I Need A Ball Playa!

Oh yea, it's tee ball time!!! I loved playing tee ball and softball growing up, it's one of the only things I stuck with through my fickle interests and many moves. Yesterday Mr. Golden Curls had his very first practice and oh my goodness was it adorable. There were boys running every which way, rolling around in the grass, trying to run with ball caps fallen over there eyes, so fun. Their first game is Thursday and I can hardly wait!

Mr. Golden Curls was very excited that he got to have his first baseball "outfit." Guess we need to work on the lingo! Batter Up:

We are having our suspicions that Mr. Golden Curls may be a lefty, at least for sports, he kept trying to throw the ball from his glove. We'll have to test it out.

Near the end Coach had a dad on each base to help the boys know when to run.

The Oh So Many Keys To My Heart

Many things have changed about The Bohemian since we first met our freshman year of college 14 years ago. One thing that hasn't changed is the giant wad of keys he carries around with him absolutely everywhere he goes. The keys in this picture are nothing compared to the set he had back in the day, mostly because he now has them separated into 2 or 3 sets. The monstrosity he had when we first met could've rivaled a mace in a medieval-style brawl for my hand in marriage! The upside to that killer set of keys was he could open many a campus door, not the least of which gave me 24/7/365 access to the art studios...ah. The other day Lil' Spitfire was strolling around the house with these clipped to his belt loop pretending to be Pappa. It was cute. I took a picture. Story of my life!

Pirate Pug

The Bohemian may have forgotten International Talk Like A Pirate Day but Mr. Cash Pugface certainly did not.

Confessions Of A Landlord Part II

Sums up my sentiments pretty precisely.

Vacation plus home don’t always add up to vacation home. For other people, but not for us. For us vacation and owning two homes means we work through every vacation, that we enjoy our actual home less than we would otherwise, that any home improvements we do are to be enjoyed, or simply destroyed, by other people. Labor Day weekend we attempted to paint the exterior of our rental house with the idea that we'd throw a little camping in the mix. It sort of turned into a comedy of errors, with lots of rain and mixed up schedules we barely managed to prep the house for painting.

My dad lucked out and got the last available campsite which put our tent in an unusually precarious position: on a rock with a tree at our door, a cliff dropping off to the lake behind us and a good sized crevice in front. It was actually a pretty cool place to be perched!

Our water logged campsite. I would've been much more relaxed and amused by all of this (I really do love camping) if it weren't for the stress of trying to get some work done.

In spite of being dragged all over creation and spending a day and a half watching us scrape and paint the house, the boys still managed perfect behavior and survived with their love of camping in tact.

One bonus to our camping trip was getting to meet the Log Lady!

Another rare sighting! Our good friend graced our campsite with his presence. He actually came ready to work but we got rained into a cup of coffee instead. I was just glad to see him, he's more like a brother than a friend.

Me and my honey

My other honey, Mr. Cash Pugface

Breakfast rainy day camping style.

We were a bit relieved that the forecast for last weekend involved lots of rain, meaning we actually got a weekend home together. This weekend will be attempt #2 at painting the house. This time The Bohemian is on his own, the boys and I have a birthday party to attend.

The Famous Mr. Cash Pugface

Mr. Cash is a model! He's now part of a shop listing in the DoDaaDoggieApparel shop on Etsy modeling the belly bands and bandanna we got him awhile back. I see star potential!

The Year Of The Potter

It all started that fate-filled day in August of 1995. It was orientation week at the U of A when a punked out bookworm was approached by an outgoing, semi-preppy band nerd on the cusp of rebelling against his upbringing. It was a week before their first freshman classes had even begun, she was sitting outside of the library reading The History Of Psychology just for fun and he had time to kill. It was no love at first sight easy romance but he was a talker who made her laugh and think and she was painfully shy, making her an impeccably good listener. Much maturing, dating, foibles and 6 years later they were wed and been happily so ever since!

The Bohemian and I celebrated our 8th anniversary a couple weeks ago and we've been so crazy busy it almost got lost in the mix. But we didn't forget and we both managed to squeeze in themed gifts and a date! Year 8 is all about gifts of pottery or bronze and we love pottery. Our date was fantastic, good German food and beer downtown, drinks on The Arlington veranda, new body jewelry at Redbeard's. Not your conventional anniversary date I suppose but right up our alley!

For gifts I got The Bohemian a mug for math nerds from Karin Lorenc on Etsy. If you love pottery too you have to check out her shop full of fantastic stoneware. My gift I got to pick out myself. Normally I would think this was completely unromantic, but in this case he surprised me by taking me to the Dryden pottery shop where they actually make the pottery and I got to pick my own! As soon as I walked in I was rubbing my hands together in delight, it was so hard to chose. I finally settled on the vase above. The pics just don't do it justice because the colors are beautiful and the shape is so simple and so lovely. It makes me smile every time I see it!

Summer Vacation

You know all those jokes about people who torture their family, friends, and complete and utter strangers with endless slides of their vacations? Well this is about to be my internet version of that. Possibly even more boring since we didn't really go anywhere exciting. There are so many little things we did over the summer. I wasn't able to blog much because my computer crashed, then I decided it would be a good idea to cut down on my computer use before my boy started kindergarten....anywho I'm so behind that I'm just going to put all those pictures (and commentary) right here for your enjoyment...also to appease the Grandmas!

Pretty boys!

The boys and their neighbor friend on the Slip 'N Slide. Not much sliding happened, but a whole lot of wrestling did, there's a shock! We're so glad to have a friend right next door!


It seems the actual bunk bead just aren't good enough anymore!

I finally get my clematis planted, yea! Two weeks later we go on vacation and it dies, boo!

Oh man, what happened to Lil' Spitfire's eye?!

Ah! It's spreading! Man do those last two winky guys look alike or what?!

I think regular boating excursions are a requirement in this town, so we dutifully fulfilled our requirement with a fantastic day out with a boat full of preachers. Safety in numbers! All in all we had 2 preachers, 1 youth director, 3 minister's wives and two adorable little boys.

Lil' Spitfire stood, rocking back and forth at this rail the whole time the boat was moving. He said he was making the boat go!

Tiny Captain on the look out!

Mr. Golden Curls did have a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure he also had this face on the whole time, not sure what that's about!

My boys got so brave with the swimming. I rode a jet ski for the first time ever and was, well, a little less than brave. Ok, I'm sure I disturbed everyone's lake relaxation. Not just those on the boat but anyone within a 50 mile radius. There was some screaming involved.