When It Comes to KFC Chicken Skin, I am a Vulture-Ninja

OK so maybe some of you know that I tend to sneak cake for breakfast when the opportunity arises, hiding it from my kids, because really chocolate cake goes best with coffee in the morning for several reasons, like feeling in total control of my life, like a rebel, and like I am gonna have a decent BM before 11 am. Now granted I don't do this often, as I am sure the kids would catch on and also I would no longer fit into my beloved PJ's. But nonetheless, eating chocolate cake in the mornings is one of my most favorite vices in life.

Now I must confess to another one. Fried chicken, KFC to be exact. Well, that's not entirely accurate. It's the chicken skin. Yes. You read that right, I have a sick obsession with eating KFC chicken skin.

Normally I would write out this whole play-by-play about how I have to hover over my kids like a dirty vulture and use ninja-like skills to steal the skin off my kids' KFC in order to eat it and satiate my need for ample amounts of crunchy, secretly-seasoned grease and fat. But, the problem is, no one else in the family wants it, likes it, or even cares. What fun is that? Hmmm...maybe I shouldn't be complaining....

People, I buy KFC just to eat the skin, and there is no challenging pursuit thrown in front of me to thwart me from my goal! At best I get from hubby, "are you gonna eat all that skin?" to which I say, "uh, yeah..." and then, I eat it.

See, everyone loves chocolate cake. And it makes sense that I have to sneak around, eating it in stealth mode, exerting my "because I can!" authority at 9 in the morning. But, who's gonna stop me from eating all that chicken skin, especially when the kids have no idea it's bad for you to eat copious amounts of fried chicken skin, 'cause I have failed to mention that to them? I mean, my kids eat great, they have fruit for snacks, they love their veggies, and can spout off what each vegetable does for you, and they actually stop eating when they are full, and don't like consuming a lot of sugar. I'm not lying here. I know, I have lied in the past, or at least stretched the truth, but I am so serious. They like being healthy, and I KNOW if I told them that eating only the skin was unhealthy, they would get on me about peeling it and eating it off of everyone's chicken.

I know this is a nasty habit and that it's bad for me. I know that years of only eating the skin on a weekly basis would be grounds for a quadruplazillion bipasses before age 50, and I know there is probably nothing less attractive than a mom salivating over a plate of mangled, fried chicken skin. But, that's me, and I am letting the whole world know. Please don't tell my kids. Locking myself in the bathroom and eating chicken skin while sitting on the toilet is even making me gag...

We Have A Winner!

WOOOHOOOO! And the winner of the book by Dr. Lara Zibners, according to the trusty (not rusty) Random Number Generator, is wendiwinn! And I know, she will like that!

So ya'll, wendiwinn likes a lot of cool stuff (check her blog) and now, she will know everything there is to know about what to do when your kid swallows batteries or thumbtacks and stuff like that! Yes!

Sorry if you did not win, like she did, but come back next month for a giveaway that will bring ambiance and prettiness to your home! Oh, and to read, and comment, and stuff...

Peace out, ya'all!

Tuesday Twitters

I am fearful that the real Twitters are taking up too much of my time, but happy none of that nonsense ends up here...

By the way, participate in that poll over there to the left, will ya? I am afraid the blog is dying.

I colored my hair last night, and I somehow managed to miss the entire patch of new gray coming in just underneath where I part my hair. Sigh.

You know all those scary spider pix I post? Well guess what. My son had one ON HIS FACE! He was IN A POOL! With that big scary spider ON HIS FACE. Can you tell I am not over this yet?

The Folgers tin I have claims it makes 90 cups of coffee; I go through one a week. Should I be concerned, or do most people drink really really, really REALLY weak coffee?

Hey, have you all entered my giveaway, over there, on the right? It's over tomorrow, and you need to know if it's worth an ER visit when your kid swallows $1.50 worth of pennies and a thumb tack! Oh, and next month I will be doing a giveaway for this nifty kitchen furniture site! Happy Happy Joy Joy!

My son walks around, trying to extract DNA from everything. Yeah, he's not quite sure what that means or what he's doing, but hey, at least he's trying!

He also wants to be a Beat Box master. This bird is his inspiration:


And my daughter draws pictures of zombies and writes her name backwards:

Nice teeth huh? I have awesome kids.

Poop, the Time Shifter and Pause Maker

So just when I think I don't have to talk about poop anymore.

I do.

I am sorry. I guess it's just that season of life; poop has anchored itself into every corner of our life, we can't wash it out, get rid of the smell, make it go away...

My kids of course learned to poop in the toilet, think the word poop is funny when made into a constipated word...wait, I mean compound word, like poophead, poopyhead, and poo-poohead...

But now they use poop as a way to manipulate time and activities. And how can I argue if they have to poop? Because really, now, they have to poop whenever they are:

-emptying the dishwasher
-doing their homework
-cleaning their room
-need their haircut
-they have to eat their dinner
-need to pick up the living room
-doing whatever is not what they want to be doing.

And the amazing thing is, they actually DO poop! It 's amazing! Like I just said! It doesn't matter what time of day! If they are doing something they don't want to be doing, they just go in the bathroom and poop. I don't know about you, but I would give almost anything for plumbing like that!

So my dilemma is, when they suddenly jump up in the middle of a chore and scream, "I need to poop!" do I call their "bluff" and make them hold it? Is that multiplication problem important enough to calculate immediately? Do I really need the dishwasher emptied in full this very second? Does it matter if their chicken gets cold and rubbery? Will their hair grow even longer on that one uncut side, making it even harder for me to cut with the garden shears?

And I say all of this because, they will poop for a half hour. No reading materials, no sign of a struggle, just sort of letting it all drop at the most leisurely rate possible to avoid their responsibilities. Now, I KNOW for a fact the boy can hold it. If you read this post, you know that when it comes down to it, my son can hold it in like a steel trap. And I know that if you push too much that causes problems, and I don't want them to have any sort of problems, plumbing-wise or mentally, because I am screaming at them to poop faster every 30 seconds, ya know?

It's just interesting to me how they figured this out: "I am doing something I don't want to be doing, so to avoid it, I will void in the bathroom!" It's like, they DO hold it for the opportune time, then they weigh each scenario, deciding if this is THE activity to delay with a very necessary bodily function, and once they make the decision, they take full advantage of it.

Since I force my son to read for about 20 minutes every day, I am thinking of making him take a book in with him. But see he hates to read (so sad) and what if that makes him never want to poop? Then I have two issues to deal with! I have seen my daughter take newspaper in with her...but then she might be in there even longer, and then with her I am making her read less? I don't know...

Then I thought about maybe putting in a timer, or taking all the lightbulbs out, or making the toilet seat really cold. See? You just can't ruin potty time, the ramifications are too big.

So I am not really sure what I am trying to say with this post, except that I feel like my kids have won this time; they have backed me into a corner and found their OWN escape from life in the toilet, as I have, many a time. Except I am not pooping, I am crying. Or eating cookies. Or plucking my eyebrows. Or taking a nap. Did any of you escape to the bathroom while reading this? Yeah, I don't blame you...

Here's a Nifty Book Review and Giveaway!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED!

So many of you might realize from reading my posts that I am a bit of a worry-wort, and I am pretty sure that germs, rabid bats, and the like are out to get me and/or my family. You may also know that I carry around copious amounts of hand sanitizer, using 3 ounces on just one outing, and I will spray you with Lysol if you sneeze in my direction, because I am pretty sure you have H1N1. Well, this awesomely paranoid behavior didn't develop overnight, it all started when I had kids.

It was actually worse, if you can imagine, right after I gave birth. And I spent a TON of time calling the triage nurses on Friday nights or early morning for such things as:

-describing in detail Jacob's circumcision and umbilical stump

-a pinpoint spot of red in his diaper

-that weird rash he just developed

-wondering if his feet were too sweaty

- a fever of 99.9

-crying when he wouldn't let me give him his antibiotics with the syringe

-that weird rash he just developed

-the number to the CDC to ask about vaccinations conspiracies

-how much Tylenol to give him, because I didn't believe what the bottle said

-wondering if I should change his poopy diaper before running him to the ER because he went head-first into the rounded corner of our wall and was bleeding from his nose and lip.

-wondering if he needed to go to the ER because he hit his head on the bed and split his forehead a tiny bit, even though it wasn't bleeding...

-that weird rash he just developed...

Then I had Audrey and I was calling:

-because she was making funny sounds when she breathed

-because she had yet ANOTHER rash I had never seen on Jacob

-when she had a gookey eye and I wanted to know if breast milk would take it away like the internet said

-911 when Jacob fell on her and she then passed out in my arms

-Poison control because she swallowed a red berry

-because she ate our dog's poop

-my friend and freaking out, while at the doc office, because Audrey puked up blood after being sick for two days and was admitted with the Rotovirus

And then of course:

-that whole ordeal with Jacob's lump, which you can read about here.

Basically, I am no different than many moms who torture the nurses and freak out about anything that happens between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am. If only, if only, I had had this book.

Lara Zibners, MD, wrote a book for moms just like me, or for women who are pregnant and getting ready to be a mom, but have no flippin' clue what to expect. The book is called, "If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Ok". Don't think after reading it, though, that I let my kids sprinkle some salt on it and have it as a snack, but, if they did, I wouldn't worry so much now...

Dr. Zibners is an emergency room pediatrician, and a former assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Mount Sinai, and she has seen it all. She writes in a light-hearted, humorous tone as she prepares you to use her book as a tool and unpacks your newborn baby, describing each part from head to toe, inside and out, and the "anomalies" that accompany baby, that often cause unnecessary freak-outs. She provides prevention strategies and also gives you guidance and assurance as you make decisions regarding those true "emergency" situations, and helps to prepare you for ER visits and medical exams/tests that might pop up. This is a great "how to respond" book for any stage of mommyhood, but man, an even GREATER gift for those women who have no idea what to expect! Here is the first paragraph of her introduction, a tiny taste of what to expect, should you WIN this fantastic book:

"Are you the kind of parent who panics every time your kid hits his head or wipes away a drop of snot? Or are you the parent handing a hemophiliac four-year-old a box cutter? Maybe you don't actually have any kids and just like dropping fascinating tidbits of information at dinner parties. Whatever the case, this book has got something for you. What would happen if your child ate the decorative pebbles in the fish tank? Actually, probably nothing. But a teaspoon of what liquid lurking in your medicine cabinet could kill a room full of toddlers? How do you know if a kid is dehydrated or not? Sick with pneumonia or just a cold? Has appendicitis or just a belly ache?

This book is not about the basics of child care such as bathing, diapering, and feeding. There are many wonderful books out there that already cover these topics. Instead, this book is a regurgitation, if you will, of all the midnight conversations I've had with stressed out and anxious parents. As a pediatrician with specialized training in pediatric emergency medicine, I have experience in treating ill and injured kids. It's what I love to do. However, somewhere along the way I started thinking, 'Hey there should be a book about this.' "

Yes, and had I had this book, I would have had two less ER visits, one less hospital admittance, avoided a disastrous CT scan, less nurses yelling at me, and a lot more sleep!

SO...here's how to win this fantabulous book:

1. Leave me a comment, with a safe way to contact you, about why you want this book.

For EXTRA entries:

2. Tweet this giveaway, and come back here leaving a separate comment with the link for your tweet.

3. Blog about this giveaway, come back here and leave me a link to the post.

I will choose the winner using the Random Number Generator on July 30th, 2009, at 12 pm.

I hope you win! And by you I mean you, of course.

Tuesday Twitters

So like, last week I actually joined the REAL Twitter under the duress of extreme peer pressure from friends (GASP!). I feel all weird (as in, weird). Don't follow me (or follow, no pressure). You will find none of these tweets on there (they are invisible). On the REAL Twitter, I just say weird things like Nar Nar, Flometer and I bother people, like Conan O'Brien (I am embarrassed, not really). Sigh.

It could be because I have given up my gourmet lattes, and I am now severely addicted to pre-ground, grocery store bought coffee that has enough caffeine to keep Dracula awake in the day. Any of my accomplished, palate-savvy coffee friends would fall over in shock at my need for this stale, awkwardly robust "Colombian" roast, but truly all I want to drink is this silly coffee, all day long, with lots of creamer. COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE!

Creamer has a coal-tar derivative.

Yum.

Do you know you can light it on fire? (home school science project!)

My daughter is really into watching Respector Gadget...you have heard of that, right? No? Well, ok...Inspector Gadget. We correct her all the time, it doesn't work.

Jacob said this to Audge, "at the store if you see a girl on a book, with blonde hair, nice clothes and a guitar, that's Hanna Montana. Stay away from her! She is a teenager!" YES!!!!!!

You should see my nails, they are like, Lee Press-On long!

We found this on the ground outside:

Audrey carried it until it stuck its little sucker stabber into her flesh! I had to rip it off of her! She is fine. She wanted to keep carrying it, but I insisted on her holding the bark instead. I dumped an entire bottle of hand sanitizer on her hand. She is fine.

My camera is AWESOME!

nasw. That was for winn...

Then, we found this:

Yes it was dead. It's a Cicada Killer Wasp. Kills the things that impaled my daughter's hand...Alaska has no such creatures...I washed my hands.

OH! OH! OH! and ya'all, I am contributing to this wonderful site now too! It's called, Oh! I Love That! and you need to check it out, become a follower, you'll love it!

Peace out!

I Am Done with Planes for the Year

Well I have to finish up with recording my experiences on the airplane. I have chronicled every flight and all the stuff that happens whilst in a metal tube flying billions of miles up in the air, something I still don't understand.

Truth must be told, and it is boring, but my kids are great on planes. You see me with my kids coming to sit next to you, and by the end of the flight, they make you want to have 8 of them yourself, cloned, cute as mine, and also great on planes. I don't even use Benedryl.

So what is interesting this time is, all I have to talk about is the crabby flight attendant (she didn't like how I stacked the meal trays and actually said, "shoot"), and almost dying because the plane was about to rip apart, 35,000 feet in the air with an outside temperature of -42 degrees Celsius (if you don't know, the big planes have little screens in the headrests that tell you that. Well, the temp/altitude, not that you're about to die).

We took another night flight, maybe some of you remember that my first night flight with the kids was a total disaster. On this one, however, the kids managed to sleep, even after being served Mexican/BBQ mystery meat and salad. By the way, I have had this same exact meal about 4 times now, and I am starting to like it.

I don't know HOW the kids figured out their Tetris-like positions and fell asleep so fast, but they did! It was amazing! I was able to put the middle tray down and prop my feet up on it, like I was in some yoga-inspired lounge chair. I at least knew this would help me avoid the dreaded DVT condition...I watched some show about parasites that ravage people's bodies, and at about 2 am the turbulence started.

Um, let me clarify, we were bouncing up and down faster and harder than virginal honeymooners (oohh that was bad sorry) and it lasted for at LEAST an hour and a half at that horrifying intensity. That part not fitting the simile....

So I was freaking myself out, because I ate the salad, and I wondered if I had given myself a lung fluke, like I was learning about on the show, and the turbulence was making my Mexican/BBQ mystery meat threaten a reappearance. Suddenly, the plane drops. Like drops nearly to the ground, or about 3 feet-ish.

I.am.not.kidding. Then...an alarm goes off...

I look over at my hubby like, "DO SOMETHING!" as this beeping continues. Why wasn't the captain coming over the PA saying, "haha it's ok everyone, you're not going to die! I'm just bored!" Why weren't the stewardesses offering more water? Why was my hubby just sitting there telling me, "we're fine, this is nothing." NOTHING? I now have a TBI and need to go to the ER immediately!

So the beeping keeps going, the guy behind me in the other aisle shoots back to me the same terrified look I have on my face. I strap my kids in, who are STILL SLEEPING. Amazing.

BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP! Over and over as I imagine the wing breaking off, the engines shutting down, fire in the cockpit...

I give the stewardess an, "I'm dying!" look and she staggers over and asks, "do you need a vomit bag?" I am all, "the beeps! The beeps! We're dying!" The guy is like, "what she said!"

So she leans over on his side, my husband still watching his show without a visible care in the world. After much searching and fretting, she discovers that the sleeping passenger next to him had an alarm in his bag. She wakes him up and he's all, "oh that's my alarm for work. Sorry." Yeah, sorry doesn't cut it, sleeping worker who has a beeping terror mechanism in his bag, boy!

The turbulence was relentless! Adrenaline was surging through my body and my heart was pounding as I counted back seat rows to the nearest exit, contemplated holding my seat cushion as a flotation device, and constructing the blankets into parachutes. Actually I prayed. A LOT.

The real calamity was, I was REALLY tired, and my kids were SLEEPING! I could have totally slept that whole flight, had not my body been jarred into geriatric submission for hours on end! What's going on that high up in the air anyway? Aren't we in space? No?

So when it was all said and done I grilled my husband, who claims he has experienced much worse many a time. He did say it was always on small planes, which I can understand, but 7 seats across, with bathrooms you can actually turn around in, THOSE planes, um...

And with that, I am done flying this year. This girl has seen and experienced waaaaaaaaaay too much adventure, and the hard ground under my feet is a.o.k.

Analyzing Psycho

I think I am gonna get all real on ya'all for a while. Like really real! My brain has all this junk in it, it's getting crowded and I am having weird dreams, like walking around on edges of cliffs and almost falling to my death...wait, maybe it's because I just did that for reals.

Maybe I need to just vent...I am at some sort of crossroads or change, or pivotal point, or something big and cliche like that...I did watch Mama Mia, which is not like me, but there was good reason to, and I actually liked it. Um...

See I took my big test, (sign language interpreting certification) recently, and I won't know for months if I passed (if I didn't, there is a big long journey ahead of me, too long for this post). But now I am no longer trying to reach a goal or study like I have for the past two years and suddenly because of that I feel empty. Even, do I dare say, irrelevant? GASP!

No, no no no no no and, no, I am not looking for sympathy (SOB!) it's just suddenly I find myself with waaaaaaaaay too much time on my hands (drowning in FB). Granted it is summer (I have a tan), and I don't have a job outside of the home (another long story) but man, a big part of my brain and heart just freed up (like when you clean up your Dell, ya know?). So now I gotta DO something (like that Britney song? You know what I am talking about?)!

To start with, I decided I am gonna get this little apartment in order. We live in about 600 sq feet living space...OK 900...and we are busting at the seams. You couldn't fit a Mini Cooper in my kitchen, let alone another skillet, and my downstairs bathroom screams, "strictly business ya'all!". Yet it is gonna take days to get this place organized. I want to use Flylady to help me. I should. She's fly.

Next I am panicking tremendously about school for my kids. I home school (a choice I make year-to-year), but I want to be like, Super Home School Hot Mom Chick Who Teaches Cool Stuff. This year that testing comes around, and I want my boy to be READY for it! I want to focus his studies around science because he is obsessed with it, and for my daughter, art. I want them to have great activities outside the home that don't run me ragged, because I am not a good soccer mom...though they play soccer. Hmmm...I want to be the Super Home School Hot Mom Chick Who Teaches Cool Stuff and Who Doesn't Run Around Town like a Balloon Losing Air. Yeah, that's good.

Mostly I want our lives to be organized. I know kids thrive in an environment that is structured, and with my hubby's schedule we need it to be so we can have great family time, like going to the pool, the zoos, or hanging out with our friends.

And I love my time with the people who live in my computer. I don't have TV so, I tell ya, when I want to sit in the morning and have my coffee, I have ALL kinds of people to hang out with and things to read, from devotions (which I need to do a LOT more of) to Tweets (oh man, did I just admit that? Is there truth serum in my coffee?).

Or maybe this is all because I just turned 35 and I am freaking out about it, because well let's face it I have never been 35 before. And in some ways I still feel 19. Well, a "my neck hurts in the mornings, will I EVER get rid of this cellulite, is that ANOTHER gray hair and WOAH my hands are reeeeeealy veiny!" kind of 19, anyway...and see at 19 you don't have to really do anything (though I was managing about 20 people older than me at the time, going to school, paying for my own car and preparing to get married) but sit around and lament things that don't exist. Now at 35, halfway to 70, I want to raise fantastic kids and be a joy to my hubby, but I also want to be relevant in my own way...

It's important for me to refocus and find some purpose. I want to serve again with my kids in a ministry, I want school to be exciting and fun this year, I want their life skills to explode, I want to have fun with my hubby, I truly want to get into shape since I have a free gym waiting for me everyday, I want to always be able to live in a small apartment if it works out that way. I want to be efficient, maybe even "green" and continue to feel 19 ten years from now.

My kids are growing up way too fast. And if I feel this empty just not having a test to study for I can't IMAGINE what it is gonna be like when they leave! I feel that tiny little "who am I?" phrase creeping in, even now, and I DON'T want that when we are empty-nesters. I think if I focus on serving others while not filling my plate to full capacity things will be ok, whatever the circumstances.

So think of this as a strange Tuesday Twitter, as I am still suffering from jet-lag and I recently went from drinking lattes to regular coffee, which has a TON more caffeine believe it or not, so that could be my problem in all reality. And oh yeah look at this!

and THIS!

Man, I love my new camera!

Peace out ya'all, thanks for reading this gloop all the way through if you did.

Making a Mountain out of a Mountain, Alaska Style

I am BACK ya'all!!

I am desperately missing morning coffee with my mom, all my friends and their kids, watching movies with my dad, and everything about the Alaska outdoors, especially since we were experiencing 75+ degree weather and cloudless skies!

If you have ever visited The Retired One, (she is dang fun-nay) she has a camera (with which she takes amazing pix) that I have been pining for, for like EVER. Yeah well, my dad got me a fantabuloso camera for my 35th bday (yeah, happy bday to me send me presents!) and so my bliss will now include some awesome photos, because if I can't capture life in a digital 3x5 I am not fully satisfied...

But today, I bring you the drama that can only be brewed by my family, which is actually fantastic because then I don't have to think about what to write. Gives my old brain a rest from being like, original and funny and witty and stuff...

OK so in the Last Frontier there is this popular mountain to climb called Flattop. See here it is, a pic from my awesome new camera:

OK so I could stop right there, but you all want the story I know...

So normally we just head out to the parking lot and look at the mountain, and the city,

and I take pictures like this:

and this satiates our need for adventure in the outdoors. However, my 8-year-old and 6-year-old begged and pleaded to climb "Mt Flattop" as they called it, again a popular tourist attraction and local recreational favorite. Did I mention it is an inactive volcano? Moving on...

The last time I climbed this mountain I was 17, and I remember it being a little bit of a trek, especially the last 30 feet or so, which is void of a trail and littered with lava rocks, many of which are not secure. Here, this is the FIRST wave of them, the last 30 feet of steep climbing looks a lot like this:

Now, for some perspective, look back at the mountain pic, and realize this pic shows that we are at about 1/3 from the top of that mountain, kinda in the middle of the mountain itself, tucked into the right of that middle angle...get what I am saying here?? And, for more perspective, at 17, in the middle of an unusually warm day in April, we slid down the snowy side, to avoid the perilous climb down...

Let's equate all of this now, shall we?

Family of 4 + two with no traction on their shoes + daughter who at this point freaks out + no way to climb out of the lava rocks easily + her being hit on the head by a falling rock the size of a tennis ball + a mom who could not get a footing, grabbing tufts of grass in order not to fall + husband, who is carrying crying, screaming daughter, and cannot help me + son who is monkeyboy climbing up without us + people around us walking up like it's STAIRS or something = OH SO MUCH FUN!

See, if you climb this mountain...

-Wear hiking boots, not your worn out aerobic shoes
-Free yourself of your liverpack so you don't get tangled up in it
-Be prepared to use your HANDS to hold on for dear life
-Put your new expensive camera in your hubby's backpack...
-You're probably sick like me if you're thinking about blogging about this if you live...
-Remember that although the woman with the cane got up and down with no problem, as did the little woman with the two year old on her hip, it is in fact still a FRIGGIN' MOUNTAIN!

So Audrey was screaming and crying and I was conjuring up a nice little panic attack of my own thinking, man, we are the WORST parents for doing this to our kids! Hubby managed to talk her into finishing the last 20 feet, especially since our son was peeking over the edge at us because he has already made his way to the top. In no way did the family, who was climbing down, with five kids under the age of 10, and the woman with the CANE, help us by talking about the lady they knew who DIED climbing Flattop, or their theories on whether or not Heaven existed. Note to those people...your choice of topic was BAD and sheesh, when faced with certain death, can you just HUMOR people around you and like, tell your five-year-old that Heaven does exist? If I could have grabbed her cane and throttled her I would have, but I was busy trying not to die...

After an hour and a half of climbing I am happy to say, we all made it!

Here are the kiddos, Jacob is elated and Audrey managed to smile for pictures and then turn into a shaking, sobbing mess afterwards screaming, "we are gonna die!" Sigh, this was supposed to be fun y'all...

I did manage these pix, at 3500 feet up (the actual climb is about half of that from the parking lot):

Imagine if you will, mild 70 degree weather, barely any wind and crisp clean air with these views...I love my state!

Now for the trek down...

This is what we saw:

I mean, what we DIDN'T see. In case I forgot to mention it, we're on a stinkin' MOUNTAIN, so from time to time clouds do roll in, and then you can't see anything off the edge where you are supposed to start climbing down, with a screaming daughter who declares every 15 seconds that we are gonna die...

So since my son and I have no traction on our shoes, and Audrey is screaming and staking out her little territory on the top since she REFUSED to climb down, we had to have my hubby coax her into climbing down, with her tucked between him and the rocks, while she crab-walked down, using hands and feet, with me behind her doing the same, and Jacob behind me, also crab-walking, and sliding into me because ya know that is SO fun to do to your mom who is having several panic attacks in a row! (wow, nice sentence!)

About the time we hit the second wave of lava rocks, Audrey decides that is the FUNNEST thing she has ever done, this is the GREATEST day of her life, and Jacob takes a turn for the worst...he needs to poop. Like, NOW!

We cannot veer off a trail, there is none, we are on jagged lava rocks, you can't run down, you can't hide behind a tree, there are people all around us, and he is SCREAMING at the top of his lungs, holding his bottom, "I AM GONNA POOP!" This goes on every 3 minutes, for 20 minutes. This is about as helpless as I have ever felt in my life, people.

With each attack I would hold his hand and help him breathe through the volcanic-like intestinal contractions, and meekly smile at the people walking/running past us. They were obviously trying to avoid us. Who wouldn't?

It took us about 45 minutes to get down, making the whole trip just under 4 hours. Jacob's spasms went away and he escaped a blow-out, Audrey was THRILLED she climbed a mountain, we were exhausted, and I was happy we all survived.

Thanks for the memories, Flattop. I shall never climb thee again!!

**note: the rock that hit Audrey ricocheted off of her, thanks to my hubby's quick reflexes to get her out of the way, and it didn't even produce a bump, God had His angels around us, as that could have been a disaster! She is fine, but that was a good reminder to always be careful when climbing rocks!

Tuesday Twitters

-Uhhhh, it's Thursday. Oh well!

-I climbed a mountain this week and three times I was sure I was gonna die, by sliding off the mountain, and dying.

-Jacob was sure he was gonna have an accident right in the lava rocks.

-I was sure I was gonna die. Again.

-Oh don't worry, I will elaborate on the mountain...there is soooooo much to say, since I lived.

-And, I have pictures of all of my travels, can't wait to share them!!

-And I got a fantastic date away with my hubby! I will not be blogging about that, but I will show you my dinner...

-No, I have no idea why Palin quit.

-No, I don't know her.

-No, I don't want to talk about it.

-Seriously, I don't.

-I dropped my beautiful scrabble tile pendant in the toilet. Yes I fished it out with my hand. It was an emergency!

-My kids displayed snippets of teenager behavior on this trip...I think I have aged 5 years as well.

-I am TAN! Most of you don't know me, so you wouldn't know that normally I am as white as a Cullen, so this tan thing is niiiiiiiiice!

-I was pretty sure I was gonna die on the airplane coming back home, too..I have never felt turbulence like that. My hubby thought I was insane...umm....yeah, blog post.

-While I was gone, many of my bloggy friends became addicted to the REAL Twitter...hmmm...I hate conforming.

-However, this Penguins of Madagascar cartoon is addicting! You betcha!