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Lazy pants and life mottos.

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You guys, did you know Ashley Madison was a thing? I always feel badly for hacked websites but I had no idea this was a thing and I am as shocked as a little old lady learning for the first time about Brazilian bikini waxes. They do what?

The boys now have a two week break from karate; last Friday they had a mini-tournament to finish off their camp week, and then there was a shiah on Saturday. I was a bit worried since Mark had what I thought was the beginning of a cold, but which I now think was maybe a bad allergy attack. Thursday night he was up coughing much of the night, and for those of you who have known me for a while, I have some kind of PTSD from when he had pneumonia at age 7, and so I didn’t sleep at all. This also coincided with my hormonal pre-ladies’-holiday insomnia, so I felt like I had been run over by a truck on Friday.

Does anyone else suffer from this? I find about a week or ten days before Ladies’ Holidays, I have a few nights where I can hardly sleep at all. This is very unusual for me since I’m generally a solid sleeper, albeit one who wakes up at four in the morning. Anyway, I find this hormonal insomnia very annoying and it makes me fear for my menopausal days.

Thursday and Friday were terribly cold – 8 degrees Celsius – and rainy and windy as well. One of my heavy lawn chairs blew over and rain came down in sheets. Therefore, I was a bit surprised to hear that they went swimming at the outdoor pool at camp on Thursday. I feel fairly sure this didn’t help Mark’s cough, but after almost twelve hours of sleep on Friday night he was basically recovered and full of his usual energy.

Hilariously, because of the cold, the boys had to forego their shorts for track pants. They wear track pants very rarely; basically only for long plane trips and not much else, but they were perfect for cold days at camp. Mark sighed a bit when he came home, and said “I like track pants, but they really make me feel lazy.” I thought this idea could be extrapolated to any elasticized pants: yoga, track, sweat. In fact, maybe this could be a classification system: lazy pants versus non-lazy pants. I am currently still wearing this morning’s sweaty yoga pants. I know of what I speak.

Speaking of camp, my husband took the kids actual TENT CAMPING yesterday. He is a fairly outdoorsy kind of guy, and being married to me probably doesn’t help his outdoorsy-ness. A few months ago the boys decided that an annual boys’ camping trip would be a fun idea, starting now and continuing, apparently, for the rest of time. It sounded good to me, especially since I wasn’t really invited. They’ve been preparing for this for the past few weeks, gathering the things that they need and making lists of the food they wanted (all meat, all the time). Amidst all this merry chatter, my husband looked at me with concern and wondered if I was feeling sad or left out. Um. No. It’s no hardship for me not to go camping.

It is a hardship for someone in our house, and that someone is Barkley. Poor puppy. They’ve been gone less than 24 hours and they will be coming home soon, but such a sad thing has never happened to him in his life. WHERE IS EVERYBODY. Every weeknight at 6:30, Barkley sits at the top of the steps and stares out the back door window, waiting for my husband to come home. He did this yesterday, slowly slumping to the floor by 8:30 pm, when I decided enough was enough and put him to bed. This morning he went to all the empty bedrooms and flopped sadly back into his crate. It’s heartbreaking!

Meanwhile I’ve enjoyed my solo time by eating food no one else really likes (kale salad and roasted chickpeas), watching TV shows no one else wants to watch (NYPD Blue), and reading Gone With The Wind. I last read Gone With The Wind in 1989, when I was fourteen, and I can safely say it reads very different now. For one thing, when I was fourteen I had zero concept of US politics, the economy, or industrialization. I mostly just focused on the sexy romantic parts, of which there are many. I’m finding that I feel a bond with Scarlett, which is something I have sort of mixed feelings about. It’s not like we are the same person, but the line “Even if you think such things, why do you say them? If you’d just think what you please but keep your mouth shut, everything would be so much nicer.” speaks to me. I feel like that could be the entire basis of a life motto. Maybe Margaret Mitchell was clairvoyant, seeing into the internet age and the comments sections of sociopolitical columns.

Hashtag “Blessed”

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Yesterday the kids really wanted to go to the amusement park, and although that meant TWO big outings in one week, I agreed. It’s Stampede Week and the amusement park is always quiet at this time of the year, we have season’s passes, and also it was a beautiful sunny day. I was preparing snacks and water bottles when I got a call from my husband: his building had a small fire and the office was closed for the day, so he was on his way back home.

Score!

As soon as he got in the door the kids immediately begged him to come with us. This NEVER happens, since we usually do our outings during the week when he’s at work. The four of us piled into the car and headed off, and we had the best time. There’s nothing like going to the amusement park with both parents to showcase which one of us is the “fun one” (hint: it’s not me). I did, however, agree to go on the bumper cars with the kids and although at times I felt like Marge Simpson, driving neatly in a clockwise direction, it was a blast.

I maintain that there cannot feasibly be two really fun parents in a relationship, and I’m okay with not being the fun one. I don’t really want to go on the log ride, for example, and I certainly don’t want to get shot with water in the bumper boats. And yet sometimes this can be hard on my non-cool ego. A few weeks ago we were discussing over dinner which Star Wars character best represented each person in our family. The boys had agreed that their father was most like Han Solo, Jake was most like Luke, and Mark was just like Anakin prior to going over to the Dark Side. When I asked which character I was most like, they both thought for a moment, and then agreed – IN UNISON – that I was most like C-3PO.

I related this to my friend Hannah, who soothed my soul by saying I was Princess Leia in a gold bikini, and I shouldn’t let anyone tell me otherwise. I would like to think that I could choke a giant slug with my neck chain, but sadly I’m now convinced that I am most like the second-lamest character in the entire Star Wars series.

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Have you ever had the experience of sharing something from your childhood with your own children, and you build it up and build it up and then it’s a total letdown because they are bored or uninterested or politely concede that it’s “okay?” I’ve had that experience numerous times, but this week was different. I discovered Top Gun is now on Canadian Netflix.

Longtime readers know how I feel about Top Gun. If not, please read this post right now. I’ll wait.

I decided to watch it Wednesday evening, since my husband was going to be at a Stampede event and I wanted something fun for myself. I asked the boys if they wanted to watch it with me, and they said yes. Mark watched and enjoyed the first and last thirty minutes, wandering off mid-movie to do something else, as is his wont. But Jake. Jake LOVED it. He loved the story line. He loved the flight scenes. He loved the call signs and the lessons learned and Maverick turning into a Team Player after all. I skipped through the sex scene, but other than that he watched the whole movie and was glued to it the whole time. He analyzed it extensively, saying things like “I don’t think Maverick is really mad at Sundown. He’s just upset because Goose is gone now.”

We have now perfected the double high-five – up high, and backwards down low, and he says that he wants this to be our playground goodbye, instead of the fist-bump that we’ve been doing for years. He is now saying things to me such as “Mom, you can be my wingman anytime.” It brings tears of joy to my eyes.

This morning, when he woke up, he asked if we could watch Top Gun together again soon.

YES, YES, A MILLION TIMES YES.

The Hippo Whisperer

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It’s Stampede Week in Calgary, and on Friday my husband headed into the office, wearing cowboy boots, a plaid shirt, and jeans. He looked pretty hot, by the way, but his usual work wear is a suit and tie (which is also hot. Hello? Hooters for women would just be guys walking around in suits holding up their credit scores, am I right?). In any case, Mark was hugging him goodbye and then stopped. He looked at my husband, and the shock and confusion on his face was impossible to hide. Um, Dad? Are you…going to work? Is this…casual Friday?

Then yesterday my husband brought out his cowboy hat, to wear to a function, and Jake gave him the side-eye. Dad? You don’t look like a cowboy. You just look like some dude in a cowboy hat.

My poor husband is going to have some self-esteem issues by the time the week is over.

Stampede Week is a great time to get out and do non-Stampede-related things around the city, so this morning the kids and I went to the zoo. They have a Dinosaurs Alive exhibit that was last there in 2010. This was me and the boys looking at a Parasauralophus in 2010:

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And this is them in front of the Parasauralophus now:

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I THINK THEY’VE GROWN.

One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is Jake’s deep and abiding love of hippos. Remember Foggy, and how deeply we mourned him? Jake has grown to love Ghost, Foggy’s grandson, just as much. As a side note, Ghost is no longer actually called Ghost, but Lobi; however, in our house he has remained and forever will remain Ghost.

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And I don’t know how it happens, I honestly don’t, but every single time we visit the zoo, something occurs that deepens Jake’s belief that he and the hippos are inextricably bonded. Today when we visited Ghost, the giant hippo turned around, looked at Jake, and wiggled his ears. When we were leaving, Jake said “Bye, Ghost,” at which point the hippo honked loudly. Cynics may think this is a silly coincidence, but I am not going to dispute Jake’s belief that he and the hippo are communicating. This is the kid who never believed in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, and who stopped believing in Santa when he was in kindergarten. If anyone tries to tell him that he is not the Hippo Whisperer, I will stab that motherfucker, I swear I will.

On a much less violent note, yesterday I was invited to a Ladies’ Lunch in honour of my niece’s fifth birthday, and it was so nice! There were eight of us: her grandmas, aunties, big sisters, and her mom. Her other auntie also has two boys, and between the two of us, I thought we might steal the gifts to play with ourselves. I had given her a paper doll/ sticker book, and it was all I could do not to cut out the dolls and start dressing them up. The boys and I went shopping last week to pick it out and they could not have been less interested.

Me: Should I get the pink puppy one, or the dolly one?

Jake: Puppies.

Me: Really? Because this dolly one is really cute too.

Mark: Then get the dolly one.

Me: I’m just not sure which is cuter!

Jake: JUST PICK ONE. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Mark: I’m going to look at the Percy Jackson books, come on, Jake.

Maybe I should have gotten the pink puppy one for myself.

How to survive and thrive in the summer with tweens.

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About a year ago, someone posted about how if and when she had kids, she would never, ever schedule “playdates” or other activities for them, especially during the summer, because she had shit to do and the kids should learn to be self-sufficient with their social lives.

Don’t you love how the people with the best parenting advice aren’t parents?

It’s true that when we were kids, we spent most summer days with friends from the neighbourhood, doing our own thing, and generally without our parents’ supervision or specific knowledge. My own kids are now pre-teens – age 11 and almost 10 – and this kind of summer activity is nearly impossible for them. Almost all of their friends fit into at least two of the following three categories: a) they live in a neighbourhood that is a minimum ten minute drive away, b) they have two working parents and so are in day camps most of the time, and c) they are out of town/ country on vacation. With that in mind, there is no way the kids can just knock on their friends’ doors and ask if they can come out to play. It’s just not happening. Hanging out with their friends actually requires some level of logistical planning on their part, with assistance from me and the other parents, and as much as I like having a marauding group of tween boys in the basement eating all the food and making all the noise, it’s just not possible as a daily occurrence.

This marks my eleventh summer at home with kids, and things go pretty smoothly, for the most part. The boys actually get along really well 95% of the time, which makes things fairly easy. However, I do find they need a bit of direction at times to keep things running smoothly, so I thought I’d share with you what works for us, what makes for happy kids and a happy me.

Kick Them Out Sometimes

No, this isn’t a nostalgic post about the 1970s summers where kids left in the morning and came home in time for dinner. As I said, that’s not exactly feasible in my case. However, 10-and-11 year olds can certainly head off to the playground on their own, despite alarmist newspaper articles. In fact, my kids love doing this: a trip to 7-11, a walk to the playground, a wander around the neighbourhood. These are the same kids who are “too old” for playground activities, but if they are by themselves, will easily spend an hour making up obstacle courses or training for a future spot on American Ninja Warrior by hanging on the monkey bars.

Get Out Of The House Every Damn Day

This harkens back to the days when they were little and I would lose my mind if I didn’t get out of the house at least once. Sometimes getting out of the house is the afore-mentioned kicking out, while I do some relaxing gardening, and sometimes the “outing” is kind of lame – a trip to Costco or Wal-Mart. Sometimes it’s a dog walk, while the kids chatter to me about some Minecraft thing they are building. The point is, I – and they – need to get out of the house, every day.

A Medium Activity Once A Week

I define a medium activity as one that requires a medium level of effort from me: having some friends over, for example, or taking them to the pool for the afternoon. Other than some involvement with sunscreen, snacks, driving, etc., there is little else required of me, and the kids have a good time. The pool is especially a good bet, because I can hang out in the sun with a book while they swim.

A Large Activity Once Every 7-10 Days

A large activity is something like a trip to the amusement park or zoo, or a day hike in the mountains. This involves considerable physical effort on my part, but is always worthwhile because these are the outings the kids remember with fondness. Years ago, my friend Tara (HI TARA) introduced me to the brilliant idea of using Christmas/ birthday money from relatives to purchase season’s passes for favourite activities. Experiences over things, right?

Let Them Lounge

One of the best things about being home in the summer is the ability to be lazy. When the kids were little, we generally needed to be OUT of the house between 9 and 9:30 or all seemed lost; now the kids are in their pajamas until lunch more often than not. That’s okay because it gives me an excuse to be in my sweaty yoga clothes until then. Unless we are going to do a Big Activity that involves crowds and lineups, we don’t need to leave the house early. I work part-time from home, and while the kids lounge in their jammies, I am able to get a few solid hours of work in. Which brings me to…

Screen Time

I know, I know, we are all supposed to nix the screen time and unplug and everything, but I allow it. I mean, it’s not an all-day-every-day-non-stop-video-game-extravaganza, but I do let the kids have at it while I’m working. Here’s the thing: they build interesting things together in Minecraft, they talk constantly about the characters in Disney Infinity, and later, they talk and draw and make up stories about these imaginary things. Their games on the PS4 are much more physically active and imagination-inspiring than just watching TV shows, which – as I remember from my own childhood – is something our generation did a lot of. I say, bring on the screen time (in moderation, blah blah blah).

Cooking

When they were little, we would do science experiments and make play dough and crafts and colouring, but they have no interest in that anymore. What they do have interest in is making things to eat (tween boys and all that). The other day, Jake wanted to make crepes. He had made them in French class at school, and he had a recipe. What really surprised me is how little supervision and help he needed to make the crepes. Every so often, putting the kids in charge of making things is a really great idea – not just because we don’t want them to grow up to be idiots in the kitchen, but also because they love eating things that they make. It’s pretty easy to give them a sous-chef position when you’re making dinner, or to let them be in charge of their own smoothies/ milkshakes. So what if they use five tablespoons of chocolate syrup when making a milkshake? They’re exercising their independence!

Housework

When I was a kid visiting my grandma, I knew never to say “I’m bored.” Grandma hated that, and would immediately put the offending child to work. My kids get a monthly allowance which gets docked if they don’t do their specified chores. There are so many things kids this age can do – from weeding the garden to vacuuming the floor, from cleaning the kitchen after dinner to making beds. A few daily chores, coupled with a few weekly chores, will keep the boredom at bay – or, at the very least, contribute to a cleaner house.

Academic Work

This is really the subject for a full post on its own, but suffice it to say that the kids do some kind of academic activity for about five hours a week. Call me a Tiger Mom if you will, but I’ll go into details later.

So that’s what we do to survive and thrive in the summer. What are your tips and tricks? xo

Summer Love

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Here we are, on day three of summer vacation, and it kind of feels like we’ve been on vacation for a month already, in the best way possible. It’s been unseasonably warm and beautiful, and we haven’t yet had a moment of missing-school-or-friends angst that typically happens in the first few days of unstructuredness. The boys finished school on Friday:

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All has been, as they say, rosy:

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We’ve been as busy as bees, having fun:

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We spent the weekend at the lake with my parents, and much of the time was spent like this:

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And some of this:

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Today we went to the local amusement park, and although the forecast was quite warm, it was very overcast. Apparently this run of great weather has ruined my Calgary weather-savviness, because I failed to bring a jacket and so was completely unprepared for the drizzle that turned into rain. The bright side is that I had a lot of work to do this afternoon, and was able to complete it without feeling resentful that I was missing out on great weather. Also, the rain didn’t really start until we were pretty much ready to go home anyway, and the boys got to do everything they wanted in the time we were there. Plus, this year they are both tall enough for the big bumper cars, and it was hilarious to watch them jam themselves into the centre and get pummelled from all sides.

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I spent a lot of time reading this weekend. I’ve been reading a biography of the Queen Mum that my mother had lent me, and let’s just say it’s eye opening. Remember the scandal when Fergie had her toes sucked by someone, and Charles said he wished he was Camilla’s tampon? First, ew. Tampon, really? But these are completely tame and boring compared with the totally scandalous behaviour and also kind of incestuous relationships by the European royals of the early 20th century. HOO BOY.

It’s also bizarrely hilarious. For example, King Constantine I was deposed, and his son took over as king of Greece. Unfortunately, says the book, he was bitten by a monkey and died of blood poisoning in 1920. Two paragraphs later, we find out that Princess Marie Bonapart, in pursuit of a better orgasm, had her clitoris surgically repositioned three times. Three times! It seems amazing that it would work after that. These are the kind of anecdotes that keep me reading, because the book itself is very dense and heavy reading. It’s not unlike reading a textbook, albeit one with very strange stories in it.

I hope you’re having a wonderful summer so far! xoxo

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A non-gambler goes to Las Vegas, covets a Popeye statue.

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This morning I went grocery shopping at my usual old-people Co-Op, and they were having one of those big “Warehouse Sales.” There were quite a few of my usual purchases on for great prices, so I stocked up a bit. When I went through the checkout, the girl handed me my receipt, saying in the robotic, automated voices of those who have worked in customer service for a while, “Today you saved $71.13. Have a nice day.”

$71.13! I repeated this, loudly, looking around me. I half expected confetti and balloons to drop from the ceiling, along with music and a loudspeaker announcement. I felt like I just won the Housewife Olympics or something. I repeated it again, $71.13, wow! The elderly man with the carton of ice cream, loaf of bread, and single cucumber standing behind me didn’t seem to care about my Amazing Savings. I wheeled my cart out of the store, immediately texting my husband AND calling my mother, just to have some sort of outside validation. They were both suitably impressed.

I just got back from an extended weekend away in Las Vegas. The last time my husband and I went away together was in 2010. We had such a blast – and the kids had so much fun at Camp Grandma – that I’m optimistic that we will go away again before Mark’s sixteenth birthday. Las Vegas is such a weird and wonderful place, although I frequently wondered why Greenpeace or similar hasn’t targeted it for its extreme environmental footprint. Maybe because it’s Vegas, baby! Anything goes. Open liquor while wandering around on the street? Check. People smoking INSIDE BUILDINGS? Check. People shoving cards for Hot Ass Escorts in your hand as you walk by? Check, check, triple check.

I’m not at all a gambler, and didn’t even put a dollar in a slot machine, although my husband enjoyed a bit of it. Gotta make some money for your little honey, as the sweaty cab driver said to my husband on the way to the hotel from the airport. Buddy! For all he knew I could have been the primary breadwinner in the family. I would have been outraged but I was too busy looking out the window, trying to spot Elvis.

As it turned out, the only Elvis (or, Elvii) I saw were two glittery-jumpsuited men outside of Caesar’s Palace, looking for tourists with whom to get their photos taken. I did not partake, because there is “fun and campy” and then there is “sad and depressing” and those two were definitely in the latter group. And yet, there is so much to do, besides gambling and looking for Elvis (or Elvii).

We met up with three other couples to celebrate a friend’s fiftieth birthday, and by far the most fun we had was going to a duelling piano bar. Duelling pianos is probably the most fun concept ever imagined, besides karaoke, and our duelling pianists were twin sisters from Syracuse, New York. This is also one of the best parts of Las Vegas: the name tags that detail where an employee is from. I had a great time imagining what brought Deena from St. Paul, or Hector from El Paso, to Las Vegas. Before you think that their stories must be depressing and gloomy, the cocktail waitress who brought my husband drinks while he gambled told him – upon his questioning – that the casinos were great to work for and provided health and dental benefits, as well as paid vacation. So, I’m going to keep imagining happy stories that don’t involve addiction or the downfall of society.

People watching in Las Vegas is very entertaining; there seem to be always tons of bachelor parties and stagettes, with girls wearing t-shirts and hats that say “Team Bride” surrounding a girl wearing a veil and a balloon hat, there are little old couples and actual newly-married couples wearing wedding clothes while at the blackjack table, there are families with small children and there are incongruous-looking couples, men with bright white running shoes and pale blue pleated jeans entwined with diamond-studded girls thirty years their junior. I was enjoying myself, imagining everyone’s day-to-day life in fun detail, all the while hoping that no one was doing the same with me.

This is because I, who have enjoyed robust and hearty good health with nary an issue for eight months, came down with a cold the day before we were slated to leave. It wasn’t a debilitating, trip-ruining plague or anything, but it was a sniffly nuisance nonetheless. I hoped that my intermittent nose-blowing wouldn’t lead anyone to think I was a cocaine addict or anything. My husband and I were idly poking around in the chi-chi stores in the Wynn, and exactly when he was conversing with the saleslady in a very expensive watch store, my nose started to bleed torrentially. I ran to the nearest marbled bathroom with my bleeding nose, while people around me averted their gaze. I have a cold! I swear I’m not a coke head!

Much more to come, I’m sure, but for now I’ll leave you with this giant statue of Popeye, that could be yours! It’s for sale – price available upon request so I’m guessing that price is a boatload of money. Does anyone have room for one of these? It’s full of whimsy.

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How to dress for the Calgary Stampede without looking like an idiot.

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…or a “Woo Girl”.

Last Friday the school hosted it’s annual Stampede Breakfast; it’s a year-end tradition that is greatly anticipated by all the staff and students, and of course my kids were no exception.

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Cute cowboys!

As I dressed that morning, I thought of all the years I’ve spent disparaging Stampede or Western wear. Typically, I think of the week of Stampede as the week that Calgary loses all fashion sense, while people walk around embracing their inner cowpoke by wearing tight high-rise Wranglers, giant belt buckles, and shirts with sunset and/ or howling wolf motifs. I always want to get into that festive Western spirit, and yet I a) don’t want to spend any money to do it, and b) I don’t want to look like an idiot and/or what my friend Jen (HI JEN) euphemistically calls a “woo girl.”

Be the change you want to see in the world, I say, and so here are three outfits that you can pull together inexpensively and with things you probably already have in your closet that will get you in the Stampede spirit. That is, if you’re in Calgary. If you’re not, though, maybe you have a Western-themed costume party you need to attend this summer. I don’t know if such a party exists outside of Alberta, but hey, if it does, I’ve got you covered.

First Step: Ditch the denim cut-offs. Cut-off denim shorts are universally unflattering. Well, I would extend that to shorts in general but then I usually get stridently humourless messages about the wonders of shorts, so I will leave it at denim cut-offs. This is especially true if the denim shorts are of a length where the pockets extend below the “hemline,” and I use that term loosely. Remember this maxim: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Second Step: Spend a small amount of money on accessories. I have lived in Calgary my whole life and I still don’t own cowboy boots. I think they’re cute, I think you can work them into other outfits, but every year I find I cannot bring myself to spend any money purchasing them. I have some kind of mental block about it; I’d happily pay for yoga tops, yoga pants, and black sweaters even though I have dozens of each, but I cannot bring myself to buy a pair of cowboy boots. Maybe you want to, though. Several years ago I bought a straw cowboy hat for under thirty dollars and it remains my best Stampede accessory. It’s versatile too; cowboy hats look very cute with bikinis on the beach. Ladies, don’t forget your hats on the beach! You don’t want to end up like apple dolls, or raisins.

Outfit #1: This is what I wore to the breakfast on Friday. It’s a good outfit for cool-ish weather because of the layering potential.

Start with a tank top and skinny jeans (or any jeans).

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Oops. That’s a bit too cleavage-y of a shot. Here’s a better one.

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Bonus fuzzy slippers! Next, layer on a button-up shirt. I have this ugly Western-themed one, but really, any button-up shirt will do. Bonus points for plaid.

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You can see the Western detailing on the back. Note the tank top – not too much cleavage or you’ll end up looking Woo Girl, as this is what we are trying to avoid.

Add the hat:

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Now, as I said, I don’t have cowboy boots. They would be perfect with this outfit, however, my normal ankle boots will have to suffice.

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Outfit complete!

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Outfit #2

Start with a tank top and denim skirt, if you have one. If you don’t have a denim skirt, jeans will work just as well.

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Next, add a bandana. I have had this thing for years. I actually got it in 2001 at this restaurant in Houston called Taste of Texas, which features gigantic steaks that are free if you break the record of x number of ounces. I did not partake in that activity, but nevertheless I received this bandana.

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Next, add the hat. See how versatile the straw hat is? I’m really pushing for it.

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Bandanas are very inexpensive to purchase – or free, if you frequent the right restaurants – but if you don’t have one, just go with the hat and tank top/ skirt combination works.

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Cowboy boots would be the best footwear choice in this scenario, but usually I end up wearing sandals. People aren’t generally looking at your feet, unless those people are my shoe-obsessed mother, in which case she is totally looking at your feet. The lady likes her footwear, is all I’m saying.

Outfit #3

Start with a sundress, any sundress. Floral is really cute if you have one, but I do not, so I have to settle for this black number.

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A word about this dress: it’s made by the yoga-wear company Prana, and it is, without exception, the most comfortable article of clothing I own. That includes pajamas. The material is soft and stretchy, and it has a built in shelf bra so it’s just like wearing the most comfortable yoga top ever, but extended to the knees. I like that it’s a bit on the longer side, so I don’t have to worry about a gust of wind displaying my badonkadonk.

Next, add a jean jacket, denim vest, or denim top.

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The outfit could, really, be complete right there, but why not top it off with a cute straw cowboy hat?

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Again, cowboy boots would be very cute with this, but sandals are a decent second place.

Are you all set for Stampede now? Can I get a YAHOO? Or maybe just a WOO? xo