Mississippi

So, I feel that I have recovered sufficiently from my vacation, so I am finally getting around to a blog post about it. Most of you have either seen pictures of the trip and/or were there with me, but for the few of you who weren't, here are the highlights:

-Well, I thought I was going on a vacation with my Perkes family, but came to find out that this was actually a Wade-style family vacation, which means we go on vacation to work not play!  The way it worked out, I showed up the day that my parents were moving into their house, so I set up beds, installed a towel rack, cleaned windows, went grocery shopping, made dinners, set up a foosball table, raked the yard, pulled ivy off their tree, and a few other things.  It was not what I had planned on, but it did kind of make me wish I had a house and a yard with projects to work on, especially a beautiful old house like my parents.

-It wasn't all work.  My parents live within a block from the beach, so I went running twice along the beach, and we went to the beach twice and Tanner swam in the ocean for reals.  Well, swam for reals, not so much ocean for reals, I guess.  He stripped down naked on the beach, and I let him stay that way, and then when the water hit his toes and wasn't like the arctic water we've got here in Morro Bay, he went in up to his neck.  And the crazy boy even kept trying to get me to let go of his hand and let him do it himself.  I've already got close to drowning one of my babies, and since I didn't have Uncle Chris to save us, I held on to Tanner despite his confidence.  Here's another cute butt shot of him, in case you didn't get enough from the previous post.  Ethan and Carter also really enjoyed playing in the water since you can go out really far before it gets deep.

And then of course, there was Isaac, who was impressively good-natured about Tanner throwing sand at his face and digging up the sand we had already placed, and about Katie and I turning him into a mermaid while he wasn't paying attention.

-It was also fun to see my friend Chelsey, whom I haven't seen since Carter was one, so in three years.  It was fun to have our kids sit around the dinner table on the wraparound porch on a warm Mississippi night and tell silly jokes to each other. 

-On the one day that Cami, Katie, and I overlapped, we were able to have our traditional Easter picnic.  I was a little bummed that we did no egg rolling, but since there are possibly no hills anywhere in the entire city of Biloxi, I was okay.  We went to this neat little spot nearby on the back bay where there was a tree that puts all other trees to shame.  It was awesome.  And so, we did our king egg contest, egg salad sandwiches with a candy egg hidden in one (Ethan's), and an Easter egg hunt, in addition to all the great climbing that we did on the tree.  It was great. 

-Other than that, there was some game-playing, playground-playing, cousin-playing, and scratching mosquito bites.  And most of the rest of my time was spent keeping Tanner from messing with the dog, messing with Isaac's stuff, and scratching their newly finished beautiful wood floors. 

-Oh boy, and then there was getting back.  I've recounted my adventures enough, but they included spending four hours in the airport and on the plane only to be sent back to Grandma's because of an oil leak; Tanner setting of the fire alarm in the airport; and skidding in front of oncoming traffic and crashing my car.  This is never where you want to be seeing at a tow truck from:

My dear friend Jen asked me if I said a prayer before I started driving, and I hadn't; but I tell you what.  I sure did right after I crashed.  It was completely unreasonable that we drove away from this unharmed, and I felt very much protected, and relieved that I didn't kill all my kids and myself.

Oh, and Mississippi did not disappoint.  I got to have a real serious thunderstorm, just as I had hoped for.  It was one of those crazy storms that California will never live up to, and my kids slept right through it. 

Muddy Mamas

I don't even know where to start on this amazing weekend!!!  I had been consistantly thinking about, dreaming about, planning, obsessing over this weekend so much that going into it, I started to get worried that it wouldn't be all that I expected.  But that worry was totally unfounded.  It was awesome! 

The trip ended up being myself, Alissa, Karisa, and Alicia.  And boy were these girls fun. Even driving in LA traffic was fun.  I mean, I knew already I loved them, but if you haven't seen an Alissa unleashed and away from all responsibility, you have not lived!!  She was a riot.

So, Friday, we ate at restaurants with no kids on our laps, laughed lots, drove lots, and I talked them out of going dancing at a club, because I can jump over fire, but don't make me dance.  That's the scariest thing ever.

The day of the dash was great. I woke up early because I couldn't sleep; it was like Christmas morning.  We got our eyes all painted by Alissa and we got all geared up with our matching Muddy Mamas shirts designed by Karisa's husband Logan, and then we were off. 

My best attempt at a warrior face.  Mostly, I giggled.

Our hotel was close enough that we walked over to the race, which was a great warm-up, and got us super excited.

And then the race!!  We started our heat towards the back, which I now know was a bad idea because we were running really slow at first because of all the people (there were 700 people in just our heat).  So, after being annoyed at the first obstacle when I had to wait for the other people crawling over the tires, things started to clear out, and it got better.  I can't remember all the obstacles, but the obstacles really weren't that bad.  They were more of a break from running, so far as I saw it.  It was no problem when I climbed over the wall that I had seen in the pictures and been most worried about, and at that point, I knew I could do them all.  The last three obstacles were certainly the most fun.  There was this water obstacle that you were in the lake and had to get up onto these floating plastic cubes and then down again three times.  So, I submerged entirely so I could get enough spring to jump my short, weak-armed self onto them.  And then the fire was next, which looked super cool in pictures, and I thought I was doing it, how smart of them to get us soaking wet first. 

Then, the mud pit was last.

 I was really glad that we did basically all our running without being soaking wet and muddy, since it was a lot harder once wet and muddy.  And I worry a bit about my race in May because they are going to get us wet from almost the very beginning.   Anyway, after a little climb over a viking hat sand sculpture, I was done! (Notice the mud in my mouth) 

And they gave me a medal (and everyone else too) that I wore for the rest of the day.

And after it was all over, I was ready to do it all over again!!  If I hadn't had wet, muddy shoes, I would have!  I ended up finishing at 1398th out of 9700 people that ran it that day.  So, that was kinda a shock to me that I did that well actually because I felt like I wasn't running very fast and could have run faster.  So that was that!!  Oh yeah, and a reporter for the Californian took my picture and wrote my name down.  I didn't actually make the cut for the paper because he had a great picture of another girl jumping over fire.  Anyway, then my girls threw me into the "Warrior Wash" (the lake), and that was that!  It was great.  We passed out our free beer tokens to some random people, and ran back to the hotel (I was really cold by this point). 

The rest of the day was great.  We went shopping, watched Hunger Games, and went to a Burke Williams spa, which could be a whole other post itself.  I have never been to a place like that.  It was crazy.  Steam rooms that smelled like oranges, cold water with lemon and fruit at every turn, soothing music, quiet rooms, a one-hour massage.  I cannot even give it justice no matter how much I describe it.  It was awesome. 

And the next day, I woke up, ate breakfast, and got back in bed.  When does that ever happen?!?  And then we drove back that day, with a few stops for food and the like.  And I came home to a calm husband, a clean house, and happy as can be.  Thank you, thank you to Dylan for giving me this time, and to my girls who joined me!!!  I had such a blast!
      

While you wait...

It has been a crazy busy two weeks with lots of adventures, so I'm still recovering a bit, but while you wait for the details of our Mississippi trip, here is my favorite photo from the trip which you won't see on facebook.

Snow!

Yeah, that's right.  We Californians can do snow occasionally.  We had an awesome weekend trip up near Yosemite with our friends who have a cabin up there and hit the weather just right because we had such a pleasant snowy time!  We didn't end up making it up to actual Yosemite because of all the snow, but I will go back, and eventually make it there.  It's only been like 9 years that I've lived in California and never gone!  Anyway, we had so much fun sledding down the stair ramp that the dads made, throwing snowballs, drinking hot chocolate by the fire, and playing games.  I must admit I am happy to be warm again, but it was so fun!  Here are the highlights in photos (Yay Amy for taking pictures of an adventure for once!!)

Mom, a.k.a. Grease Monkey

As you have noticed, I have privatized my blog.  Once upon a time, when I was a dedicated journal writer, I wouldn't let Dylan read my journal.  Not because I had things I didn't want him to know about, just because I wanted to be able to write knowing he wasn't reading it.  In fact I would often read it to him anyway.  This is similar.  I don't expect perfect strangers to become stalkers of me and my children by reading and piecing together clues to our lives; I just am a bit more content knowing my audience.

LOVE

I got a girl's night out this week, AND a date with Dylan.  I am a lucky girl.  The highlight of the date was our trip to Castaways (the thrift store around the corner).  There was the inappropriate statue that Dylan convinced me to buy for Alissa as payment for babysitting.  And the pictures for sale for $.50 each.  I'm not talking about sweeping landscapes or mona lisas.  This was about 150 3"x 5" photos of random girls dressed up for prom, or a bearded man's trip to Tokyo in 1979.  Who buys that?  So, we each picked out photos for our "vacations" and Dylan's narration won.  My imagination was lost somewhere back when I was 5, after I wrote my crowning work, "O, The Family of the Banes".  Read it?  I've got it, if you haven't. 

LAUGH

Carter coming upstairs in the morning with socks on, and socks only.  Sorry no pictures, but it made me smile.

LEARN

I am supremely proud of myself for this one.  I installed the drive shaft on Dylan's '65 mustang during Tanner's nap.  And Dylan was not even home to ask for tips.  How cool is that?!  He asked me if I wanted to do it and told me how, and I gave him a "Yeah, right" look, but then thought about it, and did it. 

LITTLE LOATH

Hitting another snag on the entitlement process for our mini-storage.  The county changing the environmental impact determination and a series of neighbor complaints can't be good.  Someday we will stop pouring time and money into this thing, but unfortunately, that day is not today.

___

I didn't have any great pictures related to my post, but I do have some great pictures from our utah trip taken by my lovely sister Katie.  So, here they are: