sundance, the happiest place on earth...

i try not to judge...

we're finally home from utah

we sat in the car for 16 hours yesterday
apparently there's a lot of sad saps that spend thanksgiving gambling their paychecks away in vegas

the word "dillweed" was used a lot by my darling dearest who did 14 of the 16 hours of driving
apparently "dillweed" is a swearword in boy world
it's right up there with "douchebag"
which is a major head scratcher to me, considering ninety percent of boy world can't say "tampon" or "sanitary napkin"

but at least we got to see uncle cody ("toady" if you're charlie) and aunt jj
and we played in the snow at sundance
and ate indian food one night
and turkey dinner the other two nights
and we've officially obtained a raincheck for the best korean food in provo
and to top it all off, i finally figured out eyeliner thanks to jj
(though it must be noted that one of the side effects of well applied eye liner
is an overly amorous husband for the next 24 hours...word to the wise)

okay, i'm off to tackle the mountain of clothes/food/debris that i emptied out of the car earlier
call 911 if i don't post in the next few days
and tell the operator i'm buried somewhere under the snowpants and baggies of crushed goldfish,
which happen to be under a weeks worth of soiled underpants and the kid's sleeping bags.

i went to bed at 1:30 in the morning...

what a day we had. there was laundry to do, banana bread to make (lots of brown bananas), clothes to fold and pack, clothes to fold and put away, dishes to wash, ice chests to clean out, hugs to give, baths to force on unwilling little bodies, potty breaks to be had...

and then we had to get to luke to little gym. luckily, a certain special cousin was able to go along and what a time those two had. and let me tell you, that lilly is a natural gymnast. and luke, well luke's a boy in a class full of girls - so mostly he spends his time run circles around them and slamming into things. sigh.

and after dropping lilly off, luke and i dropped off a bunch of donations at the thrift store and on a whim i decided to go inside and $1.80 later, i walked out with a huge planter (yes, a big ugly brass planter) full of lots and lots of "specialness"...like these two. they're eight or nine inches tall and hideous. but i knew with two or three coats of paint - they'd rock in a retro-baroque kind of way. i'm still debating on the yellow...maybe they need more pop. let me know what you think.

oh, and then there was the deep pit turkeys to get ready and the fire to build and burn down and then hyper kids to put to bed and more laundry to do and more clothes to fold and more clothes to pack and food to get ready and pie crusts to make and floors to vacuum and lots and lots of baking dishes to wash...

and then i went to bed...just to get up five hours later. good thing nick's driving. wish us luck.

oh, i had such a good day yesterday. busy, productive, a little bit cluttered around the edges - but good. and when it started to look like my life was not going to align to let me go watch the movie i really, really wanted to see (you know sandra bullock's my girl) and all my calls went unreturned and meetings got canceled...i took matters into my own hands and went to watch it yesterday morning. don't worry, i took my notepad and got a bunch of good ideas - so it was a work date of sorts - with myself. and then i got back and played with kids and cleaned house and argued with the ER billing department for the fifth time (they were much nicer) and got them and my insurance company to find common ground - it's funny that they're choosing to fight one of the few patients they have that has insurance...really good insurance that will pay 95% of their silly bills. silly, silly, silly. and personally, i don't like to be demeaned and belittled while being hassled with the threat of a collection agency. collections? really? after one billing period and five phone calls with the insurance company? hmmm. sounds like someone in the billing department was having a bad day/month/year. or someones to be more accurate. it's time to yank that collective twig/stick/branch out.

humph. today's going to be busy. we're doing laundry and packing up and heading to the grocery store to get food for the road. i've had a vision of roasted red pepper hummus spread over sliced ciabatta and topped with tomatoes with a sprinkle of pepper in my head for days now. that and peanut butter and jelly. you can't go wrong with peanut butter and jelly when you're on the road. okay, gotta go put my whites in the drier.

oh, and the turkey. the turkey has to be deep-pitted tonight. yippee.

one thousand and two clicks later...

and we're finally back from the beach
and mark and tina finally have their family foto for their christmas cards
(not this one)
more to come when i get around to editing them...
and cleaning off my desk...
and decluttering my brain...
and hosing down my children...
(i'm still finding sand everywhere after two baths and lots of shaking)

a little too heavy for such a sunny day?

just so you know...i rarely write things when i feel all charged up - but when i do, i wait a bit and publish them later so that i can go back, re-read, edit and whatnot without all that emotion fueling me. here's a little piece i wrote a while back in response to someone i love telling me for the thousandth time that i've "already screwed my kids up":

i've heard this sentiment a few times lately from a number of people:

"you have nothing to do with how your kids turn out. you have already screwed them up. and if you haven't, you will screw them up. don't fight it. nature's got everything, nuture's not nothing...and blah, blah, blah."

i find this offensive. and invariably i find this coming out of the mouth of older parents with grown or growing children who have struggled with various ups and downs - some induced by nurturing or lack thereof and some not.

so, essentially, i think this is a load of crock.

nick and i had done the whole "what happens if our kids do this or that or the other thing?"...as we should...because no matter how much we prepare them or how much we look out for them...bad friends, drugs, pregnancies...it can happen in the blink of an eye and i'm not willing to cloister my kids from the realities of such by refusing to cut the umbilical cord. what i am willing to do is set up healthy boundaries for myself and them, communicate about everything and when i say everything - i mean EVERYTHING. from sex to drugs to mental illness (oh, what a mixed bag of nuts we might have passed down to them)...we're going to be talking and talking and talking some more.

by saying screw-it-i-have-no-control-over-any-of-this, you walk away from your purpose as a parent - to teach kids everything they need to know, mold them a bit here and there depending on their individual strengths and weaknesses and then gently release them out into the wild at the appropriate age and time. and if something bad should happen, i will be there to help and pick up the pieces and support them. and while there will be a few moments of "what did we do wrong?" (how could you not), my children's ups and downs, highs and lows, achievements and failures - they don't define myself or my husband. their existence defines us.

i've read a lot of the books dr. lund has written and ironically gained the most insight on kids from his "how to raise a teenage porcupine" book. he goes through the different "types" of children...from compliant, to pleaser, to testers (my own terminalogy). and "the testers" are the ones that stood out the most for me. these are the kids that cannot simply be given a rule, or learn from others...they must experience it themselves. i thought this was interesting, from the eyes of a compliant observer (yes, i'm a combo - learn from mistakes around me, but also a major rule-follower)...and we all know i'm going to get a tester. and all i can do is set appropriate boundaries and talk a lot and hope that the testing of life can be kept to things that have minimal repercussions. but again, there are no promises in life or parenting. things happen. as the parent, i can be there trying to highlight the danger areas and if all else fails, to help pick up the pieces when the dust settles.

essentially, my parenting comes down to the philosophy of "stewarding". these kids have souls and little bodies and active minds. i am simply here to steward them towards adulthood because they belong to themselves. and if i take on every weakness or bad decision my children take on, i deny them the autonomy of being an independent person. of course, as i've already stated, i can definitely step in when i see a red flag - or even a yellow flag - but at some point, we all have to step back and realize that we grew up and they will grow up - good, bad, ugly and everything in between.

and for all the people that have consistently pushed this "screwing kids up" philosophy down the throats of everyone around them - i'm sorry. i'm sorry that your kids dissapointed you. i'm sorry that you didn't know where you ended and they began. i'm sorry that you may or may not have made all the best choices for your kids when they were growing up. i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry. but i refuse to take on the life philosophy that we all screw our kids up. listen, i know. bad parenting screws a person up. bad, bad parenting screwed me up for a long time. but i learned from it and i came out the other side and i'll be a better parent for it. and i'll take my lumps when they come and i'll keep trying to do my best."

so, as an afterthought - i still stand by what i wrote a few months ago. i will add for clarification's sake - because i tend to tiptoe too often around the big issues in life so as not to hurt feelings - that the people that have fallen back on this argument the most in my life, are the people who have made the worst choices in regards to their children and have the most to regret. this doesn't mean they didn't love them enough or do enough for them...just that they made the wrong choices at the absolute wrong times. let's be honest...there's a big difference between the parent with the type-a personality who over protects their kids and might use too much anti-bacterial soap and get their kids too involved in afterschool sports...then the parents who chose divorce, neglect, abuse and addiction over the mental/emotionl/physical well being of their children.

and i get it...i get it big time. life sucks sometimes. and horrible things happen and priorities get forgotten. but when the smoke clears and the chaos dies down and the regrets settle in - don't make yourself feel better by blanketing the rest of humanity with life philosophies that take away the merit of individual effort and the foresight to learn from those around them and choose better than you did. they aren't judging you, why the need to judge them?

Luke came into my office the other morning and with dramatic hand gestures he asked,

"what's your game plan today, mom?"

and before i could say anything, he proceeded to rush on,

"well, here's my game plan for the day - we're going to..."

tee-hee.

pee and poop cake...

so, while i was putting charlie down for her nap yesterday,
lukie pulled out my decorating tub full of sprinkles and cupcake liners and frosting,
and announced,
"we're going to make charlie a pee and poop cake for being such a big girl!"
(we're potty training around here...)

mostly, i think he did it for the copious amounts of batter that he planned on consuming
and to con me into making him a little "cake" along the way as well...

but ulterior motive aside, he was so excited to give it to her
and spent ten minutes putting every candle just so
and ten more minutes trying to convince his daddy that he should be the one to light them...

she was happy and excited and drank two sippies of milk with her slice
and promptly went to sleep and peed the bed.

well, at least we had cake.