Evelyn: 41 Weeks

Well Evey, you've now been on the outside as long as you were on the inside. Crazy!

Lately most of my pictures of you are taken when you are eating, because that seems the be the only time you slow down. 

New This week:  We went to story time at the library standing unassisted for about a minute 

Stepping out of my comfort zone

I'm shy, but I love being around people.
It's hard to explain. I don't think I have social anxiety because I love going to restaurants, parties, hanging out with friends, I worked in customer service, I'm really great at talking to people. Once I am doing something social I enjoy it, but getting myself to do the social thing is hard. I get anxiety just thinking of getting ready to go somewhere where there will be lots of people. In Oki, Paul and I and our friends went out almost every Friday night. I would have anxiety the whole time I was getting ready to go out, but once we got out with our friends I was fine. I'm like an introverted extrovert. Thinking about moving to California, where I already know people through the Marine Corps family, but most of which I have never actually met in real life scares the crap out of me. Even thinking of seeing friends or family I haven't seen in a while makes me anxious.
Since moving to Butte I leave the house to go shopping, or to eat. I don't go do things by myself with E. Besides walking, which does not involve stranger interaction. All summer I was telling myself I was going to sign her up for swim lessons, or some mommy and me class at the YMCA. But I never did. 
Well today I did something that I normally wouldn't do, Story Time at the library. I even tried to make excuses to myself as late as this morning to not go. "If E falls asleep I won't want to wake her" as I tried to nurse her into a nap. But it's like she knew, and she wanted to go. So at 10:30 I decided she wasn't sleeping so I needed to get us both dressed, I needed to put some makeup on, because I can't go out in public looking like a disheveled SAHM. 

And we went.
And it was fun.
Well parking sucked, and I almost talked myself out of going again because I couldn't find any parking, but I parked sort of illegally and went inside.
And E really enjoyed it. 



And that's the first step, I am going to try to go as often as our schedule allows. E often naps around 11, But I think this is really good for both of us though so we may have to adjust nap time to be a little later. 

Belated Military Monday

I know I am late, I really wanted to get in on this Military Monday though so here we go:

Did we plan our pregnancy? Yes. We had just returned from an overseas tour and we are both getting older, we knew it was now or never. We'll not really now or never, but we weren't getting any younger. We had spend the better part of the first 6 years together partying and running amok across the world, and it was time to settle down a little and have a little wee one. Recruiting duty was also the ideal place to do this because Paul is non deployable. But he is on the road a lot, and when he was recruiting he was often working 16+ hour days, but you can still make a baby on that schedule. Things worked out even better because he was transferring to MEPS when E was born and was able to take almost a month off to stay home with me just before and just after she was born. 

two weeks old

It was nice having him there and available for the birth, but leading up with knowing he was transferring to a new position that was located an hour away, with him commuting I was nervous about going into labor early and not having him there, or having to have him drive through a mountain pass to get home in the snow. 

As far as going "Home" for my pregnancy/birth:

I did not go home. No offense to those that do, but I don't go home, like I go to visit but I won't go to live, not if he gets deployed, not if I get pregnant again, not if I get pregnant and he deploys. We live together and have a home together and I am not going to leave that home, our home, while he is away. That's just not my style. 

My family and his family helped tremendously, they were always available by phone, and my parents visited for E's birth and His parents shortly after. That's part of the reason we decided now was the perfect time to undertake this baby journey, family is an inexpensive flight away (vs. overseas flight).

Fall?

Yeah, we skipped it. 

I know my porch is a mess. And now it's covered in snow. This was at 10pm, looks like about 1/2 an inch. Now it's midnight and we are closer to if not past 3 inches. Oh dear. 

Evelyn: 40 Weeks

 

New this week: 

You are standing without holding onto something for up to about a minute

We are trying to get you back into the pack and play to sleep for at least part of the night.

Evelyn: 39 weeks

New This Week: 

Trip to the National Bison Range

Added pureed baby food to our diet

(we are doing baby led weaning, but the organic pouched purees are so easy, and E really likes them) 

Glacier National Park Part 2

And Now I bring you part two of our trip. We start where we left off in my last post. We had just finished with Many Glacier and we were headed to St. Mary. Entering on the East side of the park in St.Mary is the Going to the Sun road which cuts directly across Glacier. Spectacular views. Spectacular!

(as always click on images to see larger image)

Logan Pass

This guy kills me. He looks so pissed I am taking his picture.
"What? You want me to pose again? shove it"

Goodbye Glacier, see you again someday. 

Glacier National Park (part 1)

For the first time since our Honeymoon in 2006 Paul and I went on a real overnight vacation. We've had lots of stay-cations and day-cations, we've road-tripped for work and to see family. But we've never had our own trip where the destination was our choice, family fun, no goals, no "just drive, so we can just get there". We decided we are long overdue. 

Another really nice thing about this trip was we didn't really have much phone service the whole time, so it really was just the two of us. 

I am going to break this up into a couple posts so we don't go into picture overload all at once. 

First Family Vacation

The first night we drove up to East Glacier. We stayed in a cute little motel (Mountain Pine Motel) that had a very retro feel, but it was very clean. Not a lot of amenities, our room had two beds an old TV, towels and bar soap (and of course I forgot shampoo) But considering we are right outside the park, for the price, I was very pleased. Most of our neighbors were hikers, after we arrived and they dwindled back in most of them sat outside and drank a beer while they took their hiking boots off and unloaded their gear from their cars.

If you ever go to Glacier I highly recommend Mountain Pine, It was clean, the grounds were beautiful, lots of grass and trees. I think they are pet friendly, I saw people with dogs, but we didn't bring our monsters.

The hotel manager (Cute little old man) gave us a really nice map and basically outlined our trip for us. I am so glad he did, because we had no intention on going to Two Medicine (blue arrow) or Many Glacier (pink arrow). 

Today I'll share with you those two places. 

Running Eagle Falls Trailhead

Two Medicine Lake

Drove down to the shore of Lower Two Medicine

On our way in Lower Two medicine was very calm and the Mountains reflected perfectly off the lake, so on our way out we decided to explore and drove down a washed out dirt road to try to get a picture. We got down and it wasn't calm anymore, but it was still beautiful. 

On our way back up the washed out dirt road though we almost didn't make it back to the main road. I was really upset because I thought we were about to ruin our vacation and it had just started, we had literally only been out of bed maybe 2 hours max. Lesson learned, don't take your Jeep, no matter how BA it is, off-roading, with crappy road tires. After about 10 minutes of trying we got up the hill and back onto the highway. 

rain coming in looking in to Lower Two Medicine from the main highway headed North.

obligatory selfie

lower two medicine panorama

Lower Two Medicine panorama 2

after we got back on our way a storm started to roll in, lots of rain and lightening on our drive from Two Medicine up to Many Glacier. 

Family Fun! 

Look at all those Glaciers! 

Once we got to the end of the road at Many glacier we noticed the clouds were parting and the sun was peeking through, it would be a good day, the rain would eventually stop and the sun would come out! 

Many Glacier view from the Swiftcurrent Lodge parking lot

Stay tuned for more Glacier National Park coming soon!