Relay For Life

TEAM PARTNERS FOR PARADISE IN MEMORY OF JEFF ANDERSON

We participated in the Relay for Life in St. George. My fabulous cousin Melinda, with the help of my fabulous cousin, Bobby decided that it would be nice to establish a team in Jeff's honor. My girls wanted to run with the team. I was going to bake cookies or something - but this was before I was able to rejoin life. (I baked cookies again for the first time - from scratch - in October). So mostly I drove my kids down, and provided some pictures for their posters and the cute booth they made up. The theme they choose was Partners for Paradise. They had a cute island thing going. It would have been super awesome if the weather had chosen to follow the theme. It was sooo cold. And the wind blew non stop. In the end, I wimped out and went to sleep in Adele's nice warm condo. A few brave souls spent the night, and someone was on the track for at least one lap every hour for the entire 24 hours!

I am very excited about doing is again - and promise to participate more fully in some way next year, as I am now back at least among the walking wounded instead of the full on zombie I was at this event! Thanks to Melinda and Bobby - and thanks to all the other family who came out to support this event in Jeff's honor. The theme was Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back ... We have, we do, and we tried! Now we need to continue to do it so others can CELEBRATE, LIVE, WIN My mom forced me to take a picture as if I was actually participating. So there you go. In Jeff's sweat pants and everything. (FYI - this is the same "Hansen Stadium" track that I will probably mention in a future post - maybe about my courtship story ;))

Easter Campout

After a lot of internal debate about if we would continue camping this year, I decided I was strong enough, brave enough, and doggone it...pretty enough to do this. I had a lot of awesome help from some amazing friends (thanks Evan and Dave - not that they will ever read this because guys reading blogs is lame - no offense to guys reading this blog) we got the trailer locked and loaded and sitting in front of the house in the "just pull straight out and stay on the road position". Evan asked me repeatedly if I wanted to at least pull it around the block to get a feel for how the brakes worked and such. I declined. My plan - always go straight, never check the mirrors, just keep going - and never get in a position to BACK anywhere! (FYI - valid plan - totally worked!)

I posted this picture the morning we were getting ready to leave, with a caption of something like "Here is praying that there is a truck driving gene, and that I got it."

And just to be clear, that is not a mini pickup with a little trailer. That is a full size - jacked up - truck with like a 32 foot trailer (or something like that - I forget, and who cares, it is behind me - and I have a no backing policy)

The trip down (and back home) was fairly uneventful. Thus allowing us to have many more camping trips over the summer. However, the complete and overwhelming anxiety every time I pull out of the driveway never did go away. Maybe that is a built in safety mechanism that I should stop trying to medicate away. I did learn to back in to the driveway - and as far as I know, I never did have to back in public (like at a gas station), however, I did have to have a guy come out and watch me once just to make sure that I was clear, because it was a really tight parking lot. I chose my gas stations more carefully after that.

Really, almost the entire trip was uneventful, except for one unfortunate accident that Chad's friend had on one of the motorcycles and ended up with a mangled arm that had to be put back together surgically. I don't have pictures of that (you're welcome) so I will just share a few pictures from the camp out.

Even though I go to all the stress and anxiety of pulling that massive trailer down, my kids love to sleep in a tent. Well, this camping trip, sadly, was the last for our tent. By the last day of camp it was duct taped and caution taped together. (Lucky for us, I found one at a yard sale in May for $5!)

No particular reason for this picture except to say that Gage is a fashionista and I am mom of the year!

The obligatory "can we just go pick up the Easter Eggs, yet" picture.

Courtney with her super clean face from riding dirt bikes with a helmet. I will take the 5 o'clock shadow look though, because it means they are WEARING THEIR HELMETS!!

The dying of the Easter eggs.

The annual "Gathering of trash to make a THE GREATEST HUT EVER"

One happy camper. (Actually, I can't believe there was a picture of me taken that I don't completely hate. I refused to change clothes or brush my hair the entire weekend in protest of being forced to sleep in the wilderness.)

Easter camp would not be complete without collecting caterpillars that then crawl in the trailer and procreate for years to come on all the camping stuff!

When I got home, my awesome neighbors had "egged" my house!

We Have A TEEN!!

Courtney's bithday! YIKES!! Anyone know a good, all girl, boarding school?

Okay, mini melt down over, let's get down to business. I would say that life circumstances caused my lack of planning, but if we are being honest, I never plan a birthday party more than 3 days in advance. It is a personality flaw. (Probably my only one, so enjoy it!)

Courtney's birthday fell on a Sunday, and by the time I realized it, I had already planned my own party for Saturday, which left her Friday. Which was April Fool's Day. We already used that theme last year - so I didn't want to do that again. On Tuesday I finally made up some invitations for her to give to her friends, so on Wednesday I told her she really had to decide what we were doing. We tossed ideas back and forth and she finally decided on a "Cake Boss" theme.

We decided everyone should decorate their own cakes. Not sure what the point of that was - we weren't doing any kind of contest, it just sounded like a good idea. This is the point where a mom who was on her game would say - CUPCAKES, let's decorate cupcakes. But I am not that mom, I was going to bake 15 cakes! Luckily my friend/awesome neighbor took pity on me and volunteered to make half the cakes. Then we realized we didn't have the right pans. So after she made a quick trip to Wal-mart for me we spent Thursday baking. Then she was nice enough to come over at 8 p.m. that night so we could frost all 15. (I should tell her that helping me find therapy would be less time comsuming!)

So Friday was the day of the big party. I planned it from 5-9 so I could have all the kids gone by 10 and be in bed. (Honestly, have I always been this dumb?) It would appear that fasionably late has changed since I was a teen so the first girl arrived at 5 and then they SLOWLY trickled in until 7:30 (I am no Miss Manners - or ever prompt, but really?!?) I have been to quite a few neighborhood parties in the last 6 months so I had a ready repoiter of "Ice Breaker" games. I got the girls started on that and they played those (and seemed to have a good time with it) until everyone arrived.

At 7:30 we started the cake decorating. (I was afraid Courtney was going to scrap that idea - which would have involved me in a straight jacket being hauled away from our house.) The hours of baking and frosting were rewarded with about 15 minutes of some really "interesting" decorating. Good thing there wasn't a contest. Maybe I should say the theme was Cake Wrecks instead of Cake Boss.

Then Courtney's friends decided she needed to have a cake smashed in her face (yes, I am looking for new friends for her).

Whatever, I am a go with the flow kind of person (yeah, couldn't even say that with a straight face, but I am trying to be more like that.) So I let it happen, after I made them move off the cement and on to the grass for easier clean up!

When the smashing was done, I locked all the doors in the house and said no one was allowed back in until they used the hose to clean off (I said I am working on my "go with the flow" attitude, it isn't perfect yet.) Half the messy girls went to a neighbor/friend at the party's house to shower, the other half showered here.

That brings us to almost 9:00, party over, right? Yeah, not so much! Another friend/neighbor had let us borrow her Kinect and dance game (BTW - I am a super HOT dancer - if I knew how to load a video I would...not). The kids decided this would be a good time to do this. Just like the arriving, the departing was a trickling sort of affair starting a little after nine. When most of the guests were gone by just a little after 11 - I asked Courtney if maybe her dear friends that were still here needed a ride home. They did! Suprise. So I drove them home - to outer BFE and got to bed at about 11:55 (for the love).

It is all good. I am sure I am the coolest mom ever and it will pay off someday.