a day with the schoenes

Our home for the summer in boulder, mt



it was amazing.  at first she was put off by all the chirping,
but then she pointed and said "mcnugget"



picnictime!





two pictures of our butts in butte.  turns out butte has excellent granite.



more from colorado

At the Chicago Children's Museum with aunt maude.
they used kool-aid as coloring in the homemade play-do.
Ummmm, what do you think a baby is going to do with something like that?

The evidence is on her face.

circle j

Time for a history lesson. This is where laura grew up. In ten sleep, WY is this place, circle j ranch. It's a methodist church camp that laura's mom oversaw and managed.  I believe this was before she went into the ministry, and for laura was her home from about preschool through fourth grade.  It's the longest she had ever lived in a place before helena and then maine.  Asking laura where she is from is an interesting process because she moved around so much, but she doesn't hesitate to acknowledge that circle j was where she grew up.  you can see why.  A few years ago, we had conversations about where we wanted to live, and consequentially where we wanted our kids to grow up.  it's a fun game.  you should try it.  What we discovered is that the qualities of a place that would be desirable for a kid to grow up in change as they grow older.  For a kid kid, circle j wraps it up.  lots of fields, orchard, goats, river, woods, and tons of kids coming through in the summer to play with, including international students that call you woah-wah.  Totally ideal place to grow up, and explains why laura claims circle j as her own.  But then, as one grows up, such an environment would suffocating.  The opportunities are non-existant, schools are variable, your class is 13 people strong and you're the only girl in it.  Not the best place to go to middle and high school. Something bigger, with more opportunities would make more sense. but then, many would disagree with us on that, and that's fine.  It's odd to reflect on those conversations, which we had before we were planning on a kiddo and before we were thinking about medical school.  This was when we were in a mode of thinking in the meta-level without those pesky details to chain us down.  Things have changed.  Ask us three months ago where we would be next year, and we'd say we didn't know.  How much control did we have over it? none.  We have the next four years mapped, but after that?  dunno.  control? none.  We won't have any control over where sienna grows up until she's 10 years old, and even then, with the way job searches go, those options may be limiting as well.  Sorry squeek.  Sorry we can't give you a circle j to grow up in.  hopefully it's replacement will suffice (I imagine it will just fine).







This rock was laura's playing rock, and where she learned to love rivers,
and generally love being outside.  from it you could throw smaller rocks into
the water, or wade in its eddy.



This is what laura looks like while walking down memory lane



this is what sienna looks like when walking down laura's memory lane.
Incidentally, it's identical to what she looks like when stuck in a backpack
in the rain.



movies from colorado

what news of sienna?  she can open medicine bottles, even the ones that have been baby-proofed.  This convinces me that sienna is not a baby, but something else.  I have a few theories, but like any good scientist, I need to control my variables before running the experiments.
d
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I KNOW I joked around that sienna was writing posts before, but above is her first actual posting.  cool.

These are the twins, and importantly, the red leash is going to frannie the cat.  yes, they put the cat on a leash.

uncle brian with the squeek.

Now it's father's day

Most people don't know this, but father's day all ready occurred this year.  It was May 8th.  I woke up early to go to the store to fetch sausage and donuts.  I was making breakfast in bed for momma.  It was 7 on a sunday, and who should I find at the grocery store?  All the dads in bozeman, some with their children, similarly celebrating father's day.  Some got eggs.  Some got milk and cereal.  But all were there taking a special day to be a dad.

Above is the squeek, a few weeks ago, honing her swagger.  We're at the lobby of the hospital, right after she met her great opa (by the way, opa is out of the hospital and in rehab, doing much better).

badlands national park.  check it out if you get a chance.

at opa's.  practicing her growl

Sienna's got talent!

I get it

Howdy folks.  No pictures for now, so feel free to check in at your other favorite website (here are some suggestions: http://mountainproject.com/, http://www.nejm.org/, http://www.101cookbooks.com/). 


We started driving out to chicago after the last post.  swung through ten sleep, WY, laura's hometown, through the black hills and badlands NP, rochester MN to see rod and carol, and arrived in Madison WI for Matt J's wedding.  In ten sleep, she hit her stride, and really started running around.  before she'd walk here and there, but there distances between two places were not intimidating for her.  It helped that the house of the family friends we stayed with had a large living room with wall to wall cushy carpet.  so off she went, later putting on quite a show for the madison folks.  If anyone out there has any pics of the squeek from the wedding, please send them along and I can post them. As it turns out, it was a very busy weekend and our hands were full the whole time.  Therefore, we got pictures from the rest of our trip, but none in madison.  booooooooo.  then we came down to chicago to visit opa, who had gone into the hospital while we were in madison.  We went straight to the hospital and sienna got to meet opa, her great granddad.  we were afraid that she might freak out and forever fear him since that's what happened when we visited papa brownie at the hospital in november.  but no, she flashed him some smiles and ran around his room and in the hallway.  Opa loved it, as did we. Her frankenstein gait was eerily similar to many of opa's elderly hospital neighbors.  As we were leaving, the nurse called us over and asked us never to come back again (with sienna) because babies aren't allowed on the floor and opa had a nasty infection that we wouldn't want her to get.  so we spent the next four days in chicago, seeing frank and maude and going to the children's museum and the park.  then laurienna went to montrose, CO and i'm still here in chicago visiting opa in the hospital. This is all a roundabout way to say that laura has the camera and so I can't download pics to post. sorry.  Especially since her birthday is coming up, which puts her at one year, which means we'll end the blog (probably). maybe not. 
By the way, I forgot to mention when we passed the 9 month mark: so at that point sienna had spent an equal time in the belly as out.  therefore, she officially converted from an amphibian creature to a land creature.  around the table that night we discussed our options.  Sienna said that she enjoyed it in the womb.  Her needs were taken care of, always the right temp, no potty, etc.  However, she could see the appeal of living on land. She then climbed onto the table and broke into song:
"I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see them dancin'
Walking around on those - what do you call 'em?
Oh - feet!

"Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumping, dancing
Strolling along down a - what's that word again?
Street"

She had doused herself in water and collected a bundle of forks, calling them dinglehoppers, though I made her get down because I didn't  feel comfortable with her on the table holding all those things.  I knew where these things led, namely to my untimely death at the hands of a morbidly obese witch with bilateral lower extremity amputations due to diabetic ulcers.  Not psyched about that.  So, anyway,  we put it to a vote and we decided that sienna would stay out of the belly (2-1 vote, with sienna in the minority).

After the wedding, laura and I were talking.  she paused and looked like she was gunna start crying.  "What?"  "someday sienna will wear a dress of white and get married."  "yeah, it'll be great."  "but didn't you think about that?" "no, course not, why would I?"  "you didn't think of it at all???"  "no, that's ridiculous, why wooooo..."  It was at this point that I started balling. 

I get it.