Happy Weekend

I am absolutely in love with this race picture from the Color Me Rad run last weekend.  

That Boy

That backward glance

Those hands clasped tightly together

My world right there

Scenes from this week

watching the winter olympics

 

"Hey mom, can we cheer for Canada?"

 

"Hey mom, how come we can't have a ski jump into the swimming pool?"

 

"Hey mom, did you see that?  That was a level 10 trick"

 

"Hey mom, can we make more popcorn?"

 

 

 



Why they invented waterproof mascara

So much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

William Carlos Williamson



So we knew this day was coming around our house.  The day we would decide that Maggie, the goat we got for weed management really, has had enough of this living with cancer business.  It has been rougher than I imagined it would be.  She really weaseled her way into our family.  The last 6 months she's gotten more attention than ever as we managed her health.  And just last week I caught her drinking beer out of the cup I'd left on the back porch and begging marshmallows out of the kids' hands.

We talked about what would be different when we got home and how it would go for Maggie.

She's in good company with our beloved Beatrix.

And as Burrito and Emma reminded me: Dobby (the rooster), goldie (the goldfish...naturally), and blackie (the black goldfish if you can call him that....who lived for quite a short time in our house).

And after all was said and done I noticed Maggie left me one last message.   Not three days ago, the blackberry plant that I have been trying to grow all season (it was transplanted from the front to the back yard) was finally starting to look really good and I thought maybe we'd get blackberries this year after all. 

Today I noticed Maggie had nibbled on it, one last time:

All I could do was shake my head, smile, and wipe away a tear.

Random pictures from the weekend

5K with my little

So the girlchild had a jog-a-thon at school last week.  Each class got to run laps at the school for 15 minutes.  Me being the nice mom that I am pledged $1 a lap.  Her score card says she ran 22 laps....maybe I should have clarified how big these laps were going to be.
She better win the disneyland trip raffle for this!

We are just in it for the BBQ afterward

The obligatory, take a picture of your shoes before the race picture.

I think I need a bigger knife

The kids talked the husband into a coconut.  Clearly we need more lessons on getting into the thing.  I think the boy got scared when I asked to borrow one of his fancy knives and a hammer all in the same sentence.

The Last Few Weeks

The boys went fishing at Pyramid and caught some tasty dinner!
Emma got to help gut the fish...she loved it.

New Year's Eve brought the tooth fairy AND....

....fireworks

I learned how to make hot tamales from one of my favorite people in the whole world

The sweet ladies at church made me a prayer shawl,
 which Emma promptly claimed as her own.

The boy turned 33.
We celebrated with a mocha bacon brownie.
Which is about as un-confetti chip cake as it gets.

Double Farkle

Uncle William and Aunt Erin always have fun games to play when we come to visit.  This time they brought a dice game called farkle.  It's kind of like Yahtzee but more of a 'gambling' game of chance.   I hope Santa brings it for Christmas!

Playing Farkle

A verse and a pickle

I have competed well;
I have finished the race;
I have kept the faith

(2 Timothy, Chapter 4)

It's been 9 years....we still miss you Pop.

Winner Winner

So I may or may not have talked the little people into letting me get one of the giant stuffed animal prizes from the fun center with all of their ticket winnings.

To be fair I did earn more than half the tickets myself.  The kids weren't really getting the games.  That's because I'm such a good parent and have them doing wholesome, brain stimulating activities at home all the time and so they don't know what a video game is.....yeah, or something like that.

The girlchild was more than happy to spend her time riding the Ferris wheel while I worked on my amassing copious quantities of tickets.

Grumpy bear had me at first glance with his Zorro mask and cape.
He's so handsome and fits nicely on my bed next to Eeyore.  The other melancholy, rainy cloud love of my life.

Lucky Dog

So the boy had some business to do last weekend up in Alaska.  Which also happened to be our 10th anniversary.  Kind of a big deal.  So he figured out how I could tag along, and we headed up to Juneau sans kids for 4 days.

I'd say this trip was equally as fun and carefree as our honeymoon to Disneyland was 10 years ago.  Minus the just married on the back of the car and all the horn honking.

Here are just a few pictures from the weekend.



My king salmon




Fishing on the Lucky Dog Adventure



The boy's salmon



zip lining school at Alaska Zipline Adventures



Always hooked to something so you don't fall out of the trees



Tracy's King Crab Shack.  Sorry Joe's....this might be my new favorite!!


Now that the summer is coming to an end, we are filling our days with back to school shopping, lounging under the cooler to survive the heat, and killing time till it's apple hill season. 

When I was ONE, I had just begun

When I was TWO, I was nearly new

When I was THREE, I was hardly me

When I was FOUR, I was not much more

When I was FIVE, I was just alive

But now I am SIX, I'm as clever as clever.  So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. 

~AA Milne

I let the birthday girl enjoy her day.  Tomorrow I'll start my nagging to quit growing up so fast.

First one standing in line

Summer is coming.....never mind that it's snowing outside as I type this. 

Looking forward to

tan lines

snow cones

cotton candy

tent camping

back porch sitting

a tall glass of sun tea

running through the sprinklers

growing the garden

thunder storms

watermelons

slip-n-slides

fishing trips

BBQ ribs

Can't. Hardly. Wait.

Say Hello to my Little Friend

This little girl has been keeping us up at nights.  Good thing she's pretty cute.

Still working on a name.

There has been input from all parties.

In no particular order:

Pippa

Hailey

Piper

Tippecanoe

Ben 10 Alien Force

Butterscotch

V-Day Love

We could always count on my mother for first day of school gifts and valentine's surprises.  And since I don't have first day's of school anymore...

This year I got two giant chocolate cookie hearts.

Pretty sure that means I'm her favorite.

Someone get this girl a Globe

The Girl: Mom, how do you draw South America?

Mom: Let's google it

The Girl: Mom, How do you spell South America?

Mom:  You know what you need.....a globe. 


I don't much care for the movie Up.  It's straight up sad.  The first 30 minutes I find myself crying my eyes out.  And so I choose not to watch it.  The boychild got it into his little head that as soon as we got home from Grandma's turkey dinner he could watch it. 

Me:  Did you say we would watch Up when we got home?

Husband: No, Did you?

Me: No!

And then they watched Up and I took a 96 minute bath.

How the Halloween Costumes turned out

Introducing......

The Yellow Knight and Gollum!

Burrito has informed me that I still need to get him a yellow feather for his helmet.  Maybe I could knit/felt one for him. 

Apparently I forgot to buy the magic sticky stuff to make the fake elf ears stick onto Gollum.  So they are bobby pinned onto her little ears.  She's such a trooper.  I offered to staple them....she didnt' think I was funny.

Take a walk with me

The quirky thing about siblings is that even though we all grew up in the same family and under the same roof, we all have our own point of view of the family happenings.  As childhood compatriots they share in the joys of summer, of playing in the irrigation water on a hot day, in the excitement of trick-or-treating and getting the crap scared out of you at a spooky neighbors house.  In the anticipation of Christmas morning.  But also in the mundane living that is life.  When it seems the parents are being cruel or we are utterly bored out of our minds on an idle Tuesday afternoon at 3pm.  It's part of growing up to have an older sibling stick up for you when you are having trouble at school AND to have that same sibling tell you to stay out of their room or quit touching their stuff.  The bonds forged then last long into being a grown up and the spaces and distance that replace the few steps down the hall to their bed on a dark night. 

Staying in touch isn't always easy.  This is the same group of characters that will need to band together when we are drawing straws on who is going to take care of the parental units and the plethora of things that will need to be sorted out someday.  And so, I carved out some time in a busy fall schedule to visit my brother.  Because I needed it, because he needed it, because my children needed it.

This is the brother that playfully (or at least part playfully and part naughty older brother) would lift us little kids up and dangle us off the edge of the roof by our fingertips. It was fun, it was challenging to see who could hang on the longest, it was frightening when he would walk away and act like he was going to leave us there forever. This is the brother that would take my side against my older siblings during snowball fights and even out the score a little. I was glad to always be on his team.

These are the moments that Emmers will remember someday.  That Uncle Steve taught her how to do the monkey bars.  That Uncle Steve gave endless shoulder rides and took her to see elk one day.  That Uncle Steve taught her how to use side reins while riding horses.

And Burrito will remember being pushed on the tire swing and driving the tractor and that Uncle Steve has the coolest rope swing ever in his garage.

Egg Beaters 1 - Zeke 0

When I was a little girl my best friend in the whole world lived all the way across town.  And I say it like that because when we used to ask for sleepovers, either set of parents would wrinkle up there noses and say,

"Maybe later, they live all the way across town."

And there would be no arguing with that because A - walking wasn't an option and B - I'm pretty sure I wasn't up to the two wheeled bike option yet.

So, on those rare sleepover adventures we made sure to get into as much mischief as possible.  We tromped through the snow chasing cows or who know what we were really trying to do, in the summer we'd swim in the water trough with the mosquito eating fish, and in general just eat candy until I was sick to my stomach. 

One very hot summer day we decided to make a potion consisting of raw eggs (a lot of them), dirt and a mayonnaise jar.  Shaken, not stirred of course.  And then left for far too long in the shed behind the wood pile.  For reasons I cannot recall today, I accidentally dropped the jar and it shattered in the shed. Causing the stinkiest, most gag worthy mess that had to be cleaned up before I went home for the day. 

And to this day I cannot lay eyes on scrambled raw eggs without feeling like I might toss my cookies at any moment.  It has also resulted in me absolutely needing to have my eggs cooked to death before I eat them.

Today on my honey-do list:
Buy the husband egg whites

Standing in the egg section at wal-mart I remember that I'm allergic to that eggy smell and I start to get panicky.  There's a cute old man trying to make conversation about how they don't have the kind of eggs he likes and I'm speed reading the boxes of egg beaters because one is regular and one is southwest and what does that even mean??  Isn't it just eggs in a paper carton.  I give the old man and half smile and book it out of that section before something embarrassing happens.  All the way up to the cash register and out to the car I can feel the eggs sloshing around in that paper carton and am trying to convince myself that throwing up is not an option. I get in the car and as I'm putting the egg beaters in the refrigerator it dawns on me, the husband did not ask me for egg beaters....he asked me for egg whites....and I epic failed on that one.

You Say Tomato, I Say Tooth Fairy

The girl-child has lost her first tooth. 

yes...sometimes I do comb this child's hair, just not today

She's 5.  Isn't that a little bit early?  Is it because I have been adamantly refusing to believe that my babies are growing up and will no longer need me to snuggle them?  I've threatened to quit feeding her.  Didn't work.  I am laying the groundwork so that I can be like that mother in Love You Forever (by Robert Munsch) when I'm an old lady.  Still needs work.

The girl-child has always had a thing for tomatoes (see video):

See that.  She how little and cute she used to be.  Even at the age of 2, Emmers could be found red handed in the garden shoveling tomatoes into her mouth like they were actually something tasty.

Back to the tooth....the girl-child is eating tomatoes out of grandmother's garden.  Why?  Because the dad planted 34 tomato plants in the garden this year.  Not 3 or 4, 34! I know what you're thinking.  Why would anyone do that?  Maybe he has some sort of massive tomato canning, getting ready for the apocalypse plan?  Nope.  Well, except for that metal shipping container out back, but let us not get into that.  The official answer is:

So that, when I want a tomato, there will be one out there, waiting for me, no matter what.

So to recap: Girl eating tomato, girl feels like dirt is in her mouth, girl spits dirt out onto the ground, girl realizes her tooth is missing....oh, crap!  And then the husband saves the day and finds said tooth because he knows that I do not need to write another letter to the tooth fairy explaining that I may or may not of caused my brother's tooth to come out and we can't find it.  I'm not doing that, again.

What's the matter with these boys

This is the Dad in Hawaii, 2006, in his beach wear.

And Burrito, sunny California, 2011

Rafting 2.0

Last year, a group of friends and the boy and I went rafting.  It was a two day adventure down Cache Creek.  We had a great time.  I had a little too much fun the first day but doesn't that make for the best kinds of stories anyway.  I may or may not have accidentally set the husband's sandwich bread in the river instead of on the raft as I lovingly made his sandwich for him.  But don't worry, he ate it - soggy bread and all.  On day 2 of the trip, I may or may not have forgotten to take the wax paper off the cheese before I made the sandwich in an effort to make up for day 1 and soggy bread sandwiches. 
The rafting itself was a blast.  We only got dumped out of our raft 1 time and we scored a pretty nice double barrel super soaker.  It was the kind of trip where before we even got home and unpacked the truck everyone was talking about doing it again.

And so we did!  Hopefully it will become a yearly tradition.  This year, I solemnly swore that there would be rules!  Set up beforehand and followed accordingly.

Rule #1: Sunscreen, lots of it.  Applied more than once the whole trip.

Rule #2: Under no circumstances whatsoever should I drink anything handed to me by the boy's cousin.  He's the devil.

Rule #3: Do not set tent up on a ginormous rock that you will regret sleeping on the entire night.

Rule #4: No tandem puking.  For many reasons.  Some of them being: dinner, glow stick dancing, and so that I can enjoy the giant community bowl of oreos

We had an equally good time this year.  Fell out of the raft a few more times that I would have liked.  And once it happened at the top of one of the harder rapids.  A little bit of scary-ness later and it's back to all smiles and laughing.  Still a little bit sunburned and we really should have brought an air mattress to sleep on but I'm not complaining. 
I think I'll start my don't forget list for next year right now....