Short and Sweet

I haven't been in a blogging mood for some reason. Well, I guess part of the reason would be that we've been preoccupied with some stress with Mike's work... Helping out some friends with some hard things going on....my mind has been turned to other matters. More weighty matters.

Suffice it to say, there's been a lot of prayer, time in the temple, family history work, long talks with family and neighbors, some tears and laughter too. It is a growing time.

In the midst of all these cares of life, we had a short over-nighter to the yurt in Goblin Valley (our place of respite) planned.  It seems like the last few times we've gone, we have been in desperate need of solitude and perspective. Those hours in the desert are like medicine. Or, as Mike repeatedly commented, "balm of Gilead".

We left Friday morning as early as we could...9:30 was the best we could do after Mike worked all day, and late into the night Thursday. We got to Goblin Valley about noon, and headed straight to Crack Canyon on the north side of the reef, eating lunch on the trail. It was a bit chilly, only in the low 50's, but with the sun and a little exertion, that wasn't too uncomfortable. We met a group of family and friends on horse back in the canyon, which surprised us, because we had passed through some tricky stuff. We had a pleasant conversation with them about where they were from, how they had come into the canyon, etc. Cool people.
The wind REALLY started whipping up after a few hours, cutting right through our layers of clothes. The last mile of our 5 mile hike, facing into the wind, Abner started to cry a lot. So we took him out of the packer, wrapped my fleece around him, zipping it up around his face, and Mike carried him in his arms shielded from the wind. All in all, it was an amazing hike. Not as difficult as Little Wild Horse/Bell of last year, but challenging enough for little feet (Sully walked pretty much the whole way).

Heading back out of the canyon

In one of the tight spots. (Abner was starting to melt down, mostly because he'd just had his head dinged on an over-hanging rock. It's tough for little guys.)

 Some of Jessie's instagram shots from Crack...

After the hike, we drove back to the yurt and got settled in. The wind was pretty much howling by this time. So the kids didn't do much exploring around the cliffs, as they always do. I needed some coals to warm up our empanadas for dinner, so I set to work lighting a fire in the fire pit in hurricane-force winds. Mike and I would crouch, eyes tightly shut, next to the fire pit, trying to shield our tiny flame as the wind came roaring across camp, sandblasting us, and nearly knocking us down, electrical sparks shooting between us if we touched. We finally got a good fire going, and soon had a warm dinner.

Sully and Mike did venture out before dark to do some quick exploring...long enough to take this picture.

The rest of the night we hunkered down in the yurt, cozy with our fireplace heater. Mike worried about the kids having to stay cooped up all evening, and wondered if we should have brought some games or something. But it turns out, we had more than enough to entertain ourselves with...

Abner was entertained opening and closing the door about 500 times...

The rest of us were happy sipping hot chocolate and joking around, & laughing at the pictures we'd taken... as long as you like each other, you don't need much.

The wind had died down (mostly) by morning. So I was able to light our propane stove outside and cook up some Ziploc eggs.

Abner venturing out first thing

Noble lighting a small fire in the morning.

Getting in a little journaling/thinking time while breakfast cooked. Just what the doctor ordered.

 We visited the Valley of the Goblins proper after breaking camp, but within about an hour and a half, the wind had kicked up again, making things uncomfortable. So, I made a tail-gate lunch there overlooking the Valley of the Goblins, the Expedition facing into the wind, to shield us as we ate at the back end. The kids huddled in the shelter of the family car, eating as fast as they could, so they could get out of the wind and back in the car. Other than the wind, it was a gorgeous day. Clear and bright. The kids laid claim to an amazing castle in the valley. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of exploring the goblins this time. Too busy having fun, I guess.

The view from the yurt....the reef way out there, with Crack Canyon beyond. 

So glad we got to go. On the drive home I was thinking how really sad I was to have to leave. But that's alright. I came back with a better handle on life. We all need things like this.

Patches

Yesterday (among other things) I kept more than busy patching stuff.

For starters, several pair of pants. Noble is HARD on school pants, and I can't bring myself to buy a new pair every time he rips a knee. So I keep one old pair (left) for cutting patches from. If they aren't really bad I can usually patch them up well enough so you can't tell without a closer look. Now, they'll last a few more months, maybe long enough to get us through the school year. (...if I could keep him from outgrowing them before then...) Thanks to my mom, who had the right color of Salmon thread, I also patched a little hole in Jessie's favorite pair of pants.

After spending several (VERY frustrating) hours attempting to remediate a few Abner-initiated disasters in the basement, I finally finished and came up to make the little boys a late lunch. TWO MINUTES later I heard Abner crying...the REAL kind of crying. You know what I mean, like you-might-want-to-get-911-on-the-phone kind. According to Sully, and consistent with the evidence at the scene, he had been running laps around the playroom, and pummeled head-first into Grace's doll house. I put lunch on hold for another hour while I tried to wrestle a screaming toddler, clean up the blood, scour through my cupboards and closets looking for the butterfly bandages I thought I had, put a band-aid on it only to be promptly ripped off... twice....Finally, I just threw my hands in the air and called it good, oozing gash notwithstanding. I was tired. So tired. Later, after a quick run to Walgreen's for butterfly bandages, in between getting Jessie to guitar lessons... Abner is all patched up. Good as new. Maybe there will be a scar to remind him. That's ok too.

Sully's "Worstest Day EVER!"

Sully was sooo busted today. 

His explanation: that he and his buddy were "fixing the rocks". Their method? Dump 4 quarts of engine oil (2-cycle and regular) out in the garden. *I hear that's kind of bad for your garden soil.* Aside from creating an ecological disaster, he also spilled it all over the front of himself, completely ruining those cute leather high-tops I just got for him last week. To add insult to injury, as I walked into the garden to survey the scene, I stepped right into a sizable puddle of oil, camouflaged with a thin layer of grass clippings on the surface. 

With flip flops on. Didn't see it coming. 

When his sentencing came down (time-out after some soap and hot water), he threw one giant fit. He kept yelling, "This is the worstest day EVER!!" (That is his go-to protestation when things aren't going his way.) and, "I don't want to be in a lot of trouble... I want to be in a little bit of trouble!" He didn't get what he wanted. 

He is in a LOT of trouble.

Oh man, I don't have time for shenanigans like this.

Race Redemption

With April coming to a close I am once again swamped with preparations for the annual NPA 5k/fun run fundraising event.
This year we are making significant strides to both simplify and improve.

You may recall the series of unfortunate events that was last year's race. This year we purchased a professional display clock (so we don't have to beg for the donation of timing services every year), and we'll let the folks make a note of their own time while they're in the chute. With the simplified finish line, I am throwing more effort into route support so we don't have a fiasco like last year. I mapped out the course myself with Mitch-darling this last weekend. It will be marked, mapped, staffed and we're even looking into having race volunteers pacing/with maps & info in the race.

Hopefully, that will take care of any eventuality. Short of an alien invasion.

Having said all that, please come out and support the kids' and our school. This is our big event of the year (and in my unbiased opinion, definitely the most fun!). April 28th 9AM sharp, Roi Hardy park - 12600th South in Riverton on the parkway. You can register to run ahead of time (this week- let me know) or that morning. $20/participant. Pre-kindergarten age = free. Or you can sponsor the kids. Or come cheer them on and eat pancakes!

See you there!

Mike says I should explain...

We have had a lot of questions about the Tacoma incident after my brief reference in the last post. I was trying to gloss over it a bit for Mike's sake (he was pretty disgusted for about 24 hours). But now that we're a few days out, and Mike has had a few good laughs, we decided a public retelling was OK.

Actually, no one actually witnessed what happened (except Jupiter, and he's not talking) - so this is our best guess at how events transpired.

Jupiter the Space Donkey - lone attestant to the destruction -

 looking down the rock wall at the aftermath.

He's thinking, "What in the...?"

Mike had helped me off with the kids for the first day of school before pulling out of the garage to go to work. He noticed that pen ink had leaked on his sunglasses case. So he decided to run in and rinse it off, leaving the truck in neutral. (Mike traces the whole ordeal back to leaving the lid of his pen at work the day before. How narrow is the knife's edge upon which the events of our lives sometimes balance. ha ha ha.) He was standing there at the kitchen sink rinsing, when he heard the dog going nuts outside, which began, of course, to irritate him. So he walked out yelling for the dog to be quiet, & noticed that his truck was NOT where he left it.

First reaction, "Someone has stolen my truck!"

Next instinct: look at what the dog is barking at in the back yard -----------truck wedged in the back fence. Now start putting the pieces together: truck in neutral, large rock retaining wall, smashed shrubbery, tire tracks in the grass, demolished fence.

A few moments of stunned immobility.

He said his first thought was a sinking, "I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS! What am I going to do?" He said his next thought was, "I hope none of the neighbors saw that." (I think it's hilarious that he thought that...because I KNOW I would have thought the same thing - even though it's silly. *digression* When I was like 8 I drove my family van in neutral down the hill of the church parking lot and hit another car. And even at that young age, I distinctly remember trying to distance myself from the disaster - and act as if I was totally uninvolved. I kept trying to shush my sister who was yelling for help out the window, because I was embarrassed that she was drawing attention to us. Oh my goodness, that is a funny memory...)

At this point he called me (and freaked me out because it took him FOREVER to spit  out what had happened - I  thought it must be something awful) - and started trying to figure out how to get the truck out of the backyard. In case you've never been to our house, the backyard slopes down & there's basically a boulder retaining wall all the way around it. It's hard even to get the lawn mower back there and out again...much less an automobile. 

When I got home he tried rock-crawling up the most gradual & shallowest spot on the wall. No good. The only other thing to do was to go and ask the neighbor if we could drive through her yard. Mike sheepishly rang the doorbell at 8:30 AM and asked if he could drive over her lawn. She responded, "I would rather you didn't." And then he explained that thing was, his truck was stuck in the back yard unless he did. She started to laugh and said she'd let him drive through their yard if she could come see the carnage.

We were sure we'd have to make a claim on our home owners insurance in addition to a claim on our auto insurance to fix the fence & the dent in the truck.

But it turns out PVC is an incredibly forgiving material. All of the downed fence panels were intact, even the posts were relatively unscathed. It took Mike an hour on Saturday to fix the fence. Then he was able to buff out all of the scuffing on his truck. In disbelief, he kept repeating to me yesterday that he was just as shocked about how easily he was able to fix the damage as he was at discovering the accident in the first place.

We still have a dent to repair...and honestly, it's pretty minor. I also have a bunch of broken limbs on a bush in the back yard.

But I'm not complaining. 

It's another good story for Mike to tuck away for telling at parties.

Like the time he got stuck at the mushroom convention, wearing just his boxer shorts. Only this time he doesn't have a cool t-shirt to show for it.

Here We Go Again

The last gasps of Summer...

 Noble fishing for crawdads at Soldier Creek

 Cooling off with the cousins one more time

 ...Before the first day of school

 First day of school for the little brothers. It's confusing to be loaded into the car while you're still half-asleep.

 

Mom (still in jammies) & kids ready to roll. 

It's a bitter-sweet time. We are already missing the freedom of summer break, but you can't help getting excited for the possibilities of a new school year.

New clothes, new haircuts, lunches packed, pencils sharpened...

The kids were up AND dressed by 6:30 this morning. (I, on the other hand, was not. It was a long night with the newborn... and a toddler who wanted to take over my spot in the bed.) I cannot believe that we have a middle school-er this year!! She's pretty nervous about being able to work her locker combination fast enough. But she had her schedule memorized and her locker all decorated (decorated??). So she should be good.

Exciting.

And, adding even more excitement to the day...

Mike's truck, left to its own devises (neutral), took a short trip off a rock wall into the back yard, leaving us to figure out how to extricate it. No serious harm done (whew), but thrilling none-the-less. We like to keep the adrenalin pumping around here.

In the Trenches: a Brief Tutorial

"In the Trenches" is probably going to become a regular posting - all about the rad stuff you learn living with kids. It kind of comes from something my awesome sister-in-law, Helen, said to me one day.  While wrestling her kids out of the car, she observed a lady precariously navigating an icy parking lot in stiletto boots, thought about her own ultra-practical look, shook her head in amazement, & thought to herself, "I'm in the trenches over here." (Actually, the way she said it was so much more funny.)

Not to knock stiletto boots. We all know they look hot. What she meant (and I echo) is - this family living is UN-glamorous business. And doing this line of work usually demands the kind of UN-glamorous approach that could be summed up in a pair of ratty overalls and sneakers...at least with little dudes. It takes skills. The kind you learn on the job.

(I guess doing the dirty job of parenting WHILE in stilettos would be one of those amazing skills too. I just haven't tried to master that one yet.)

So with that introduction, today's post:

WHAT TO DO WHEN A KID (or adult for that matter) LEAVES A CRAYON IN THEIR POCKET, AND IT GOES THROUGH THE WASH

11:00PM last Wednesday.

This is what I discovered as I attempted to change the laundry before bed.

In this load: almost ALL of the kids' school pants, the boys' church shirts, one of Mike's more expensive work shirts, a few pair of maternity pants, Sully's linen Easter vest and a couple of t-shirts. In total: several hundred dollars worth of clothes. The dryer barrel was nicely smeared with melted red crayon - so I couldn't put the wet clothes in that were waiting in the washer. 

Breaking it down for you: two problems. #1. How to get crayon off the dryer barrel? #2. How to remove crayon from all those clothes? Problem #2 seemed most challenging. Mike left a fountain pen in his pocket once and it ruined a whole load of laundry - and there was no recovery in that case. I didn't hold out much more hope for this situation.

Google to the rescue. (How did people EVER survive without the internet?!)

With a little Soft Scrub and about 5 minutes our dryer barrel was restored.

The clothes were a little trickier. The best advise I found was this: start with the simplest solution and work your way up to the more complicated. So....

I soaked everything (in batches) in HOT water with detergent and baking soda for 30 minutes. This took care of most of the crayon. Then I washed everything again in a HOT cycle (even that linen vest). And...everything came out crayon-free. (Except Noble's best church shirt which held the stain for some reason. Still, replacing one expensive-ish shirt is no biggie when I think of what I would have had to replace.)

Sorry, no finished product photo. I was kinda preoccupied, saving the world...or at least the laundry. Next time I'll do it in stilettos. Wait. I don't own any.

Sully Strikes Again

Like many a two year old before him, Sully has entered a new phase of destructiveness. His specialty and new found passion is the toilet. You can scarcely open a toilet lid in this house without finding something deposited inside. The hairbands and rubber duck pictured are among his more innocuous deposits. I found the entire contents of the master bath garbage bin dumped into our toilet one day. Another day I found his Monsters Inc. "Sully" stuffed toy jammed into the toilet along with the toilet brush. (I think he tried to push him down the drain.) A toothbrush thrown into the kids basement bathroom toilet caused over a week's worth of back-ups before it was snaked out. A word to the wise: if we are coming over, keep your bathroom doors closed.