In which I try to get caught up...sort of

JULY

Having been extremely remiss in blogging lo, these past six months, I shall now try and get caught up by posting a multitude of photos accompanied by (I hope) relatively succinct narrative of what we've been doing. You might wonder why I would even bother, but one of the functions of this blog is to serve as a journal of sorts. So I better not skip over the entire second half of 2009.

If you're just now joining us, we are jumping back in time to July, 2009, which explains why everyone is tan and the grass is so green.

We celebrated the Fourth of July by setting off fireworks in the road in front of our house, which may or may not have precipitated three fire trucks and two squad cars rushing to our location later that evening. That did, in fact, happen, but not because we were setting off illegal fireworks that we bought on the Indian reservation (it's OK if you ARE an Indian.) Mainly it happened because our next-door neighbor's house caught on fire. And can you believe that the house caught on fire because of a poorly-disposed cigarette, and not illegal fireworks? Neither could I, but the firefighters seemed pretty convinced that my neighbor, who secretly smokes in the garage, put out her cigarette on the floor, which was caught in a gust of hot, Vegas wind under the garage door, igniting the interior of the garage, which subsequently burned quite vigorously. Charlie had already gone to bed for the night, and awoke to find dreams of firetrucks quite literally taking shape in his own front yard. Quite an exciting experience for a 3-year-old boy. Good thing I've written it down here, because I doubt he'll remember it when he's older and he's complaining that "You never let me burn anything down so that firetrucks can come to our house!" I'll just pull this up and show him we've already had that experience, and that will be that.

This is the evidence that proves that our fireworks were NOT illegal.

On July 16th my sister, Lori (or Lorraine, depending on when you became acquainted with her) gave birth to her first baby with husband Sean. Wait, that sentence did not sound right. I'm not implying that she'll have other babies with other husbands, just that she had a baby, and Sean is the baby daddy. That sounds better, I think... Dorothea Leigh Stevens weighed something around 6 pounds, I can't really remember now. That was, like, six months ago! Anyway, she was and is quite adorable. We get to see a lot of her since Lori and Sean moved to Henderson, about two blocks away, actually, so that Sean can attend medical school here. Right from the get-go Charlie was fascinated and protective of Dorothea, even more so than he was with Antonia. I think that is partly because Dorothea doesn't pose much of a threat to him as a usurper of his throne: Sovereign of the Daines House. (He does still think he maintains that title because he's bigger than Antonia and can physically dominate her, but the rest of us know the truth, including Antonia.)

Aunt Adri (Future Favorite Aunt) with newly-born Dorothea Leigh Stevens

July was fairly jam-packed, and also included the yearly family vacation with my side of the family. We rented a cabin in Wallowa Lake, OR, which is a really pretty little town on a lake in Northeast Oregon. There's something very European about Wallowa Lake and its neighboring town, the way the rolling hills and farmland come right up to the town on the edge of the lake and mountains. The beauty of the scenery probably didn't mean much to Charlie, as he was mostly interested in throwing rocks and finding big sticks with his cousins Cameron and Eli. I learned a few things about the Hall family and its extensions. For one thing, when it comes right down to it, ridiculously hard puzzles are more enticing than a rousing round of Guitar Hero, for at least half of us anyway. Also, putting each married child + spouse in charge of a couple meals results in a week of fabulous meals and lots of good eats. We have some good cooks in our family, no doubt. And not the least important: no one should try and induce Will to ride a tram 3700 feet up to the top of Mt. Howard, no matter how many states you can see when you're up there. He won't tell you that in so many words, but he will gently and firmly insist that he can stay home with Antonia.

Nia generally likes to smile when encouraged, but sometimes she's of the notion that it's good to play coy with the camera. When I look at this picture I can't believe how much her hair has grown in six months. Just wait until I get to January's pictures, then you can see for yourself :)



Once back in Idaho for a continuation of our summer trip north, we did manage to rock some more Guitar Hero. From left to right: my sister Jo's husband, Richard; Will; my brother, Bryan, Jo (Guitar Prego Hero) and Bryan's wife, Brittany. Don't you get annoyed when bloggers assume you know everyone in the picture. I do.


We had one more trip to make in July, to Virginia for a family reunion of sorts with Will's side of the family. They had been planning a get-together in honor of his dad's mother and all of her kids and their kids were going to come out to celebrate her birthday. Sadly, she passed away in May but as many as were able came out in July anyway. We celebrated her Swiss heritage by lunching at a Swiss-chalet replica restaurant in the hills of West Virginia, which is funny because Wallowa Lake is sometimes referred to as "America's Little Switzerland" or something like that. So I guess you could say we went to Switzerland twice in July, without actually going to Switzerland at all. Will and I have both been to the real Switzerland, so we were not tricked, but I think Charlie and Nia might have been...

There are so many fun things to do in the DC area where Will grew up, we did not have nearly enough time to hit all of them, but I made sure that Will and I did the most important thing: eating a very, very, VERY delicious hamburger at a place called Ray's Hellburger. It should be called Ray's HEAVENburger. I know, right? This place is frequented by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, people. That's how good it is.

Since Charlie and Antonia didn't get to have any of the delicious hamburgers, we took them to the National Air and Space Museum, truly the most magical place in the world to...mainly older men and war veterens. Little boys like it, too, I think, because they can sit in a real plane and pretend they're flying. Unless you're a little boy whose mom won't let you touch the controls because little boys should NOT fly planes. That's not how it went for Charlie, though. He would have sat and pushed buttons and pretended to fly that plane that was bolted to the floor all the livelong day.

I think my favorite part of the trip to the Air and Space Museum how really reasonably-priced everything was. The gift shop was not overpriced AT ALL. I should be grateful, really, for the abundance of free museums provided by the Smithsonian Institution, and I am. There are plenty of things you can score for free in Vegas (free valet, free alcoholic drinks, free "postcards" of naked women...) it's just that those things are slightly less intellectually stimulating and enriching than museums.

From Virginia, we took a short jaunt up to Pennsylvania to visit my college buddies Annie and her husband, Jason. They have 3 delightful children who were happy to show the ropes to my kids at this fabulous botanical adventure called Longwood Gardens (another educational/kid-friendly sort of place that I would LOVE to have in Vegas)
Since Antonia was born, Will and I have been endlessly fascinated watching the differences in personality between two kids who both came from the same gene pool. Antonia and Charlie are soooo different, it never stops surprising us. For example, at 10 months, Charlie would have been very hesitant to participate in new activities in unusual surroundings with lots of strangers around, but Antonia jumped right in without hesitation. She probably would have literally jumped in if we'd let her. Even at his age, Charlie probably would have been more hesitant if Adri (Annie's 4-year-old, named after me, of course :) and he hadn't already formed that unshakeable bond that little kids have even when they've just met. He probably would have allowed her to dress him up in her princess outfits. In fact, he did just that, later at her house.

This is just water that Charlie and Juliet are painting with, but it's good practice for when we're ready to paint that downstairs bathroom. I'm going to need somebody to help me, and heaven knows Will doesn't have time...

Pretty flowers, pretty girl. Antonia looks alright, too.

Can't you just see the romance blossoming?

I don't know what this chair is all about, but that didn't stop us from thinking we needed our picture taken perched all up in there. I see a crown, tulips, and what looks like beehives...but what does it MEAN!?

Annie wrote some way better stuff about our visit on her blog, check it out here.


AUGUST/SEPTEMBER
Most of August was taken up with a....p r o j e c t (cue dramatic music.) We thought it would be a good idea to wait until the end of the summer and then start a project that would surely only take a week or two, just long enough to give Will something to do before school started again. My mother-in-law Geri, our faithful Project Babysitter came out to watch the kids so that we'd have plenty of time to finish everything. Except that we didn't. As usual, the project (that word is starting to feel like a bad word to Will) took longer than anticipated. However, the outcome was quite as much as I desired, if not more, and one of these days I'll take a picture to by way of explanation for why we pretty much fell off the face of the earth in August and even stopped showering or dressing our children. In case you're curious, it was just a minor face-lift to the kitchen: we re-worked the cabinets with some molding and such to give them more height and that built-in look that's so hot with the kids these days; then we painted the cabinets black, added hardware, replaced light fixtures etc; If you think black sounds a bit intense, try not to picture late 80s black lacquer, more of a matte-finish black pottery-barn look. I guess it doesn't really matter to me what you're imagining in your head, I just don't want anyone to lose any sleep wondering if we made the biggest mistake of our lives.

Here are some random pictures of what our kids looked like in August:



Fortunately we managed to finish up The Project just in time to avoid celebrating Antonia's birthday amidst chaos and destruction. We tried to downplay that whole first birthday thing, in a vain attempt to convince her that the universe doesn't actually exist with her at its exact center. So instead of the 200+ guests I had originally considered inviting to a party on a rented yacht pulled by dolphins, we invited Lori and Sean and Dorothea to join us at our house for festivities that were merely party-ish, and I didn't even make a cake. I purchased cupcakes for the kids, and a tres leches cake for the adults, because who in my family doesn't love soggy desserts? No one that I can think of. Antonia put on a great show devouring her cupcake, and then lobbing it onto the floor with a satisfying SPLAT. It was much more satisfying than when Charlie touched his first birthday cake gingerly with one finger, and then refused to have anything more to do with it. I love this picture of her drunk-with-pink-frosting eyes.



So now our babygirl is one, and it's very frightening to think how fast she's growing up. At this rate I'll only have posted 10 more times and she'll be going to kindegarten!