Happy Birthday Nanny

Father's Day Weekend Pt 2

Father's Day Weekend

My Texas Girl with her Safari Dad.



Cooling off!



Would you like to know the deffinition of the worlds best Grandpa: A man who follows a two year old here, there and everywhere in 108 degree weather, with a smile on his face. We love our PawPaw!



Water Baby

At Levi's Lake

Grandma has been at Momma and Daddy's house all week so every day Laine and I have been over there visiting. I have a few photo's of everyone hanging out but not too many words to tell you about it. This has been a wonderful couple of weeks with the Ranch and the Lake trips. All in all our summer is getting a very nice start. I hope we can keep this happy streak for a while.

The first photo's are at Momma and Daddy's house. Laine was doing Momma's hair. It looked painful but Momma didn't mind.

Levi found a turtle in the road when he went to go pick up lunch and he brouhgt it back for Laine to see. She was afraid to touch it until it ran and jumped in the lake, then she wanted him back.

 

 



Levi had these little fish he used for bait. Laine didn't want to touch these either but she did want to carry the bucket aroudn and watch them swim. 

Levi had a large binder that had a ton of sheet music in it. He let us flip through it and pick out the songs we wanted to hear and he'd play for us. He know all the songs, that's amazing to me.

Vacation Over

So I covered most of Friday and Saturday in yesterday’s post; Saturday night and Sunday morning was mostly more of the same. We ate, we slept, we rode around on the golf cart which was my favorite I think, riding the same trail over and over and never seeing it the same way twice. I’m going to share the photos before I tell you about the ride home.

Real men take fire seriously.



Real men kill stuff.



I would  have stuffed a pillow under my shirt,
taken my shoes off and held a beer and cigarette in one hand
with the gun in the other,
but this is all the redneck I could muster on short notice.
I think I look convincing don't you?



That goat was MEAN. He eats his own babies.
I don't know why I was surprised
when he tried to take a bite of mine.

Now, the ride home.

We left the ranch right around 10:30, about an hour before Laine’s nap time. So Laine was tired, and she was upset over having to leave my mom and dad behind and she wanted to be held because it was nap time, so she cried and screamed or three hours. THREE HOURS of a baby crying is long enough to drive anyone up a wall, but Erik had to get into the office. He had to. We were unable to stop for Laine, so she cried. For three hours. When we stopped for gas Erik bought Laine a small cup of Dippin’ Dots and that made her happy for almost an hour so that she didn’t start whining and crying again until we hit Katy.

By the time we got home, it was almost three o’clock (yeah that’s a 5 hour trip packing into a 4 ½ hour trip with gas stops and one stop to clean up the vomit after Laine cried herself into hysterics included) and we were all running on fumes. Erik stayed only long enough to help me unpack the car before heading out to the office. Laine and I ate some leftover twice baked potatoes (thrice baked) and hung out in the living room for the rest of the day, I was doing laundry and Laine was taking out every toy she owns and throwing at the wall and me until about 10:00, at which time I held her down until she cried herself to sleep, she woke up an hour later but snuggled down with me, put her hand on my face and smiled at me.
My vacation at the ranch was so wonderful and so relaxing that having Sunday happen was like a bucket of boiling oil being poured into my socket after someone tore my eyeball out with flaming tongs; it’s Tuesday and I still want to cry thinking about Sunday.

Saturday night Erik got a call from work, apparently it was flip out time and his boss/brother was yelling at him, cursing at him and generally just tearing Erik down. I really don’t care what is going on at the office and I really don’t care whose fault he thinks it is, and I really, really don’t care what his excuse is. I’ve never heard disrespect like I did Saturday night. It was ridiculous and uncalled for.
Then Sunday comes along and he finds out that Erik is on his way into the office, we’ve left our family vacation early, and now he’s fine. He’s happy; he now understands what Erik was trying to explain to him. Now he’s open to new opinions and NOW he’s treating my husband like a human being. 
Now you can tell me that a job is a job and it has to get done; I understand that and I’m not arguing that point. I know that there was a problem at the office but I also know that Erik was fixing it, that he was doing everything that he was supposed to be doing he just wasn’t doing it in the office, where James could check in on him on a regular basis. So instead of trusting Erik to do his job, the job he’s been doing very well for a number of years, James had to call him, and demean him, disrespect him and humiliate him. I heard large chunks of the conversation, I heard my husband lose his temper and raise his voice for only the third time TEN years and I can’t stand it. So yeah, you can tell me my anger is misplaced but I won’t move it. You don’t disrespect my husband.

Cazadora Ranch

This past weekend Erik, Laine, Alicia and I all drove 5 hours to a friends ranch and had three wonderful days of doing whatever we wanted. Most of it included naps and food and playing on the playground but some of it included the ranch itself. We rode the property on the golf cart a few times, we fed the horses and had moments with a goat who wanted to eat my baby.
Friday, Erik, Alicia and I were all able to get the day off of work so we were able to be on the road by 9:30 after I dropped off the cake balls to the WOMAN WHO MADE THE FIRST EVER ORDER OF CAKE BALLS! That was exciting. We met and exchanged cake for money in a gas station parking lot. It felt like a drug deal, I totally got an adrenalin rush. Once we got on the road Laine fell asleep and I was able to concentrate of some barrettes for about two hours, then she woke up and we stopped at a burger king when she started getting rowdy. After a bellyful of food and some running around we piled back in the car and made it to the ranch just after 3:00. That’s some pretty dang good time for driving with a toddler. Once we got to the ranch we got the tour of the most wonderful most beautiful place in the world. I mean it’s amazing. It’s peaceful and quiet and there are no people around and no traffic and no smells or sights besides that which God planted and I LOVED IT! There were no people! It was heaven for me.
We piled into a golf cart (all 6 of us) and drove around the property for about a half an hour, taking photos of things that probably won't interest me again but totally fascinated me there. We saw rabbits and roadrunners and eagles and red-winged blackbirds and turtles and otters and deer and hogs and trees that have been around longer than my family name! There was so much to see and at the same time absolutely nothing to distract you from the beautiful place we were in.
We got back to the house and unpacked our bags, I traded in my sandals for boots and we got started on dinner, steak and potatoes of course. However when I say steak and potatoes there is no way for you to understand the amazingness of that meal unless you’ve eaten with my family. If you have you know, if you haven’t you haven’t ever really eaten.
After dinner we played with Laine on the playground that was right in front of the house; a huge wonderful playground with a slide and swings and amazing happy rays of sunshine sprouting out from it in all directions totally intoxicating my daughter with laughter and bubbly giggles for the entirety of the trip. I love that playground.
Bed time came around 9:30 for Laine and me, even Erik crashed earlier than usual. Being outdoors eating mad amounts of good food and drinking very cold beer can wear you out if you aren’t used to such wonderful conditions. My city body had to adjust to the easy life of the country.
Daddy woke Erik up around midnight to go out hunting and while they were gone Laine woke up, of course flipping out, in a strange place in a strange bed and it was super dark and she couldn’t see me so it took me a while to calm her down, but after I told her “It’s okay, we're sleeping in DonDon’s bed” it made her a lot more curious than afraid of where she was. And that started the next two days worth or “It’s DonDon’s bed? It’s DonDon’s chair? It’s DonDon’s house? It’s DonDon’s? It’s DonDon’s? It’s DonDon’s?”
It’s really cute is what it is.
Saturday morning Laine and I were up at 7:00 for breakfast and cartoons for a few hours before everyone else got up and started moving around. We spent the morning with coffee and campfires and good company a hammock and some music. A beach vacation with pina colada’s delivered to me by ethnically handsome young men can’t even touch a morning like we had in the hot and dry side of Nowhere, Texas.
We went for another ride around the property, took some more photo’s and enjoyed the cool breeze that was missing the day before. We played with Laine on the playground and had conversations usually reserved for Sundays. We prepared then ate more food and took naps. TOOK NAPS. Sorry, didn’t know if you saw that. I TOOK A NAP. Yeah I did.
We slept until around 2:00 and then waited for everyone else to wake up form their naps, we sat around the fire again and played at the playground again and we fed the horses some apples and we made the acquaintance of a very mean very ugly goat that literally kept trying to eat my child’s feet.
Yeah, I snatched her up and ran away.
Yeah, my dad laughed at me.
Oh and how my dad laughed! All weekend, all day and night and day and night again. He laughed and when he wasn’t laughing he was smiling. The place we were in was amazing enough on it’s own but to have the music of my dad’s laughter covering it all was like all the beautiful things you can think of wrapped up in all the beautiful things you can’t think of and smooshed together with all the beautiful things God hasn't made yet. It’s was so nice. I really, really hated to leave.
I’ll have photo’s tomorrow.

Just To Make You Cry

I see you when you think I’m not looking, when I’m scrubbing dishes, standing at the window, your arms and legs a hundred miles a minute through the grass of the backyard, your hair in a stream of gold behind your neck, your feet carrying you from one end of the earth to another.

I see you when you are alone, dancing to jazz standards in a ballet leotard, pink with glittered straps
across the carpet of your room elbows slightly bent, toes pointed you learned in class, head and chin tilted up, you leap across the carpet taking flight, during a supposed nap.

I see you when you think I’m too busy, between moments of direction; do this, don’t do that, are you listening to me? Between morning oatmeal, lunchtime questions (how do dogs pick things up?) and evening books, when you are eager to know if Alice makes it back up that hole.

I see a girl with eyes that wonder everything, stopping to see that a bird does in fact have a red breast. I see a girl tenderly touching a blade of grass, just one to see if it’s soft or coarse or nothing
at all. I see you, my girl, from all angles, all sides, right and left, up and down every corner of your soft heart and curious mind.

I see you. It is everything else that is the periphery.

 
 
I found this poem on the 52 figs blogsite. a beautiful poem from mother to daughter I thought.

mmmm...Update.

Gluten free brownies with sugar free chocolate icing in a not sugar free but
super yummy vanilla candy shell with silver rock candy sprinkles, yeah!

Vanilla Spice cake balls with a vanilla candy shell,
 before decorating drizzle.

After the decorating drizzle of pink vanilla candy.
 I think these two are cute together.

Gluten free Devils Food cake with sugar free chocolate icing in a not sugar free but
super yummy chocolate candy shell with a pink vanilla drizzle.

I got my first Mother's Day card of the year
from Levi and Sydney, yay!

Happy Mother's Day weekend to all the mothers reading this.
But mainly mine.