Man. It's been forever since I sat down at my computer. These days summer is keeping us busy with it's crazy fun flexibility. We're busy from the minute we wake until the minute our heads hit our pillows, which is far too late for my taste. We need to get to bed earlier or I'll never survive the next two and a half months! I think for me, finally not working at the school is providing me with the hours I always wished I'd had access to for so many necessary projects and fun activities, that I'm on overdrive mode. Hopefully it'll settle down. But even if it doesn't, the fun memories are worth the exhaustion. So instead of spending down time on the internet, these days we hop on the internet real quick to see what the weather is going to be for the day, and then don't touch it again until the next morning. I am sooo behind on the internet to-do list. Emails I have yet to answer, research that I need to do, college classes to register for, blogs to read, blog posts to journal, etc etc. But I thought I'd throw a couple of quick pics on of what we did today. We started the day by taking the first step into our healthier future. Last night some of my girlfriends and I went out shopping for green smoothie/drink produce and came back to our house for a one on one drink-making course. It was fantastic. This morning I decided it was time to start a new morning drink ritual. I know it'll take some getting used to for some of the girls. But I am so excited for the health benefits and the energy for all of us that I know will come as a result of getting all those healthy greens into our systems. Ane is so funny with it...she says "nummy, yummy" the whole time she's drinking it, and asks for seconds. Some of the girls just gulped it all down and didn't love it, but didn't mind it either. And then we had one little girlie, who just struggled with even trying it. I'm not worried because she does that with EVERYTHING. We'll all be so blessed, I'm convinced, as we try so hard to take care of these precious bodies that God has blessed us with. We then scooted over to a baptism of one of our precious buddies, and the girls sang a duet as a group. Good grief, are those girlies amazing. I was so proud of them. I never get nervous playing the piano, but as I sat down to play for them my back was to them and couldn't see all six of them up there singing, my hands started to shake and I realized that I was nervous FOR them. But it was completely unwarranted. They sang like little angels. And yes, I'm a little biased, but they still sounded like angels! We jetted from there to catch the second half of Eli's tball game, dropping Lose off at a birthday party on the way, and then rushed back over to the baptism luncheon. From there we came home for naps and laundry (for me, anyway!). The four big girlies took that time to decorate their bikes. Auntie Katie had told the girls that her kiddos were going to ride in the bike ride before the parade for Orem Summerfest, and asked the girls if they wanted to decorate their bikes and ride with them. Good grief. You should have seen these girls. They took one day to map out their plan, complete with sketches and write ups. Then they took one day to start tracing stencils, cutting out, and decorating the stencils. The final day was today, finishing of the prep work and finally breaking out the duct tape to make sure it all didn't blow off as their bikes rode in the back of Uncle Matt's truck. Several of them were convinced that they also needed to decorate themselves, and had full costumes prepared. We were able to compromise and some decided to go with colorful socks instead. Line was bummed because she couldn't find a match to the one funky sock she could find, but was thrilled when she realized Addie didn't wear funky socks either. Although I was in the worst of moods at the beginning of the festivities (I hate parades and all that it involves...parking, crowds, finding seats, and the panic associated with all three of those things, not to mention dirty feet and sticky hands. I have issues people, I already know that) it turned out to be the best night. These three stinkers are so funny... And as the parade progressed these two didn't want to sit in chairs. No, of course not. I just hauled the chairs along with me for the heck of it. Instead, one wanted to sit in front of me in my chair, and one wanted to sit in back of me, in the same chair. It was...lovely. Although I was a bit oversensitized between the two of them, their sweet young selves smelled delicious and scrumptious. I was close enough to know. And their little chubby fingers and cheeks were right within my reach. It was a great night. Thanks Brousseaus for telling us about the sweet seats. :) And thanks to the other Brousseaus for providing the seats AND the parking, completely eliminating two of my parade pet peeves. Gooooo, Summer!
At therapy this week Eva asked to work with some paints. She took a paper plate and put all the paint colors together on it. Instead of using those colors to paint onto the paper, she instead chose to mix all those colors together on the plate itself. Her therapist told me that Eva explained it to her that all the colors mixed together made her favorite color, brown..."Brown, which is the color of my daddy, and it's the color I'm turning into!"
We started our morning with breakfast at the inn. The girls just loooove staying in a hotel, motel, inn, you name it. They feel like queens, and having a delicious breakfast waiting for them when the woke up just solidified that.
Now even though I had told myself that this was an unplanned week, I of course couldn't quite break from my OCD tendencies and laid out a tentative outline. For this day, because of the weather, I'd planned to go in the morning when it was cooler to a park, go somewhere for lunch, and then come back and do some fun swimming in the afternoon at the inn. But I was terribly outvoted. Line suggested and the others quickly followed her suggestion, that we switch things around a bit, and swim first, play at the park second. I tried to take my own advice I'd written before, about saying yes as often as possible so that when I say no, they'll hopefully understand that I would say yes if I could. So, switch we did. And no, the world didn't fall apart. Who knew? Yes, it was a great learning opportunity for all the kiddos because it turned out to be cold during the swimming and quite toasty at the park, but we lived to tell the tale.
I had forgotten my suit, and so all the girls took turns swimming with Boo and Eva. I was so proud as I watched and listened to them all playing with one another in the water. I SERIOUSLY need to live somewhere with a pool, people. I'm just sayin. Then I was even more proud when they befriended a girl named Addy who was swimming there alone, and I was so happy to see them choosing to be inclusive rather than exclusive. I'm not so sure she realized what she'd gotten herself involved in, but they all looked to be having fun together.
At one point in the day we were walking back to our room on the second floor. There was this one stair case that had half of it covered with a small ramp, I think it was for people to walk down the stairs while simultaneously pulling their luggage down the ramp beside them. The girls of course preferred to go up and down that ramp, and no matter how many times I warned them, then tried to run down it. Sure enough, Eli fell down it and bounced a couple of times on the way down. She was of course sobbing and boo-hooing while we were all guffawing. It looked hilarious! And I'd checked to make sure all bones and such were still intact...only injuries were some bruises and a bruised ego. Of course, during the second half of the day she retold the story, saying that "Remember when I fell down the stairs and WE WERE ALL laughing?" Well, as long as she remembers it with a positive spin, I guess.
We made our way to McDonalds for lunch...the only eating out we did while we were there. We enjoyed several picnics and meals from the food we'd brought with us, which I must say, for packing it all last minute was exactly what we needed. This doesn't happen very often, so I have to include this...the lady cleaning at McDonalds said she’d never seen so little on the floor after a group of kids had eaten..
The girls discovered this stage thingy and played there for a bit to get out of the warm sun. They created this game where the person in the middle picked out a section of the concrete floor as the hot spot, and then sang the tune to "Pop goes the weasel", with whomever stopping on the spot they'd picked at the conclusion of the song becoming the next person in the middle.
After the park we discovered this meandering paved path that covers quite a bit of the town. We started at a spot close to the park where we were playing.
After returning to our room for some dinner, we then headed out in time to catch a movie, "Hop". The girls were soooo excited to see this. Me? Not so much. But no worries. Imagine our surprise when we pulled up to the theater to see that it only had a total of three movies showing, and then we saw THIS sign, an even bigger surprise.
So we all piled back into the car to go find an ATM, and since the town is so small it was super quick finding one. The girls and I agreed, that we were all so shocked at how small the town of Moab actually is. So many of our friends travel there for leisure and family fun we just naturally assumed it was a big and hopping kind of place. It's unexpected size is definitely part of it's charm.
One tricky part of the movie experience was that Daddy and I had a good movie theater system. He would take out any fussy babies, and I would get to stay in with the other babies and keep them unfussy. Now that doesn't work too hot. Sometimes I'm amazed at what Boo remembers. She started to get fussy, and so I stood to take her out but Ane was not having that. She wanted Daddy to take her out, not me, and she told me that in a very loud, scream-like kinda way. She eventually calmed down, and thankfully Eva and Eli were okay with me not sitting right beside them in the dark while I was out in the lobby for a while.
We got back "home", cleaned up and then the girlies crashed while I stayed up to do laundry. This one adult only stuff can get tricky. I hated stepping out of the room to go start and switch the laundry. I've learned that those moments when one just isn't enough, that prayer and reliance on the Lord is what sustains me. I find myself in situations like that often, and pray so hard that instead of my sweet husbands presence and hands for helping, I feel the Savior's presence instead and rely on his all-encompassing hands.
I fell asleep that night happy, peaceful, and yet nervous about the upcoming day, since it was the day I had planned to do Arches National Park. I was so worried that it would be too much for all of us, yet so wanting it to be such a great experience.
I have been trying to blog about our Spring Break for what feels like forever, but have really struggled with getting these pictures to upload. They sometimes did, sometimes didn't, and when they did upload, would not upload in the order I selected them to. Geez, what a nuisance. So. It is with great pleasure that I give you...our first day of Spring Break 2011!
This year I had the strongest prompting that we needed to go, somewhere, anywhere, for Spring Break. I was worried that I wouldn't have the driving stamina needed to drive somewhere far, so decided to stay and discover parts of Utah we'd never experienced, one of the very things Naki and I had talked about doing more with the girls. It was one of those experiences that I know I was guided to do. At first I thought that perhaps by leaving and going somewhere I was avoiding some kind of catastrophe here. But as soon as we were on the road, it was crystal clear to me that the girls and I were very much in need of spending time just playing with one another. It was so refreshing for me personally to finally be the source of fun and silliness instead of being the one reminding everyone how many minutes until we were leaving for such and such activity, or reminding people of homework responsibilities, or tooth brushing, or bed making, or chore reminders, or shoe putting on, or taking one more bite of a meal, etc. We, all 7 of us, needed this time to just BE together. It was the best time any of us has had in quite some time. The best part was that by just getting to be with one another, there was a miraculous side benefit of NOOO fighting...NONE! The girls were respectful and great listeners, they were compassionate to one another, and so gracious towards everyone they met. None of us wanted to come home, although that's a necessary part of any vacation. It was simply the most angelic time with each other.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a planner. It was extremely unlike me to quickly pack in 20 minutes the night before a trip and throw some food in the car and not have every detail of the trip planned. But that's exactly what we did. The night before I had also made some hotel reservations at certain places so we'd have a place to sleep. I had a rough idea of what we'd do on certain days because I'd checked the weather for the days we'd be gone, trying to match the activities we wanted to do with the best weather, but other than that I was shooting from the hip. And thankfully, all turned out marvelously. Just perfect!
So, in the order of the first day...
This was all of us, super excited. We didn't even leave at the crack of dawn, another change for my road trip style.
We enjoyed seeing any change of scenery, and these huge mill-things, whatever their proper name is, was new to us and the girls ooohed and aaahed over them. After a few hours of driving we found this simple rest stop, where we enjoyed our premade lunch which included Malia's cookies she'd baked the night before. It was so fun to see them running around having fun and being goofy with each other. I was trying to capture video only to have my camera tell me my memory was full. I had mistakenly grabbed the wrong SD card, and it wasn't until that night that I discovered that Line's camera had room on it for all the video and pictures I had wanted to take. She was kind and switched cards with me at the end of the day, so this was the only video I captured on day one.
After we piled back in the car I just could not resist...this was what I got to see out of my windshield. Could the weather have BEEN any better? I told Ane that it was a good time for a little nap, gave her her blankie, and told her to lay her head down for a little bit. She decided that I actually meant that Line and Malia needed to lay their heads down instead. This was our first destination...Goblin Park. It was soooo much fun, and thank you Ric for suggesting it. It was fascinating and fun all at the same time. I made the initial mistake of telling the girls we were going to Goblin Park, using a spooky voice, and it kinda freaked Eva out. It wasn't until we were there that she actually realized all was well. Everyone was assigned partners and before I knew it I couldn't see the big 4 girlies, since I was partners with the two littles. I could hear them, but I couldn't see them. It was easy for that to happen, since these formations were everywhere, all of them taller than we were, so someone could be four steps away from me and I couldn't actually see them. So when I kept going around one formation, then another, and then another, and I still couldn't see them but could hear them, I couldn't figure out where they'd gone. Until, I looked further, and a little higher. They're actually in this next picture...can you spot them? Here they are again, but this time I zoomed in with my camera. How did they get so far away so quickly? At least they followed the safety rules and stayed together. Malia showed Eva, Ane, and I how to climb up the gravel-like mountain the girls had found, so we stayed up there and watched the girls play hide and seek. We set some boundaries for the game, otherwise it would take forever to find anyone in there. It was hilarious having a birds eye view...they could not see where each other were, but from where we were they were only steps away from each other. At the end they had me hunt for everyone. It was super fun. Can you spot the hiders in this pic? We left there and decided that instead of staying at the motel that I'd made reservations at locally, we'd drive on over to Moab and stay there instead. What a great choice. Again, during the drive there the girls were absolute angels. We used this time for their favorite activity ever in the car...sticker books. Thank you sooo very much Tonia. Instead of letting a girl pick one book that was there's, this time we did 30 minute shifts, switching after the time was up. Before we knew it we'd pulled into Moab. Of COURSE the first thing we had to do was go swimming. I'd picked the place we stayed based on the fact that they had rooms with three beds (which means I didn't have to sleep on the floor) and that they had a pool that was indoor and outdoor. The one packing casualty that we experienced was that Mom forgot her bathing suit...and that is not a "forgot" kinda forgot. I truly did forget it since I packed in under five minutes right before we left. But true to nature, all the girls took turns swimming with the littles, who mostly lived in the hot tub. It was adorable watching them take care of each other. We crashed that night, tired and happy.
