not, and if not: how much longer it’ll be.

Our first major stop was:

OK, not really, but it is where we ate for lunch that first day. Don’t worry, I didn’t take pictures of all of the restaurants we ate at. Just the first one. We tried really hard to limit ourselves to ONE Fast Food restaurant per day. ONE serving of french fries and ONE soft drink per day (and less if we could manage it).

Interestingly, of the fast food joints we did go to, McD’s was consistently the best in terms of customer service (fastest, best at getting our orders correct, etc…). We had terrible luck at Wendy’s, Subway, Pizza Hut (which isn’t fast food, but still, it was horrible), and Burger King was OK, but McD’s always came through for us.

Our actual destination that day was in:

Mark’s Aunt and Uncle live north of Omaha, so we stopped to visit with them, and Mark’s cousin and her family. (A family which grew by one baby girl 2 days after we were there. We were hoping baby would have arrived BEFORE we did. Oh well, we had a good time being entertained by baby’s big sister (who is all of 2 years old…).

Much of the time we were there was spent playing with rubber band guns of various sizes:

(Yes, that is a rubberband gun. Ridiculous, isn’t it?)

Even the big kid got into the rubberband act.They also got to go outside and shoot balloons with BB guns. Oh, and I think they used apples as targets, too.

When we left the next morning, we left behind rubberbands allover the place. I felt badly, but Mark’s Aunt didn’t seem to mind — if we hadn’t left when we did, we might not have escaped (the boys would have gladly spent 2 weeks just shooting rubberbands…), plus she said it made her nostalgic for the days when her son was leaving rubberbands all over the house. (Her son is the young man that just graduated from West Point).

So, that was Day 1 of our big adventure. More tomorrow.