Steven's first ten days back at home

Boy, have we been busy! When you don't have your dad at home with you for 71 days, you have a lot to catch up on once he returns.

On Tuesday, the seventh of June, the kids and I began making a big 'Welcome Home, Dad' banner. Here was our starting off place...a nice, wide expanse of clean, white nothingness.

The kids asked me to pencil in the letters, which I happily did, and then they got busy filling them in with lots of color and creativity.

It was starting to look pretty good.

About two hours after we started this project was when Steven came in through the back door, shooting my blood pressure and my heart rate to an all time high, making me cry with absolute happiness and bringing all of us a huge sense of relief. The main Wing Man was home. 

So much for the 'Home, Dad' part of our sign. Oh, well. We'd much rather have Steven home...but it would have been a pretty cool surprise.

We wanted to do something for both Mylee and Scott to thank them for being so awesome while Steven was away. Scotty has been talking about wanting an electric guitar since, well, since we moved here more than two years ago.  

I think he picked a pretty cool one. Red, of course, because that's his favorite color.

He and his dad have been playing around with it, adjusting knobs here and there. Scott's not Angus yet, but he's working on it. (That was an AC/DC reference by the way. We have some metal heads in our house, folks.)

Mylee and Joey hanging out and listening to the tunes. Mylee has decided that she'd like an iPod Touch for her gift. She's been shopping around, price comparing and we've decided to wait until this weekend to buy in the hopes that there will be some good Father's Day sales out there.

After two summers of saying we were gonna but never actually doing, we decided to try our hand at sailing. Here are Steven and Scott on our little rented Sunfish. Mylee actually took part in a five day Sunfish camp on this very lake, (Lake Crabtree) the first summer we were here when she was ten. She's the only one of us with any formal training whatsoever, but Steven has done a lot of studying and reading in years past. He did a great job.

Steven is such a wonderful teacher. He's very patient, doesn't get upset with questions and explains things well. First he took Scotty out, and taught him how to handle the dagger board and the rudder.

And they're off!

Meanwhile, back at the dock...Mylee had put her sunscreen on just a little bit too thickly and she was, I believe her word for it was, "gooey". Better than sunburned in my opinion.

She was not loving the bugs so much, either. She's got a cute hair cut, though. There's always that.

I'll let you fill in the blank here. Shouldn't be too hard. I believe her look says it all. It was hot on this day...upper 90's with a lot of humidity. It could have been breezier, but there was enough air moving around to push our sails.

My boys coming back to shore.

Success! Scotty had fun!

Maya was second to go out with her dad. Like I said, she knew a bit about what she was doing. She learned a lot in camp, but didn't actually have a ton of fun participating. The teachers were bored and impatient teens who were unable to get the kids excited about sailing. No matter...that's what Dad is for. 

Cherry cheeked boy. Scott and I hung out and played with a couple of skinks that were running around the boat docks.

In Colorado, you watch out for squirrels when you go to the park. You don't want them to get into your picnic baskets or snacks. Here, in North Carolina, you have to watch out for these little lizards. I think they're pretty cute, quite honestly. In the morning when it's hot out, I can look through our front window and see several of them sunning themselves on our porch steps. I've never had one of them try to steal my Dorito's, though. I might not think they're so cute if that happens.

Did I mention it was kind of hot out?

Here are Maya and Dad on their way back in to shore.

I got to go out with Steven, too, and got my first sailing lesson. The kids didn't feel like taking pictures, though, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I was fully prepared for one of us, if not all of us, to wind up in the water. Scott was actually thinking about tipping over on purpose because he was so hot, but we all stayed upright and had a great time. Our plan is to do much more sailing this coming summer...even try our hand at something large enough for all four of us to go together.

Pirate's of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides came out on May 20th, but the kids and I waited to see it with Steven. We are big Pirate's fans. We've gone to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Torero's and to Chili's this first week and a half, and saw X-Men First Class in the theater as well.

Maya and Scott are part of a youth bowling league that started just before Steven came home. He got to come and watch them bowl for their second week and the four of us went bowling together, too. Steven, who hadn't bowled in about ten years, got a 158 right off the bat. Sheesh. The rest of us broke 100, so we were happy with that. We've all got 'bowling names'. Steven is 'Turkey'. (Soooo many strikes.) Scotty's name is 'Backspin', Maya's is 'One Pin' and I'm known as 'Sleeper'.  It's early in our bowling hobby yet...I'm guessing our names will change, but as of right now, this is how it stands.

Steven's been working this past week but has been able to do everything from home so far. He's scheduled to have the month of July off, but we'll see how that shakes out. General Dynamics hasn't been real good at allowing him to take his vacation time but we're gonna give it a shot. 

One more cool thing that's happened since Steven's been home...

Scott lost another tooth. He has three loose on the top, including the two front teeth. Pretty soon here he'll have no teeth at all in his head. Unfortunately for him, he's told us he no longer believes in the Tooth Fairy, so he hasn't made a single cent since he's been losing his teeth, but he sure can make a lot of noise with the holes in his mouth.

We hope your summer is starting off as well as our's has. If your emails or calls go unanswered, you'll know we are busy celebrating the reunion of our family and filling our time with lots of fun activities. Don't worry about us...we'll resurface eventually.