{ a swoop and a dart }

2017: The Dillow Year in Music

We, uhm, bought some music in 2017. Somehow more than we realized, and definitely more than our last few years' totals. Does anyone else still buy albums besides the Dillows? It feels like the answer is no, especially over the course of the last few years... still money well spent. Our classic 2008 iPod is still functioning, though it occasionally gets in a fight with the van on long road trips and has to take a time out while it resets.

Pictured left to right:

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down A Man Alive

The Lone Bellow Then Came the Morning

Sarah Jarosz Undercurrent

The Shins Heartworms

Aimee Mann Mental Illness

Nickel Creek A Dotted Line

John Mellencamp The Best I Could Do

Andrew Bird Are You Serious

Valerie June Pushin' Against a Stone

Chris Stapleton From a Room: Vol. I

Gregory Alan Isakov The Weatherman

Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde

Old Crow Medicine Show 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit The Nashville Sound

Metallica Hardwired...To Self-Destruct

Son Little New Magic

Kendrick Lamar Damn.

Thomas Rhett Tangled Up

Flo Rida My House

Kaleo A/B

Rush A Farewell to Kings

Mandolin Orange Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger

Leon Bridges Coming Home

Foo Fighters Concrete and Gold

Charles Bradley Changes

Macklemore Gemini

The Cars Complete Greatest Hits

INXS The Best of INXS

Melba Liston Melba Liston and Her 'Bones

Imani Winds This Christmas

 Big Head Todd and the Monsters New World Arisin'

Ned LeDoux Sagebrush

Beck Colors

Taylor Swift Reputation

Chris Stapleton From a Room: Vol 2

Led Zeppelin Mothership

Jade Jackson Gilded

Trombone Shorty Parking Lot Symphony

Notes!

+ I am the only person who listens to Thao & The Get Down Stay Down in the house and that's really a pity, because she is awesome. This is my third or fourth album of hers.

+ I am also a repeat customer of The Lone Bellow. They live in the part of my brain as Shovels & Rope. Highly recommend both.

+ Matt loves Sarah Jarosz and I'm working on it. I am inexplicably picky about female voices—I love what I love, I struggle with I don't love, and sometimes it takes me a while for like to happen. It drives Matt crazy. Heh.

+ Oh, the Shins.... they've been around long enough that they'll be one of the bands that makes us cry when our children are grown and gone. New Slang just makes me weepy just thinking about that little Maddie singing along. They'll always be welcome in our music library.

+ Aimee Mann: I try. I try. I just can't. [Matt shakes his fist at the sky]

+ A Dotted Line was a surprise win for the year. This is a great album.

+ There was some greatest-hits-buying on the downstairs computer this year... things that just popped up in the main music library. Overall, good choices—though I had nothing to do with them... I suppose every American ought to have a little John Mellencamp in their collection, INXS does in fact have some greatest hits from a very specific era in my life, and while we do have a lot of very old/used CDs of questionable quality when imported into iTunes, we will be happier people if we can access better sounding Led Zeppelin (anyone from a specific era in Akron, OH listening range will understand). $100 says I will never choose The Cars, though. [Matt shakes his fist at the sky]

+ Andrew Bird: I can't be sure, but probably a Grady Kirkpatrick-induced choice. Fiona Apple makes a surprise appearance! I like this one.

+ Valerie June is good, too. There are some songs I like better than others, but the ones I like definitely make up for the ones I don't like as much.

+ In the running for top five of the year: Chris Stapleton's From a Room, which was released in two separate volumes at different times this year. I LOVE CHRIS STAPLETON. It is a great sadness that he has not been in the CFD lineup these last couple of years. He is hands down my favorite country guy. (I have so few active country guys, so this doesn't seem like a fair honor, but gosh I just love his songs.)

+ Gregory Alan Isakov is a Matt find, and I think he and Andrew Bird would be friends.

+ So for Matt's birthday, you might remember that his gift was tickets to see Old Crow Medicine Show in Denver; we decided on the way down to listen to the original Blonde on Blonde but realized we only own it on imported CD most likely purchased at Looney T. Birds, and didn't have the iPod with us so we bought it on the fly and listened to it via phone. [whispered confession: we both like Old Crow Medicine's version better. SACRILEGE!]

+ Jason Isbell's new album is probably in the running for Matt's top three of year. He is great. I recently heard a song on The Colorado Sound that I madly Shazammed and discovered it was his wife, covering Madonna's Borderline. WOW.

+ Metallica: nope.

+ Son Little released what became one of the songs I will forever happily associate with Summer 2017 (Blue Magic) and while the rest of the album might need to grow on me. I haven't given up though.

+ So here's a funny little story: it seemed like every radio station programmed in our vehicles was playing Kendrick Lamar's Humble in July, which happened to be when we were driving back and forth and forth and back from every CFD activity we had on the calendar, and somehow Humble became known as The Truck Song. You haven't really lived until you've seen five Dillows in an official CFD truck singing "Yeah yeah" in unison. I'm not sure Kendrick Lamar would really know what to make of this visual. (We bought his album though, albeit the clean version, so there you go).

+ Thomas Rhett and Flo Rida are also summer albums. I have until my unofficial deadline for blogging missed stories—Chinese New Year, February 16—to tell you why.

+ Kaleo was a Colorado Sound-induced purchase. I don't exactly understand how a band from Iceland can pull off this sound, but whatever. It's one of my favorites of the year.

+ Rush: updating our cassette tape collection. Though our record player Christmas gift from Nana and Papa also provides us with a working tape player (!!)

+ Mandolin Orange is one of Matt's favorite bands. I like them, though haven't listened to this one much yet.

+ Leon Bridges' album is also in my top five of the year. There is a men's retro sound making its way back to the mainstream, and I like it. This is a really lovely collection of songs, and I have recommended it to many people this year.

+ I may never recover from missing the Foo Fighters IN CASPER on December 10. This is the second time I've missed out on the Foo Fighters; the first time was when Gracie was a tiny little baby and Matt went to see them and Weezer without me and I might still be pouting. Even though I encouraged him. Related: in the category of things Matt will never understand is my love for the Foo Fighters and my general disdain of Nirvana.

+ Charles Bradley died this year 😕 He has made an appearance or two on this blog over the years.

+ Say what you will, everyone in this house knows I love me some Macklemore. Even if they aren't all allowed to listen to full albums yet. Top five.

+ Gracie was reading one of her biographies of famous women books and came across Melba Liston and insisted I buy an album RIGHT THIS MINUTE. She rarely does that, so I did. We are now Melba Liston fans!

+ When Maddie went to Fame Jr High in Montgomery, Imani Winds came to hang out and play at their school. I was thinking about them this year and discovered they have a Christmas album, which I purchased to save for Christmas music season. It is so good! I love good instrumental Christmas music.

THERE ARE A LOT OF NOTES THIS YEAR. HOW DID WE MANAGE TO ACQUIRE SO MUCH MUSIC.

+ Big Head Todd and the Monsters have been a Matt & Elizabeth favorite since early college days. This album is a return to everything we first loved about them.

+ [Whispering: Matt was trying to improve our Wyoming cred when purchasing some Ned LeDoux but we struggle. And lose any iota of LeDoux cred in a state that values father or son LeDoux cred more than just about anything. SIGH. Sorry, Wyoming.]

+ Beck! You're awesome and we all love you. So much that we bought your album twice: once from itunes, once to be part of our new small modern record collection of three*, because someone in this house cannot be subject to only Hall and Oates and Quiet Riot albums on the new record player for eternity. Ahem.

+ Bridget wasn't sure about this new Taylor that killed the old Taylor... but she seems to have come to terms with the whole business now.

+ Jade Jackson is a new find of Matt's, and I like her too. If you close your eyes and didn't know who was singing, you might mistake her for Lucinda Williams a little.

+ And finally... Trombone Shorty. I was wrong about Gracie becoming a Trombone Shorty fan in Louisiana—this blog records the first known reference to Trombone Shorty fandom as when we lived in Cheyenne the second time, before we moved to Louisiana.

So there you have it. 2017 wasn't the easiest year but the music was good, and that makes up for a lot.

*other albums in our new small record collection: 1989 by Taylor Swift and Lazaretto by Jack White.

2017: The Book Report

2017 was a weird reading year for me—I actually read 38 books (a lame amount to many of my reading friends but pretty huge for me) and most likely would have surpassed 45 if I hadn't decided on a whim that I would start rereading Harry Potter from beginning to end. I am a slow reader when I get overly busy, and in 2017, overly busy was an understatement. Here is where I should point out that Bridget decided on a whim to read Harry Potter from beginning to end TWICE this year and just lapped me for a second time. I would get after her for reading it twice so close together (and probably for the 12th time overall) but the child probably reads 200 books a year, so whatever. For me, reading Harry Potter (only for the second time) was mostly an act of rebellion and escape. Hogwarts is the most relaxing literary place I can think of, so it served its purpose well. I didn't finish my Book Bingo card for the first time since I started in 2013; I think I was subconsciously rebelling against the sheer volume of scheduled events this year and just couldn't always be reading something that anyone (or any bingo square) was directing me to read. I will finish books 6 and 7 in 2018.

I also read an astonishing number of 5 star books. Lucky me! A few notes on those:

+ March Vol I-III are graphic novels telling the story of John Lewis's life in the Civil Rights Movement; I will never get enough of reading about the Civil Rights Movement. Though I'm not a huge graphic novel fan, these were so well done.

+ Hillbilly Elegy was the first book of the year for my local book club and it's a great book to discuss. Also, very eerie in so many ways to me because of where it's set—because I went to Miami and also spent a summer working with kids from Hamilton and Middletown, I knew many of the geographic references. Some of Matt's family tree follows a similar migration path as the author's relatives, and that was super interesting. It was not exactly a hopeful book, but an important one to at least raise the conversation of struggles in southwestern Ohio and Appalachia overall.

+ The Fortunes: a random library pick because of the cover (superficial but true). I wasn't sure I liked it until I suddenly loved it.

+ Another random library pick because of the cover (and also because I like the author, who often works with Melissa Sweet): The Trial, which is a jFiction book about the Lindbergh kidnapping. I grabbed it because I forgot my actual book on one of the days I had to kill 27 minutes this summer during summer band, and wow was it ever good. I learned a lot about the Lindberghs and of course, the trial that followed the kidnapping. It's an older book, but worth tracking down.

+ Gracie, Bridget, and I read The Crossover together and we all gave it five stars. I LOVE books written in verse.

+ Maddie recommended All We Have Left and I was able to overcome my usual avoidance of YA fiction because it was less about teenage angst and more about September 11. It was very good.

+ While Sara-sitting this summer, I grabbed The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from Abby's bookshelf and read it in almost one sitting. I've been meaning to read it for years and just... haven't. (See YA avoidance which I probably need to get over once and for all.) It was just so good. Heartbreaking and funny and well-written, just like everyone says it is. I need to listen to everyone more often.

+ I gave Matt News of the World for Christmas last year because the description seemed loosely similar to one of his favorite movies ever, True Grit. It wasn't exactly like that, but it was still excellent–a good, old-fashioned story.

+ I have not yet seen I Am Not Your Negro but after reading all this material that contributed to the making of the documentary, it's high on my list.

+ What would a list of mine be without a Melissa Sweet book on it! Some Writer! is a biography of E.B. White and I LOVED IT. The story, the illustrations, all of it. Other books about E.B. White exist, but no one had as close access to his work as she did, and it shows.

+ I have been impatiently waiting YEARS for Ashes, and was so happy when it finally was released that I almost forgave Laurie Halse Anderson for taking so long to finish her trilogy about the Revolutionary War.

+ It's hard to pick a top book of 2017 because I read so many good ones, but The Hate U Give is definitely up there in the top three for me. It isn't an easy book, but it is timely and so well-written that you fall into the story like I imagine putting on virtual reality gear must feel like. It's a read-it-again book, which I will do in 2018 because my book club picked it for April, I think. 

+ I've been meaning to read Mudbound for a long time and finally picked it up this year. It wasn't about what I thought it was going to be about for some reason, but whoo boy. INTENSE. Here is part of what I wrote when I reviewed it on Goodreads:

This was an absolutely engrossing, excellent, and hard novel. Sometimes the blurbs on the back of the book are corny to me, but in this case some of the words used: heartrending, tragic, breathless—are the best way to describe it.

Not too shabby for good books. Here are the ones I rated as four stars:

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger; The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi; Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masumoto; Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende; New Boy by Tracy Chevalier; The Mothers by Brit Bennett; Native Son by Richard Wright; Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate; The Extincts by Veronica Cossanteli; The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker; Commonwealth by Ann Patchett; Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead.

I also had a Least Favorite Book of the year: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. It won the 2017 Newbery Award. I DON'T UNDERSTAND. After I finished reading it, I obsessively read book reviews trying to figure out what I'd missed or what was wrong with me. The bare bones premise was actually great, but everything that came after that just didn't work for me. I guess you can't love everything, though I really don't like hating a book and I just did hate this one. You should read it and tell me what you think, because I'm dying to know. Barnes and Noble likes to spit out a recommendation slip with your receipt and on our traditional New Years' Eve bookstore trip, I giggled to myself when it spit out this one:

 Nope. Not likely. You've pegged me completely wrong this time, booksellers. Heh.

 What are your favorite books from 2017? Any good recommendations for the new year? Do tell!

December All At Once™

It's time for December All At Once™! For anyone who is on top of their December memory-keeping, as always I encourage you to check out Ali Edwards' December Daily® project, which is actually a real thing. For the rest of us, play along with my not-actually-trademarked project! Today I will break Typepad with all the pictures I'm putting in this post, so like usual, if you are easily bored by posts with too many pictures (many of questionable technical value) please visit soon for Best of 2017 books/music/other things posts.

: )

December felt a little bit like a scramble from the beginning since we were driving back from Ohio on "get ourselves together after Thanksgiving" weekend. We had to acquire and decorate our tree in shifts because of all the other things going on; Riverbend Nursery to the rescue as usual. The lady working asked to take a picture of us with our tree for their Facebook page, which actually turned out pretty well considering none of us had yet taken a shower that morning. Haha. The van was demoted from tree-hauling duty, and it was Maddie's turn to put the tree topper on. Her next turn will be December of her freshman year of college. WAAAAAAAAAH.

Christmas party season kicked off the first weekend of the month with the Wing Commander's Reception; 16 other Christmas parties would follow AND I AM NOT EVEN MAKING THAT UP. Pictured: me and my 2017 work-partner-in-crime, Sharon. Spoiler: by the last Christmas party I wore jeans, a t-shirt, and a ponytail. Heh.

Bridget and Ellie helped us pretend it would be a calm and restful month.

I was assigned to bring a fun holiday drink for a Christmas party I went to, so I channeled someone's inner Canadian (I don't actually have any inner Canadian as far as I know, but the internet helped) and made something called Moose Milk.

Matt's big December adventure was attending National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas; he also got invited to play fantasy NFR by Gracie's science teacher (who happens to be a long-time CFD family friend of ours)(I had no idea you could actually play fantasy rodeo) and he texted us some fun photos from the Thunderbirds visit portion of the trip. Cheyenne and the Thunderbirds have a very close relationship because of Cheyenne Frontier Days, so it's always part of the NFR trip.

MEANWHILE, I was busy cutting 28 of these Cheyenne Gymnastics thingies with my Silhouette Portrait for the coach to adhere to the team's new backpacks; it started out as an Elizabeth Should Have Kept Her Mouth Shut project because I really don't have the Silhouette skills yet to pull off such a project, but in the end they turned out perfectly. We headed off to Evanston, WY (5.5 hours from Cheyenne) for the girls' first meet of the season—it was a weird meet, and they did better than their scores would indicate. The season truly kicks off the first weekend of January, and it was good to shake off the cobwebs at a smaller meet.

If you're following the story problem correctly, you'll note that Matt was in Las Vegas while we needed to go to Evanston which meant Ellie got her second road trip in two weeks. I ground my teeth and bought an extra night at the hotel so she could hang out while the girls were competing; I suppose it isn't so much different from back in the days where she had to stay in the kennel while we traveled. She had a great time, enjoyed herself immensely in the hotel, and didn't try to die at any point along the way, which really made us realize once again that this dog just hates Rock Springs. Funny story: on the way home we stopped at McDonald's to get a quick dinner to eat in the car; Maddie got a salad with chicken on it, and Ellie raced back to the backseat, put her paw in Maddie's face, turned into Iron Strength Dog and proceeded to scarf all the chicken down. Much drama ensued, and I'm sure anyone walking past the van (we were still in the parking lot) couldn't figure out what in the world was going on. After everyone had calmed down from the Chicken Drama, I got back on the road and TOTALLY FORGOT TO GET GAS. Which meant I was in the middle of Wyoming with literally 16 miles 'til empty in the tank when I realized. If you've ever driven in the middle of Wyoming in the dark with this little gas in the tank you know this is a TERRRRRRRIBLE plan. I panic-asked Siri where the nearest gas station was, and we ended up turning around and driving back to Sinclair, WY. Which is hilarious and ironic, because Sinclair, WY is THE Sinclair of the Sinclair Oil Refinery. I have never been happier to see a gas station IN MY LIFE. I definitely dodged a bullet there, because running out of gas within a 15 mile radius of Sinclair, WY is something I would never live down.

Matt won a little money in Las Vegas so we bought extra gifts for our angel tree recipients. (Not pictured: a little make-up/bath kit for the 16 year old one).

Not in the right order: Christmas concert photos. Bridget had her first-ever band concert, Maddie played in both the orchestra's and the band's concerts for a total of two evenings, and Gracie had her first middle school concert. All were festive.

At some point before the middle of the month, we ran out of coffee because I didn't order it in time to cover the gap. It was not our best couple of days drinking sad substitutes, haha. I went over to Fall Hall one day to get a plain old coffee and admired their very Christmas-y sign. I haven't been so happy to see a package in a while when it finally arrived!

Baby Gracie turned THIRTEEN years old! Seriously, time just flies. No class to take magic cookies to in middle school, but she still requested them for her lunch table friends, a couple of teachers, and her gymnastics team. Cellophane and sticks = still the magic recipe. We tried to surprise her with Trombone Shorty tickets (he is coming to Cheyenne of all places!!) but she wasn't as surprised as we thought she'd be because no one in this town can keep their mouth shut about a famous trombone player coming to put on a concert. She still was over the moon, and is counting down the days until January 31!

I did manage to pull off two actual Christmas surprises; pictured here: a CFD coin holder thingy designed by the Arts & Crafts Center on base for Matt (that will actually serve to hold belt buckles even better) and a custom "Share a Coke with Yushika" Christmas coke bottle that I randomly sent to my friend Shika. It was so fun to pull off actual Christmas surprises. 🎉

We didn't pull off Gracie's Gingerbread House/Birthday Party extravaganza this year (boo) but she did get to go to a fun birthday party at a pottery painting place downtown  for a friend who also turned 13 in December.

A handful of photos found on my camera roll from CFD Christmas parties; not even close to representative of the people we saw and Christmas parties attended. We sure do love our CFD family.

A shoddy picture of Bridget's school program; it was, uhm, not quite the same style of program like last year's most brilliant one ever. Ah well, can't win them all.

The December timeline is getting muddier and muddier by this point; I did get gifts out on time (except for Deb's, which I forgot in the basement on the day I visited the secret UPS warehouse). UPS and I are currently embroiled in a bit of a scuffle about a broken gift, but otherwise I'm still thankful for the secret UPS warehouse.

As for other gifts, in a 24 hour period I made 11 little calendars, 8 dozen biscochitos, two trays of pine park, two batches of fudge (Mexican, orange), a triple batch of chocolate-covered cherries (thankfully Matt was not sick this year so I didn't have to do that by myself like last year), 16 hot chocolate gifts for school friends, and packaged everything up to hand out. It was not the earliest night of all time.

I managed to get Christmas cards out on time! Unless your name started with T, U, V, W, Y, or Z in which case I didn't order enough cards or stamps this year and had to order more after Christmas. GAH. One of these days I'll be on top of it.

No Gingerbread House party this year, but Maddie invited four friends over to decorate Christmas cookies after school got out (not included in the previous baked goods rundown) and between Maddie, her friends, Gracie, and Bridget we had the most beautiful Christmas cookies produced in this house, ever. I always end up making a different icing recipe but this year I'm keeping the one we used because it turned out perfectly. That, and I remembered in time that all we had for decorations last year was one lame bottle of ice cream sprinkles, so I stocked up beforehand.

Oh yeah! I worked a lot in December. I have two new design project contracts and squeezed in a couple of photo shoots. Fun.

Megan and her sister braved the snowy roads and came to see Coco with us, which was hands down my favorite Pixar movie EVER, and maybe even in my top ten movies of all time. We all loved it. Post-movie, Megan spent the night and she and Maddie baked a whole lot of goodies for Christmas gifts until sometime near the middle of the night. It was fun. And no, we have not actually reached Christmas yet in this post.

And then, Christmas Eve. We had our traditional pizza with Pizza Hut Dr Pepper things for Christmas Eve dinner; it was a quiet, fun, and more relaxed night than any previous night in December. I managed to get most gifts wrapped BEFORE 10 pm on Christmas Eve, so I didn't even have to pull a super late night. We had tamales and posole for Christmas dinner, and the last thing I did before I went to bed on Christmas Eve was put the posole in a pot to soak.

As a rule I don't generally take too many Christmas morning photos, but we were so happy that Ellie made it to Christmas that we do have more than normal this year. She is a tough dog, and so happy to laze around like a spoiled dog on her favorite holiday.

Matt and I headed over to the Dining Facility to serve lunch for a while, which is a cool tradition the base leadership does here.

A few random things: we Sara-sat over break, and every day I took a picture of Sara with a different kid to send to Abby and Wes. We love Sara! I received an awesome package from my Book Bingo Secret Santa (oh! I forgot to add Secret Santa gifts to the list of things I managed in December: one for me, multiple for the girls, whew). Bridget and I were out running a couple errands the day after Christmas and spotted this super weird rainbow that we now know was a sun dog. I have never heard of such a thing somehow but now have heard of it at least ten times since December 26. Weird how the world works like that. And weirder still that I've lived in so many cold places and have never seen or heard of it before.

The Hunts came to town! For less than 24 hours, but still, we'll take anything we can get! It was so fun to have Jill, Curtis, and their wild monkeys in our house at Christmastime. Ellie had a bit of a scary night while they were here, but recovered by midnight.

See?




We had some freezing fog so I headed to the lake to take some pretty freezing fog (now I know it's called rime ice) photos; Cora came for our second base movie of the week (Wonder, awesome) and we hit the library and the Discover Space exhibit there.

I sent these little second grade girls (!!!!) off to see a movie on their own (!!!!) and while they were gone, Bridget, Gracie and I went on our traditional New Years' Eve bookstore adventure (Matt was out in the field for alert). We got a couple good books and three new records for our new record player courtesy of Nana and Papa.

The month closed out with a freezing cold walk with Ellie the Miracle Dog, a quick visit to a base New Years' Eve party, another good movie (Queen of Katwe) and a deep breath to face whatever 2018 has in store for us.

Happy New Year!

 

Observations from a 2,614 Mile* Round Trip

About a month before Thanksgiving, we decided that we better figure out a way to get to Ohio for Thanksgiving since we had last been there in December/January of 2014/2015. Too long! We put off plans for our original 2017 trip back in August because we didn't think Ellie would be able to make the trip in the heat with her heart and kidney failure... but as she is still inexplicably kicking, after much hand-wringing on my part we decided to take our chances and head east for a whirlwind four days of driving and four days of visiting time. Here is an incomplete list of observations:

Iowa stinks.
I spent a lot of time driving through Iowa growing up since my grandparents lived there, and I do not remember it smelling as bad as it smelled on this trip. It rivaled that one spot in Texas that turns us all into immature and obnoxious whiners, though that lasted longer so it still wins. BUT GOODNESS GRACIOUS. It was like a terrible combination of manure, dead things, garbage, rendering by-product... blech. However, I still love Iowa for its memories of my grandparents, rolling hills and beautiful barns, and West Des Moines was a pretty fancy place to stay the night. We also spotted a Younkers (pronounced YONkers) which is the department store chain where my grandma worked for years. It used to be more of a department store/dry goods place, but now is mostly like an upscale Kohl's or similar. It definitely helped make up for the stench.

An hour is better than nothing.
During the course of the trip, I was able to meet up with two of my oldest friends; it is hard to live so far apart and only get an hour or two every couple years, but it's the best to be able to pick up exactly where we left off. I missed Kattie by a few hours, as she was in town from North Carolina but our schedules couldn't make it work. SIGH. But, Nancy! Jesse! Friends since 1973 and 1974, respectively.


Bonus: Maddie and Molly came along on Wednesday night, too—despite never living in the same city, they are third generation friends that can pick up right where they left off, too. Yay!

Matt and I both need to staple our wallets to our foreheads on these trips.
We both had a panic about the whereabouts of our wallets (at different times, both wildly inconvenient had they been lost where we momentarily thought they'd been lost). But thankfully, both were not in those places. A welcome relief after that one time we learned that, in fact, you can FedEx an inadvertently left behind wallet from Ohio to Alabama in mere hours if you're willing to pay the price. AHEM.

Cousin bands are the best!
Uncle BJ, aka the cousin whisperer, organized a fantastic rendition of Doorbell by The White Stripes (a longtime Gracie favorite) when Marie, Katherine, and I went to lunch on Wednesday. AWESOME. It is a lot of work to upload videos here so instead, an adorable picture of the Dillow/Taylor/Pershey first cousins. But trust me when I say it was good.

There is an actual camera version of this scene AND I AM WAITING PATIENTLY FOR IT HINT HINT

Dillow girls are shorties.
Lily is 10 months younger than Gracie.
Maddie is the younger one here, but may very well end up being the second shortest of the Dillow side first cousins when all is said and done.

Attending a Cavs game with 17 other family members is a great way to celebrate a birthday.

Count 'em, 18! This is an important piece of information.

It was so much fun to see a game in the Q! And, they pulled it off 100-99. I personally willed them to win, because how horrible would it have been for us to see them lose twice in one year and ON MY BIRTHDAY no less? It was awfully exciting, and went off (almost) without a hitch.

Panic counting is the absolute least effective strategy of counting.
Hitch: the moment when all 18 of us were finding our seats (two rows, 10 in front and 8 behind) when the people in charge (read: Matt) suddenly thought we didn't have enough seats and maybe we accidentally counted wrong and there were 19 of us (when you travel with a pack that large through the crowds, they mostly eye you loosely so it totally would have been possible to have a 19th person with us). Have you ever tried to count that many people (and match them to a correct seat number) under duress? You end up with all sorts of numbers, like 17, 19, 18, 29, 141... hee hee. It turned out we just had to shift a seat down and all was well. And I recovered from my fit of giggles at the absurdity of it all very nicely.

Packing changes over time.

We brought a lot of stuff back with us that we didn't take with us, and we STILL had less packed than the first time we made this trip when Maddie was 7 weeks old (for Katherine's and Ben's wedding). Hee hee. And none of it exploded onto the gas station parking lot on the way out of town this time around.

Ellie Dog is one tough dog.

We worried so much about her because she has a.) outlived all predictions of her lifespan by a good 18 months and b.) she tried to die in Rock Springs, WY last March. But, turns out she just really hates Rock Springs, WY. She made this trip perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch. We love her so.

*Don't calcuate the mileage of a trip until you have to circle back 23 miles to a rest stop in Pine Bluffs, WY on the way home to find your brand new glasses which somehow fell off your head in a bizarre glasses-falling-off-top-of-head freak incident on the very last stretch toward home. It was really more like a 2,660 mile trip. But thank you, kind stranger, for propping said glasses up on the planter where I could find them in the dark! 

Halloween Tradition

One of my most favorite traditions on this blog is posting an annual Halloween photo album. Though 2006 is inexplicably missing (??) I have one for every year that I've blogged. It's hard to believe how much time has passed. Click the photo above to see this year's album!

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15 Second Review: Miss Spa Bee Venom Plumping Mask

As with all 15 Second Reviews, this is DEFINITELY not sponsored and views are DEFINITELY all my own. : )

I come from a family filled with bee-allergic members, so when I saw this I immediately thought "hey! A stocking stuffer that would off my sister!" I am of the opinion that one should never market the word "venom" unless "the ultimate in firming" really is code for "DEAD."

(I'm sure you have other lovely products, Miss Spa.)

October

October
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

 

 

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

 

 

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

 

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

 

 

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

 

 

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

*For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

 

*I don't have any pictures of grapes, and I don't exactly understand why Robert Frost tacked this last part onto the poem... but in the spirit of never picking a fight with a dead genius, it stays.

 

: )

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Mid-Summer Participles

Little Laramie River, Medicine Bow National Forest

These Wyoming summers of ours are so packed that sometimes it feels like when counting weeks forward, summer might as well be over already based on the lack of down days. But we've done a whole lot of summery things, and I don't want to forget that perspective in hindsight...

Eating ice cream in Laramie, Centennial, at gym, from the Cusinart that may not be as traditional as a hand-cranked set-up, but amazing all the same; pizza, picnics, Jeffrey's Bistro, Sam's Club produce by the bushel-full

Celebrating old friends passing through, antelope baby sightings, an elusive hour of down time, 22 years of marriage, Air Force leaders coming and going, multiple centuries of rodeo-military partnership, good mail, America, murals, completing giant work projects, Albin, WY, the birth of Wyatt Lucas, all the remaining days with Ellie

Watching Wonder Woman, an occasional Disney show, saved episodes of Alone, Sara the Cat, the weather forecast, children grow up, Frontier Park come to life, the Air Force Academy Band

Playing trombone, trumpet, piano; Groundies, Jackpot, at Brimmer Park, catch in the back

Borrowing a horse, a truck, four 1890s period costumes, future sleep reserves, many library books, a book about the Lincoln Highway and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from Abby

Driving to and from gymnastics five days a week, to East HS four days a week, to Frontier Park, to endless summer errands, to Albin, to Greeley, to Denver, to Fort Collins

Missing a hundred items from this list, but at least it's a start

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Color/Colour Lovers

I participated in another round of Color/Colour Lovers in February along with Andrea Jenkins, Xanthe Berkeley, and a whole bunch of other photographers around the world. Instead of focusing on one color a week this time, it lasted four weeks long and every day was a different color.

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These Photos Have Notes

+ I don't really know how she can be fifteen years old, either.

+ It was actually her idea to find a purple shirt and recreate this photo from when she was 2; I had only asked for a nice birthday photo.

+ Same ham, different year.

+ Turning 9 freaked me out because we were halfway done with her living at home full-time! But 15 might be worse, because three years is nothing. Nothing. Snap of the fingers, blink of an eye.

+ We need to find some time to squeeze in some bucket list items before three years pass and it gets harder and harder to do things together as a family of five.

+ Sniff.

+ That black velour background that was all the rage in the mid-2000s sure came in handy today, especially since it could be thrown over a door in two seconds. Best background-equalizer around!

Happy birthday to Maddie, who has always learned how to grow up in every single stage right alongside us as we learn how to be parents in every single stage.

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