The Arizona Grandparents take their shot with the Erben bambinos, shuffling off with Tyler and Nora after lunch. They headed down toward Twin Falls today, and will head up with the trailer tommorrow near Sun Valley for a few days of ‘roughing it’ in Idaho.
Continuing our travels for the recent month+, we are cooling our heels in Laramie before zipping back west to meet up with more Grandparents in Salt Lake City Saturday night. Unfortunately, this trip was for services for Flossie’s grandfather who passed away earlier in the week. The kids have been traveling fools the past month for family visits, and we once again loaded them up Thursday morning for another 700 miles of the western United States, and again, they weather the journey fairly well (we shall not speak of the last 100 miles from Rawlins to Laramie last night though, for thy dear wife had reached her limit).
We arrived into Laramie around 9:30PM or so, a smidge over 13 hours on the road, and caught the end of the NBA finals as the kids unwound a bit. Nora was quite happy as she received her very own Tinkerbell inflatable bed plus sleeping bag. She laid down in the living room, her brother quickly passing out on the couch in his sleeping bag, and quickly scurried into the bedroom with mommy and daddy as it was scary, so, she slept quite comfortably IN HER OWN LITTLE BED ! Score one Gramps Lance !
Friday dawned a day as you might imagine, but thankfully the kids were in decent spirits and agreeable, getting through breakfast, dressed up, and over to Great Gran’s house without so much as a moan or sigh. Once there, they were very cordial to folks there and those that arrived, introducing themselves as “Hi, my name is Tyler Erben and I am five years old and this is my…”, “Hi, my name is Nora and I am three”. Ok, that did that once or twice, then Tyler was off to play and Nora turned on her bashfulness mode. Nora found pleasure fixing Great Grans table on the back patio, getting underneath it with her diaper in wide view, and performing mechanic like operations, noises, and gestures with some toys. She then wandered around in the backyard, enjoying the pretty flowers.
Around 10:30 or so, we began making our way to the church for services. The kids did quite well, listening as well as one could expect (or even better) for their ages. Nora the past few days has requested to go to the poddie on her own, and done so, going with a dry diaper from Boise to Laramie, and so far today batting 1.000 as well after a little bit of a wet one this morning. Tyler, Nora, and their cousin Reese made it about 15 minutes into the services before their gentle clapping at the songs, and fishing with some flowers (I felt guilty videoing it, but it was awesome) turned into a bit more uncontrolled energy, and we made an exit from the packed church to saunter around and burn off some energy.
After a visit to the cemetery, we had an enjoyable reception at the Laramie Country Club, with Nora enjoying the Chicken Penne Pasta as any good child of mine should, and Tyler, out of the blue, deciding he was hungry and dining on some steak and potatoes, with about five pieces of bread. We kicked off our shoes and dipped them in the pool for a bit, and finally wandered back to Gramma’s house around 4:00 ish, the kids getting to ride in the back of the Tahoe, as seen below as they relaxed before our short drive.
Advent Calendars showed up from Grandpa Lance, and the kid wasted no time getting into the packages and finding the tasty chocolate treats hidden behind “1″. So far, the calendars remain out of reach of the cunning canines, but the candioholic Nora has swiped Tyler’s a couple times and almost made off with a few days worth of goodies.
Worn out from the activities tonight, so not a full post, but if you wish to catch a few of the pictures and videos from the party tonight, head on over to the flickr page:
It amazes me how quickly my kids are growing up. Today, after Nora went down for her nap, Tyler wanted to play a game. I figured we’d have a rousing game of Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders. However, he found our Simpson’s Uno set in the closet. At that point, I was informed that he had been playing Uno at Leanne’s (Tyler’s daycare). I was a bit surprised, but thought, okay, I’ll play Uno with Tyler. I figured it would be a lot me correcting him on the rules, etc as the box recommended age started at 7 years old.
Could I have been more wrong?! Tyler and I played 11 games, of which I won 4. Yes… Tyler is the Uno champion. The first couple of games, I was not playing “ruthless”. I mean, I am playing a 4 year old, albeit not for long. I decided to change my tactic and try and actually win a few games… I still lost.
And not only does he understand the rules, he also has the strategy down. He’s using the “skip” cards and changing the colors with the numbers, and I even happened to notice at one point, when I had laid down a Wild card to change the color and I only had one card in my hand (Uno). I noticed that even though he had the “red” card in his hand, he played his own Wild card to prevent me from winning the game.
I have a feeling that I have a future professional poker player in the family! 
