the birds don't hate her

So here's my problem.  I plan on posting here but I have pictures that go along with the post I have in mind and I am only getting worse at finding my camera's cord and uploading the pictures to my computer...so then I don't post anything thinking I'll get to it soon but obviously I don't.  I'm gonna try something new, something crazy, something you've never seen before, I'm gonna post when I have something to say and leave the picture uploading to Flickr when I get around it.  WOW! I am a blogging genius!


We are back from Yellowstone and no one got mauled by a bison or scalded by a geyser.  Success!  Josephine played nicely with her cousins she met for the first time which was fantastic.  I made tote bags for everyone, well, I screen printed on pre-made bags, and filled them with cowboy hats, cowboy boot shaped can coozies, and jerky. We ordered M&Ms with my grandmother's face on them and I made fortune cookies and stuffed them with Wyoming fun facts.  The cookies were yummy, not pretty, but still worth making.

I got my last haircut with "my" stylist because she is moving and even though I loved it I took the scissors to it a few days ago and while it's not fabulous it's not bad either...

Josephine has been growing ridiculously fast lately.  Physically, she's been mostly napping and eating for about a week, but mentally she seems to be putting so much together in her head that she hadn't done before.  Unfortunately she is also repeating all the awful things she's heard in the past two years that everyone thought she was ignoring...  I want to go back in time and glue everyone's mouth shut.  It's odd to hear here say "dang it!" which isn't bad, but she's called me a jerk, said she hates me and also that the birds hate her...The jerk one was easy to figure out where she got it (sister) and I've probably said it in front of her too, but the hate one really threw me for a loop.  I never say I hate things and I'm especially careful to never say I hate any person.  Hearing someone say they hate another person makes me super uncomfortable.  My heart broke for a little bit with that one.

While I'm on the topic of annoying things my 2 year old does...She is obsessed with driving... I made a car out of a cardboard box but that was only good enough for about a day.  Every day, all day, for the past few weeks Joey asks, begs, demands that I let her "drive" which means sitting in the driver's seat in whatever car is in the garage and pretending to go to the beach or on a hiking trip.  I don't know how to type out how annoying it is because I know right now it sounds pretty tame but oh my gosh she won't shut up!

Joey, my parents and I are driving to Colorado this weekend for my great aunt's 90th birthday.  Wish me luck.

at this rate, the end of the world might come before i post again...

You know how there have been a lot of bad earthquakes lately, a tsunami, and then that volcano in Iceland that just wont quit? Yeah, so if you wanted to think of this as like a natural disaster opening ceremonies then you would look down the line and see the the grand finale is the eruption of Yellowstone.  How you seen the movie 2012?
Guess where we are hosting a family reunion this summer? YELLOWSTONE! Let's hope that if mother nature is going to provide a fireworks show that it's when we are there to see it! (or we have all boarded the ship that's moving us to the moon, not like we could survive it even if we are back home).
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I made homemade pop-tarts the other day, some with boysenberry jam and some with nutella, delicious.
And since I'm thinking about food, let me give you the best tomato soup recipe ever.  Like, ever. I don't like chunks of cooked tomato in my chili or marinara sauce and I think the cream of tomato soups in a can are only OK but this soup totally changed all my ideas of what tomato soup can be. Please try it.

Slice several garlic cloves but not too small, I like being able to bite into my garlic, you will too.  Cook the garlic in a little oil for a few minutes.
Peel and dice 8-10 plumb tomatoes (I think I ended up using Roma because we had plenty already and the grocery I went to doesn't have plumb tomatoes)
Simmer tomatoes (and garlic) in a good quality stock until they start to break down. Like 15-20 minutes.
In each bowl place a slice of day-old crusty french bread...or buy a baguette the day of and toast it because who buys bread and leaves it out all day? Your cat will jump up on the counter after you've gone to bed and get her cat germs all over it. Gross.
Crack an egg over each piece of bread.
This is when you are supposed to ladle the soup over the egg and put the bowl in the oven for 5 min at 400 but when I did that the first time I ended up microwaving the bowls for a few seconds because the egg whites didn't cook enough and everyone was grossed out.  Sooooooooo, I put the egg and bread in the oven first so that I could watch them better, until the whites have just set, and then ladle the soup over them.
Top with chopped parsley.
I have some parsley growing in my little garden.  I mean, I have a parsley MONSTER growing.  I planted some last year and didn't even expect it to grow because that was the soil that Josephine decided to "help" me with and scooped it up and plopped it into the basil pot... I scooped it out, the parsley flourished, the basil never grew.  This year the parsley came back pretty early, it's gone through some snow and freezing nights but it has persevered.  The last time I went to cut some I decided to cut it back before it took over the rest of my herbs and I cut through stalks that were as big around as a quarter. Yeesh.
Anyway, the leftover soup is great alone too but the bread really makes it so toss in some croutons or something, because you at the rest of the baguette loaf before the dishes were even cleared from the table.

home and head intact!

We got in last night around 8ish and Josephine was so excited to be home that she squealed and quivered and ran her feet in circles for a good two hours before finally crashing out for the night. She did way better than I thought she would in the car and slept better than I thought she would in the hotels.

If you've never been to Yellowstone I highly recommend that you make plans to go there. The hot springs and geysers are incredible to see, a little stinky, but pretty amazing (and dangerous, this was supposed to be a stop for us the second day there but it was closed).

And of course we saw Old Faithful and the famouse Old Faithful Inn.

Then there are the animals! I didn't get pictures of all the animals we saw because some were just too far away, and some were just too boring to stop for I guess... We saw bison and their babies, black bears, fox, deer, elk, moose, pelicans (really! pelicans in Wyoming!), more bison, a stink bug in our hotel bathroom, marmots, and a bunch of boring birds.

The bison were everywhere! They stopped traffic several times and then I saw a sign at the beginning of a short trail that led around some geysers and hot springs that warned of bison charging and goring hikers. We started walking the loop and around the first corner we saw some bison very very close to the trail and a ranger asking us to go around the other direction and hopefully they'll have moved on by the time we get back to that point. My mom and sisters decided they'd rather wait in the car. So my dad and I come around to the spot on the trail again where the bison were and they have only moved about a foot away. My heart is beating a little faster. Dad takes my camera and I start down the trail. When I get close to the bison he yells my name so I'd turn around and then the bison stops eating grass and looks right at me with a snort. I immediatly turn forward again and keep moving so he only got a shot of my backside. And I may have peed a little.

All in all it was one of the best family vacations I can remember. Very little bickering, much laughter, and I only had to crack the window twice because of someone's farts in the car. That last fact is probably the most surprising to me.

might attract bears, the whole head exploding thing

If you don't hear from me this weekend, it's because tomorrow we're leaving for Yellowstone.
If you don't hear from me ever again, it's because I'll be in a car for several hours with my family, and my head might explode.
Driving with my father who thinks the earth might actually stop spinning if we stop the car for anything but gas.
Driving with my mother who is constantly uncomfortable with the air temperature and will ask for it to be cooler, cooler, cooler, I can't breath it's so stuffy, agggghh it's so cold in here, open a window, shut up and grab a blanket, why is the a/c blasting?
Driving with my sisters that can go from zero to ax murderer in .2 seconds if they feel they have been trapped in the car too long with the parents (see above).
Driving with a baby who cannot yet understand that Honey we'll be there in two minutes and you can get out then, just relax a little bit longer, I'm sorry but we all have to be buckled in, I know I know, here have a snack.

pray for me.

Here is a video of my cat just for the hell of it. I'm going to bed.