Nana comes to town

My mom just left today after a 10-day visit. As always, we loved having her here and were sad to see her go. With Wyatt in school now, we have a little break during the day where we can browse the stores at a leisurely pace, a luxury we usually don't have when he's with us. Hadley's a little trooper and loves shopping with the girls. She's such an easy baby and it was fun for my mom to see how much she is changing. She's quite smiley but I'm having a hard time getting it on camera. Actually, the problem is I'm enjoying her way too much to go look for the camera when she does something cute.

Wyatt loved having his Nana in town. He can sucker her into reading more stories than I'm willing to read. She enthusiastically plays Hide and Seek - always feigning surprise when she finds him hiding in the pantry, the only place he ever seems to hide. At one point, I looked out into the hallway and saw Wyatt and Nana playing "Star Wars Snow Walker", Wyatt's current favorite game, with Nana (the Snow Walker) crawling on her hands and knees making mechanical noises while Wyatt clung to her back. How many Nanas do you know that will do that?

I loved having all the extra help. My mom was busy the entire trip - cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, feeding and playing with the kids and even sewing. She even made a ballerina outfit for the little monkey I have hanging in Hadley's room to make it more girly looking. I took advantage of the babysitter and even got out on my own a little. A rarity these days!

Dayven and I headed to down to Calgary one day to apply for Hadley's passport at the U.S. Embassy there. Since she was born in Canada to American parents, she has dual citizenship. The U.S. doesn't recognize dual citizenship so she's American as far as they're concerned and must hold a U.S. passport. Since she's also a Canadian citizen, she can also hold a Canadian passport and return at any time to live, work or go to school. The whole process was fairly quick and painless and we actually had time to enjoy a nice lunch and then head to the Alberta Boot Company to order our custom made cowboy boots. We both wear our boots almost every day (until the real snow comes) and thought it would be fun to have some Canadian ones. You can pick the color, stitching pattern, style and even select your own piece of leather from the "back room" where the men are hand crafting them. We must share the same taste because after a considerable amount of time trying them on, discussing styles and pouring over thread colors, we ended up getting boots that look really similar. They're shipping them to us once they're completed and I can't wait to see them.

We headed over to a friend's house on Sunday for a potluck get together. The men camped out in the basement watching football and keeping the hooligans in check. The kids always get wound up when then bouncy house is inflated. The women chatted it up around the food table. It's the closest we came to celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, which was Monday.

Dayven headed down to Denver for a little trip (more on that later) while my mom was here. He has been gone more than he's been home in the past month. Are you noticing a recurring theme here? I'll soon be renaming my blog to "Dayven's Travel Adventures" or maybe something more catchy than that if I can come up with it. Wyatt has even stopped asking about him. He just answers his own question now, "Daddy's on a work twip". I was tired of living the life of a single mom, which was part of the reason for my mom's visit. It was so great having her here. Although I know she enjoyed her time with us, I think she was ready to get back to her leisurely life in Florida, especially now that it's snowing!