Last day in Tucson

Tomorrow I fly home to Chicago. I've had a great week visiting with Mom and Dad in Tucson. The highlights include: daily AM walks with Mom, shopping for maternity clothes and looking at baby gear, enjoying lunches at some of Mom and Dad's favorite restaurants around town, introducing Mom and Dad to Season 1 of White Collar, and making bibs!

Mom and I spent most of yesterday and this afternoon working on the bibs. It is much more time consuming than I realized. There are a lot of steps involved. For a few of the bibs, we cut out fun shapes like an apple, fish, leaves, a chicken and balloons, and Mom appliqued the shapes onto the bibs. They are really cute and definitely one of a kind.

Now, the only thing left is to sew on velcro, which Mom will do out at the ranch next week. Overall, I'm really pleased with our final products and I'm so glad these bibs are gender-neutral because I don't see us doing this project again.

Fabric for Baby Stuff

Mom and I went to the Home Fabrics store here in Tucson yesterday (it is the most amazing fabric store ever - tons of great-quality things at the lowest prices you've ever seen!). We bought a bunch of different gender-neutral cotton fabrics to make bibs and receiving blankets. I love the stuff we found. Tomorrow we're planning to do some sewing, so we'll see how it all turns out.

Day 4 of the Roundup

Saturday was the final day of the roundup and branding. My mom has a detailed post on her blog describing the day's adventures along with photos. Below I've posted some of the photos I captured as well as a video of Dan wrangling a calf in the branding corral. I'll post more videos tomorrow. My role during the branding this year was (very amateur) videographer. Mom and Aunt Mary had their fancy cameras and got right in there in the corral to take hundreds of photos throughout the day. It was a lot of fun, as always. Every time we attend a roundup, I think about what a special experience it is since this way of life is fast disappearing.

 

(Sorry for the clicking sound in this video...my camera's auto-focus kept making noises.)

Dan and Oscar ride towards the house early in the morning.

Dan, Dad and Dustin work on a calf.

Dan and Colter Lee.

Hank is such a sweet horse. He didn't participate in the roundup this year (too young), but his corral (with him still in it!) was used as a holding pen for some of the cows, so he got to be part of the action.

I took this photo when the cows had just been pushed into the corral. They were glaring at us.

Day 1 of the Roundup

The roundup began this morning at the ranch. Dan and I will arrive tomorrow and take part on Days 3 and 4. Dan will join the guys on horseback to roundup cows and move them to the branding corral. Then on Day 4 they will do a final roundup and brand the calves. My role will be photographer and "general helper" for preparing and serving food. There will be 30+ people, so my mom has been cooking all week already. My mom took some great photos today which she posted to her blog. Here are a few of them:

Happy Father's Day

I feel very lucky to have such a great dad. He is one of the smartest people I know and since we were little kids has challenged us (C, W and me) to think about things in different ways. He is encouraging, supportive, and tells us often how proud of us he is. Dad worked really hard to provide an incredible life for our family, for which I will always be grateful. I am so glad that he has followed his dream of being a "cowboy" and is enjoying a second career as a rancher. I love you, Dad! Happy Father's Day.

Justin Bieber for Babies

Earlier this week Stacy let me borrow a book called "Prenatal Parenting" that was a very interesting read. I agree with a lot of what the book suggests you do before your baby is born - things like:

• Read to your child. It exposes them to more words and they become more familiar with your voice, which will be a comfort to them after birth.
• Play classical or soothing music for your baby. After birth, if you play those same songs, it will comfort the baby because they are familiar with the tune.

I have been slowly collecting children's books and baby classical music in the past several months. Today, I found a super-fun downloadable album on Amazon. It's called "Baby Lullabies Popular Music" and they turned classic or pop songs into instrumental versions that are soothing for babies. The album includes songs like Justin Bieber's "Baby Baby," The Beatles "All You Need is Love," The Eagles' "Hotel California" and more than 30 others. I think will be fun for playtime and there are a few songs on here that could be soothing for nap time.

Dinner at Riposo

When Dan and I lived in NYC, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants was a little hole-in-the-wall place called Riposo. Tonight, I was at a reception just down the street from Riposo and my client and I decided to duck out for dinner. We went to Riposo and shared the cara cara orange salad and a flatbread. So yummy! Riposo has the best flatbread pizza I have ever consumed - anywhere. This place is just as scrumptious as it was when Dan and I lived here. So far, this trip has been a truly fun walk down memory lane. Tomorrow I'll be at the media event all day and then fly home.