Summer 2013: A Nutshell of Photo Collages

Alrighty, folks...trying to keep it simple as I promised.  Here's the rundown of our summer months:

 

1. Spent a week at Marriott's Newport Coast Villas in Southern California.  Minutes away from what I still consider my 2nd home: Balboa Island (spent 2 weeks there every other summer growing up). We spent time walking around the island (as much as I could on my poorly-timed broken toe), eating Balboa Bars, enjoying the sights on and around the island, relaxing and swimming at the villas, playing on our favorite beach: Corona del Mar, going for a cruise around the harbor on Duffy boats, spending a day at LEGOLAND (1st and last time) and more than anything, we enjoyed spending time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Walks around the island with family, time with cousins, and most importantly, Balboa Bars from Dad's.

 

 Amazing gardens and sights on Balboa Island.

Cruising in the Duffy boats.

Corona del Mar: my little brother found a seaweed super hero mask, my oldest brother showed the sand who's boss, Hudson and Grandpa had fun in the waves, and I discovered that buddy taped toes and sand don't jive...at least my nail polish rocked. The wide pic at the top is of my dad, two brothers, my bro-in-law, and a niece all a ways out from the beach waiting to catch waves (body surfing and body boarding).

LEGOLAND with my little brother and his family, my kids and I, and my niece, Becca.

2. After Newport Coast, we headed to Northern California for some quality time in my hometown of Los Gatos. We took my niece with us for some extra time with my kids (didn't hear one complaint from any of them).  We stopped at Harris Ranch and Casa de Fruta on the way up.  I was an amazingly awesome mom/aunt and paid for the kids to ride the double-decker carousel a the latter.  My childhood self wishes she could have ridden it.  While staying at my parents' place for over a week, we enjoyed going to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium, spending time with friends and extended family, going to the park, doing a little bit of shopping, and more than anything, we had a great time being at Grandpa & Grandma's house.

The three cousins together: at The Boardwalk, Casa de Fruta, Harris Ranch, and G&G's backyard sandbox.

 

Happy 4th of July: The kids spent a good chunk of the day riding scooters in the backyard. They were having fun hamming it up for the camera and Grandpa had fun photo-bombing a totally unsuspecting Hudson.

 

Day trip to Monterey Bay Aquarium: Hudson got to pet a Bat Ray, we all pet sea creatures in the tide pool exhibits, a saw Bottlenosed Dolphins swimming a ways off the main observation deck (a real treat...they're rarely in the Monterey Bay). The jelly fish exhibit is always a favorite...the one picture shows Hudson's hand with a teensy jelly swimming on the other side of the glass.

Swimming with friends and playing with 2nd cousins.

3. Next up was a trip to my sister's in El Dorado Hills, CA, where we spent the last few days of our trip.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity see two of my dear lifelong friends who live in the area.  One made the long-ish drive with her cute daughter to see me at my sister's and my kids and I went to visit the other friend and her family at her parents' home near EDH (extra special treat as I hadn't seen her parents in over 20 years!).  Aside from visits with friends, my sister and I made sure to fit in some sister time, complete with a yummy lunch at one of our favorite digs, Jack's Urban Eats.  The kids spent their time playing with their cousins and swimming in the neighbor's pool.

 

When we drove home to Utah, my sister and her kids came with us to spend almost 2 weeks out here.  One of the highlights of their visit here was our day spent up in Park City where we took the kids on the Alpine Slides (my 1st time ever!) and Alpine Coaster.  I didn't get many pictures of our other activities here but I'm pretty sure that only my sister and I would truly appreciate looking at photos of every eating establishment we went to and the foods we consumed at each place.

A glimpse of our days in EDH and at the Park City Mountain Resort.

Now, that was better than my usual wordy self, wasn't it?  It was wordier than it could have been but far less wordy than I'm capable of.  You're welcome.

Back In The Saddle...AGAIN

I hope you were sitting down when you opened my blog and saw that I had written for the first time in over 4 months.  I can only imagine the state of shock that I've put some of you into.

 

Not that I have a ton of readers, but amazingly enough, people have been checking my blog on a fairly regular basis during my hiatus.  I think that roughly 85% of those visits have been my own sister and parents (who know better than to think that this professional procrastinator would have gotten her act together) but still, I'm always surprised to see my ticker/counter keep going up. I've even checked my blog during these past months.  Never to write anything, mind you. It's always been to click over to blogs that I frequent, but that being said, sometimes even I've been surprised that nothing new has popped up on my feed.  So strange how that works.

 

I've decided that rather than writing four million "rewind" posts, I'm just going to do a few (ha ha ha...you thought you were safe, didn't you?!). They're primarily going to be filled with a whole lot of picture collages and not a whole lot of writing...at least that's my intention.  I've never been very good at keeping things a) short and sweet or b) my words to a minimum.  We'll see how this goes...

 

First up, we have the end of the 2012-2013 school year.  I was able to manage going on both kids' end-of-year field trips during the last month of school.

 

Hudson's class went to the Ogden Nature Center.  I volunteered to drive up with a couple of other parents and the lunches for all three classes in my car order to avoid riding on the school bus (don't get me started on how buses made for children don't have ample leg room for tall adults). It was rainy.  We got wet.  One kid slipped and fell in the mud.  All the kids "got to" skim the water in one of the ponds in search of nasty little bugs and organisms.  It was kind of cool and kind of gross.

 

Claire's class went to Wheeler Farm in SLC.  We all had to ride on the bus.  I dealt with it and it helped build my amazing character.  It was not rainy or wet that day.  The weather was beautiful.  I teamed up with another mom and we managed our little groups of girls together. We all walked and/or ran around seeing and petting the various animals. The barnyard stunk.  I didn't mind the stink, though, as the animals are fun/cute/awesome and I wish I could take a fair number of them home with me.  My backyard would be very crowded and messy if I did.

 

Finally, we had the last day of school.  I always take 1st day of school pictures and last day pictures.  We were running behind this particular morning (this had never happened before...) so I only managed to get a last day of school picture.  At least I remembered.

 

That's it for tonight, my people.  More to come in the next few days...

Rewind: Disney Princesses on Ice

Yes, you read the title right.  I took my girl to Disney Princesses on Ice.  This was a first for both of us as I had never been to any "on ice" performance in my life (I assume hockey games don't count but the fights are fun so that has to count for something, right?).

 

I bought our tickets several weeks in advance and lucked out when I snagged two seats at the aisle just one row up from the most expensive sections in the arena.  I didn't tell Claire but I wrote on our calendar that it was going to be a night out for the two of us.  She was excited as could be and leading up to the big day, she would refer to the calendar often.

 

Our evening started with dinner in SLC.  Once we arrived at City Creek, I gave Claire a few dinner options and she chose Blue Lemon.  We hadn't eaten there before and we both loved it.  I'm starting to salivate just thinking about the butternut squash soup I had. Mmmmmmm. This post isn't about food, though, so I'll move on...   After dinner we walked to the nearest Trax station and took the train over to The Delta Center (it has been renamed Energy Solutions Arena but it'll always be The Delta Center to me).  On the wait to the train and once we were there, Claire noticed other little girls dressed up as princesses.  She questioned me about it and I was very vague in my responses.

 

When we finally arrived at the arena, I sat her down in front of a tree and told her my evil plan.  She was beyond excited and happily held on tight as we made our way through the crowds inside.  We stopped at Cinderella's carriage which was made entirely out of Lego Duplo blocks and Claire did her best princess wave for a picture.  Then, being a total sucker (and having cash from the hubby), I gave in like any good pushover parent would and got her a light-up sparkly wand (it even makes pretty sounds) and a foam "crown" before we headed in to find our seats.  I also allowed myself to be talked into kettle corn, cotton candy (which she decided she didn't care for - strange child - we saved it for the boys at home), and a bottled water that cost me more than it should have. Oh well...it was a special mommy-daughter date and my girl is worth every penny!

 

 

The show itself was a ton of fun.  Claire was completely enthralled and loved every second of it.  I think her favorite part was the WHOLE thing.  My favorite scenes were when Rapunzel and Flynn held onto long, flowy bands of fabric and rose up into the air and when they lit the lanterns at the end.  Such good stuff!  I honestly enjoyed the entire show and would love to take both of our kids sometime when they put on a more gender-neutral show.

 

Now, I've saved the best for last.  I took a video or two of Claire during the show, just hoping to catch one of "those" moments.  At one point, I could tell based on the storyline and such that a something big was coming up so I quietly turned on my phone's video camera and waited...

This was hands-down my favorite moment of the night!

Think Deeply

So much for my grand intentions of knocking a few posts out this week.  I'm down to the wire now (assuming that we're counting on a Sunday to Saturday calendar here, I've still got over 30 minutes until the week is over) so here I am sneaking in the post I promised earlier this week.

 

We've had a rather large amount of snow this year and my kids regularly tromped through it at school, at home, and in Hudson's case, on the way home from the bus stop.  One day at the end of January he walked in the door after his trek down the hill in the snow pretty much drenched from head to toe.  I asked him what happened and he proceeded to tell me a story about how he fell in a big snow bank right after getting off the bus.  Then, rather than walk on the plowed street or on shoveled sidewalks, he did the logical thing and made his way home primarily by way of other snow banks, snow-covered front yards, and piles of snow.

 

Before stripping off the wet & freezing layers of clothing, Hudson handed me his backpack (which was open) and his math workbook.  The book was every bit as wet as he was.  I asked him if the book fell out of his backpack and he replied that it hadn't - he had simply held onto it on the bus ride and all through his escapade on the way home.  When he realized what had happened he said, "I guess I should have thought first."  Yeah.

 

Being an awesome mom (it happens on occasion), I took his math workbook and cover to cover and page by page, I wiped out the water and snow that were throughout it.  Yes, there was actual snow in between some of the pages.  After getting rid of any excess moisture by blotting each page with paper towels, I then pulled out the ironing board, turned my iron on steam-free, and set to work. Never, in all my imagining of what my life as a mom would be like did I ever think I'd have to iron a math workbook.  It was glorious fun. All 100 or so pages of it.  I called my sister and we had a good laugh as I relayed the story to her and then laughed even harder when I saw what was printed at the top of almost every page:

THINK DEEPLY

Indeed.

Spring Break

My last post generated more comments and visits to my blog than I've seen in a long time.  I should babble on about not blogging, writer's block, my lack of gumption and all that nonsense more often!  That being said, I'm actually going to do a real post...

Last week was our kids' Spring Break.  Aside from a trip to the library and the park, we didn't do much with our first couple of days.  Not wanting the remaining days off to go to waste, the kids and I tried to make up for it from Wednesday through Friday.

WEDNESDAY

That morning I took the kiddies to Kangaroo Zoo.  It's a fun place for the kids to be noisy, run around, get all sweaty and wear themselves out for a while.  Once they'd hit their energy limit (which I'm always shocked actually exists) I surprised them with a trip to a farm store nearby.  They had dozens of chicks, ducklings and baby rabbits for sale for the upcoming Easter holiday.  We weren't permitted to hold any of them but one of the employees was nice enough to hold both a chick and a duckling so that the kids could pet them.  It if weren't for the lame-o zoning laws and such around here, I would have come home with a handful of chicks.  They were SO cute!

Next it was off to a really nice local grocery store, Harmon's, where we chose what we each wanted for lunch from their deli, salad bar, bistro, Chinese buffet, etc.  Aside from the great fruit and such that all of us shared from the salad bar, my lunch was hands down the most expensive and worst tasting of the three meals...NASTY Chinese food.  It smelled fabulous when I was serving it up and I was so excited to give it a try.  What a total waste of money.  Sorry, Harmon's, but I would pick the hole-in-the-wall cheap place here in town or Panda Express over your Chinese food any day!  And either one of them would have cost me about half of what I spent.  Thankfully the kids both made really delicious (and inexpensive!) choices...Claire had homemade macaroni & cheese and Hudson opted for the fried chicken.  Next time I'm going for the deli/bistro.

After lunch it was across the shopping center to a really nice new play structure out in front of the theatres.  A friend had mentioned the playground in a FB post a day or two before so I figured that as long as we were in the neighborhood, we ought to give it a shot.  I was so glad we did...the ground was covered in nice rubber bark (bouncy to walk on - kind of fun!) and the play structure was made to look like a tree house, complete with a couple of "board" ladders, a climbing wall, "stone" steps, etc.

Our last hurrah for the day was a trip to another theatre (closer to home) to see Mirror, Mirror with Max.  It was such a fun movie!  I thought the beginning scene with Julia Roberts - aka the Evil Queen - giving a bit of a prologue was very interestingly done in terms of animation and very funny in some of the things she said.  The whole movie really was entertaining and generated some good laughs.  We all enjoyed the movie and while it wasn't the greatest flick ever (I never want to say movies are super awesome...gets peeps' hopes up too much), it was a good choice for the whole family.

THURSDAY

We were headed into SLC to stop by a cousin's place in Sandy that morning so I decided to make the best of being that far south.  After our visit there, we headed to IKEA for lunch.  I know it's not gourmet food or anything but I seriously LOVE their meatballs with gravy, potatoes and lingonberries...I also get a side of steamed veggies every time.  And most importantly, the kids and I always get a piece of their chocolate cake to share.  It is so very tasty!  I would gladly pay Harmon's prices for an IKEA meal.  It just goes to prove that cheap things aren't all bad and pricey things aren't always good!

After IKEA we headed down to Thanksgiving Point to go to the animal farm/park.  It was fairly cool with a very cold wind outside and while I was sorry to have worn short sleeves and that none of us brought jackets, I was glad that I'd made the kids wear long sleeved shirts that morning.  In spite of the cold, we had a wonderful time.  I've always been a sucker for animals and springtime is my favorite time to visit there with all the baby animals and such.  While there were a few animals still expecting babies (two cows, two ponies, a couple of goats, etc.), there were already a number of chicks and lambs there, three of the lambs having been born just hours before we arrived.  The kids loved petting and feeding the goats, the big draft horses, a few bunnies and a couple of the lambs that came over to the gate.  They also enjoyed their pony rides...Hudson rode Cosmo and Claire was on Elvis.  I'm hoping to make it back down there soon so we can see the goat kids and foals that were due any day.  This was the only day that I remembered to bring along my good camera...

FRIDAY

We stuck around home Friday morning as it had snowed 6-8" overnight.  We were supposed to have a neighborhood Easter egg hunt at 11:00 that morning but it was postponed for Saturday in hopes that the snow would be melted.  Instead the kids had a blast playing the snow while I shoveled our driveway and walks.  After lunch I took them downtown SLC to see the new City Creek shopping center.  I took Claire there for a quick visit a couple of weeks ago but didn't get to see everything so it was fun to really explore this time around.  We did a bit of shopping (Disney Store, Go! Toys & Games, Macy's) but mostly just walked around and took in the sights.  Fountains are always a favorite, the waterfall is really something and watching trains and people from the sky bridge was fun...but the hands down favorite for all three of us was the trout pond.  I think we could have easily sat there watching the fish dart around all afternoon.  We were there for a good 2-3 hours and I was shocked at the end when both kids complained about leaving.  "Please, just one more store!"  is not something I usually hear come from my almost 8-year-old boy's mouth.

That night it was a last minute dinner from Papa Murphy's pizza since I hadn't thought ahead enough when I was home that morning.  Not that take-and-bake pizza is normally something to rave about but if you haven't had it, you really ought to give their Herb Chicken Mediterranean DeLite pizza a try.  They use olive oil instead of sauce and it has chicken, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, feta cheese and a sprinkling of herbs on top.  Three words: yummy, tasty, delicious.

I think that's about it for our uber-exciting spring break...

Next up: Easter!

LET SLEEPING KIDS LIE

Around 11:00 this morning Claire decided she'd had enough of the day already. Lots of fussing and crying. And a bit of whining and a few sourpuss faces to go along. So I took her to her room, laid her in the crib, and walked out. Silence. Three minutes later I hear talking/jabbering. I go back into her room and peek over the side of the crib to see her playing with her toes and smiling. Okaaaaay...so maybe we just needed a second alone. Or not. The minute I stand her on the floor, she starts crying again. So I sit in the rocking chair and hold her for a whopping 30 seconds before she decides that she wants to get down and play. And then cry again for no reason.

At this point it's about 11:15 or 11:20 and looking at my watch, I realized that I'd be having to go to get Huds from school in about 35 minutes. And I am NOT waking Claire up to do so. She's just going to have to be cranky and ticked off until we get back later.

So I gave her a 1/2 slice of homemade bread from a neighbor (SUPER good...mmmmmm) and head downstairs to check my e-mail and the likes thereof. You get one guess as to what happened as soon as that 1/2 piece of bread was gone. Yes. The tears, whining, fussing, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth started all over again. MY WORD!

With expert patience and ignorance on my part, the minutes were counting down until it would be time to go. I thought we were actually going to make it. Then I acidentally nailed her in the forehead with my elbow. Oops. Bad mommy. After I picked her up, she laid her head on my shoulder and started working on that magical thumb of hers. A few seconds later...quiet. And nothing since except for the occassional whimper or the sound of her sucking her thumb.

The entire time that I've been typing this post Claire has been out cold on my shoulder. Guess I'll let her take a quick nap after all and hold her all the while. Good mommy....until I wake her up to put her in the car seat in a minute. Then I'll be a bad mommy all over again.

BAD MOMMY, GOOD MOMMY...NO WAIT, BAD MOMMY

On Monday, I broke a promise to my child. Before school in the morning, I told Hudson that after lunch and helping around the house a little bit in the afternoon, I'd let him go out and play in the snow. I didn't intend to, but it turns out I lied. When he got home from school, he had lunch and played a little bit on his DS. Then I made him help me go through his toys to add to our D.I. pile and then clean up his room. The latter two took way longer than expected and by the time we finished, it was dinner time. And too freaking cold and dark out for him to play. Bad mommy.

Yesterday I made up for my Monday misdeed. After I shoveled and snow-blowed the yard and got myself ready for the day, I bundled him up like the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man and sent him out into the snow. I even went out and helped him sled down the hill the first couple of times. Good Mommy.

After about 20 minutes of his playing outside, I heard Hudson calling me from the living room. I walked in to find him standing in the outside doorway. He said that he was cold and wanted to be done playing outside. I was really surprised but had him walk around to the garage so that I could de-marshmallow him. A little later, after Hudson had thawed and I had him and Claire all bathed and ready for the day, we got in the car to drive into the city to meet with a friend and her kids for lunch. As I headed down the hill, I looked at the outside temperature gauge. I immediately felt a tidal wave of guilt wash over me. A big, shiny green 19 was staring back at me. And this was a good 90 minutes after poor Hudson had been playing in the backyard. It had probably even warmed up a degree or two at this point. No wonder he was cold outside. Bad, bad mommy.