There's a worker at our house right now doing paint touch-ups and I have no idea what to do with myself so I'm gonna bust out a blog post. Does anyone else feel soooo awkward when someone comes to your house/apartment to fix something? Like, what am I supposed to do with myself? Do I stay in the same room as him so I can "keep an eye on him" and be there if he has questions? Or do I go do something in another room so I don't have to make awkward conversation/endure awkward silence? I have some social anxiety, so I am probably just overthinking this. I never thought I'd say this, but I really hope Jack wakes up from his nap early so I at least have a little buddy here with me in this awkwardness.
The painter is really nice. We've just been chatting about babies and small-town life. Oh, and prison and high Casper suicide rates and meth. Normal Casper stuff. p.s. Literally EVERY city we've lived in the US has claimed to have the nation's highest depression/suicide rates. And they all have studies to back it up. And I've genuinely loved all the places we've lived so who's to say what the actual stats are? But anyway, it's still weird with the painter here even with the smalltalk. There's this element of feeling guilty that I made him come. Our home is a new build and when we moved in there were some tiny little paint chips in random places. Honestly barely even noticeable, but Jared's OCD about this stuff so we nagged our builder for a few months until he made the painter come back and fix it. Also awkward because the painter and our builder came by at 8:00 this morning to check out the "damage" and I was legit a frazzled mess with my nightshirt hanging out of a too-small jacket I threw on and crazy bedhead. I'm presentable now but it's still weird.
Moving on! Here is a post about when we went "exploring" a few weeks back. There is nothing within a 2-hour radius of Casper so it was a bit anticlimactic haha. This random rock pile in the prairie is where we ended up. It was right outside Edgerton, WY. Population 197. There's some cool terrain nearby (little mountains and hills), but as far as we can tell almost all the land in Wyoming is privately owned so you can't explore it. Makes me appreciate the Utah mountains. I could literally spend my entire life exploring just the state of Utah and still not discover everything. Don't get me wrong, we truly love Wyoming and feel at home here, but we are hopeful to one day settle down in Utah. (Probably after we spend a few years living somewhere awful that will help us pay off Jared's student loans, because Utah sure ain't gonna help us with that. #familymedicine)
This is a good depiction of what most of our part of Wyoming looks like. Pretty plain. Probably why it's called the plains. It's not much, but it is peaceful and provides gr8 sunsets.
Savvy found a herd of antelope and chased them for a while before coming back to us. Then this one male antelope, probably their leader, came back and just stared at us the entire time we were here. I was so scared one of us was going to get gored to death by an antelope. Antelopes are not even scary and they have tiny horns, but this one looked like it wanted to eat us for dinners.
At the beginning of the summer (early May) we went camping at Capitol Reef, UT with my family. Jack and his cousin Asher were only 2 months old, so the whole "sleeping" thing didn't really happen. The infant stage is brutal, guys. Jack's only getting up once or twice a night these days and I'm still perma-tired. I have literally no idea how we made it through those first couple months where he was up every two hours and it took him an hour to eat each time. HOW. I have very few memories from that time. It's all a weird fuzzy haze. I'm glad I'm back to blogging so I can hold on to a couple memories.
Jack did better than I thought he would for the 3-hour car ride down. Homeboy HATES his carseat and it was even worse back then. Luckily he mostly just slept on this ride and he woke up once to eat. Our whole group stopped to lunch in the shade of a church tree. This was in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Utah. After I fed Jack he looked so content. This is the most milk-drunk he has ever looked (picture above).
^^There are some cool Indian petroglyphs in Canyonlands you can check out. Utah is so cool.
I asked Jared if he had anything he wanted me to write to remember this trip by. Without a beat he said, "Ya, write about how when we go there in the future with all our boatloads of money we're going to buy up all the patches and paraphernalia at the gift shop and ranger station." So there you have it. My memories are of red rocks and beautiful hikes. Jared's memories are of gift shops and tourist paraphernalia. Jared is a professional patch collector and professional cool guy.
This weekend we went hiking in the Bighorns. Jared had gone camping at this spot with a bunch of his coworkers just before starting his residency, but Jack and I stayed home because I was sick at the time. Jared was impressed with how beautiful these mountains were and how close they are to us in Casper (less than a 2 hour drive), so when he had a half day of work yesterday we took off for the mountains.
The little town you go through to get to this hike is Buffalo, WY. It's really cute and is oozing with old-westerny charm. We were pumped on exploring Buffalo, but it was insaaaaane crowded driving through it. After we finished our hike we walked down main street and split a pork burrito from a food truck. Come to find out, it was "Longmire Days" in Buffalo. Apparently this is the town that the tv show "Longmire" is based off of/filmed in. So all the cast and diehard fans were there that day. We watched part of a softball game that was being filmed for an episode. Kinda cool. But also we're excited to go back when it's not so crowded. Here are some pictures of our lovely hike! Luckily we only saw a handful of people the entire time we were in the mountains. The Longmire fans stayed in town.
The hike is 2 miles each way. I don't know what it's called but it starts at Circle Park. First you pass this cute little lily pond (pictured above), and then not long after that you get to the lake. There are more lakes beyond the one we went to, but with a baby this was our maximum.
Jared carried the bambino on the way up and I carted him down. It's always a dilemma being the photographer in the family, because pictures are important to me and I wish there were more of ME with my family, but I don't want to be annoying and always ask everyone else to take pictures of me. Usually I'll do that once and then one self-timer pic and call it good. All that to say, that's why you only see Jared with the baby most of the time.
^^Jack genuinely seems to love being outside. I have a friend whose baby boy gags when he touches grass (hey Tori). He was born in Chicago so the joke is that it's cuz he's a city boy. But not Jack! He's always been calmer outside than inside, and he loves touching grass and reaching for plants.
^^Luckies. I really wanted to go swimming in this lake, but (a) I knew there was a chance we'd stop into a cute Buffalo restaurant for dinner, and (b) gotta protect Jack from dat giardia lyfe. #breastfeeding
^^I love this so much! I handed Jack a sealed bag full of goldfish to play with while I took pictures of Jared and Savvy. The goldfish were Jared's and I thought Jack would just look at them for a minute and then toss them aside. But when I came back the bag was open and the goldfish were all over and Jack was smiling from ear to ear. How'd ya boi know how to open a ziploc?!?? I swear he's ahead of his time. He's already sprinting after Savvy all day in his walker. Don't worry, no choking occurred. He's probably old enough to gum 'em down anyway.
^^Of course these were our faces for the picture with the gorgeous lighting!
The end.
Usually we have our Roper Family Reunion at Camelot Resort in Strawberry Point, Utah. This year it got flooded out the day before the reunion, so we improvised and hung out at Uncle Elray's way nice church pavilion and at the Provo Rec Center. Jared was in Utah with us for a day or two, but he had to come back to work and miss the reunion. Here are some pictures of mine and Jack's week in Utah.
Jack with his one and only Haines cousin, Asher boy! Also grams and gramps.
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