Don't Rain on My Parade

This weekend has been nothing short of fantastic. From Hallie getting to experience a lot of "firsts", to me getting to experience what it feels like to sleep in my bed...fantastic. Riley had been telling me about Western Days for several weeks now but I had completely forgotten it was this weekend. Western Days is a yearly celebration in Mustang with lots of stuff to do. So I hadn't planned on going out Friday night but was totally up for getting out of the house with the family. We had our first eating out experience with just the three of us. Hallie slept the whole time. Next it was on to shopping at the booths they had set up and then to the carnival. Riley insisted on pushing the stroller. Very protective daddy! We did have to have a quick tutorial on how to fold/unfold the stroller. Riley's words were, "well that was easy, no wonder you payed so much for it!" "Haha, very funny!" So we wandered around for awhile and the only person who profited from the shopping was guess who? Of course I had to buy more bows! Next we went across the street to check out the carnies. And to waste some money on impossible carnival games. Riley's favorite thing to do was ask "what did I win?" after each time he would lose a game. My favorite response of the evening was "well, you don't get nothin' if you don't win nothin'". Lol! I loved taunting Riley as we walked past the "scary" rides. He even claims that he won't ride the caterpillar "rollercoaster" with Hallie when she is old enough. He is a scaredy cat when it comes to anything that moves in a circle or looks to be out of control. I can guarantee him that the caterpillar coaster is probably his safest bet. The lady getting off a spinning ride with her granddaughter who was ten seconds away from blowing chunks everywhere was not helping my case any. Looks like it's just Hal and I enjoying theme parks together someday...and dad will be watching and holding our stuff. We pulled out of the parking lot to drive home and instead ended up at the rodeo. Hallie was being such a quiet little angel that we thought it would be fun. Fun=hot as the sun. It was so humid and we ended up having to strip down our little girl. I insisted on keeping her pretty hat on though...she had hat hair. I almost thought Riley was going to take off her onesie and just leave her in her diaper he was so worried about her. Riley was pretty concerned about not being dressed in his cowboy attire. He is always picking out what he calls the "drugstore cowboys" everytime we go to a concert or a rodeo. Guess he felt a little self conscious in his flip flops and shorts holding a diaper bag and a carseat. What city folk.....

Drugstore Cowboy

It wasn't the most entertaining rodeo in the world but we had fun! I was perplexed by the music selection. Lady Gaga for your opening of the rodeo? Really?

She just screams rodeo, right?

      

Hallie's first rodeo was a success!!!

 Since we are new to Mustang and don't know a whole lot of people, we were excited to see people we knew and actually be able to remember eachother's names. Riley's words were "we have a community now." He is quite the social butterfly in the neighborhood.

Like I said above, Friday was great for many reasons. Riley stayed up with the baby for the first shift. And I got up early for the second shift. But the fact that I got to sleep in my own bed and that Hallie slept 5 1/2 straight hours, the early shift was a piece of cake! She scored a high score of 8. Good girl! Riley was up early to go enter his truck in the car show. I was a little stressed out when all at once I had to get baby and I in the car to go pick Riley up from the car show, feed the baby, and have the dogs at the vet in 40 minutes (the vet is 30 minutes away from our house). Somehow we made it. Riley took the crazies to the vet. Lucy lost 2 lbs so I guess our walks are FINALLY paying off. I've been walking that big girl for over a year and she has yet to lose even an ounce until now. So Lucy gets the gold star for this vet trip. Emmi is maintaining her girlish figure well. After Riley had to pay the vet bill though, he called me and said "they are on their own from here on out." Emmi is not helping anything by wanting to make an escape from her crate every night. I realized I was calling her crate a cage in my last post and it sounded so cruel. So I will call it a crate. It really doesn't matter much anymore because we are retiring the crate. She has graduated to big girl status and is now proving that she can sleep out in the open without her SBDD (sporadic barking dog disease) acting up. 

 

Locked up no more!

After trying to find the "perfect" parking spot for what seemed like a lifetime, we found our way to the parade. Hallie slept right through all of the fun. The clowns that is. The parade was a parade...a bunch of cheerleaders, football players and your average muscle bound tanned freak pushing a tractor tire advertising his store called "musclelicious." Wait, what??!! The most entertaining part of the parade was not the actual parade, it was the announcer...he was getting tired of his job by the end of the parade and kept yelling over the mic at the floats that were lagging behind. "You are going to have to hurry, you are moving TOO SLOW!!" I was just imagining a group of tiny kids down the road being publicly scolded for having too short of legs!

An older man who may have very well been drunk approached us during the parade to check out what was inside the stroller. Well, he thought he had found a boy. I wonder what gave it away? The flower headband, the miniskirt, or was the pink and leopard carseat? I waited a respectful 5 seconds for him to walk away to start asking "what the heck?" Riley's response was "I knew that would get you going :)!"

Our pretty little boy. So proud of him.

Next Hallie experienced her first of what I'm sure will be many car shows to come. Riley is a car show lover for those who don't know. He shows his 1960 Ford pickup that he worked on for shop class in high school. He is very proud of it and I know he can't wait until Hallie can cruise around in it with him!

We didn't really have any shade outside so I was afraid our baby was going to fry. We made it home just in time to watch the Sooners play. My cousin Garrett just started his college career at Florida State and had bought Hallie an FSU onesie. He told me the other day "she better be wearing that onesie on Saturday!" I'm sorry Gar, but she still has some growing to do. ;) Riley went back to the car show while we cooled off. Hallie was asleep and I was ready for the game. Then my phone rang. Dangit. Don't you know what time it is?? Well I'm glad I answered because it was THE BEST NEWS EVER!! You guys must have been praying! It was Mindi, the lady who runs the home daycare across the street. She is going to babysit Hallie! We are so thrilled. We talked details and I feel really comfortable with this setup. She didn't want to pass up the chance to get a kid so close to her house...it just makes it easier for everyone. After talking with her for 30 minutes, I was so excited that I didn't even care that I was missing a great game!

Aunt Bailey and "Uncle" Spencer stopped by just to drop off their car and ended up being my babysitters. I wanted to go be with Riley for the car show awards but I didn't want to take Hallie back out in the heat. So Aunt Bailey babysat Hallie. Spencer wanted to get paid for it...but it doesn't count as babysitting if the baby sleeps the whole time. She must have been worn out from the day because she slept for almost 5 hours!

Aunt Bailey wishing she would wake up to play

Riley was surprised to see me back at the car show "babyless". I was planning on doing the "I forgot the baby at home" act, but I suck at lying. Riley's truck got first place in his class!

Riley and his trophy

We had pizza and movie night with Bailey and Spencer. Riley was busy taking trips in and out of the garage to listen to the OSU game on the radio. In the end he was a happy fan! When both of our teams win, it's considered a great (and peaceful) weekend. Riley took the first shift of the night but again it lasted almost the whole night because our super star slept 6 hours!!!!!!!!! That deserves a 9! I got up with her at 5:30 and she went right back to sleep. Sleeping patterns they are a changin'!!! Then again it may just be all of the busyness (is that a word?) of the weekend but hopefully not! She was still tired this morning and slept through Emmi giving her a nice bath....

Hallie's Corner

Well, I see that my mom shared every last agonizing detail about our weekend with you all, so I won't repeat it. See Great Aunt Pauline, my mom told you it would be a long post and she wasn't lying. But man, it seemed like fun. I say "it seemed" because I really couldn't do much but lay there in my stroller for the most part. Maybe next year I'll do more. But I will say that my parents are pretty stupid for playing those dumb fair games...I mean come on, even I know that they are rigged for you to lose. I decided it was probably a good weekend to sleep through the night. Mom and dad were looking kinda ragged...mom was so tired she forgot to do laundry this week and dad had no clothes. So I cut them a little slack. I got to see my Aunt Bailey yesterday...her and mom are ridiculous...they just sit and stare at me waiting for me to smile or make a funny face. I can't do it under pressure like that! I'm getting ready to tell mom I'm hungry and my hand doesn't taste very good so I'm gonna go now. Bye!

I am watching the rain pouring outside! And I can hear Riley in the other room changing a diaper and talking to Hallie in a John Wayne voice...he is watching another "great John Wayne movie." Oh wait, there is a floating hungry baby head on my shoulder right now. This is their way of telling me it's time to wrap things up and it's feeding time. They crack me up together! I decided I should cook some lunch since I hadn't in a couple days, so I got out the recipes that my mom had sent me home with. I couldn't decide so I was going to make a 'yes' and 'no' pile based on if I had all the ingredients I needed for each one. Well out of 6 recipes, I had the ingredients for one. Looks like it's hamburger casserole for us today.

Grammy called this morning to have Hallie wish her a "Happy Grandparent's Day!" She claims that she heard her grunt when I held the phone up to her but I'm not sure. So for all of the grandparents, HAPPY GRANDPARENT'S DAY! Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!