The terrible night that led to the horrible day... or Day 8

When I was packing up my stuff for the night, I was greeted by this little critter.

Yes, that is a centipede. Scared the crap out of me! It was just a few feet away from where I was sitting. I am sure that the irrigation earlier in the evening helped it find its way into the house. I ended up spending the next 10 minutes trying to capture the little beast so it wouldn't find its way into anyone's bedroom. Once I had it captured, I didn't know what to do with it, so I kindly left it in a container on the kitchen counter for everyone else to find in the morning. The boys were thrilled, the girls freaked out. I thought it was only fair that I gave everyone else a chance to see it, too. It was strange that not everyone appreciated my kind gesture. :-) I finally got to bed around 12:30 that night.

The next morning I was awakened a little too early for my liking. I ended up falling asleep accidentally when I was putting V down for her first nap. Big mistake. It seems that the kids were a little lot mischievous that day. While I was asleep, the kids successfully ruined, RUINED my parents back yard. Yep, the yard where we are supposed to have the open house at in a few days. I was absolutely furious!

It all started the night before when my parents were getting irrigation. They thought it would be fun for the kids to play in it. I knew better, so that's why I had taken them to the park. I told the kids they were not allowed to play in the irrigation. Anyway, while I was asleep, smart little Jayke thought it would be fun to take grandma up on her offer, even though I had told him no. He found the only place in the yard that still had water and took all his siblings (except V) and started to "play". Not only did they play in the water, they kept walking and played in the mud and continued on into the newly planted grass, the grass that was only a few inches tall. When I finally woke up, I was a little scared since I couldn't hear my kids playing inside the house. I went to look for them and found them stomping around, completely covered in mud, right in the middle of the back yard.

At that moment, I completely lost it and was not a kind, patient, loving mother. I yelled and I yelled a lot. I made the kids clean themselves off with the hose and sent them inside while I tried to repair some of the damage.

The damage covered basically the entire back section of the yard. If you can't really see in that picture, here is another one a little closer.

There was not a single piece of grass that could be saved in that area and there was no time to replant it before the weekend.

I did what any rational, sane mother would do. I made the kids work. I made them clean the entire house. My mom helped give the kids chores to do and I stood over them nitpicking until I couldn't stand it anymore, which was a very, very long time. I was ready to pack up and go home that instant. If I had known what else they did that day, I actually would have left. The only thing that kept me there was the fact that Ashley and her kids were on their way and we needed to say hi to them.

After Ashley came and unpacked all of her stuff, we ended up staying up until midnight canning apricot raspberry jam and cutting up fruits and veggies for the next day and just talking like family does when they finally get to see each other again. Thankfully the kids had mopped the floor earlier in the day because by the time the night was over, V had discovered that she loved licking the tile floor. :-)

"Vacation" Day 7

Day 7 was difficult for me. I was really missing Ryan. I had gone to bed the night before crying because I didn't have Ryan around to hug me. I just melt like butter and all my worries just disappear when he hugs me. After not having that for an entire week, I was starting to go crazy. I was also missing my bed and a sleeping baby and a routine for the kids. V won't sleep without her swing. I didn't realize until we were gone how much I had depended on her swing. She takes most all of her naps in her swing. Without it, her naps have been maybe 15 minutes each. I have resorted to putting her in her carseat and driving around just to get her to sleep well for any length of time. I was getting cabin fever pretty bad by this point. The kids were driving me crazy inside the house, even though they were outside most of the time. I couldn't handle them coming inside for even a few minutes. I knew it was time for us to get out of the house for the day.

Since we had already gone to Holbrook, we decided to go the other direction and do things near Show Low. After visiting Show Low's webpage and learning about what a "wonderful" place Pintail Lake was, we decided to try it out. We should have realized that it was a sign of things to come when we saw that the entire parking area was empty. We started down the trail and stopped to look at the map.

I liked that it was a nice short trip, since it was a little warm and the only shade was a bunch of juniper trees no taller than a house. The walk was so exciting that the kids decided to play "I spy" and it sounded just like the movie "Brother Bear". I spy something brown. A tree. I spy something round. A rock. I spy something tan. A rock. I spy something... A rock. I spy a vertical log. A tree. I spy... A rock. It was a blast. ;-) You can tell from the picture below that there was not much to look at.

 Once we got to the lake, we quickly saw why the parking lot was empty. There was no lake. Even with it being a reclaimed water lake, there was no water. Do the people of Show Low not use enough water to even make a little pond? We were disappointed obviously, and were very thankful that we didn't have to walk very far to see nothing. The area behind the kids in the picture was supposed to be the lake. It didn't even look wet.

We decided to try another spot to hopefully find somewhere decent to play outdoors. Our next option was Scott's Reservoir. This one turned out to be a much better option. There was actually water. At first we went to a side with only a little access to the water. It was pretty, but not what we were looking for.

There were two really tall dead trees out in the middle of the water. The kids thought they were a little interesting.

The walk down to the lake on this side was pretty steep and rocky. Aimee realized halfway through why I told her to take off her water shoes and put on her tennis shoes. As she was walking over a rock, her shoes slipped and put her face first on the rocky ground. She got a few bruises and scrapes from it. She admitted at that point that she should have listened to me earlier.

We wanted to get to the other side of the lake, so we got back to the car and drove down the other road to get a little closer. This side actually had a walking trail along the edge of the lake. When we got to the area I wanted, the kids went to the lake to see what they could see.

 

Mostly they found cloudy brown water, but at the edge they found a bunch of baby frogs. It took a minute to catch them because they were surprisingly very fast and could jump quite far. The boys finally caught some and were thrilled.

Once again, V was quite happy in the Moby and was blowing raspberries the entire time! I did have to tuck a blanket around her legs because I forgot to put sunblock on her.

And again, Aimee realized that it is important to listen to and obey her mom. She thought it would be okay if she didn't use the potty before we left. She quickly realized her mistake when she needed to go "right now" and there was nowhere to go. We had to walk back to the parking area and use the outhouse, which completely terrified her being able to see 6 feet down into piles of %*#@. Outhouses are nasty!

That evening, we went to the park for family night. We couldn't have chosen a more perfect way to end the evening. The boys played racquetball while the girls played on the playground equipment. Kate did get a turn to hit the ball, but didn't actually play a game.

The girls found a 2-seater dinosaur to play on. They loved it!

 V, being the girl she is, always gives the best facial expressions.

I can just see her asking me, "Mom, don't you think you have enough pictures yet?" Never, dear. I could never have enough pictures of my sweet kiddos.

She even sat up for the first time unassisted for more than 1/2 a second while we were at the park. It was like a whole 3 seconds. :-)

You can tell she's already starting on her way down by the time the camera finally took the picture.

 And there she goes!

She was getting tired of the moist grass, so I put her on the blanket to try sitting a few more times. But every time just looked like this.

 Once the sun went down, we decided to go back to my parents so we could go to bed. At the top of their road, the kids asked if they could get out and walk. At first I said no, but then realized it might help wear them out a little before bed, so I said yes-as long as they beat me in the van. So J, E, and K all scrambled out of the van and started running. J didn't have any shoes on and credits his speed to being barefoot. They all beat the van, but only because I stopped several times to take pictures of them running.

 They were all glad to arrive before me since I told them they owed me a treat if I got there before them.

Even thought the day had a rough start, we were still able to enjoy the time we had.

"Vacation" day 6

When my grandma passed an year and a half ago, we helped clean out her house. Kate found on old crochet hook and got permission to keep it. My grandma used to crochet the most beautiful and intricate projects. She crocheted tons of doilies, table runners, baby blankets, etc. She always had multiple crochet projects going on at once and many of them would take months or years to complete. So, you can understand why receiving grandma's crochet hook was such a big deal to Miss Kate. Ever since then she has been asking me to teach her to crochet. Sadly, I am probably the only girl in my family that did not learn to crochet, so I could never teach her. I checked out books from the library, searched the internet for instructions and videos, but I just couldn't catch on. This is probably the one skill that I am completely unable to teach myself.

Knowing I was going to visit my mom for a couple weeks, I figured it would be a great time for Kate and I to learn to crochet. Boy was I right! We decided that learning to crochet was the perfect low-key activity for our first Sunday at my parents' house.

My mom helped Kate crochet a square, just to get practice of where to put the hook and how to hold the yarn. It was a little difficult teaching her because she is left-handed, but we decided to teach her to do it right handed so it would be easier for her to do it in the future without having to flip everything around to make it left handed.

It took me a while to get the hang of it and I felt really clumsy with my hands, but by the time I went to bed Sunday night (and I won't admit what time it was) I had crocheted an entire hat.Yeah there are a few mistakes in the beginning, but I was not about to pull the stitches out just to fix them. I'll just deal with them. Of course I didn't show my face in the picture. I was tired and my face definitely showed it!

I still think it looks cuter on a little babe, even if it is way too big!

"Vacation" day 4 and 5

On day 4, we actually had Grandma home from work. It was nice actually getting to see her and hang out with her. We spent most of our time planning for Deanna and Luiz's open house. We went shopping for all the decorations and food. We kept texting and talking to Deanna, because they ended up with a broken thermostat on their car in the middle of New Mexico. I really don't mean the middle, I mean halfway between the Texas border and Albuquerque. Yep, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing for a hundred miles, middle of New Mexico. They were supposed to arrive here around dinner time and they still weren't here by 12:30 when I went to bed. Poor guys, but they did make it at last, sneaking in during the wee hours of the morning. We were all so glad to see them!

Day 5 was spent getting the yard ready for the open house and lots of cooking. The kids played with Luiz much of the day. They were all excited to have a new uncle. I saw him more than once carrying one of my kids on his shoulders around the yard. The kids were in love. 

The kids found a garden cart and a hill and decided that they could make the two work together. The handle was a little bent, so the younger kids had a hard time steering, but the boys figured it out pretty quickly. 

When Kate tried steering, she ended up going right off the edge from the top and went straight into the concrete block sitting there. The picture below gives a better view of the side. Thankfully she didn't fly out of the cart and was only left with a few scratches on her knee when she slid in the cart during impact. Also, thankfully she was the only one in the cart at the time, so there weren't extra bodies to shift the balance or bonk heads with.

The kids still had a blast with it until the wheel finally gave out on them and they couldn't use it anymore.

V was missing her dad dearly that day and when I grabbed my phone to check a message, she started furiously kicking her legs and grabbing my phone to slobber kisses all over it. She now correlates my phone with daddy since we have been video conferencing him a few times. He took a break from his studying so he could talk to his little munchkin and she was thrilled! I've never seen such big smiles come from her all at once before. I asked Ryan to take a video of him talking to her so I could play it for her when she wanted to see her daddy again. Of course she loved it and thought she was actually talking to him.

We ended up having a family dinner that night out on the patio. The wind was a little gusty, blowing plates and cups across the yard, but by 7pm the wind died down and the evening was very enjoyable.

Biopsy results are in...

And everything is cancer-free! The spot on my nose just showed an ulceration, one on my head was a benign mole, and the other three spots on my old scar were seborrheic keratoses. Hooray!

"Vacation" day 3

On the third day, I decided to head North of town to let the kids see what exciting things we could find. We were curious to see how close we could come to the new windmills. We found a gravel road just a few miles out of town that brought us within 1/4 mile of a few of them. The kids thought they were pretty cool, but didn't appreciate the wind very much. I guess it's obvious why they chose the Snowflake area to put all these windmills. The wind seriously never stops.

While we were way out there, I wanted to show the kids a cattle guard, since they always ask about them when we drive over them but have never actually seen one up close. I really just did it because I wanted to see if Aimee would actually walk over it. She did with a little help. I'm proud of her for not freaking out over it. 

After we finished looking at the windmills and walking over the cattle guard, I took the kids to Holbrook to see the teepee motel that was the inspiration for the traffic cone motel in the movie Cars. The kids thought is was great. Jayke wouldn't put his camera down and wanted to take pictures of EVERYTHING! 

They even had old cars in parked in front of all the different "rooms". Jayke wanted to take pictures of them so he could show Ryan that there were a lot of cars that needed Ryan to work on them.

Jayke wanted to have his picture taken in front of one all by himself. He actually wanted me to take pictures of him in front of each of them, but I wasn't going for that. 

When we pulled out of the wigwam hotel, we were staring at this tire shop that was "just like the one in Cars" so we took a picture of it, too. Jayke also said he saw Doc's "office", but I was driving and couldn't pull over to take a picture. 

We also saw the dinosaur statues, which the kids thought were awesome.

When we were leaving town, Jayke spotted a butte that looked "exactly" like the one in Cars. Starting to sound familiar, isn't it?

So I humored him and pulled off the side of the road to take a picture, just for him.

After we got back to Snowflake, I took the kids down to see the temple.

Jayke was super excited about it and wanted everyone to have their own picture with it. When the other kids realized how small it was and that it didn't have a visitor's center, they quickly lost interest.

We went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house to eat lunch and so I could take a (much needed) nap with V while the other kids watched a movie. 

With me a little more rested, I decided to let the kids stay up until it was dark. We played a little peek-a-boo, which brought about many giggles.

We spent the evening outside in the yard. Kate (did) and Aimee tried climbing the apple trees.

I just love the look on Aimee's face.

Kate thought climbing the tree was pretty awesome.

We rocked on the porch.

We sat in the grass, which was apparently a new experience for V.

An experience that she wasn't very fond of.

She was especially not fond of it this way. 

But this way wasn't so bad.

And this way was even better.

There were lots of games of tag with the cousins.

And even a little dancing...until mom got the camera out...and then there was just bashfulness.

But then Grandpa decided to give it a try.

And then it was okay to dance for the camera.

And then we rested with baby on lap

and conversations with Grandpa

in the cool evening breeze until Grandma came home from work. It was a good day.