THIRTY-SEVEN

Matthew decided to take a photo of us, but he took two terrible photos of me and then apparently gave up. He says it's my fault for a poor photo. I say, if you take two photos while someone is talking and they're both crap, well then stop being rude and give me a chance to smile. :) In other news, Vera ate that entire snow cone. 

2015 week thirty-seven

Summer is coming to a peaceful breezy end, and this week was a lovely show of it.

Labor Day birthday party for a friend. Disappointingly, the water table was a way bigger hit than the bouncy house. 

Playing Play-doh with the cousins. 

I couldn't decide on one pie, and had two small pie pans so I made three pies for family dinner: strawberry, blackberry raspberry, and peach blackberry. 

This was so tasty I had to take a photo. Baked creamy sundried tomato pesto gnocchi with parmesan. 

On Wednesday we made wild grape jelly with grandma and had to run to the store for some jelly accoutrements. She was thrilled to push the basket and put things on the conveyor belt.  I love when she loves helping. 

On Friday I made her a little skirt and she was thrilled to prance around modeling it,

and look at herself in the mirror, 

and smile like a creep. 

Saturday morning walking around Grapevine Main Street with cousins and practically cousins. (Matt's sister's husband's brother's children. That's pretty much cousin material, right?) 

Some wonderful friends threw me a spectacular baby shower with delicious food on Saturday. Sunday when I was organizing everything, Vera found these baby leggings and wouldn't take them off. 

Baby Shower decorations

Baby shower festivities :)

Cousins not fighting for about 15 minutes. :)

Matthew in the middle. Vera has been making this identical grumpy face for days this week.

Quotes:

I did not record a lot of quotes from Vera this week, but she's busy saying funny things constantly -dont you worry. 

We went to the doctors for a prenatal check up and in the office there is a stack of plastic umbrella bags. Printed on them is a picture of an umbrella. Like this:

She asked if she could have one so I said sure. She opened the bag and told me she was going to take out the umbrella. She reached her hand in and where she thought and umbrella would be was obviously nothing. Her whole body froze and she looked terrified as though she had just encountered some strange magic. She whispered, "It scare me."

Vera, "Mama, I lost my mind."

Story: 

We went to the rodeo on Friday night with Matt's sister Melissa and her husband Scott, Scott's little brother Darrin and his wife Sera. Darrin is also one of Matt's old college roommates. There's a whole lot of related going on around here. When we were walking around the stockyards we saw two sad examples of Murica children. One very fat little girl had a face smeared with barbecue sauce and she was jauntily riding a mechanical pony, and one three-year old boy drinking coke out of a baby bottle riding another mechanical pony with one hand. Welcome to a Texas rodeo, folks.

During one of the bull-ride portions of the rodeo one kid (like 18) managed to stay on the bull for the allotted 8 seconds before he was thrown. When he was thrown, however, his rope that was still attached to the bull wrapped around his boot and wouldn't come loose. The 1,200 pound behemoth dragged this poor kid back and forth around the arena (what they kept appropriately calling the colosseum). The rodeo clowns were doing their best to distract the bull so the cowboy could get his boot loose, but one took a horn to the gut and the other got lifted and thrown back a few feet. Nearly a dozen men were racing around trying to distract the bull while it was pouncing and kicking and hitting everyone around him. They kept diving for the rope to try to cut it loose. After what seemed way too long to be anything but nauseating (I kept thinking, "Someone is going to get kicked in the head. This kid's leg is going to break. I'm going to watch someone die, etc") they finally got his boot free, the bull contained, and everyone walked away. The crowd was silent. It was terrifying.

And last rodeo story. My oh-so favorite one. During one part of the rodeo they asked for six volunteers. But not just any volunteers, strictly girls. They needed six girl volunteers to enter the arena. They lined them up and then blind folded them, and then told them to have a dance contest. One self-respecting soul bowed herself out to much respect from me. Good ol' Texas rodeo, needed an all girl dance contest to really class up the joint. After the initial blind folding they asked the girls to just warm up a bit and dance a second before they started their competition. Then the announcer laughingly said, "Girl on the end. This is a family-friendly event. There are no poles involved here. I know a professional when I see one." ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Family-friendly event and you just called this girl a stripper? I am not one to readily hoist my feminist injustice flag, but it shot straight up during this. I was so upset I don't even know how to describe my emotions: disappointed, offended, embarrassed, embarrassed for these girls, objectified, belitted, etc. I was feeling quite a load of indignation. The point of the dance contest was to trick the girls into thinking there was a tie so one girl was dancing blindfolded by herself in the middle of the arena as everyone else was tapped out. Then she got to feel the brunt of the humiliation I guess. Then she won no prize -which maybe is the best part of this? They didn't reward her for making a display of herself? It doesn't really matter, I was fairly disgusted. #sexisttexas

These poor girls. I felt like Liz Lemon, I wanted to shout, "You're more than this! You can have a job! And a career! Where is your self respect?!" But I also wanted to throw up or storm out. I'm not sure which emotion was stronger.