Easter in Colorado

A couple weekends ago we headed to Colorado for my little sister, Cassie's, wedding reception. As luck would have it, it was also Easter weekend. A trip to grandma's house is always on my kids list of favorite things to do, but this time they had concerns. Namely, would the easter bunny find them at grandma's house? I won't leave you in suspense, yes he did find them. Whew! What a relief. Anyway, we had a great time. We got to see Monsters vs. Aliens, the kids and daddys went bowling, we had our Easter egg hunt, and ate way too much junk. Thanks Grandma!

I had forgotten what the term "Rocky Mountain Spring" means, but on the day if the reception I was effectively reminded. Of course in my desert rat/city girl mind I was thinking, "Will all the guests be able to get here with all this snow?" Duh! Of course they can Miki. They live with this all the time. 3 inches of snow may shut down Las Vegas but in Colorado it's nothing. the house was packed full of Cassie and Jason's friends and family. The snow was beautiful. I love the snow! But I also love going home to my warm weather and sunshine.

Natural Bridge Hike

This morning we gave the kids the option to forego our usual Saturday bike ride for a hike, to which they enthusiastically agreed. We headed south this time to Nelson, NV to hike to a natural bridge. This area is still part of the Lake Mead NRA, but lies south of Hoover dam along the Colorado River. A natural bridge is similar to a natural arch except that it is formed by water erosion as opposed to wind erosion. You can actually see the arch if you look carefully at the Google imagery (35°43'36.74"N, 114°49'7.37"W: look for the shadow spanning the wash). This is a good 1.0 mile hike each way with a tiny bit of thigh-high rock scrambling on the trail. This destination is tucked away at the bottom of a wash with some neat rock formations, plenty of oak shrub, a spring, great vistas of Boulder City and Nelson, as well as a small glimpse of the Colorado River.

We had a baby rattlesnake cross my path today between Karter and I. Baby rattlers are about 10 inches at birth. This one was about 12-13 inches long and I could only see maybe two little rattles on the tip of its tail. The snake was about 3 feet from Karter and heading his way when I spotted it as I was about to step near it. We were in a small space between the rocks and I realized I couldn't get around the rattler to get to Karter, so I frantically called to Miki, who was in front of Karter, to pull him clear of its path. Karter did a great job of standing very still, probably frozen from me raising my voice suddenly. Miki swooped Karter up while the baby snake quickly hid under the rock not to be seen again. Karter decided after this that he never wants to step on a snake and had me carry him past that spot on the way back out.

This time we packed a lunch that we ate in the shade of the natural bridge while we enjoyed the cool breeze. Of course the "tired" starts to kick in on the way back, but we made it back home to enjoy a short nap followed by Saturday chores. It was a fun time! Now maybe I should probably start thinking about getting ready to plan to possibly go about getting some studying done for my upcoming economics test. Can't wait!

Natural Bridge Hike

The price of being a great dad

So after hauling Karter around on Fridays to go hiking and doing errands, I figured it was about time we do an activity of his choice. Apart from Disneyland (which he asks every other day if we can go back there since last summer), where does every three year old want to go? You guessed it...Chuck E. Sleeze's! We have our two older children and several birthday party invites to thank for the first-hand knowlege we have at the battles of tracking our little ones among throngs of excited and screaming children, camoflauged by the seemingly endless maze of flashing lights and sounds of the video games. It's a good thing they stamped our arms upon entry with an invisible ink bearing a unique indentifier that matches us together so that we cannot leave without each other, right? Right!

Well, this wise dad looked online to see what time they open, and planned this trip accordingly on a school day and during normal school hours. Trust me that this place is much more tolerable when you share the place with three other people...that is if you have to go!

We scrounged all the left-over tokens from the other kids drawers. You know the ones from past parties that you don't have time to spend in the name of getting safely and sanely out the door together. Darn, there's only 9! I think we can get by with 9. I negotiated to purchase them from Sage for a buck. Luckily there was a third-grade bake sale going on that day at her school, so she was desperate for cash and saw it as a win-win.

Thanks to the overhead climbing tube-bubble thingy with the slide, our 9 tokens last us almost two full hours. Just enough! Now, it's not that I'm too cheap to pay the exorbant prices for their pizza lunch (afterall it is worth it's weight in grease), but the thought of getting out of there without spending a single dime was too tempting for me, so we shared some orange chicken from Panda Express on the way back home. Karter is one happy kid. I am one great dad. And now I get to hear a little less of Disneyland and a little more of Chuck E. Cheese's for the next month. We'll have to hone Karter's skee ball skills another day.

The Dawning of an Era...

And an expensive one at that. Kaleb is venturing into the exciting world of orthodontics. Just after new years he we had an expander put into his mouth to help make room for the much larger permanent teeth coming in. Of course we don't have pictures of that since we don't think you'd appreciate a picture of the roof of Kaleb's mouth. But yesterday morning Kaleb got braces put on his front 4 teeth and 2 molars. At first he was very excited and liked what they look like. In his words, "they don't hurt at all". As luck would have it, the kids bi-annual dental cleaning and check up fell on the same day in the afternoon. By the time we got to the dentist his teeth were sore and he wasn't impressed at all with the cleaning. Today he says the braces are bad and good. Good because he still likes the new look and bad because they're still sore. I'm a little worried that we might have to do this again with two more kids. Of course anyone who knew me as a teenager knows I had braces for over 2 years and multiple oral surgeries to get the smile you see today. My kids definately come by it honestly and since Kal's never had braces there's no doubting who's genetics created the mess.

How Cool is This!

My fab friend Terresa is an aspiring writer but if you ask me she's already a fabulous writer. Check out her blog, Chocolate Chip Waffle. She's among the top blogs on Mormon Mommy Blogs and is hopeful of winning favorite blog. If you feel so inclined please check her out and vote!

Love to you all!
Miki

Mommy Marathon

For all you moms out there, I've come up with a flattering way to look at our days. You know all those people who spend months training and preparing for a marathon? They've got nothing on you! Today, after doing the carpool, taking my 3 year old to preschool, picking my 3 year old up from preschool, grocery shopping, baking bread, and picking up a must have recipe from a friend, I had lunch with a few friends. One of my friends at this lunch was commenting on marathons. She said something to the effect of, "How do these people find the time to run 11 miles in a day? All to spend what 4 or 5 hours running 26+ miles." It got me thinking about how a mom's life compares to a marathon. I left that lunch with my 3 year old and my friend's three kids to search for a PostNet that doesn't appear to exist. So, I ran home to find another PostNet that does exist. Then I had to get 4 kids out of the car, do a search on the internet and get them back into the car and off we ran to the "existing" PostNet, dropped off my package and headed home for the kids to play. While they played I did laundry, made work related phone calls and started the clean up process from the bread making. Not far into this my older 2 children returned home from school. So now there are 6 children in the house playing loudly and I'm still "trying" to get things done. At one point I realized my shoulders were up around my ears and I was panting like I'd been running. After our little friends left it was homework time, then piano lessons, and cub scouts. As I pulled into my garage at 5:45 I realized that I had asked my husband to make dinner tonight and thought to myself, I have 45 whole minutes to relax. As soon as I started to feel a little relaxed I heard the sound of the dryer buzzing. I couldn't help myself, it was too comical. I started to laugh like an insane person you see in movies. I'm not sure exactly what my children were thinking but they were looking at me with raised eyebrows and looks of concern. So, after pulling the clean clothes from the washer and stashing them behind our oversized chair (it's less stressful having unfolded clothes if I can't see them), my husband arrived home and I decided that he needed a little help coming up with a healthy dinner solution since I knew full well his idea of dinner would consist of Ramen Noodles and Country Time lemonade. After stuffing down my portion I was off and running again to pick up my oldest from cub scouts and attend the monthly cub committee meeting. Upon returning home my son had a practice spelling test that he insisted must be done tonight and oh I almost forgot it's bath night. So, I bathed the kids and got them to bed around 8:30. We were only 30 minutes late so I patted myself on the back for a job well done. But the day's not done. That bread mess was only moved from the counters to the sink, so I'm off to do dishes and finally fold that last load of laundry.

Marathoners who are really good take 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Others come in anywhere in between that and 7 or 8 hours. Let's see I got up at 6:45 and as I was sitting down to blog it was 9:30. I was running and let me say again RUNNING for over 14 1/2 hours. For moms this is no record, it might not even deserve honorable mention. Ladies this is our life. We "run marathons" on a regular basis. There's no starting point or finish line. There's no winner or looser and there's certainly no cash prize. We all do the best we can, but we should be proud of our accomplishments and never feel ashamed that an 11 mile run is not in the cards for us today, tomorrow or OK never. I'm tired and run down, but I'm also very proud to be a "mommy marathoner"!

Power to the People

OK, call me a geek, but I often daydream about having a self-efficient, smart home someday. Here's one of the many topics I spend my nights thinking about when I can't sleep. I have always wanted to know where I consume the most electricity in my home. Without going into details, I know I'm a power hog, but I've always thought it would be nice to know how much it costs to keep my hot tub heated at 100 degrees as opposed to 98 degrees. Having the power company control my thermostat remotely just doesn't work for me since it is occupied most of the day. Plus, AC is just one component to my overall consumption. Needless to say, Google's announcement today of their new power meter initiative gets me excited! Read more here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.html
http://www.google.org/powermeter/