It's About...Time

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Paisley. Before her well-meaning parents were able to update their blog, she grew up and moved out of the house. Luckily, things haven’t gotten to that level yet, but we have really been negligent and are determined to redeem ourselves, again. The real tragedy is that in the time since our last post, we’ve taken some fun trips and Paisley has made some exciting accomplishments. After much deliberation, we’ve decided that the best strategy to catch up is to start in the present and work backwards.

Ready. Set. Fourth of July weekend. While on our last trip to Utah (we’ll get to that post eventually), we decided that the best way to celebrate Paisley’s first birthday was in Utah with family, friends and fireworks. Can you believe that she's almost 1 already? We can't either. We loaded up the car Thursday afternoon when Tim got off of work and headed north. We finally crawled into Salt Lake at 3 a.m. Friday morning and managed a few hours of sleep before Paisley arose with the sun. It was probably for the best since we had plenty of work to do before the pool party that afternoon.

The best news of the morning was confirmation that all of our efforts (20 lbs of dry ice) were enough to combat 112 degree temperatures and we managed to keep Paisley’s birthday cake frozen on the drive up. Even though Brandi had made a valiant effort over the week to make enough homemade ice cream for everyone, we ended up having to settle for a tub from the grocery store. We had the party at Grandma Sherry’s and cooked up some hamburgers and swam until our fingers and toes resembled raisins. Paisley just loves the water and had a blast floating around on her float (which is NOT a life saving device). But her favorite was when her mom took her down the pool slide. Squeals of delight. We almost even thought about getting it on camera. After drying off, it was time for presents. She’s one spoiled little girl. She’s still trying to grasp the whole concept of wrapping paper, but was fortunate to have two young friends that were eager to assist. I think next time presents are involved, we’ll just wrap stuff in our favorite magazines since she never has a problem tearing those up.


The birthday cake really was quite the ordeal. A couple people from work recommended a local decorator, so we made an appointment. Our appointment exceeded 90 minutes and not because we were being difficult. At least until they quoted the price. We agreed that designing our wedding cake was easier. The biggest challenge became when they told us that because we opted for the cream cheese filling, it needed to stay cold until serving. Thus the dry ice. When we picked it up, they threw in a little cake just for Paisley. We stuck a candle in it, put it in front of her and took cover from the sugar shrapnel. But the little princess took her time and dipped into the frosting one dainty finger at a time. The frosting eventually found its way all over her mouth, eye lashes, legs and mom just not at the blitzing first hyper rate we anticipated. Hopefully we don’t sound too disappointed.


Once we had finished with celebration #1, we loaded the car up again and drove to Oakley (where Brandi’s dad and step-mom live) for a rodeo rendezvous weekend. That’s right, we said rodeo. We pulled into Oakley just in time to catch the local firework show. Even though there isn’t any more snow on the ground in town, the high 60’s felt down right frosty.

We spent the next day hanging out with more family and when Paisley went down for her morning nap, we decided to leave her under the supervision of Grandma Lorrie while we headed over to the rodeo arena to check out something called a horse pull. The event likely qualifies as our second date since Paisley's arrival. A horse pull is exactly what it sounds like. A contest to see whose horses can pull the most weight. These horses were gigantic and the winning pair managed to pull 10,000 lbs. Very impressive. We headed back to the house, picked up Paisley and headed over to the Polar King for our third hamburger in four meals. Yum. Our lack of sleep seemed to be catching up with all three of us and we ended up all laying down for an hour or so before the night’s big event.


We forced dinner down Paisley's throat and skedaddled over to the arena. We timed it perfectly and got to our seats just as the announcer welcomed all of us good Americans to a good American activity. Paisley was so excited to experience her first rodeo she was in tears. The announcer combined with all of the sudden cheering must have startled her but like a true cowgirl, she quickly adjusted to her surroundings. Probably faster than her mom and dad. We’re probably self-conscious but it felt like everyone around us could smell the democrat on us. Our booing the rodeo clown’s Obama joke didn’t do us any favors.

If you’ve never been to a rodeo, you’ve got to try it. Especially the Oakley rodeo. That may come off as sarcastic, but it shouldn’t. It was really fun. We got to see AND use terms like bareback riding, tie down roping, saddle bronc riding, steer wrastlin’, team roping, barrel racing and the climax of the evening was of course, the bull riding. Paisley seemed to enjoy watching cowboys fall off of large snotty animals. So much so that she made us stuff her into her Halloween cow suit once the evening cooled off. We did manage to get it on, but couldn't snap the legs and the sleeves were probably closer to her elbows than her wrists. It probably just reminded her of a game she plays with her dad at home. After the last cowboy got tossed into next week, they turned all the lights off so that the night could finish off with a bang. Many bangs actually. Paisley doesn’t seem to hate fireworks.


We spent Sunday morning relaxing with the Hoggan’s and getting ready for the long trek back home. After a late departure and probably 4 more rounds of A Bug’s Life, we got home just after 10 p.m., late enough to watch the car temperature gage drop back to the double digits. All in all, it was a great trip and we were so glad that Paisley could be surrounded by family as she celebrated her first birthday. Thank you Grandma Sherry and Grandpa Don for hosting a fantastic pool party. Thank you Grandma Sue Ann for the great presents. And a huge thank you to Grandpa Randy and Grandma Lorrie for taking such good care of us, exposing us to rodeo and making the whole trip possible. Cowboy up and we’ll see you next year!