Lately

We have a bunch of awesome camping pictures somewhere around here...but meanwhile, here are some from family camp this past weekend. Yes, we camped for two weekends in a row with two babies. I'm expecting flowers this week, or at least a medal.

Family camp brought back a lot of memories. The last time we went, we were newlyweds and Una was our main source of anxiety in life. We were like all stressed out about whether Una was playing well with the other dogs, if her coat was perfectly white, if she was eating normally while traveling. Oh, how it all makes me laugh now. Don't get me wrong, we love Una as much as ever (have dedicated a good portion of our lives to preventing her obesity), but how times change.

Last time we spent our evenings running around with the kids, playing capture the flag and yelling about rules. This time we skipped out on the campfire only to spend the duration of it trying to stop the screaming. There was a lot, a LOT of screaming during our second night. It was cold--and little Heidi did not appreciate that, or the fact that Elsa had first dibs on mommy. Lots of drama.

And, of course when you travel with a nursing infant, you sometimes need "nurse stops." Husband does us a favor and tries to pick the prettiest scenic overlooks for such stops. On one of these, we were surrounded by several government vehicles and bright lights, and a dude in a uniform came up and asked us what we were doing. "um, nursing?" it helps when you have the actual infant to prove it. In the spirit of our current administration, the cop said "belt the baby and jet." I guess we were on government land after sunset or something. A microcosm of our times.

But all's well that ends well. I made sure to strap the baby into the carseat whenever we were letting her chill in the forest--have you noticed, we have an awful lot of pictures of Elsa sitting in the carseat in the middle of nowhere this summer. But she is always buckled in, so that if a mountain lion tries to get her he will have a harder time. That will give me the split milisecond I need to get my charlie's angel on and kick that cougar to the other side of the rockies. This is how I think now. In short, we had a lot of fun and not a lot of sleep, but are none the worse for wear.

Chad and Jill: those are our tomatoes but not from seed. We did get cucumbers, pumpkins (what do I do with pumpkins in August???), one canteloupe that was eaten by a squirrel, and zuchinni all over the place. Your cosmos and another pink flower are blooming beautiful--the morning glories and other vines are great but not blooming. I swear, pictures soon.