Category Archives: vacation

>And, I Am Back

>As Dave says, you know you aren’t ready for your vacation to end when you are taking 30 mile side trips (to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison) on your way home. Sigh. I’ve been back at work for 2 days and I am still not ready for it to end.

But here is what you can look forward to reading as I force myself to get back into the swing of things:

1.) The Commenter Contest Winner
2.) Embarrassing things that I have said at work
3.) Something asinine about my job
4.) Vacation Jackisms
5.) Family photos gone wrong
6.) Vacation round up
7.) Dave’s bike ride
8.) Mouse’s chocolates
9.) Update on books read
10.) Peaches

Ok, ok, I’ll let you know that commenter Laura won the commenting contest. Yea! Laura! Thanks to all July commenters. Commenters appears to not be a word. Commentators? People who left comments?

Anyway! Thanks! I need to devote an entire post to Laura’s prize, and that is number 8 on the list.

One more thing – As you can see on my Books Read 2009, I have already read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Loved it. I also read 3 books on my vacation, which pretty much means my vacation was awesome.

>The Target/Walmart ad of Yellowstone

>As usual, I forgot some essential camping item, in this case it was a sweatshirt for Luke, so we had to stop somewhere and purchase a sweatshirt. We stopped at Walmart. Luke was really excited to be wearing all clothes from only two stores: Target and Walmart. I guess when he has on clothes from Savers, it just isn’t the same? Anywho, I suggested we do a photo shoot.

From Yellowstone
From Yellowstone
From Yellowstone

>The Food Of Yellowstone

>One our long ago trip to Yellowstone, all the adults took turns making meals.
I made fajitas, served with guacamole, wine, and a side of ibuprofen. Actually the ibu was just for Luke and his potentially dead tooth, a story that I will post about just as soon as I can look back on it and laugh.

From Yellowstone

Grandad made a pizza with with guac, chicken, chedder and salsa. On the grill. We have a friendly pizza making rivalry between the two of us.

From Yellowstone

Grandad has to get creative after he insisted that I not continue to buy wine with screw top lids.

From Yellowstone

Which inspired all sorts of resourcefulness:

From Yellowstone

After our awesome hike, Grandmom made chili dogs.

From Yellowstone

Pancakes are usually my specialty, but Dave developed quite the knack this summer:

From Yellowstone
From Yellowstone

>Days and Days of Photo Essays

>Remember, way back when, after I got back from vacation, when I posted a list of things I planned to blog? I really want to say “blog about” instead of just “blog”, but I can’t end a sentence with a preposition. Anyway, remember that?

Let’s see how have I done so far? Ok, not great. But! I have posts scheduled into the future now.

1.) Wildlife – Tuesday
2.) Mushrooms and Wildflowers – Friday
3.) Jack getting dirty and dirtier – See below
4.) Food – Saturday
5.) How my pedicure fared? – Done!
6.) Other
7.) Luke’s ad campaign for Target/Walmart – Sunday
8.) Core Mountain Sports – Sort of Done!
9.) Geologic Features – Monday

Full disclosure, I have the photos ready… The text isn’t complete. So if I fall back into some other rut of working/sleeping/reading/watching tv… the posts will still go up, but without my scintillating commentary. And I am sure no one wants that!

And now, here is a boy that got pretty dirty on his camping trip, and had no time for photos.

From Yellowstone

>The Long Awaited Pedicure Photo Essay

>As promised, I am working through the items on my list of things to blog about, starting with what people will probably find least interesting: my Yellowstone Vacation Pedicure. I decided to try something new this summer, bee-you. It turns out that I am a little addicted to the color, because I just had to get it redone this weekend. Funny story, after my pedicure, I was sitting at the little counter with the uv lights drying my little piggies and reading a book. And then I heard this:

“HelllOOOOOO!”

And it was a very impatient hello.

I looked up, slowly, over the top of my glasses. And I slowly tried to figure out if I knew the man who was impatiently saying hello to me. The bearded man, who looked like he had just finished a run, and was maybe going to go home and mow the lawn, or scold his kids. I didn’t know him, so I didn’t say anything. He was sort of leaning over and looking at me with a bit of hostility. I was really enjoying my book, though, and I was not thrilled that he had torn me away.

Then he said, “Do you WORK HERE?”

Still looking over the top of my glasses I said, “No.” And then I continued reading. And that was it. No apology, no embarrassment. He just got his nails done and then stormed out to his subaru and drove off.

Anyway – on to my pedicure photo essay.

Here we are just a few days into our trip, and the polish appears to already be a bit chipped, like our windshield. We were following the RV from Cody to Yellowstone, and we had been in the car for a very short time when Jack started saying, “Down Mommy. Down. Mommy, Down!”

I was pretending I didn’t understand him, because we had been in the car for less than an hour and there was no way he was getting down. It turns out I didn’t have to pretend that hard at all because I actually didn’t understand what he meant. Until he elaborated. “Mommy! FOOT DOWN!”

When we were at Old Faithful, we spent a bunch of time entertaining ourselves at the picnic area while Dave worked. That is the subject of another post, but one of the things I did to pass the time was to take a picture of my foot.

Then on the way out of the park, we stopped at one last geologic feature, and I took a picture of my foot over a bacterial mat.

Possibly coming soon… Pictures of geologic features that do not feature one of my feet.

>And We Are Back

>

I am going through the pictures and I think I am going to organize them into the following categories for blog posts:

1.) Wildlife
2.) Mushrooms and Wildflowers
3.) Jack getting dirty and dirtier
4.) Food
5.) How my pedicure faired
6.) Other
7.) Luke’s ad campaign for Target/Walmart
8.) Core Mountain Sports

Possibly not in that order.

AND – school starts on Thursday, so I’ll have to post about that too. I have plenty of material, I just need to get back into the blogging routine. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of work for the next year or so, so hopefully I can squeeze a bunch of blog posts in too!

>Just a Few More Pictures

>And maybe one more video tomorrow…

The Highlights (until my camera fell in the sand and stopped working):

We had a suite on the first floor and I took this picture from our patio:

From Mexico

The boys were very cute:

From Mexico
From Mexico

Jack really likes to say cheese for the camera now:

From Mexico

We really needed a few days of nothing but sun, beach, pool, food and drinks. You can tell by the smiles:

From Mexico

Now, I mentioned the highlights, and I mentioned the only real challenge we faced, but here are some other interesting tidbits.

Most common types of pizza at the snack bar:
hot dog pizza
salami pizza
tuna fish pizza
hotdog and carrot pizza

And this:
Me: I wish we had just eaten all this fruit so we wouldn’t have to declare it.
Dave: It’s no big deal, you just have to declare it.
Customs Officer: This form is for you, but don’t worry you aren’t in trouble.
Me: You are taking the fruit?
Customes Officer: In the future, don’t bring fruit to Mexico.
Jack: Miiiiiiiiine. BANANA!
Me: (contemplate asking the customs officer for the confiscated banana so I can feed it to Jack right there.)
Jack: Miiiiiiiine!

Note to self: anything included in the section with weapons and explosives, is probably something you should eat before you get off the plane.

>Nothing Cuter

>My friend Laura was saying that there is nothing cuter than a running toddler, but a toddler running on the beach has to be the cutest. It was a little windy, and you can see the shadow of the kite that Dave was flying. Just 46 seconds out of our few days of beach, pool, play, food and drinks.

>As Our Mexican Vacation Ends, So our Swine Flu Quarantine Begins…

>Kidding!!! But since it’s the topic on everyone’s mind, I might as well give you the scoop on the swine flu first, since who wants to hear all about the beach, and the pools, and the drinks, and the desserts, right? You’d probably feel jealous if all I talked about was how we were upgraded to a suite, and had the best location for our room, near the adults only pool on one side, so it was quiet, and with the miniature golf course right outside our patio. So you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow for all that good stuff. So: Swine Flu.

On Sunday or Monday we noticed about 4 people wearing masks, and one of them was a really, really old lady. It had seemed sort of hazy as we were landing, since Puerto Vallarta is on the pacific side, with the ocean and the mountains and the LA style inversion layer… I thought maybe the masks were asthma/smog related.

Tuesday morning, we turned on what we thought was the news, and it was like this: “Influenza, blah, blah, blah, Influenza, blah, blah, blah, INFLUENZA, blah, blah, blah! INFLUENZA!!!” interspersed with video of people frantically passing out masks. (My Spanish isn’t very good.) I wondered if maybe instead of the news we were watching a Mexican production of The Stand. Dave said, “Huh.” and turned off the TV. We were just trying to get an idea of what the weather was like in Denver.

At the airport we saw random people wearing masks. No one at the United counters had on masks, but some baggage handlers were wearing masks. One Asian family was masked, all Americans were unmasked. Carl’s Jr. workers: Masked. Starbucks: Unmasked. Etc. I asked Dave if he thought we were going to be quarantined when we got off the plane. He said, “No.”

When we got off the plane, we got a piece of paper that listed the symptoms of the swine flu, and it said to call the CDC if we got sick. That was it. You get sick in 2 to 7 days, so I guess we’ll know in 1 to 6 days.

In the meantime, here are some cute greetings from Mexico. Jack was very popular in Mexico, especially once he started saying, “Hola!” (or owa!).

¿Cuántos años tiene su bebé? Mira a los ojos azules! Hola bebé!