I missed making 8 and 9 month posts for our little princess. Now she’s a full fledged big 10 month old baby on the move. Click on the picture above for a video from the last week of May– her first intentional forward movement. She’s super busy and into everything.
She also talks! Well, babbles and waves and says MOM or Mama, Bah for Brenna, Dadadada or Daddy for Dad, dod for dog, nana for banana. Super, super, super cute.
So, we had a little campout this weekend. Barry raced the Bailey Hundo, which is a hundred mile MOUNTAIN bike race in the Colorado mountains. We set up our camper near the finish area Friday night, ate some tacos, played some Blink!, and went to bed. As far as camping sleeping goes, it wasn’t bad. Barry and I made our bed like a bed instead of using sleeping bags– sheets and a down comforter. It was super comfy except for the little girl who decided she needed to snuggle in it too and nurse all night long. Eva and I slept pretty well once Barry got up a little after 4 to get ready for his 6:00 start.
(photo by a photographer camped out on the side of the trail.)
He did awesome! We loaded up in the van to drive to the half way point and cheer him on. I missed my a turn, so we ended up getting to see him cross the highway after I realized my mistake and we turned around. He gave us a beauty queen wave as we passed. I was worried that we’d miss him at the aid station, but when we got there only 6 pros had come through. We took our time getting our chairs and camera out of the van. I was loading my arms up in the back of the van a second time when I glanced over to the food and water bottle table and thought, “That guy looks like Barry, but he wouldn’t be here yet.” Then I noticed his yellow shoes and screamed and ran over. He hugged and kissed all of us, but I didn’t get a single picture. He was too far ahead of schedule.
It was an hour drive back to camp. We got back in the camper, ate some lunch, and the sky started to rumble and rain. Then in REALLY rained– torrents accompanied with pea to marble sized hail. (My seams got put to the test! They dripped a little, so I need to do some seam sealing, but the entire tops were water tight and that was the big problem before.) When it let up I went to get my rain coat and park myself at the finish line so I could get a good picture of our muddy hero.
Then he rode up. He was done! 2nd place in the 30-39 category! Last year he did it in over 9 hours. This year–
7 hours and 37 minutes!!!
I really am married to a super hero.
A couple of summers ago we bought a used tent trailer we found on craigslist. It has been fun to camp in, but needed a little help. I recovered all the cushions with cute new fabric and still need to work on the curtains. But what it really needed was help with the tent roofs. The vinyl was brittle and discolored and CRACKED in a bazillion places. Not so good in rain storms. (There were only 2 small cracks when we bought it, but they spread and multiplied with each use.)
I looked into getting the vinyl/canvas replaced, but it was going to cost nearly $1000. So, we held our breath, ordered some Temper Tent Vinyl tarps from none other than tarps.com and sewed in new roofs ourselves.
My sewing machine wasn’t too excited about it, but we made it. The tension was all wonky and I couldn’t ever get it perfect, but we weren’t going for pretty– just functional. It was HUGE and HEAVY and really hard to maneuver. I had to keep telling Barry, “We can do it! We can do this.” Of course the second one went better than the first.
Things I learned– use a walking foot, and a jeans 100/16 needle is better than a leather/vinyl needle. We used bulldog and binder clips to hold everything together so we didn’t make holes with pins. Not that pins would have ever gone through without getting all bent.
We used a mix of new binding made from tarp scraps and the old original binding. You can see that sometimes my tension was a little loopy, especially over the curves, but the seams are still strong and hold up to being stretched. Phew!
We got it all put back together.
And look- no cracks!
We’re headed up to the mountains today to use it. Barry’s got the mother of all bike races tomorrow–
the Bailey Hundo. 100 miles on a MOUNTAIN bike. Totally nuts, but totally awesome.
It is baby bird season. Ellie is going crazy with all of the baby grackles in our back yard. She tries to catch them constantly, but as far as we know has only succeeded once and we intervened by putting into a neighbor’s fenced back yard with no dogs. Those grackles, though, make the most hideous noise and we’ve got nests of them near every upstairs window it seems. Brenna found a baby house finch (I think) on the sidewalk, making its way to the road. She snuggled it for a while, then put it in a bush.
Eva is just cute. (I got her bonnet from UB2.)
Here is my attempt at gardening this year. For the first time I started some seeds inside in March? February? Well, ages ago. My 2 broccoli plants got a little leggy, but were generally happy and are doing great out in my little 4×4 square foot garden. I started a couple of pepper plants as well as a bunch of tomatoes them too. My peppers are ok, but only 4 of my 8 tomatoes made it outside. They looked fine one day, and then half of their leaves were brown and wilted the next. It sounds like Jessica had the same problems on a much grander scale. I’m not really trying to feed my family with this garden. Well, maybe for one meal.
We’ve got radishes! I really wanted a salad garden, but I used old lettuce seeds that apparently aren’t any good. I planted 3 squares of 4 plants each. I’ve got ONE lettuce growing. Hmmm…
I figure we’ve got to make some effort to grow some food every year. It’s good fun, but I’m sure thankful for Costco and Sunflower.