Moi?

Oh, what? You think I'm supposed to be blogging?
I was under the impression I was supposed to be outside.

That's where I've been.
Outside.

All of the time.

So, if you need me... that's where I'll be... out.

My cell phone will be inside - let's face it, probably on silent, God only knows where. I'll be sweaty (hello humidity!) and happy and having fun with my munchkins or completely ignoring them while I search for fossilized sharks' teeth on the beach. I found 47 on our last trip. Yes, 47.

Pardon me, I have to go. The beach beckons.

I Lava You

Yeah, we went to Disney World last week.
Yeah, it was awesome.
I'll tell you about it sometime.

But for now... well, you see... I received a ukulele for Mother's Day... sooo...

Back off. I'm busy.

Maybe I'll play you a little ditty this summer and tell you about our trip.

For now, I've got to practice!

Sunday

Don't ask me how much coffee I've had this morning and I won't ask you how much you've had.
Hint: it's at least less than Voltaire.

I'm right in the middle of GWTW. Which of course means don't talk to me or expect me to do anything other than read. Holy mackerel that book is fabulous.

I'm thinking about ordering my bookshelves by putting the books that I reread all of the time together, books that I love but don't tend to reread together, and books that I haven't read yet together. That could be interesting and save time when searching for the next book to read.

I finally got control of myself and have lost a few of the pounds I needed to shed before ww weigh in. I'm not back to goal yet but hopefully will be before the end of April. How does one get control if they are Casey you ask? I filled the fridge and fruit bowl with fruit that I really like. I wrote "not for Casey" across the top of the peanut butter jar (my weakness), and hard boiled 50,000 eggs. And filled the freezer with edamame. That's about it. Voila, lost weight. I'm eating more than fruit, edamame, and eggs, but those are just good go-to things for me when I'm feeling snacky. Oh, and greek yogurt. Now I just need to maintain this control.

Disney countdown is in full swing and I'm busy squirreling away entertainment for the two day drive. I'm really looking forward to the car trip. Our last car trip was a blast. We're not a techy family and didn't watch movies on the drive or bring ipads or whatnot. I'm stocking up on conversation ideas, books, and car friendly games. I plan on getting a good audio book or two from the library as well. I can't wait!!

Just Beachy

For the first time (ever!) my mom and sister and I went to the beach together. Just us (with guest appearances by Jimmers).
It. Was. Awesome.

We drank margaritas and danced the night away at the Ship's Wheel and got manicures and laid out.

*Kidding*

We worked on puzzles and searched for sharks' teeth for hours (I found fourteen!). Then we worked on more puzzles. We wandered through the Gulf Coast Market and Bolivar's one and only thrift store. We worked on more puzzles. We blew right through nap time and looked for more sharks' teeth. We went out for dinner at seven pm (what?! wild and crazy!) and Kelly and I ate a mountain of bbq crabs at the Stingaree.We didn't change any diapers. We didn't refill anyone's milk. We were un-needed for over 24 hours while our own mother took care of us. It was pretty much mom-of-toddlers heaven.

I even stayed in bed until seven. What?!

And then... I came home... to the greatest family ever. One of the best things about going away is missing each other. Chris and I have known each other for longer than we didn't know one another. That sentence was confusing. I met Chris when I was fourteen and I'm now almost thirty-three. So, yeah, missing him every once in a while is kind of nice.

I came home to a clean house and a huge cardboard space shuttle in the living room (I paid 8 bucks for that thing at Goodwill. Score! It's bigger than it looks online). A clean house. Sleeping beautiful children. Bliss.

Peek A Boo!

Hey Little Blog... I see you there... I remember you...

kind of.

Ugh! Get off me! I've been busy, okay!

Doing this...

and this...

and of course...

Yesterday I started my first ever paper mache project (first ever! 30+ years without paper mache! how did that happen?!). So sorry to tell you this blog, but I fear you are going to feel the ramifications of that one while I spend my time covering everything in sight in wet newspaper... this could get caaarrrrrraaazzzyyyy. Seriously... how have I never done paper mache before? I now have visions of masks and four foot tall paper mache minion armies and a plethora of pinatas and... oh how the possibilities are endless!

Summer O Fun 2015 plows onward. Where did June go? And wait... what the hell... my eyes flick down to the right and see July TWELFTH? Time does in fact fly when one is having fun. Thus far my plan to have summer fun every single day continues. We haven't had nearly enough sno cones, but as kids do not start school until after Labor Day I think there is still plenty of time for that. My plan to invite friends over "all of the time this summer" has been somewhat unfruitful thus far, but mainly due to vacations and staples in heads (well, thankfully just the one... Carolena...), and I plan to reinstate the Summer of Parties Rule beginging again today.

Now, if you'll excuse me... children are sleeping and I have some wet newspaper to go drape across a balloon... PINATA!!

“after all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”

When it's fall, fall is my favorite season. When it's "winter," "winter" is my favorite (it gets quotation marks because... well... Texas) but, man oh man, when summer comes...

 

There's just something about summer. I think it's because I live in a southern state on the coast that just makes it so darn easy to celebrate summer. I love the fall, but its hard to do fall-like things everyday when you're still wearing short sleeves and sweating buckets. In fact, just read that sentence again and substitute the word "winter" in for fall. Spring is fun... but mainly as a precursor to the jubilant summer. In fact, right now it technically still is spring... but we're calling it summer. We start the summer season early and stretch it out for as long as possible because we've got a lot of hot and sweaty months to spend along the waterfronts down here.

As mentioned and mentioned and mentioned, we kicked off summer '15 with one of my favorite vacations ever. We came back home and immediately went into my "rule" of doing something fun and summer-y every single day. So, we got a new kid pool (last year's cracked) and put up a clothes line for hanging wet clothes and towels. Carolena really wants to start hanging all of our clothes on it from the washing machine. I could totally dig that if it weren't going to be more work for me... but I mean... I'm barely keeping Mount Everest at bay here. Perhaps I'll throw the sheets out there sometimes. That does sound wonderful.

The pool has been thoroughly inaugurated through both a party with Carolena's school friends (a smashing success except for the moment when I realized there were sugar ants in the cupcakes. Did I mention the friends with "cake ladies" were there?) and a family impromptu water fight last night. Taco dinner is postponed to tonight and peanut butter sandwiches were consumed yesterday as we spent all of dinner time waging a water war in our backyard.

I told Chris and Carolena that I want our house to stay clean all summer so that any time we ever want to invite friends over we can. So far so good. The goal is to have people over on a whim any time we feel like it. I see that Tuesday is Donald Duck's birthday and Thursday is Kamehameha Day (luau anyone?) and Sunday is National Bourbon Day and Strawberry Shortcake Day so it looks like we have a lot to celebrate just this week alone.

I plan for us to spend the summer with iced teas and mint juleps and lemonade and popsicles and cookouts and the bubble machine and good books and good friends and our back deck and the splash pad and the ymca and the beach and well... you get the picture. Join me if you're interested.

“This day was the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and full of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.” The Wind in the Willows

Trip Highlights

Our road trip was seriously one of the most fun trips ever. I could keep doing separate blog posts about each thing for a very long time. I guess I'll do a more condensed recap today so that I can move on with my blogging life.
Our first stop (and 10 days later the last) was Tyler, TX. Deep behind the Pine Curtain it is home to Tyler roses and that elusive furry hard to capture on camera mythical guy...
Uncle Hunter!

 

From there it was just a short drive to Little Rock where we dove headfirst into civil rights history at Little Rock's Central High School. 

And then it was on to Memphis! Where we ate barbeque and soul food, went walking on Beale Street, played by the Mighty Mississip, and absorbed more civil rights history at the Lorraine Motel.

From Memphis it was on to Saint Looey where we ate more bbq, rode to the top of the Gateway Arch, spent the day at Grant's Farms, had fun in City Museum, and went rollin on the river.

Riding to the top!

 

From St. Louis we had a Laura Ingalls Wilder day and went to Rocky Ridge and the Kansas Prairie. Man, Almanzo was pretty fabulous. That guy did farm work, built their house, made his own shoes, and hand hooked rugs in his down time. Geeze, all my husband does is anoint the sick and dying. Sheesh, man. Chris, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas...

So, in summary, we had a fantastic road trip and did way more than I can feasibly blog about. I have roadtrip fever now and we are in full-blown summer vacation mode around here!

If you are at the end of this and still reading... then you're probably related to me. Hi!

7 hours after posting this and hmmm... you know... I guess there was that time Chris built a deck and pergola onto our house... and the time I went out of town for the weekend and came back and he had cleaned all of the grout. Wow. Well Chris, start making your own shoes (moccasins!) and some fine rugs for our home and I'll continue feeding you so you hang around!

City Museum!

I've traveled to Jamaica, Canada, Belize, Norway, France, Spain, England, and Italy. I've been to 23 states and plan to hit all fifty - hopefully I'll make that goal sooner rather than later. I mention this to give context when I say that last week we went to St. Louis' City Museum and to quote Tommy Boy, "I swear I've seen a lot of cool stuff in my life... but that... was... AWESOME."
There is no way to fully describe how cool City Museum is. You really just have to go experience it. I can't wait to go back. I loved St. Louis. I plan to go back when our kids are older and we can explore the city a little deeper and stay up late for a baseball game. I would guess when we return we will plan for two days in City Museum. It's like the Magic Kingdom of St. Louis: we'll have to go early in the vacation because by the end we'll be ready to go back again.
City Museum... holy mackerel... so, as far as I could tell, pretty much anything there is fair game for an adventure. It isn't really a "museum" per se. It's a playground, fun house, mad house adventure into wonderland. Unless it explicitly said, "do not climb on" - you could climb it. A small hole in the wall might lead to a passageway. Sometimes I would find an entry way and realize I was too big to find where it led. I keep saying there were things like cages on the ceilings, but they weren't really cages:

 Do you see Chris in the picture above?

Perhaps cages" is the exact term for this. The ceilings were covered in these metal mazes and when you found an entryway you could just go up and crawl around. Eventually you would find a slide to get back out.

A tunnel would have a door in it that would lead to another tunnel. A hole in the floor would turn out to be a slide to the floor below... or perhaps the slide was longer than anticipated and you were going down more than one story. Chris went down a 10 story slide!
The record-holding world's largest pencil and world's largest pair of underwear reside there, which both turned out to be a "huge!" source of entertainment for Carolena.

There is a school bus hanging off the rooftop of this eleven story building...

that you can get in just to give your mother a heart attack...

Everywhere we looked there was something exciting to do. Slides, giant legos, huge chalkboard walls, a circus (yes, really), a kid-sized train that Carolena rode at least three times. Everything there was exciting and cool. And if it wasn't... then you just kept walking until you found something else that was.

While we were eating a pile of cheese fries someone crawling through a tunnel beneath our table reached out and grabbed my foot. Even having been warned by Chris to watch my feet, I let out a huge screech and jumped a mile. Moments later a gangly kid came and gave a giggling confession that it was he who had grabbed my foot. He was adorably proud. I'm glad my immediate reaction was to pull my leg away and scream so loudly.

There was more to do there than could be done in a day. We saw a one-woman circus performance (during which Carolena whispered to me, "I'm going to do that when I'm a grown up!"), and I got to run in a huge hamster wheel. In my humble opinion, I was amazingly good at it so let's add that to my resume when I return to the work force. Too bad we didn't get video or photo of that accomplishment. We ran around on skate park ramps,

rode a ferris wheel that overlooked the city (on top of the 14 story building!),

and generally ran amok.

 Did you spot Chris and Carolena in the photo above?

 City Museum, you are awesome. See you again in a few years!

Season 1 Episode 8: A Camping We Will Go

We survived our first camping trip with kids! Shout it from the rooftops! Sing joyfully in the streets! Wake up the entire campground at five am! We did it! We did it!

We all had a blast. The trick to any trip with kids is to set the itinerary at simply this: survive. Anything else is just icing on the cake. So we didn't go hiking. Who cares? We did manage to play outside all day, go down the world's tallest playground slide, cook out hotdogs on a campfire, and eat s'mores. And then eat s'mores. Oh man, did I ever eat a ton of marshmallows. I don't know how many calories I burned in bootcamp on Friday morning... but I ate more than that in burnt marshmallows on Friday night. Worth it.

We didn't even attempt to go hiking. Brazos Bend is known for its gators and we didn't want to be known as bait. We did venture down to one of the big lakes where we saw a big alligator that nearly gave me a big heart attack as I was entirely convinced (for no reason other than motherhood) that Carolena was going to fall in and that I would have to jump in after her. *shudder* After that we stuck pretty close to our campsite and the giant terrifying playground. But hey, what's a twenty foot drop compared to staring down the gullet of a six twenty foot gator?

As it turns out Brazos Bend State Park's playgrounds are as old as the hills. Did you see that photo?! Certainly they would not pass Hunter's playground inspection. Huh, what? You don't know who Hunter is? Guess what internet: I have a brother. BAM. Never mentioned him? Okay, I probably have. But he isn't what one might call "on the grid." He has a beard and a dog and designs parks for a living (although he does have an iphone...) and thus doesn't end up on the old bloggeroni much. Anyway, Hunter is a certified playground inspector among other varied talents. Many mornings I look in the mirror and see Hunter sans beard staring back at me and decide to put on another coat of eyeliner. I digress...

A few months ago we bought a tent big enough to accommodate camping with kids. That is to say, camping with our kids and the Williams kids who will surely accompany us on our adventures someday. Carolena and Nils would have spent hours running around inside of the tent had we let them. Nils was furious when we put him in the pack n play and wasn't showing signs of letting up so Chris ended up popping him in his carseat to do some backseat nighttime sightseeing of the park. Carolena had a blast right up until it was time to fall asleep at which point she announced she was ready to go home.

I told Kelly Carolena that when we woke up in the morning we would go hiking and look for animals which gave her pause in her desire to go home. Then I asked her to tell me about her favorite episode of the Brady Bunch in which the Bradys go camping. That did the trick. She lulled herself off to sleep mumbling about who each of us should be and cooking fish for breakfast. That kid.

We were awakened by Sir Nils bright and early this morning. I shouldn't say bright. It was about two hours before sunrise. After breakfast and more time at the playground and (not) helping Daddy to take down camp we headed off for a hike... which was when I hit my breaking point of gnats flying into my nose and ears and we had to leave. There are only so many times that small bugs can go up my nose before I lose my mind. Anyone in the Rush family remember the hotel with the shuffleboard court and all the gnats?!

We came home dirty and exhausted and happy from all the fun. Duncan Family Camping Trip #1 can go down in the books as a huge success. Someday we'll take teenagers backpacking on a month long expedition on the Appalachian trail or college aged kids climbing up the face of El Capitan and we'll look back on the days that we had a pack n play in our tent and go, "Wow. That was tough! We were so crazy back then!"

ABCs of Casey's Interests

I've always thought that you could learn a lot about someone by their google search history. So, here is mine:

Alf
Benedryl for babies
Crock pot roast
Drake passage
Ernest Shackleton
Fort bend women's shelter resale
Golden snitch sweater
How to do a one armed pushup
Indoor rock climbing katy
Jennifer aniston ring
Katy texas events
Lutefisk
Memphis
Nils Holgersson
Origami goose
Prius "key detecting in vehicle" alarm while driving
Q (nothing)
Rudolph movie bird that doesn't fly
St louis
Twilight zone
Uni toys wombat
Verse about she bears
Wombat video
X (nothing)
Youtube sweatin to the oldies
Z (nothing)

 Yep, that seems about right.

The Happiest Place on Earth

The kids in Carolena's class made a book recently that she brought home to share with us. There were twelve pages, each with a kid's footprints and the sentance, "{Name's} feet take him/her to..." Each child got to finish the sentence.

Kate's feet take her to McDonalds.
Julie's feet take her to an aquarium.
Phil's feet take him to Chick-Fil-A (as do Harry's feet).
Kara and Eloise's feet take them each home to play.
Pat goes to the grocery store and Jennifer to HEB.
Theresa goes shopping and David goes to a toy store.


Carolena's feet take her to Disney World.