Moon Lake

We finally got to leave and take our first real vacation in 2 years. We chose to go to Moon Lake for the first three days of our vacation. We had so much fun up there. It was so nice to not have TV, cell phones, internet, or anything else to take away from our time together as a family.

It is a long drive to get there and the boys and dog did such a wonderful job enduring the trip. This was the first trip that we didn't have the boys buried under half of what we needed to take. I thought that we would have plenty of room in our Expedition for all of our supplies for three days. Kenny thought we needed a little more room and got a box for the top of the truck. He was right, we filled the back of the Expedition and the box on top. I always over pack and as you read you will notice that this time I over packed all the wrong things.

This is our cute little cabin. It has two bedrooms, a small kitchen and a bathroom. It was the perfect size for us. We arrived at our cabin just at dinner time and we were going to roast hot dogs over the fire for dinner, but as we unloaded we quickly realized that we were missing one important part of dinner. We had forgot the roasting sticks. Boiled hot dogs it was, it worked but we were all bummed and dinner was okay but not at all what we had thought we would eat.

That first night we were there Kelton and I took Charlie for a walk down to the lake. It was so peaceful and beautiful. I was surprised to see how low the lake is, usually in June you don't have much of a beach but there was plenty of beach to play and walk on.

I had planned many fun things for us while we were staying at Moon Lake. One of those things was to bake cookies. I quickly remembered that the stove and oven in the kitchen is miniature. I forgot to take a picture of how small that appliance is, but it only had three small burners and I took my smallest cookie sheet and it wouldn't fit in the oven. We decided to try an experiment and try cooking the cookies over charcoal, it worked! We had fresh chocolate chip cookies two of the days we were there and they were wonderful. It was fun to try something new and have it work. It was also fun to watch the people in the cabins on either side of us stare at us like we were crazy.

It was also fun to find something to use the charcoal for that we had hauled all the way up there. Our original intention for the charcoal was to have a dutch oven dinner, but we quickly realized that we had forgot another important part of that dinner. What was it you ask? Oh, nothing as easy to work around as forgetting roasting sticks. Oh no, we forgot the chicken. It was still safe at home in the freezer. Even though we were all bummed, the boys were happy to have a whatever you can find you can have for dinner night. We ended up mainly eating Chex mix for dinner while we played Uno and Trouble.

I'm glad to say that we had a ton of fun that night and laughed so hard as we played games and told stories and remembered other trips we had taken together. I enjoyed watching us all pull together and not let a little thing like forgetting the meat for dinner ruin our fun.

For two days we spent the majority of our time on the beach playing. We had so much fun making all kinds of sand castles. Above and below are two of the castles that the boys built on the first day. They had so much fun digging trenches to their castles so they would have a private lake and a moat. Eventually Kenny and I got in on the building and being the Egypt nerds that we are, we had fun building a pyramid and a sphinx. However, we did run into one small problem, we had dogzilla (aka Charlie) with us and he smashed our sphinx in record time. Napoleon couldn't have done better. Taylor quickly followed and took out the pyramid. We didn't end up with any pictures of our creation, but then we also didn't get any proof of me sitting in the mud building a sand pyramid.

I did however get a picture of me digging my toes into the sand and enjoying the soft cool sand. It may not look it in this picture, but the sand there is so soft. It was like a little piece of heaven to sit there and relax and watch the boys play in the water and build their sand castles.

Kenny and the boys all decided to wade into the water and play a little. I still don't know how they did it, the water was so cold. Kenny only lasted a second and his picture is of him trying to get out of the cold water as quickly as possible. The boys somehow were able to go in and out of the water several times and had a blast just walking around in it. Taylor was trying to hold up his shorts, but they ended up soaked.

I know the boys would be upset if I left out Chunk. That is what they named the pot-gut that hung out around our fire ring. We ended up feeding him a little here and there. We were so surprised when he walked right up to Kenny and sat at his feet for a minute, Chunk was not afraid of people at all. None of could believe how many chipmunks and pot-guts there were. It was fun to watch them run around and even climb up the sides of the cabins. Who needs TV when you this kind of entertainment?

Other than forgetting a few vital items that we needed for dinner's and a couple other things that we had to go to the Lodge to buy, I don't think we did to bad. Even though we took a nap everyday we were at Moon Lake, we were so tired when we got home. This picture of Charlie sums up how we all felt when we got home, we all just collapsed for a while.

Coming home has been bitter sweet. We love it at Moon Lake and it was so relaxing for all of us, but we are so ready to have a night in our own beds.

A horrible, no good, very bad day!!!!!

I keep wishing that today was just a bad dream that was part of my migraine last night, but now that it is time for me to get ready for bed I am coming to the awful truth that today really did happen. I know we all have bad days and sometimes when we think our day can't get any worse, it does. That has been my day today. I vowed to never speak of work on my blog and I'm not really going to start now, but just now that it was a rough day. The kind of day that before you even reach 10:00 am you start thinking that you should have never gotten out of bed.

It didn't start bad. I didn't even poke myself in the eye with my mascara brush this morning. I think my depth perception has left me for the summer, which has been really bad news for my eyes and our car. Unlike Ralph in a Christmas Story, I'm not going to go blind from soap poisoning, it will be from mascara. So far I have been pretty lucky and Kenny hasn't forced me to get a bus pass even though I have run the car into two things in the past week.

Back to today. There comes a point in the day that one of two things happen. One; God knows that you need to be able to laugh or your going to start crying. Or two, Satan knows that if you notice what is about to come in front of you, you will notice it and make fun of it because that is your weakness. No matter how this came to happen it saved my hide. It helped me to not cry while driving down I-15 and crashing the car into one more thing. It gave me a good laugh which distracted me from focusing on all that had happened today. And, well, of course I have to make fun of this.

Alright, I should never have taken this with my phone or while driving (shhhhh, you never heard me say that). So the picture is really blurry but you can just make out the pin striping on the back that looks like a mustache. Really, this car has a mustache on it's butt. Who does that? I did make sure to crop it so no one can see their license plates, I had to do this to protect the innocent. But, really who would pay money to put that on their car?

The next innocent victim was some poor person who had just bought this cute little red car and their front passenger wheel was wobbling all over the place. Could they not feel that? And they had really just bought it, it had the temporary tag in the window.

As soon as I realized that I wasn't about to loose a tire and that I don't have a mustache on my car butt, my day didn't really seem all that bad. It quickly reminded me that it can always be worse. And then it did get worse, my computer crashed. I think I have it fixed now, but who knows.

At least I don't have a car butt mustache!

Boared

Every once in a while I like to post my favorite text that I have gotten that week, this week it was "Boared." It took me a minute to figure out that Kelton was bored and not that he was warning me that something was flying at me. We have been known to do things like that ever since we first saw Twister. We love that movie. As soon as I figured out that this was not a warning, I promise it wasn't long, I quickly replied, "then clean your bathroom". He then replied with, "maybe." Which was quickly answered with, "no, do it."

That is a quick synopsis of the first week of summer vacation. How could they be bored their first week home? I don't get it, I don't remember ever being bored. My summer was filled with teaching my dolls, playing house, reading, doing puzzles, and intertwined in all of this bossing my sister around and making her do and say whatever I felt she needed to do at that time. Sorry Becca, I hope that at some point over the years you have forgiven me.

There was no time to be bored, I had a bike to ride (which I would pretend was a motorcycle), Huts to build in every room of the house, Barbie's to dress up and occasionally cut their hair when I decided they were sick of long hair. My sister's hair to cut, when I decided she was sick of hair all together (sorry again). I would go out and play in the rain, something I just can't let my boys do. This may take professional help, but by the time I can afford it they will be too old to want to play in the rain, that's my hope anyway.

I'm trying to figure out what happened between my childhood and my boys. They have all the same things I had growing up, they just don't like to cut hair and you really can't cut Darth Vader's hair or GI Joe's. They are boys and they figured out that they can burn their dudes in my candles. I think playing in the rain may soon be a possibility if they promise to not leave any more foot prints in my candles. We may have a good compromise here.

I have been able to keep them pretty occupied since that text with cleaning and laundry, but I fear that I may have mutiny on my hands before we even get to go on vacation. So far, my only thought is to tell them that I will give them spelling lists and math worksheets. I'm hoping that will scare them into finding something to do and to get out and play a little. Any other suggestions would be welcomed!

Taylor's Birthday

It is official, we now have a teen and a tween in our home. Let the hormones rage!

Taylors birthday was actually last week, sorry bud, I'm a little behind in getting your big day posted.

I can't believe that you are 11 now. It seems like yesterday that you were born and we had the nurses mad at us at the hospital for our corky sense of humor. I really think it was just last month that I was taking you to Primary Children's Hospital every other week to get you a new cast on your leg. Those days were such a blur of doctors appointments and preparing for your first big surgery. I remember not knowing how to pick you up when you got out of surgery, you were only 6 months old and you had so many tubes and lines coming from you and I was so scared that I would hurt you. I can't believe how much you have grown and what an amazing young man you are today. You have made it through so much; physically the five surgeries and mentally everything that comes from being slightly different from everyone else. However, through it all you have learned how to look at other people with a new appreciation of what they might be going through and you have so much compassion for others. I hope you never lose that!

It was so much fun seeing you get your new birthday presents. I can't even believe that you are big enough to ride your new mountain bike and I had so much fun watching you put together your new lego set.

Here you are first seeing your new bike. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of your expression, you were so surprised that all you could do was stand there and point at it. convincing you that you could ride it was the next trick.

Chris did a wonderful job of demonstrating how to ride a mountain bike and how to change the gears, all with the tags still on. I'm not sure how much that helped Taylor to finally get on and ride, but Chris sure looked like she was having fun.

You finally did get on and figure out how to ride your new bike that you kept thinking was to big for you. You still look a little unsure here, but it was no time until you took off. Now you ride so fast going up and down our street that you and your brother are starting to scare me. Please, both of you, remember to not land on your head, just until I decide to be a good mom and get you a new helmet.

One of our new traditions that we have started is singing happy birthday really fast while Chris holds a lighter for the birthday person to blow out. It all started because none of us remember to buy candles and with Grandma on oxygen it isn't a good idea to have a bunch of little candles anywhere near her. Open flame, oxygen, I don't know, but we started thinking that it might not be a good thing to have together. I finally taped us singing so we can always remember how silly and creative we are. We also need to remember that this was all started for safety, not that none of us could ever remember to buy candles.