Today was another of our Mommy Monday's where Austin and I spend some quality one-on-one time. It was overall a great day, I just had an "oh-duh" moment this morning. So when I woke up I saw that Dustin was watering the back grass. It is not on our irrigation system, so we have to set it manually and he will often turn it on and leave it for me to turn off when I get up. He is up and at it an hour or two before I wake up, he's a morning person, I'm a night person. So I go out and un-hook his hose and hook up my garden hose and turn it on. Meanwhile I get Austin up and ready for his doctor's appointment. I intended to turn off the garden before we left, but in all the hustle and bustle I forgot, boy was it Monday! So we go to the doctor, get home and are sitting here spending time together and it dawns on me that I forgot the garden, oh crap, it's like two hours later! So I go out and turn it off with a sick feeling in my stomach that I wasted a bunch of water.
Then Austin and I went swimming and had a blast. One of Austin's friends from the old daycare met us there and the boys had fun playing together. We get home, have lunch and Austin goes down for his nap. I brave the heat and go outside to stroll through my garden. I notice the plants look limp and wilted and think "what the heck, why do they look like that after all the water this morning?" Then I looked at the end of the drip irrigation system and realized that it's not hooked to the hose. Oh yes, yesterday Dustin was burning some weeds around our yard and used my garden hose as his fire supression line because it's the longest one we have. So for the two hours that I was afraid I wasted at that water I merely just charged the hose that had a trigger sprayer on the end of. No wasted water afterall, but one wilted garden, silly me!!!
Anywho, Austin's appointment was great, he is on track and totally healthy. He was 30lbs and an even 3' tall, which puts him in about the 50th percentile for both. At one point during the appointment when I was talking to the doctor he crawled under the exam table. He is just so fast, he was under there before I could stop him. Then he turned his head up and down and couldn't get it back out until I forced his head back sideways to slide through the openning, silly boy!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
7 of 12
Friday, July 22, 2011
Austin 2.5
Either today or tomorrow, depending on how you look at it, is Austin's half birthday. Today is the same number as his birthday, but there is an odd number of days in a year, so to get to half it calculates out to be tomorrow. I kind of like recognizing it on July 23rd because that is my Dad's birthday, and he would have turned 74 tomorrow. At any rate I am here and have time for a blog, so I wanted to share what Austin 2.5 is up to these days.
- He loves to play ball, and the kid has an arm. I am about ready to ban all balls from inside the house as he definitely throws them hard enough to cause damage. Doesn't really matter what kind of ball, he has them all, and he calls all of them "b-ball". We will correct him and tell him whatever kind of ball it really is, and he will repeat it, but then goes back to calling it "b-ball". Any time we drive by a basketball court he yells out "b-ball" too.
- His language development is really coming along. He says about any word now and speaks in short sentences. Mostly he is too busy to stop and chat, but is able to effectively communicate whatever he is thinking. Sometimes when he doesn't know a real word for something he will spout of some made-up word, and it cracks me up.
- Potty training is in the finishing stage...I think...I hope! I will probably do a stand alone post about our potty training adventure, but briefly I would say we are about 90% there.
- His eating is all or nothing, which drives me a little crazy. I know they say you should not make your kid eat, but it just seems wrong to me on the nights where he does not eat a single bite. Then there are nights he will eat more than Dustin and I combined.
- He still loves to be outdoors and I think would prefer to be outside than in. If there is a lake or pond his job is to throw rocks in it. He was driving my sister crazy last weekend when we were fishing and he was trying to fill in the pond.
- He is really into books at the moment. He loves to look at books and be read to.
- He loves to color and brings stacks of artwork home from The Learning Center.
- He loves to play with playdough. I got him a set of little cutters and presses and he takes and fills the cutters in like a mold.
- The kid is a fish in the pool. He has no fear of the water at all and loves to go down water slides. At our local pool they have a play feature for younger kids and he runs up and down that thing the whole time we are at the pool and does the slides by himself. We took him to a pool with a big slide while in Colorado and we were taking him on our laps, but by the end of the time we were there he got grumpy and wanted to go down by himself. I told him it's not the slide that's the issue, it's the 4' deep pool at the end that he can't swim in yet. Of course a two and a half year old is invincible.
- In clothes he is in a 3T top and 2T-3T bottom. Size 7.5 shoes. We have a doctor's checkup on Monday and will get his official height and weight there.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Soundgarden date night
The main reason for our recent road trip was to see Soundgarden play at Red Rock's Amphitheater. In case you don't know, Soundgarden was one of the 90's Seattle grunge bands who broke up when their success became too much to handle. There most famous hit is "Black Hole Sun." The lead singer Chris Cornell went on to sing in a band called Audioslave, and then did some solo work. Last year Soundgarden got back together and are touring again. Dustin requested this as his Father's Day gift. The concert was spectacular, Chris Cornell never sounded better, seriously his voice was amazing in all four octaves that he spans!
We went to Blackhawk and had dinner at the Ameristar Casino to start our date night. My sister said she thought they had crab legs on the buffet there, but we found out that they only have them on the weekends, so it was a tiny bit disappointing, but once we tried the food they did have it was very good and worth going there. The best part was they had a chocolate fountain on the dessert bar and I had dipped strawberries, pound cake, rice crispy treat, and a marshmallow, yes I was a little piggy!!!
Recently there was a study that showed that Colorado has the least percentage of obese people of all the states, and after going to the concert I can see why. To get to Red Rock's we had to hike in about a mile from where we parked. Then at the amphitheater, you enter at the bottom and have to hike stairs to get to your seat. The worse your seats, the more you hike. We waited to make the decision to go to the concert, so by the time we committed to it the seats we got weren't great, but in all honestly I don't think I could have handled the intense sound if we were sitting any closer, I wouldn't have any hearing left today. At any rate I feel like I worked off the calories that I gained from my chocolate fountain indulgence.
Funny things Chris said during the concert:
We went to Blackhawk and had dinner at the Ameristar Casino to start our date night. My sister said she thought they had crab legs on the buffet there, but we found out that they only have them on the weekends, so it was a tiny bit disappointing, but once we tried the food they did have it was very good and worth going there. The best part was they had a chocolate fountain on the dessert bar and I had dipped strawberries, pound cake, rice crispy treat, and a marshmallow, yes I was a little piggy!!!
Recently there was a study that showed that Colorado has the least percentage of obese people of all the states, and after going to the concert I can see why. To get to Red Rock's we had to hike in about a mile from where we parked. Then at the amphitheater, you enter at the bottom and have to hike stairs to get to your seat. The worse your seats, the more you hike. We waited to make the decision to go to the concert, so by the time we committed to it the seats we got weren't great, but in all honestly I don't think I could have handled the intense sound if we were sitting any closer, I wouldn't have any hearing left today. At any rate I feel like I worked off the calories that I gained from my chocolate fountain indulgence.
Funny things Chris said during the concert:
- "After a few Soundgarden shows back there's become a contest to see who could smoke the strongest dope in front of us, downwind. So tonight because we have less oxygen in our blood because we are this high up, instead of it being replaced by something healthy it's being replaced with THC...smoke it all so that you don't get busted on the way home" (disclaimer: I do not do any kind of drug, I just thought it was funny)
- Referring to the natural rock wall of the amphitheater: "It acts like a speaker, it bounces off that wall, bounces off that wall, falls back down right to my head. If you're really loud go." (then held up the microphone to get the crowd going)
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| On both sides of the seating are these huge red rock pillars that hold the sound in. |
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| Red Rock's is quite possibly the most perfect venue ever! |
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Red Rocks faces east and overlooks the Denver skyline. About half way through the concert the big, brown full moon rose up. It of course looked much better in person, and was very cool. |
Here I am
I know I have been missing, yet again, but I am back. I have several blogs I want to write, and just need to find the time to get it done.
Our Colorado trip was pretty great. I am a big loser though and only took a few pictures at the beginning and then got distracted and never picked the camera back up. So you will have to rely on my written accounts.
We left last Thursday and rolled out of our house by 1. We drove to Grand Junction where we grabbed dinner and got a hotel room. The next morning Dustin had to do a teleconference at 10 so we went ahead and drove to Riffle, CO and found a little neighborhood park where Austin and I played while Daddy took care of business.
We finished up the drive and got into Grandma's at about 3. Aunt Cathy was going to drive down and spend the evening with us too, but she got in a minor car accident that messed up the front end of her car so she had to take care of business up there. Since she had a second vehicle that was parked at her cabin in the mountains we offered to drive her up there Saturday and spend time while there. We got to go fishing in the private ponds of the association she belongs to and caught some really nice rainbow trout. I caught the first one and was pretty impressed until she pulled in one that was MUCH bigger. Austin had a blast playing at the ponds and filled them in a little with rocks.
We headed back down to my Mom's house because my brother said he was going to drive over to see us that night. We got all the way back and of course he called and said they weren't going to make it, but they would be over in the morning. Morning came and they called and said they wouldn't be able to make it after all. That would be fine, but man it was hot on Sunday and my Mom has a swamp cooler in her house; which usually in the arid west it works great because the swamp cooler blows saturated air into the house and then it evaporates and causes the room to cool. But it has been an especially wet summer in Colorado and it doesn't do much good when the humidity is already high both in and out of the home. It was pretty hot, too hot to be outside and muggy inside. If we had known my brother was going to bail we could have stayed at the cabin and played all Sunday.
Monday we were determined to get out of the house so we went swimming. We went to a rec center where they had an indoor pool figuring in would not be too crowded since most people would probably go to the outdoor pool. It was really fun and they had a big water slide that we really enjoyed. We could take Austin down on our laps and Dustin and I would take turns. The best part is he had to walk up two flights of stairs to get to the top, so he definitely got his exercise. That night Austin and Grandma got to spend some quality time while Dustin and I went on a date. I want to do a separate post about the concert after I get the photos uploaded from our cell phone, so I'll share those details later.
Tuesday we were still crossing our fingers and hoping to find out about the job in Wyoming, but they still have not called, so we decided to take the south route home and drive Highway 50 through the mountains so we could see Canon City, Salida, Gunnison, Montrose, and Delta which are all towns we have on our list of places we would like to live. We stopped in Montrose for the night and got a room. All those towns were beautiful, but we confirmed that we would take Gunnison and Salida off of our list because they looked like they would get a pretty snowy and cold winter. We finished our drive home yesterday, and the trip overall was great.
When we were almost home we did get a call with bad news that Austin's Godfather Andy passed away. He is a co-worker of Dustin who was an incredible person. When he was a young man he was drinking and driving and got into a bad car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Even so he overcame that and went on to be an upstanding person who is much loved in our community. He always had a huge smile on his face and kind words. He was a faithful usher at our church and only missed when he was in the hospital. Pretty much every year in the winter he would end up in the hospital with complications from his paralysis, but always seemed to get a little better in the spring. He had been in and out of the hospital ever since last winter and was unable to overcome his complications.
Our Colorado trip was pretty great. I am a big loser though and only took a few pictures at the beginning and then got distracted and never picked the camera back up. So you will have to rely on my written accounts.
We left last Thursday and rolled out of our house by 1. We drove to Grand Junction where we grabbed dinner and got a hotel room. The next morning Dustin had to do a teleconference at 10 so we went ahead and drove to Riffle, CO and found a little neighborhood park where Austin and I played while Daddy took care of business.
We finished up the drive and got into Grandma's at about 3. Aunt Cathy was going to drive down and spend the evening with us too, but she got in a minor car accident that messed up the front end of her car so she had to take care of business up there. Since she had a second vehicle that was parked at her cabin in the mountains we offered to drive her up there Saturday and spend time while there. We got to go fishing in the private ponds of the association she belongs to and caught some really nice rainbow trout. I caught the first one and was pretty impressed until she pulled in one that was MUCH bigger. Austin had a blast playing at the ponds and filled them in a little with rocks.
We headed back down to my Mom's house because my brother said he was going to drive over to see us that night. We got all the way back and of course he called and said they weren't going to make it, but they would be over in the morning. Morning came and they called and said they wouldn't be able to make it after all. That would be fine, but man it was hot on Sunday and my Mom has a swamp cooler in her house; which usually in the arid west it works great because the swamp cooler blows saturated air into the house and then it evaporates and causes the room to cool. But it has been an especially wet summer in Colorado and it doesn't do much good when the humidity is already high both in and out of the home. It was pretty hot, too hot to be outside and muggy inside. If we had known my brother was going to bail we could have stayed at the cabin and played all Sunday.
Monday we were determined to get out of the house so we went swimming. We went to a rec center where they had an indoor pool figuring in would not be too crowded since most people would probably go to the outdoor pool. It was really fun and they had a big water slide that we really enjoyed. We could take Austin down on our laps and Dustin and I would take turns. The best part is he had to walk up two flights of stairs to get to the top, so he definitely got his exercise. That night Austin and Grandma got to spend some quality time while Dustin and I went on a date. I want to do a separate post about the concert after I get the photos uploaded from our cell phone, so I'll share those details later.
Tuesday we were still crossing our fingers and hoping to find out about the job in Wyoming, but they still have not called, so we decided to take the south route home and drive Highway 50 through the mountains so we could see Canon City, Salida, Gunnison, Montrose, and Delta which are all towns we have on our list of places we would like to live. We stopped in Montrose for the night and got a room. All those towns were beautiful, but we confirmed that we would take Gunnison and Salida off of our list because they looked like they would get a pretty snowy and cold winter. We finished our drive home yesterday, and the trip overall was great.
When we were almost home we did get a call with bad news that Austin's Godfather Andy passed away. He is a co-worker of Dustin who was an incredible person. When he was a young man he was drinking and driving and got into a bad car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Even so he overcame that and went on to be an upstanding person who is much loved in our community. He always had a huge smile on his face and kind words. He was a faithful usher at our church and only missed when he was in the hospital. Pretty much every year in the winter he would end up in the hospital with complications from his paralysis, but always seemed to get a little better in the spring. He had been in and out of the hospital ever since last winter and was unable to overcome his complications.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Camping and 4th fun!
We had a great weekend to celebrate our independence. Saturday we went to a reservoir in Utah and camped for the night so we could go fishing first thing Sunday morning. We didn’t end up catching anything, but it was beautiful and relaxing. Austin of course was in his element and had a ball running around camp and the lake exploring and throwing rocks.
We only camped one night and came home. On Monday we went to the town north of us for a 4th of July festival and then went swimming. Several of the kids that Austin went to the old daycare with were at the pool and he had a ball reconnecting with those friends.
We went and saw the local fireworks display which was awesome for such a small town. Austin wasn’t digging it at all, but he didn’t cry. You could tell he was tired and just wanted to go home.
On my earlier post, once I got home and re-read the letter to the editor, if you look at it knowing that we are trying to move it reads the way I described, but if you didn’t know that you probably wouldn’t think that after reading it. I hope that all made sense, I think now that they don’t know we are planning to move on, it just struck me that way since I am definitely thinking about it. And yes, it’s the job that would be about 25 miles from Brandi!!! Oh and I was in the paper too, there was an article about our kids camp that we did in June and I am in the picture, but it’s of my backside because we were playing the human knot game.
Ramblings
I guess some people have not been able to comment on my blog so I attempted to re-adjust the settings and set up a gmail email for my blog:
sarann.rap.blog@gmail.com
Feel free to send me an email if you can't leave a comment.
I have been wanting to sit down and write out some blogs, but life has been busy. Here are a few things going on:
sarann.rap.blog@gmail.com
Feel free to send me an email if you can't leave a comment.
I have been wanting to sit down and write out some blogs, but life has been busy. Here are a few things going on:
- We finally got a hit on one of the jobs we applied for. Dustin has an interview this Friday for a job in Wyoming. They checked his references last week and even called on random co-workers in his office for references. We are semi keeping this on the down low around town, but today in the local paper one of the people Dustin works with put a letter-to-the-editor thanking him for all his effort and wishing him success in the future. Well, newsflash, we haven't gotten the job yet, and how in the heck did they find out, and couldn't they have just sent him a note? So far only one person at my work asked about it, but I guess the cat will be out of the bag now. Oh well, it will just be awkward now if we don't get the job after all!
- We are heading out next week for our Colorado trip, I am so ready to go and have fun!
- We went camping this past weekend and had a blast. I will post pictures later.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Thanks Brandi!
Brandi made these super cute matching aprons for us!
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| Austin wasn't cooperating on taking the picture. |
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
21 Day Summer Challenge Day 20
Today's Topic: Summer Outings
Outings so far:
Outings so far:
- We have been swimming a few times now that the weather is finally hot enough to allow for out door pool enjoyment.
- We took Austin on his first camping trip when we had a camp for the kids I work with.
- Last week we went to the park to take in a couple of the summer softball league games. I used to play, but haven't since we had Austin. Austin had a blast playing ball with one of the little boys he used to go to daycare with.
- We went to the big city last weekend to see Cars 2. Austin did really great considering it was a two hour movie. He sat through the whole movie and only got antsy twice. Overall we mostly enjoyed it, but I thought it was un-necessarily on the violent side.
- We are thinking about going camping and fishing this weekend, but we will see how the weather holds out since we are expecting the monsoon any day.
- We will catch the firework display in the town north of us on Monday.
- Our trip to Colorado for the Soundgarden concert.
- More swimming!
- More softball games at the park.
- Western Legends Roundup
- Kaibab Paiute Heritage Days Powwow
- Possibly interview/house hunting trips if either of the jobs we are applying for pan out.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Fire!
There are a lot of wildfires making national news right now, it's hot, it's dry. We don't have bunches of buildings burning, or the threat of nuclear waste burning, but we had a fire in our vicinity yesterday.
I was home with Austin since with my new schedule I stay home with him on Mondays. We went swimming in the town north of us and on the way home, off to the west I could see a huge smoke plume rising. There is only one two-lane highway between the towns and there just so happened to be a construction crew re-paving the highway so they were limiting traffic to one lane at a snails pace. I saw the smoke, and of course not too long later heard the sirens coming from behind me. This is a small community and any time there is a fire all the local departments get called in, as well in this case as the Forest Service, BLM and BIA. The fire trucks came racing down the closed construction lane and sent the gravel flying. I watched the back window of the van in front of me shatter into a million pieces and fall to the ground. I got a couple new stars in my window, but none got completely destroyed. When we got to the end of the construction zone the van pulled over and joined 3 other cars sitting there with completely busted out windows to complain.
I get home and Austin fell asleep in the car so I moved him to his crib and logged on to Facebook to see if anyone knew what was going on. I could also see that they had airplanes and helicopters dropping water on it. I watched from my front door and this is what I saw:
And then this:
The winds were very strong and blowing the fire towards town. There wasn't a whole lot of information about it since it was small and we kind of live in the middle of no where. After a couple of hours they had the smoke knocked down.
Today at work I found out the fire was mostly within the reservation of the tribe that I work for. The fire started on the highway and burned east where it hit a dry wash and exploded because the wash was full of tamarisk. It then burned further east until it just got just outside the reservation. It was still probably a good two miles from the western edge of my town. It was still smoldering in places this morning so the fire fighters from various agencies are out there keeping an eye on it. The winds are really picking up, so keep your fingers crossed that it does not get re-started.
Now comes the fun part of figuring out how to secure the soil in the wash as we are one to two weeks away from our monsoon season starting and this wash will have all kinds of erosion problems without any plants holding it in place.
I was home with Austin since with my new schedule I stay home with him on Mondays. We went swimming in the town north of us and on the way home, off to the west I could see a huge smoke plume rising. There is only one two-lane highway between the towns and there just so happened to be a construction crew re-paving the highway so they were limiting traffic to one lane at a snails pace. I saw the smoke, and of course not too long later heard the sirens coming from behind me. This is a small community and any time there is a fire all the local departments get called in, as well in this case as the Forest Service, BLM and BIA. The fire trucks came racing down the closed construction lane and sent the gravel flying. I watched the back window of the van in front of me shatter into a million pieces and fall to the ground. I got a couple new stars in my window, but none got completely destroyed. When we got to the end of the construction zone the van pulled over and joined 3 other cars sitting there with completely busted out windows to complain.
I get home and Austin fell asleep in the car so I moved him to his crib and logged on to Facebook to see if anyone knew what was going on. I could also see that they had airplanes and helicopters dropping water on it. I watched from my front door and this is what I saw:
And then this:
Today at work I found out the fire was mostly within the reservation of the tribe that I work for. The fire started on the highway and burned east where it hit a dry wash and exploded because the wash was full of tamarisk. It then burned further east until it just got just outside the reservation. It was still probably a good two miles from the western edge of my town. It was still smoldering in places this morning so the fire fighters from various agencies are out there keeping an eye on it. The winds are really picking up, so keep your fingers crossed that it does not get re-started.
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