So, Here's the Thing

We had a great weekend.  We took a couple days off last week and ran away--not too far, just to the mountains.  We had a wonderful time camping.
We had friends join us on Friday and much fun was had--even if we did try to tip the camper over.

The weekend started easy for us on Thursday.  We shopped, packed and got out of town by three. Up to the campsite and set up by 4:30. The fire ban had been lifted so we got to have a fire.

Friday we headed back to town so we could help our friend come up with her kids.  Her hubby had to be out of town for work, but she was determined to come anyway.  It was while we were setting up her pop-up camper that we neglected to set the jacks on the back.  Were merrily trying to set up the beds when the whole camper tipped on it's end while we were both at that end of the camper.. Scary, but then funny.

Kids ran around like kids are supposed to, even her 17 year old daughter was engaged and fun to be with.  She even helped cook.

We were graced with a fabulous sunset Friday night.  Being out to see things like that is why we go.

Saturday we took everyone to the lake and Turbo caught several crawdads, with help from the other kids, but Turbo was the most dedicated.  Nine crawdads ended up in the cookpot and were quite tasty.

Another fire Saturday night.  It was a bit colder, so the fire felt nice.

Sunday came too soon, but getting home early and having time to unpack, unload and all was wonderful. I even got a nap.
All in all, a wonderful weekend.  Too bad there isn't more time in summer to do more of them.  Back to school is creeping up on us far too fast.
How was your weekend?
Ours was a perfect summer camping weekend.

WWTK

We Want To Know Wednesday around here.  Time to get a bit random with the questions:

1. What are three things you couldn't live without (not including food, water, shelter, etc)? Books (in one form or another), my boys (both big and little), and the ability to get out of town, our road trips to the mountains are our sanity when things get crazy.
2. If you could only wear one beauty product, what would it be? I'm not a big one for beauty products. Maybe moisturizer? Don't ask me for beauty advice, really, just don't.
3. Are you excited for the school year to be starting soon? Kind of.  I'm looking forward to getting on a good routine again, but sad to see summer go. It's gone by so fast and it seems that we haven't done a whole lot, but we ahve.
4. What has been your favorite thing about the summer so far? We have gone camping a couple times and are going again this weekend.  It's been great getting out.
5. What are some questions you would like to see asked in the We Want To Know Link Up? Hmm, some topics like food (like recipes), favorite sites to visit (other than Facebook), favorite blogs to follow, holidays, outdoor activities, indoor activities, just favorites (foods, animals, books, drinks, movies, etc.).

Now you grab the questions and play along.

Link up with Kensie and Scriptor.  They would love to have you join in.

Random Late-ish

Time to random it up, some. I know that Stacy is packing, but it looks like the lovely ladies of Talk To Us Tuesday are up and running this week.
So on to the random:

• Nick had a relative die last week, a great uncle.  Yesterday was the funeral and Nick had to be out of town. He got home around 5 and headed over to the local pub to meet up with some of his relatives and later we went to his cousin's house because, in his family, they kind of hold a wake after the funeral. It was a good night reconnecting with cousins.
• This morning we took Turbo for phase 1 of braces.

Before

After.

•  Pahse 1 because they only put braces on his top teeth.  He still has a couple baby teeth to lose. Turbo was excited to get rid of his spacers.  It's a whole process he's embarking on.  Tweenhood here he comes.
• Celery and peanut butter really is good.
• We plan on going camping the end of this week. Our way of welcoming in the last month of summer vacation.
• It really can't be almost August already.  I have got to stop blinking.  Summer slips by each time I do.

So that's my random for the week.

That Flashed By

 But not fast enough for some of it.  The weekend I mean.  Saturday could have lasted longer, but I truly wish Sunday had been over before it started.  Friday night was very low key for us.  We relaxed and Turbo had a friend over for a sleep over.  It went well and even thought they were up quite late, they were raring to go Saturday morning.
I grocery shopped and started on my laundry mountain.  Didn't do too bad.  Turbo and his friend rode their bikes to a park (one farther from our house and with a pond) And returned wet.  A change happened and back they went.  They caught a fish with their bare hands. Later, Turbo had a birthday party to attend and while there, he crashed into the sidewalk--has a nasty little scrape on his right knee.
Nick brewed Saturday. He is involved in a brew competition at work. Well, not at work, but he and another guy from work brew, so they are competing against each other, and other coworkers will judge who makes the better beer.  Fun, good relations, good beer, good food.  That's the plan anyway. It all started this weekend.
Saturday evening we had dinner with friends and left Turbo there for a sleep over.  They took him to the movies--the cheap seats to see Iron Man 3--Turbo came back Sunday morning excited about the movie and thinking he had had a pretty good weekend (with exception of the intimate meeting between sidewalk and knee.)
Sunday started out at about 3 am with a migraine for me.  I slept in some hoping it would go away.  No such luck.  Sunday was pretty miserable for me.  We still smoked a chicken so we could celebrate my mom's birthday.  We also watched Oz, The Great and Powerful.  It was pretty good in our opinion.  One we will definitely watch again.
All in all, not a bad weekend, I got the laundry done, but failed at vacuuming.  Could have passed on the migraine and the knee crash.  But really, it was a weekend.  Busy with stuff that doesn't happen during the week and relaxing enough to know we had a weekend.

Confessions on Running and Such

Yippee! It's Friday!  Gotta get through the work day and then, weekend here I come! Although this weekend has nothing exciting planned.  But sleeping in, no going to work good things to look forward to.
Now on to the confessions:

• I wanted music to run to. 
• Sounds simple.
• Not so much.
• I had never put music on my phone.
• Did not think it would be so complicated.
• Took me an hour and a half yesterday afternoon to figure it out.
• Could I repeat the process?
• No.
• Well, maybe, but I'm not totally sure how I got the music on there.
• It works, so there's that.
• It was nice to run with music.
• I thought less about how far I had to go and just ran.
• One and three quarters miles.
• On my way to two mile three morning a week.
• Still not a huge fan of running.
• I run, but I'm not a runner.
• At least not one of those who run bunches of miles and stuff.
• In other news, the sound of cooperating boys is wonderful.
• But it is not the standard sound around our house.
• I have a hot date this weekend.
• It's name is laundry and it's bringing it's buddy the VAcuum.
• Yep, cleaning is on the agenda for this weekend.
• With any luck and some diligent work, I can get most of it done on Saturday.
• That leaves Sunday to play a bit.
• I want to go to the farmer's market tonight.
• It's crazy days downtown and there might be good deals.
• I think I need to go see.

So what are your confessions?  Link them up with Aubrey.
 

Spin Cycle--Reruns

Gretchen said that summer is all about reruns, so this week the Spin Cycle is rerunning your favorite post.  I'm spinning it and showing how I evolved over the last almost four years I have been blogging by sharing my first post and then the posts that I had for each anniversary.
Very First Blog Post ever:
Hi, I'm New Here
Well, after lurking around the blogging world for the past few months I thought I'd give it a whirl. I'm not sure how interesting my life is but you never know what people will find interesting.

A little about me and my family. The man I'm married to is a geologist and all around great guy. My oldest son is six and we don't call him Turbo for nothing. My baby is nine months and is our Bruiser. Oh and then there's me. I am a part time stay at home mom, part time working mom, a geologist, reader, scrapbooker and I love to cook. We live in a, well, large town for Wyoming but a small town in the rest of the world. We are close to the outdoors and mountains and we get out quite often to enjoy them.

So come and see what we have happen around our house. I promise the crazy doesn't rub off.
I got absolutely no comments on this post.  On my second post, Jen from Sprite's Keeper was my very first commenter ever.

First anniversary:
I Did It!
I made it one whole year with this whole blogging thing.  My first post ever is here.
It's been a wonderful adventure.  I've met so great people.  From my first commenter--Jen from Sprite's Keeper--to the 114 followers I have now, I had so much fun this last year.
I've won prizes, gotten to rant a bit, and opened my self up.  It's been good for me.
I'm pretty shy in real life and have a hard time making friends.  And in my town, keeping friends is even more difficult--cause they change out every 4-5 years(college town).   I'm looking forward to the next year and seeing where this adventure takes me.  It's been great so far.

So thanks for all the support, therapy and good times.  The smiles from the comments make the whole day better.
 I had seven commenters on this post--one of whom was Nain from The View Down Here.

Second Anniversary:
I confess...
...that it is time to confess with Mamarazzi.  It's Friday---yay!
And here we go:

• We are not night people.
• We had a night away from the boys.
• In downtown Denver.
• We were tucked into our hotel room by 9:00pm.
• Red wine doesn't like me.
• It's OK, because I'm not a big fan of it.
• I like blushes and rose'.
• We still have an obscene amount of candy here.
• I miss my boys.
• I've been away from them for two nights now.
• We got back late enough that they stayed at my mom's last night too.
• Miss them!
• I got a hot date this weekend.
• It's laundry and vacuuming time again.
• I bet you're jealous of the fun I'm going to have.
• Don't be.  
• The laundry is the dullest date in the world and all the vacuum does is go over and over what it went over last week.
• Dull, dull, dull.
• I'm sleeping in at least once this weekend.
• Sad that sleeping in until 7:30 counts for me.
• I just realized that today is my two year anniversary of blogging.  
• I can hardly believe that I have been doing this for two years.
• I have met some wonderful women, and consider all of you my friends.
• Thank you for going on this adventure with me.  
• And I hit 200 followers today.  
• Nick owes me a dinner or two.

On this post I got a whopping 12 comments.  I was thrilled that there were people who read what I put out there.

Third Anniversary:
Ah, I Needed That
We had a great weekend.  It was relaxing, fun and had some successes.  We were busy, but not so much that time flew by in a flash.  It was everything a weekend is supposed to be.
Friday afternoon we went and go family pictures taken.  We get to see them this Friday.  I think they will be quite nice. Then it was off home to muddle through dinner and the rest of the evening.
Saturday we hung out and got the chores going--I had laundry to start, groceries to buy, and vacuuming and such to do.  After Bruiser's nap we headed to the rec center and went swimming.  The boys had a blast.  We were there late enough that the time when they allow float tubes in the lazy river came up.  Turbo and Bruiser had so much fun floating around on the tubes.  I even went down the slide they have twice.
On our way home we stopped and had dinner and watched some of the football game.  Wyoming managed to win this one.  They found a team that is worse than we are.  Once home I had a friend come over and we watched the CMA awards that I had recorded.  We watch for the performances, to get a bit snarky about the dresses/clothes and skip what we don't care to watch.  We also polished off two bottles of wine in the process.  It was fun to hang out.
Sunday started out with a call from Bruiser to come help him.  I was still in bed so I got up and headed up stairs to see what he needed. I couldn't find him upstairs at first and called out where are you? "In the bathroom" was the response.  HE was indeed in the bathroom--he had pooped on the potty all by himself.  Hooray for Bruiser!  Small steps and all, I'm still cleaning him up but at least he's trying.
I finished laundry--it has no reason to whine at me, currently.  I also made another batch of salsa, two loaves of Pumpkin pie bread and made plans to have dinner with friends.  We headed out to their house once Bruiser got up from his nap.  We had put together a taco bar and you could make soft tacos or nachos with the toppings we had spread out.
With the time change, Sunday was very long.  Nick spent most of it cleaning and rearranging his garage.  He is way happy with the results of what he accomplished.
So, like I said, it was a good weekend, full but not too full, busy but not too busy, I guess it was a Goldilocks kind of weekend.  How was your weekend?  Too busy, too quick, or just right?

Somehow that fact that I had made it another year completely slipped past me.  I was more about documenting our weekend and such that I forgot it. I got 6 comments on this one--from the core of readers I have. 
Now to see what the rest of this year brings me--I make four year at this in November.  I think I have a much more confident voice now.

Go see Gretchen for more spins.

WWTK--What's Up Blog?

Time to Answer some questions.  All about bloggy goodness this week.

{1} How did you come up with your blog name? I am the lone girl in a house of guys.  My hubby Nick and two charming little boys.  Three to one.  Loads of testosterone around here. When I was naming my blog I wanted to use Living the Testosterone Sea, but it was already in use, so I came up with what you see up there. I think it works pretty good to describe the way thing are around here.
{2} Where do you go to find inspiration for your posts? I only have to look at my family and our activities, but I also like more open ended link ups. When I don't do link ups, it really makes me think about the posts I do.  Sometimes those mean more, but it can get taxing to come up with ideas.
{3} What are you favorite link ups? Spin Cycle, This one obviously, Random Tuesday Thoughts, Talk To Us Tuesday, Friday Confessions.
{4} How do you decide if you want to follow a blog? I have to enjoy the writing.  Good grammar helps.  Having something in common with the writer helps too.
{5} If you could change one thing about your blog what would it be? More commenters?  Really, I like having the feed back. But I like what I put up on my blog.  It's a mix of me and family and fun I think.  It's a great place for me to document the things going on here.

Now you grab the questions and play along.

Link up with Kensie and Scriptor.  They would love to have you join in.

Getting a Bit Random

Tuesday.  Another Monday down.  And time to random.  Sounds like fun so let's get to it.

• We are still working on the potty thing with Bruiser.   Well, the pooping side of things anyway. He's making steps.  Small ones, but he's choosing them. Maybe he'll be in real unders by school time. 
• Nick has started riding his bike again.  Just an urban circuit (8.1 miles), but he's happy about it and it's good for him.  He raced mountain bikes when I met him and his bike has always been important to him.  His getting back on it and riding is really great.
• McDonalds toys mate in the dark.  We always have more than I thought we did.
• I want a nap.
• I think I need some good chocolate.
• I also want to get a MP3 player for when I'm running.  I could use my phone, but it's kind of heavy and I usually don't have a pocket in my running clothes and don't really want to hold it while I run.  So, a smaller MP3 player is definitely something I want.
• Turbo has been loving his Kindle Fire HD.  He likes playing games, watching videos, and on occasion, reading books.
• Insomnia sucks.  Especially when it insists on my company all night.
• Four weeks until both my boys go to school.  Turbo to 5th grade and Bruiser to preschool. Where has the summer gone?  I feel it's been a good summer.  We have taken advantage of the weekends to the fullest, but it seems to slipping by really fast.
• We have another camping trip the beginning of August.  It should be fun.
• And as Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

So that's my random for the week. Go see Stacy for more.

And join up with Shawn and Impulsive for Talk To Us Tuesday. No rules, just fun, link up.

What We Did

We had a pretty good weekend, mostly.  Laid back, relaxed and fun.  Seems to be a theme for us recently.
Friday, I indulged in a few glasses of wine and maybe a mojito.  Turbo had a sleepover, so we only had Bruiser.  Nick and I sat in our yard, watched the moon and talked. It was nice.  I was a bit slow the next morning, but it was worth it.
Saturday, I got the grocery shopping done and Nick took Turbo for a bike ride.  They had a blast.  I attempted to nap, but was unsuccessful. So instead of napping, since Turbo was at a friend's house, and Brusier had gone with Papa and Nana to a birthday party/barbecue, we took advantage of the kidless time and went to get Nick a Blanket of the back seat of his truck, some Keen sandals, and new lounging set for the back deck. We also took a moment to have a Moscow Mule at an adult establishment. Adult time rocks.
We  grilled pizza and watched movies.  The pizza was great and, bonus, we didn't heat up the kitchen in the process.  Practically fire baked pizza.

My mom stopped by after her trip to see her sister.  She was in a pretty good mood.

Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, was up and we had a nice evening. Nick maybe let the beer flow a bit to freely and was hanging pretty hard Sunday.
I did get him to get the smoker going for some spare ribs.  He had to feel better by evening, he was DD for the guys trip to Dwight Yokem in Cheyenne.
He surfaced mid afternoon for the fantastic ribs and managed to haul himself out to the concert.  I think he had a good time, but I'm not totally sure.  He was still sleeping this morning.
This starts a busy week at work.  Next Friday can't get here soon enough, but I bet it will get here faster than I think it will.

How was your weekend--too busy or just right?

TGIF! Confessions

Oh, so happy it's Friday.  I just wish I could have stayed home today.  But duty calls--so does the paycheck.
Now let's confess it all so we can head into the weekend guilt free:

• I made Turbo's month.
• He has been working hard and earning money toward a tablet he had seen at a local store.
• He has worked so well and without complaint that when he had enough for that one we added to it so he could get a Kindle Fire.
• He is in heaven.
• It's so fun to be able to do that for your kids--and he earned $125 through chores for us, Papa, and Grandma.  
• And he still isn't complaining about doing chores.
• Score one for us.
• I wimped out on dinner last night.
• Frozen pizza and a cheese quesadilla for the boys. 
• It was easier than trying to cook anything.
• I turn 40 in a month.
• I don't feel 40.
• That seems so old when you say it.
• Not for another month.
• I played around with myu banner.  
• Nothing fancy, but I think it is more in keeping with my button now.
• Do you like it?
• I'm seeing results from my running.
• Not sure what the scale says--we don't have one in the house.
• But my pants fit better and I look better in the mirror.
• I might be swimsuit ready by the time we go on our river trip.
• I'm thinking wine will be good tonight.
• And maybe ice cream (after the boys go to bed)

Go see Aubrey for more confessions.