Gonna be a Good Day, oh yeah and I went on a Trip

So I couldn't sleep this morning because I'm throwing CTP his 5th birthday party today and I have so much to do. I just keep thinking and thinking about all I have to get done, plus a few other pressing issues like unreimbursed church receipts and parking tickets and MY BLOG! I lay there thinking that if I didn't get up and blog about our trip to Colorado right now, it wasn't going to happen anytime soon, so here I am blogging in the dark. Of course, C woke up with a wet bed right after I sat down - help me people! How do you get a kid to stop wetting the bed? He doesn't do it very often, but when he does it seems like he does it several times in a week. Of course this happens on the day of his party, plus our washer is still on the back porch and the dryer is unavailable, and it's going to rain today. While the kids and I were gone, Troy worked his little keister off on the laundry "nook" (not quite big enough to be called a room) and it is going to be so awesome - it's so tidy and all the pipes and wires are in one neat little corner, there's a huge pantry above it...it's going to be awesome. It just isn't done yet. Anyway, so now C is in the tub and R is still sleeping and I'm going to try to get a few details down about our trip.

I guess we decided during the summer to take a trip to Boulder to visit Adam and Whitley because we didn't feel like we got enough time with them on their last visit, plus Troy and I have been talking about me getting the kids out of the house for a few days so he could just work like crazy on the construction. I would have liked to visit Peter and Sheri and their wee babe in Monterey, but I didn't think my two kids all over their baby was a good idea yet, not to mention the drive being significantly longer. Anyway, we ended up going on this particular week because Whitley is the activities committee chair in her ward and they had a Halloween party on Saturday. We went to try to help out with the kids and stuff because it was a huge party. I hope we were helpful - we added enough chaos that it may have come out even in the help department, I'm not sure.

Luckily my Mom was coerced into joining us - I don't think I could have driven all that way without a separate adult to help the kids in the car. Poor Mom had just been on a quick trip to Monterey to meet her new granddaughter. She left a week ago Thursday, was home on Monday. We left on Tuesday morning, and the kids did great. We did have a really fun week. Having been back to Boulder only six months ago, I wasn't really there to see all the sights or hang out in town, we just wanted to be with Adam and Whitley. Mostly we just spent time together playing, going to the park, trying to help Whit. We did get in a trip to the Denver Zoo. I was hoping to have recognized something from my youth, but I really didn't. It was a fun zoo, though. We got to trick or treat at Adam's work, plus there was the Halloween party - it was a fun week.

You know, I probably should have blogged daily while I was there because there were a lot of fun things that happened, but now that I'm looking back on the whole week it just seems like a big fun loud messy blur. I would say that the highlights of the trip were RAP finally making friends with her uncle Adam, of whom she has always been very shy. It turns out that Adam is absolutely darling with kids. I kind of knew that already, but watching him with R was charming. On Friday evening one of Whit's friends held a "Witches Night Out" and Mom and Whit and I all dressed as witches and went - it was really fun. Adam totally handled all four kids, putting three to bed easily plus hanging out with R all evening. She had a nap every day of the trip so I didn't get her to bed before midnight a single night. But they just happily hung out, and she totally adores him now. That was fun.

The Witches Night Out was also a highlight, minus the degradation of my very silly costume. I'm definitely going to host one next year if I can - we all dressed up and hung out eating yummy treats and then we told scary or embarrassing stories. I of course told my classic and still super-great embarrassing story of walking on campus at USU with the entire back of my skirt tucked under my backpack. Let me know if you haven't heard it.



Other highlights? Well, Smith and C were kind of a highlight/lowlight situation - they'd play their hearts out together for hours then just totally melt down. Whit and I both got quite frustrated trying to keep them well behaved. I'm afraid my mom saw more than she wanted to of our, uh, firm parenting. I'll just say that by the time Friday night rolled around both Whit and I REALLY needed the night off. I wasn't sure what my mom was thinking until I asked her if she were horrified (both Whit and I had been totally frustrated with our boys because they were screaming and crying and unable to focus on us enough to let us even finish a sentance. I'll admit that voices were raised....) and she replied that she couldn't do anything but laugh. I asked her if she had ever just totally lost it, and she asked if I didn't remember the time we were fighting and she actually climbed up on the table, stood up, grabbed our crayons and THREW them on the floor. I'll admit that I have no memory of this, which is probably good. It might mean that my kids won't remember me losing it either. And it filled my heart with a warm flood of joy knowing that my own mother, so sweet, optimistic, cheerful and loving, lost it enough to actually stand up on the kitchen table to yell at us. I imagine her up there like mighty Zeus, fist raised above her head, clenching not bolts of lightening, but our beloved crayons, her eyes blazing....warm joy, I tell you.

Baby Laine is such a sweet happy baby. She was fun to spend time with. She doesn't have much stranger anxiety. She's also tiny. I mean itty-bitty, but she's trying to learn how to walk. She's only 8 months old, and she scoots and climbs and pulls herself up and is really trying to take a step. Sorry, Whit.

Of course the party was a highlight too - Whit put so much effort into the details. The decorations were so carefully crafted and the food was terrific - she needs to be careful, or they'll never release her. She's too good. Adam dressed up as Nacho Libre and was totally hilarious - I think he won funniest costume. I went as a troll - a costume mom purchased from a SLC theater company. Mom couldn't resist her Halloween fetish and dressed as "Red Death." She had a red cloak with hood, long red gloves and a scary sort of ghoulish face. She wanted me to paint her as the figure in the painting "The Scream" but I talked her down. I wanted our children to not be traumatized. This is an improvement from ten years ago when she wore this costume but also had a skeleton face, skeleton hands, a scythe, and she wore dry-waller stilts so she was about 7 feet tall. My mom has a Halloween problem. I think it's because it's the one day a year she feels that she can misbehave.

We also had a mini-birthday for C, who turned 5 on Sunday. We were leaving that day, but I made a breakfast birthday cake - all the grownups loved it and the boys wouldn't touch it. It must have been too brown without actually being chocolate. It had apples and whole-wheat flour, you see. Too brown. And healthy. He opened some presents and then we packed up and headed out of town. I only left one thing there - one ENTIRE bag full of dirty laundry, including the kids' Halloween costumes. Aren't I brilliant? I think we have some spares for the actual holiday, and I'm very sorry that Whitley has to UPS dirty laundry. That's just the kind of brilliant mind I have.

Well, it's now 10 in the morning, and R should probably get out of her nighttime diaper. I'll be back soon to report on the excited adventures of birthday parties and Halloween!