Monday, September 20, 2010

a royal collection

As promised, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

The tail end of August found us up north once again.  Another camping trip (Juniper's fifth time tent camping: hoo-yah!), this time up to Yellowstone Lake where the men folk volunteered on a gill-net boat to capture and remove (yes, kill) non-native, cutthroat-munching, lake trout.  


The sis-in-law (argh...I hate having to type out that whole "in-law" part; really, she's just sis) and I hung out in camp which, in Yellowstone, is tantamount to hanging in a mid-sized Wyoming town.  We walked Osa round the block a few times, watched Owen throw rocks in the firepit, regularly swiped pebbles out of Juniper's mouth and kept an eye out for the neighboring camper who was parked at his picnic table with satellite dish and laptop and laughing his ass off.  And smoking.  In his underwear.  (And I thought New York City was an fun place to people watch.  Just goes to show that it's easy to overlook your own back yard.)

But mostly, we just hung.  June bugs nursed by the fire.

Nights were COLD and I forgot to bring a stocking cap (or, as my man would say, a toboggan) which is very unlike me.  I'm usually a nagging mule when it comes to toboggans.  Don't forget your toboggan.  Where's your toboggan?  You should have brought your toboggan.  That sort of thing.  But like the stereotypical mom, I took care of every other mammal but myself.  And so, I had to utilize my rudimentary turban-wrapping skills.  In this photo, Juniper could be wearing one of those "I'm With Stupid" shirts.    

After two nights of camping we quick jaunted up to cousin Owen's pad where the cousins are truly getting old enough to act like cousins: fighting over toys with an air of civility (verses the no holds barred wickedness of siblings).

Oh.  And the train.  Imagine: Pee-wee Herman's voice and, All aboard!  It's the alphabet train!  Over and over and over and over again.  We only have one battery-operated toy at our house right now--the sit and spin--which Juniper tolerates, but it's not a favorite or anything.  And for the most part, those are the types of toys we're *trying* to avoid.  But oh, that train.  She'd pull herself up to standing and push the little button that made a chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a sound and she'd squeal and laugh and bob up and down to the chug-a-chug-a beat like she was dancing.  I've never seen her so enthralled with a toy.

::  The tail-end of a huge rain storm put a bit of a damper on the music festival my sis had organized.  But alas, when there is good music and beer nothing else really matters.  And, you can't have this sky without the storm:  

:: On the way home, we lunch-stopped at Grant Village where my husband had once worked, a hundred years ago, when he first moved to Wyoming.  As an employee he never could afford the restaurant, but this time we ate in style.  And speaking of style, check out her hair.  (Yes, it was windy.  My own hair was probably too greasy to budge.)  

::  And, as though finding out the Easter Bunny comes twice a year, the best surprise was awaiting our discovery at home in our pathetic, chizzler-munched garden:
Holy potatoes!  Seriously.  We didn't think we'd have ONE.  We had a hard frost, which--for those of you who garden in extreme climates--had the interesting effect of completely biting the Viking Purples, but not even brushing the Yukon Golds.  But anyway, as my usual garden-obssessivness (re: garden journal) was left boxed and stored along with all my canning equipment this year, we thought we'd dig the potatoes just to try and see if we could tell which potatoes were which and which were more frost-tolerant.  I never hilled, never threw any dirt on them, nothin.  We weren't expecting anything edible, just a rotton, mushy seed pot at the base of the plants.  Well.  My, oh my.  Were we wrong.  Purple and gold, a royal collection.

And here's June bugs after sucking on potatoes and sporting her Jellystone bug bites:

:: Bath that night, J bug throwing a leg up trying to scale the tub.  She is becoming a mover and a shaker.

Next post, one more catch-up: over the river and through the woods and thirty-thousand feet in the air to grandmother's house we go....      
      

1 comment:

  1. It is so funny the toys our babes pick out for themselves if we can step back and let them. We have a toy someone dropped off at our house that says, "Red, Blue, Orange..." in some monotone and redundant voice over and over and over. Of course, Olive thinks it is the bees knees. She figures, why play with her wooden stacking blocks or cloth books if that's around, right?!

    Lovely camping photos. I love Yellowstone Lake. Looks like fun.

    On our recent trip back to Montana I realized I should always have a scarf and mittens with me. You just never know when it will fall to 33 degrees - even if it was 70 during the day.

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete

What say you? I want to hear it!