I had the blues a couple days ago. I called my sweet momma and of course she was there for me. “Come over and we’ll go to lunch.” she said. She happily sat a Chick-fil-a with me and listened to me dump all of the lame frustrating stuff in my head.

Moms are great aren’t they.

Well, Emma has the blues today. I’m not sure why. She woke up a little sad about life. I even took her to the splash park and that didn’t cheer her up at all. She moped around and eventually took off her swimsuit, got dressed and sat under a tree for the remainder of our time there. I had no idea such a little person could have the blues for a whole day. Right now she is currently wrapping her arms around my neck. How nice to have a little cuddle. I’m going to finish this blog and see if she wants to play “Pony World” or “Movie Stars” (her latest fav) and try to be as good of a mom as my mom is to me.

Agg, I’m feeling a little bit crazy and there is one little boy that is the cause of it.
The truth is… I hate taking Isaac places. He has to be strapped down all the time. Watched all the time. He is not safe.

I had a new babysitter on Friday. I told her specifically to keep an eye on Isaac because he will escape. When we returned home she was brave enough to tell me that he had escaped and a neighbor had brought him back.

I’ve thought about putting Emma in swim lessons. I know she’d love it but the thought of sitting at a pool with Isaac seems absolutely impossible. He can hardly handle the 10 minute safety check at the pool. “Water! Water! I must be in the water!” He is constantly twisting and turning in my arms.

I went swimming 5 times this last week (what can I say, I didn’t have much else to do.) Isaac has turned up the craziness to notch 100. It is no where near relaxing to go to the pool. I usually leave completely exhausted. I have to keep 100% attention on Isaac at all times. Otherwise he is just not going to make it. I’ve even let him get stuck in the deep water to see if he’d learn is lesson. Nope. He loves it. He is way to comfortable in there. He loves to go under water… he just has no skills to get himself out. I swear he has drank half the pool. No amount of coughing and sputtering is going to knock sense into this boy.

I can’t even explain to you his craziness. Jump, jump, jump, jump. That is all he wants to do. Jump in the deep end, jump in the shallow end. He is all over the place. I look around and see no other child acting like him. Turn you back on him for 2 seconds and he’ll be under the water. I am serious. Can you understand me? He will scream, flail his arms, steal others toys, run and jump. Ahhh!!  He never stops.

Emma is really great at the pool. She loves her pink life jacket from costco and cruises around all by herself. At times she’ll want to play dolphins or mermaids. “Pretend you see a mermaid swimming by you.” I’ll give a small attempt “Ooh, look a mermaid!” and then run off to protect Isaac’s life. Emma then acts starved for attention. “Why are you playing so much with Isaac? You don’t love me.” and off she will go to sulk. I’ve tried to explain to her that I need to keep Isaac safe. She’ll just keep saying that I love Isaac more than her. Grrr…

On Saturday I had Jeremy come to the pool with us. Earlier that week he has said, “If I was a stay at home mom, I’d spend every day at the pool. That would be the life.” I looked at him and rolled my eyes. I am sure he was imagining me lounging by the side of pool, soaking up a ton of unhealthy sun and sipping on a lemon aid slushy.

“You just wait!”

Jer didn’t last 10 minutes. I made sure he had time all alone with Isaac and Emma just so he would know how if felt to handle the both of them. He looked at me franticly and motioned for me to come over and help. He couldn’t believe the things Isaac was doing. “How do we teach him that we have to hold him in the deep end or else he will drowned?”   “You figure it out and let me know.” He let Isaac go and the little boy sunk to the bottom. After a few short seconds he pulled him up. Isaac giggled and said “Momma, bubble!” He was so proud of himself for blowing a bubble under the water. We looked at each other and sighed. “It’s going to be a long summer.”

It is hard not to ask myself what have I done to the little guy? Why is he so crazy? What can I do to change this? Anyone who may think that it is me… I’d love for them to take him. Just for day. Lets see if they can survive!

So life… ya, it’s moving along.

S L O W L Y

But I guess that is a good thing. It’s important to enjoy each little moment I have with these cute little tikes… Right?

I’ve had a bit going on this week but as of 10:30 this morning it’s been pretty dead. I’ve done nothing but change from one pair of sweats to another. It is now 3:24 and I’m pretty sure I haven’t brushed my teeth today… oooh, gross. I better go do that…

Okay, so now that I have freshed up for you– here is a layout I made a few days ago of me and Jer’s latest adventure. There is this little canyon near our house and we’ve been dying to get up inside of it because of a massive granite buttress. It’s been calling my name. The hike and terrain are not child friendly so last Saturday we got a babysitter and headed up. Can I tell you… it was so gorgeous!!! I could scream with joy just thinking about it. It was the most perfect day and the canyon is so small there is rarely a hiker up there. We were All Alone!! How lovely. (Well, besides the lizards and gigantic ants.) The photos aren’t so good because I again forgot my camera and had to use Jer’s iphone. It is always hard to get cool pictures of us climbing because I’m suppose to be belaying. The rock was awesome and the climb was super tough. It left our finger tips feeling a bit raw. but still totally awesome. I want to go back again and perfect the climb. We will be heading back there some time to try the other side of the buttress too.

Check out the view of the valley down below. Super cool.

To some of my old faithful readers…

Do you remember when I wrote this post? and took a photo of the inside of my fridge. I think I must have started something because someone made this little quiz.

I think it is only 50% accurate, at least for me. I love to be adventurous, have many greedy bones and I am certainly not single. The money part is right on and I do try to be responsible.

My fridge does look very much like a college apartment fridge though.

What Your Fridge Says About You

You don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. There isn’t a greedy bone in your body.You are not careful with your money. In fact, you rarely think about how much you are spending.You don’t tend to be a very adventurous person, but you do surprise everyone now and then. You have a bit of a wild side. You try to be responsible, but you don’t always succeed. Your heart is in the right place though. You are likely single – and spending many nights alone at home.

What Do the Contents of Your Refrigerator Say About You?

Here is a picture I was trying to download the other day. It is kind of hard to see it but there are 5 staples under there… and here is the innocent looking guy that did it.

Jer was wondering the other day if maybe Chopper Dog was loosing some of his eye sight. He seems to be acting real dumb lately. He can’t seem to find dropped food on the ground as well. He’s been horrible at fetching sticks and now he’s plowed over Isaac. He actually plowed Emma over the other day too. She just wasn’t hurt… well, it did hurt hurt her. She flew about 3 feet but didn’t need stitches or anything.

*** *** ***

Our good friends invited us down to Lake Mead, Nevada for a water skiing trip. They have a nice house down there and a couple boats. We were sooo excited to go but then after Isaac fell and looked like Frankenstein we weren’t so sure we’d be able to go.

But, honestly guys, when it came down to it… who could pass up an awesome trip like that. Certainly not us.

Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car the whole trip… not one single picture except the few that Jeremy captured on his iphone. I’ll have to get him to email them to me because there is an awesome picture of me getting big air on the wakeboard. Woo hoo!

We were pretty happy that we ended up going. It turned out to be super easy keeping Isaac’s head dry (doc’s orders.) Despite all of his faults and dare devil activities Isaac does not desire to swim in strange, large bodies of water. He was totally content playing in the sand and riding in the boat. Actually all he wanted to do was drive the boat. Anyone surprised?

Overall it was super great. I even did a good job smothering everyone with sunscreen (which hasn’t been the case in the past– ie. Jeremy pink cameo looking back last summer, oops!)

The long drive was totally worth it!

I was totally bushed upon returning home. My whole body ached under the intense reaction of lactic acid and wiping out. I was looking forward to doing nothing on Monday except conquering the mounds of laundry, toys and bags piled on to my floor from the trip. That was going to be plenty for me.

But the truth is… I love my sister way to much. She has been struggling with hyperemesis and she’s come down to Utah to let my sweet mother cook for her. I have offered to help out with her kids as much as possible.

I had the chance to go to the Zoo and despite my aching body and dirty house I loaded up the kids (5 total) and met my Aunt (with 3 more kids) at the zoo. My aunt and I were both pretty nervous about the day. How in the world were we going to keep track of 8 children? (3 of which are quite challenging (Isaac being the worst.)) Although my nephew gave us a run for our money a few times. He wouldn’t even let me take his picture, little stinker!

With a double stroller and a rented wagon we trudged through the zoo seeing all the animals and keeping our eyes at all time on the children. We moved quickly and worked together as a team. We were so proud of ourselves. At the end we relaxed by the duck pond enjoying Popsicles and high-fiving each other upon the fact that we had no catastrophes nor lost any children. Gosh, it wasn’t as hard as we were expecting. We got up to leave and I looked around and said, “Where’s Katie?”

Oh, crap! we were soooo close to being successful… we split up and started the search party.

Luckily, she wasn’t too far and was being helped at the front desk by a nice lady. I guess we shouldn’t have high-fived until we had them all strapped down in their car seats.

Today has been a lot less crazy even though my house has been overflowing with children all day. I even mastered a few of the looming piles of laundry. Go me!

Is there anyone else out there who’s men are watching the LA/Celtic game tonight?? I should have planned a girls night out tonight. Dumm dee dum! There is way to much testosterone in this house!

I spent all afternoon trying to get some photos on my computer but to no avail. Something is up with my camera connections.

I have photos to share of Isaac’s head. Last night Jer called me and said “You better come home right now.”  I guess our dear sweet mongrel of a dog ran out the back door sweeping Isaac’s legs as he went. Isaac fell and popped open the back of his head on the stair or something. There are no eye witnesses but there was a ton of bleeding as a result.

I came home to hubby sitting on the couch with his head between his knees. He held things together until I got there but just telling be about the blood was enough to bring on the queasiness.

The end result -5 staples in the back of that round little head.

He’s fine. Already tearing up the house and wanting to ride his bike.

Now… what to do with my night?

This past week my computer has been running soooo ssslllloooowwww! I could hardly stand it. I would give up working on anything. Today I had my bestest bro come over and help me clean up my computer. You see, he’s a genus when it comes to computers. Woo hoo. Thanks Ryan. Everything is running so much more smoothly. I think my typing is even faster.

Now, on to our latest adventure… we when up to the mountains this weekend and stayed the night at my friends cabin. It was such a nice get away and we had a lovely hike on Saturday. There were still piles of snow but the warm sun was out and we could watch the winter world melt away before our eyes.

We hiked to Donut Falls. It’s a real nice family hike; a mellow trail, pretty scenery with a smash bang finish. The water fall actually falls through a hole in the rock. Super cool. It was hard to see the actual donut though because off all the snow.

I guess there are some moose that call the area home. We’ve seen them before but today we only saw their droppings. I think they must hike the trail whenever they are bored because it was obvious that they had been there -more than once. Isaac couldn’t help but point out all the piles. He’d point and say “Mama, poop.” In order to get a good idea of what he sounds like… try saying poop without opening your mouth. Let your lips flap just a little bit and you’ve got it. Yup, I just about got sick of hearing that. “Mama, poop.” “Yes, Isaac, I see another pile of Poop. Thanks for pointing it out!” I made sure to take a picture for your viewing pleasure.

You’re welcome.

Here’s a pretty hummingbird I captured. He kept humming around in the air making that fun whistling noise. He sat still just long enough for me to catch a picture.

We had such a nice time that I’m looking forward to our next adventure.

I’ve been working on a couple new template so stay tuned.