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.

Yes, he dressed himself.

Hi Giraffe

Originally uploaded by erben22

Tyler has taken a keen interest in photography, so we have let him use the Nikon E3100. Today, he toted around the Zoo with the camera in hand, snapping shots of all the critters. Here, he captures a giraffe at eye-level shortly before feeding the long-necked, friendly critter. Stay tuned for more photos by Tyler !

Testing blogging from Flickr to WordPress.

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A late dinner (approx 9pm) but still scrumptulous. Tyler and Nora
both had some fixins, with Tyler, if you can believe it, eating some
turkey.

Tyler patiently awaits spring training in his new hat, complements of
Gramma. He had his pre-Kindergarten shots, so the ice pack cools (or
makes us think it does) one of his owies.

Com'm double purple on the river ! Note the new helmet, complements
of Gramma. Frontside is cool, but you cannot get Nora to wear it that
way.