My grandmother had the genius idea to build a teepee – but after buying all the necessary equipment, for whatever reason (or maybe it was her reason all along) she decided to recruit Dan to build it instead and gave us the equipment. I think Dan was thrilled to have a project to work on and he put all his boy scouts / master seamster / engineering skills to work and built the mother of all teepees in my opinion (you aren’t even seeing the finished version in these pictures, it got even better than this.

I’m not sure if you know that my husband is a Wampanoag – you’d never know it looking at him in all his white boy glory, but it’s true. I can vividly remember having to get a DNA test after MM was born so that he could be accepted into the tribe, too. Silliness. But regardless, it’s kind of cool and it made this whole teepee business all the more fun, even though Dan said something about claiming that his ancestors lived in teepees was about as absurd as saying my (European) ancestors came from China – whatever – he’s Native American, it’s a teepee – and clearly it’s in his genes to build these things because unless he’s built like 80 of them before now that I don’t know about, he certainly made it look easy – but maybe that’s just a guy thing. Speaking of China, I really got a kick out of the fabric being all Asian Zen-like. We’re a multicultural free for all kind of family I guess.

Anyway, in the midst of all this fun, I also managed to get myself into a couple of pictures – I hate most of them, but there I am, nonetheless. If I think of it, I’ll take some pictures of the finished teepee and we can all ooh and ahh over hubby’s handiwork and stuff. Meanwhile, MM is pretty much thinking he won the luckiest kid on the planet lottery right now – his daddy seems to have decided to stay home and make teepees for him and eat lots of birthday cake. Basically the best vacation ever in his opinion. In my opinion? If we don’t find a few more projects to do – or a new job for Dan – I might go crazy. He had a quick impromptu phone interview of sorts with another company that’s in the early stages of hiring, even further away than Dream Company and in a state that had me feeling all geographically biased and holier than thou, thinking, “We can’t live there – gross!” But I researched the town a bit, because it sounds like they really liked Dan (who wouldn’t) and it doesn’t seem as bad as I thought, maybe even kind of nice. I guess at the end of the day, every town has it’s ups and downs – I’m sure even Dream Company in Dream State has it’s negative points (besides the 17 hour drive from here). What really gets me – is that it could end up being either of these places, or somewhere else entirely – and it could happen at anytime. My life has turned into one big Choose Your Own Adventure book except it kind of feels like someone else is choosing which pages to jump to and I’m just saying, “But will I have health insurance?” over and over until I turn blue in the face. I mean… Look – up there at the top of this post – pictures of me!

52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you’re not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!