Traveling Friends

My friend Beth M always catogorizes friends into three groups: friends, good friends and friends you would travel with. The last group is the biggest complement because it means that you like your friend enough to spend tons of time together for days on end.

We are so lucky that we have lots of friends that fall into that last catagory. And this summer, we were lucky enough to have our friends, the D family, came to visit us in Montana. As if we couldn’t love this family more, after sharing a glass of wine in Big Sky Country really put it over the top.

One of the best parts of having them visit was that their daughter, Morgan, shacked up in Baylor and Auggie’s room each night. And they. all. slept. Like all night. So clearly we have to move in together.

We did a little of everything – rafting, hiking (well, tried to, that’s a long story), Yellowstone Park, roamed around Livingston, and just enjoyed laughing with each other. It was a fantastic week!

I can’t stand this picture. It kills me. The girls are THRILLED to be playing the hardest game of Go Fish (no numbers, only names, they can’t read. You get the picture.) ever and Jeff is physically in pain over it. I’m laughing as I type.

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 I’m not sure what this is about…but I like it

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 Someone finally finally won the game and put poor Jeff out of his misery

photo 3 (43)More to come on our Griswald-esk trip through Yellowstone National Park.

Losing It

A few days before we departed for Montana, Baylor told me her tooth felt “funny”. My first thought was oh super. The occasional skip on tooth brushing has caught up to me. I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to spin this to the dentist when he tells me she has a cavity. Good God I hate brushing their teeth…. So I took a peek in her mouth and noticed her tooth did look odd – I touched it and it wiggled under my finger!! SHE HAS A FREAKING LOOSE TOOTH!!

My reaction was a little strong. It’s not often that life’s events sneak up on me and take me by surprise. But man, this one caught me off guard. I sort of gasped, yelped, freaked out in one sentence. Which, of course, made her freak out. Suddenly there was a total freak out had by all with lots of I don’t want to loose my teeth!!” being screamed.

After we were able to get it together, we decided it was all ok and actually very exciting. A week later, B woke PW and I up with her tiny little tooth in hand and a big toothless grin on her face.

toothThe Tooth Fairy, Penelope, shelled out $5 for her tooth. She said it was because her tooth was sooo clean, it deserved a few extra dollars.

I sighed in relief that we survived the whole ordeal….and then B informed me that her other tooth in the front is loose. Holy moly. What’s next?! Didn’t she just get her teeth and now their falling out?! Cripes, at this rate, she’ll be in college by the end of the week!

America the Beautiful

All American 4th of July 2014

Small town parade….

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Rodeo…where the only limit on the number of beers you can purchase is how many you can carry

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I’ve got some work to do on high speed low light pictures….IMG_7096 IMG_7089 IMG_7079 IMG_7050

Fireworks, pig roast, family and friends

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‘Merica

(Did you notice Baylor’s missing tooth?! More on that later when I can stop crying…)
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Loving Cousin Z timeIMG_7105

There was much controversy brewing over the ring in my back pocket. Anywhere else? No one would notice. In MT? Everyone things I’ve taking up dipping…I assured everyone it was my lens cap, not a can of tobacco!IMG_7173

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We did discover that Auggs is not a big fan of fireworks. But he was a trooper and agreed to watch them from inside so there’s hope he’ll be with Peter on the fire duty in the future!

Big Sky July

In a moment of stressing about packing lists, I realized how far we’ve come and how much we’ve done in a short time to make a dream of ours come true.

Let me back up to last summer. After a long flight and drive to the ranch, Peter and  were sitting in rocking chairs on the deck waiting for Auggie to doze off. It was after 10pm and the sun was almost down. It was cool and quiet and…perfect. We started seriously thinking about how we could make a transition that would allow us to spend more time in Montana. After a lot of conversations, we came up with a plan.

In just under a year, Peter has passed the Montana bar, been admitted and we have booked a rental house for all of July. We can both work from here and he’s working on a Montana client list – ensuring lots of summers in Big Sky country to come – and I’m sure a few “client meetings” during hunting season too…

The logistics of getting here were a little daunting. We settled on having Peter drive the 18ish hours with Mac and all our crap stuff while I flew with the kids. I’ll save you the details…but there was a barf bag involved in my part of the trip. But we made it all in one piece! The house we rented sight unseen has turned out to be great (with a few additional baby proofing measures post Auggie’s minor tumble down the stairs. Hearing Baylor scream “Auggie fell down the stairs!!” was as close as I’d like to come to knowing what a heart attack feels like).

 

We’re unpacked, settling in and awaiting the arrival of our friends/house guests! And this morning, we’re waking up to this:

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Dear Sandman

Dear Mr. Sandman,

Where the hell have you been?! You decided to take a vacation weeks ago and then just never returned?? What is the matter with you? How do you expect to keep your job when you are so sloppy?? No one in this house has slept more than 4 hours at a time for the last 2 months!! Four hours!! Do you know what it’s like to have to sleep in intervals and never know when you’re going to get to go to sleep and when you’re going to be woken up again?! No! You don’t! Because you’re on vacation!!

Did we do something to offend you? Was it something I said? Something Peter said? What about Auggie? He doesn’t have a big vocabulary but since he’s the center of the problem, I’m wondering if he did something….

Because if he did, just tell me. I’ll make it better. I’ll fix it, I swear. Just tell me. TELL ME. I WILL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT JUST PLEASE COME BACK!!

Please?

Pretty please?

Happy Anniversary

Today PW and I are celebrating 9 years of marriage (15 years together!).

There’s been a few for worse times. A life time of for better times. Some sickness, lots of health. Thankfully more richer than poorer.

Four road trips from DC to Phoenix and back. One house full house remodel. A job change. Two kids and countless other memories that have made us who we are today.

We are so lucky. So blessed. We are the lucky ones that meet when we were 17 and are still very much in love 15 years later. It’s a different love. When you’re newly weds, your love is based on hopes and dreams for the future. After 9 years, our love is rooted in the experiences we’ve had. In surviving the bad times. In enjoying the good times. In learning how to be supportive and to allow yourself to be supported.

When we got married, my mom gave us a budget. Whatever we didn’t spend, we got to keep. It was up to us how we spent it- we could elope and keep it all, we could use it as a down payment on a big wedding. Peter was a first year law student racking up loans and I was working retail. So we decided to split the middle. We had lots of appetizers, good booze and a great DJ and then bought a couch with the remainder. One of our friends worked for a wine company and had several cases of champagne “fell off” the truck and into the bar of our reception. It was cheap stuff but the fact that it was free made it taste like Crystal.

I love you to the moon and back PW. Here’s to 99 more years together and  to always remembering how good the cheap stuff tastes!

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