What didn't we do yesterday? Hard to say, seeing as how I felt like we did it all. What a fun day. The weather couldn't be better - it's so fresh and cool outside, still warm enough for short sleeves, I just love it. I was having a quiet morning when my friend Misty called to let me know that the pre-circus elephant parade was happening down town. I guess every year when the circus comes they do a little parade on the first day. I have zero plans to take kids to the circus this year, perhaps some other year. But it was really fun to head down to the gateway and sit on the curb surrounded by many excited kids and watch the elephants go by. You're not going to believe this, but I actually took CTP to school one hour late so he wouldn't miss it. I know, it was only a five minute parade, but it's a little sad when your baby gets big enough to start missing all the kinds of things you used to take him to. I even offered to let him take the day off because he's been reluctant to go lately, but he really didn't want to miss school altogether, so after the parade we hustled to drop him off. I'm glad he likes school.
so he let us through. It wasn't a great spot either - no trees covered in beautiful leaves or trails to wander on. We just walked down towards the water as close as we could (I took one step closer than that and ended up ankle-deep in mud) so we could throw rocks. You may be aware that rock throwing is among the most popular pastimes of all children. At my house, anyway. We threw rocks for a long time. But, I still wanted leaves. I thought, "Ah ha! Millcreek Canyon is not far away!" We were already there before I remembered that they too have a fee-station. Next time I just need to stash a check-book in the car, don't you think? By this time I was defeated, and we just headed to the oft-requested "Sunnyside-Up Park" for a romp on the swings and slides, and of course a few minutes ruining our clothing in the pine-tree cave.
To finish off my evening, I walked up to the Football Facility for night two of the women's football clinic. I'm really enjoying it so much. We did a little less touring around the facility this time and got more information from coaches. We heard from the head of the Athletic Trainers and then we listened to both the Offensive and Defensive Coordinators. Quite an honor, really. Not to mention a lesson in penalties from Coach Whittingham himself. It felt pretty similar to getting sprayed down with a fire hose. So much information, so fast, every moment realizing more and more how much there is to know about football, and how little of it I understand. Sounds depressing, but really it was a blast. I am slowly understanding a little more about the complexities of the game but mostly I just feel like I need to buy a book that slowly spells it all out for me. And eventually I would like to be able to watch a play and know where the ball is. That's still my biggest difficulty! It's fun caring, though. As we were leaving we caught Coach Whit in the stairwell. Poor man - these guys just do not get a break during the season and he looked so darn tired. But he was gracious and friendly and was perfectly happy to have his picture taken with us. When Troy saw the picture he laughed and said it was a good thing that I didn't do this with Urban Meyer because I would have blushed like crazy. It's true. I totally had a crush on Coach Meyer. I took it very personally when he left me. I mean when he left. Anyway, I reassured Troy that I'm developing a new crush on Coach Whit. Troy thinks it's cute when I get crushes on these guys.
Other events of the weekend included a totally crazy birthday party for one of CTP's schoolmates. The party was at a nicklecade on Redwood Road, and I must confess that I really didn't want to go. I tried to think of a good way to get out of it, but really, I knew how bad CTP would feel if he knew he missed it. So we went. Wow. Never been to a nicklecade before - quite the experience. I've never heard bedlam like that before in my life. After cake and presents in the party room, we were set loose on the games with a plastic cup full of nickels. C just about went berserk. The lights flashing and whirling, the constant pinging, dinging and ringing of all the games - he didn't know which way to turn. He'd stop at a game and just shove nickels in, and he'd give the thing about 10 seconds. If he couldn't figure it out by then he'd whip around two or three times until another game won his attention. No chance he'd give a game a second try to attempt to do better at it, one chance was all anything got. 
That is until he found the Lost World game, in which you sit in a booth and shoot at dinosaurs with a red or blue plastic gun. It was in use when he saw it, and was willing to wait for about 15 minutes for a turn. When we finally got in the thing gobbled up nickels so fast we were done in about 2 minutes. C was disappointed but coped well and didn't flip out when I told him our lack of nickels meant it was time to exit. R was with me too and she bopped from game to ride to game almost as quickly as her brother, just usually in the opposite direction. By the time we made it to the car I had a pretty ringing headache, but was happy all the same that we went because the kids had a great time. Oh yeah, I did try really hard to help them earn some tickets. You know, you play ski-ball or something and if you do well a little slot spits out orange tickets at you. People were walking around with streams of tickets wrapped up in their hands. I obviously don't have the nickelcade-knack, because despite my best efforts we wound up with a total of 33 tickets, and that's after four of them were donated to us. At the little shop at the end of the room, we were able to purchase 33 tickets-worth of plastic crap. Luckily 33 tickets buys you only very little crap. One blue sticky hand, one plastic diamond ring, and one miniscule green spider. I must say, I'm a little tempted to go back and try again on that ski-ball. I'm hoping to up my prize to a blow-up hammer, which costs 250 tickets. It's going to cost a lot of nickels, I think.
Dad's going to kill me, but I also must confess that I think he must have done something to make my mom very angry, and she has taken sweet revenge. Just kidding. Really what happened is that they both love Charlie Chaplin, and there was some sort of Chaplin night down town. There was a movie playing and you could go see it for the very 20's price of two bits, and dressing up was encouraged. I'll have to save another blog entry to describe my mother's Halloween-tick, but she ADORES dressing up. Dad - not so much. But he adores my mom, so when she wanted to dress up, he said okay. I don't think he realized that she would be getting him a chain-gang outfit, not a dapper 20's golfer or gangster or something like that. They came over on Friday night to show off their costumes and they both looked great, though Dad had a bit of a grim set to his mouth. As it turns out, not many of Salt Lake's Chaplin lovers share my mother's passion for costumes, and my parents were one of maybe 20 other people who got gussied up. As Halloween approaches, perhaps I will blog an ode to my mom and her many costume episodes. I love you both.
"Yeah, it's the letter Me!"
"Can we go to Sunnyside-up park?"
"Look! I'm so naked!"
Be prepared. If you want to come to our house to play, you're going to get filthy. Absolutely filthy. I have a theory that it is literally impossible to come over to our house and stay clean. The dirt in our back yard is just too alluring. The dog hair is just too abundant. My theory has been proven true time and again - kids come over, and I feel I need to have their parents sign a waiver or something so they won't make me pay for the clothing that is about to be destroyed. I know I should say no to the dirt-play, but I just can't. I don't think there is a healthier pastime out there. I just love watching kids having the time of their lives, their creative juices flowing, their imaginations creating new worlds. I guess I love it except for the nerve that starts pulsing in my temple when I think about getting them clean before their parents get here. 
What's that famous saying? Something about "Pride goeth before the whuppin'?" Yeah - what a fun football weekend! As you should already be aware, the Running Utes were set to play UCLA this weekend, and I was afraid we were going to get creamed. Forgive my lack of faith. UCLA is ranked 11th in the country. Correction: WAS ranked 11th. We've already had a tough year with two losses and four injuries to starting players. I could hardly stand to watch. Troy even got tickets to go see the game - his buddy Mike gave them to him because Mike was going to Florida to watch Urban Meyer coach the Gators for a game. Mike mentioned that this was a game he was okay to miss - he just couldn't stand to watch the bloodletting, and Troy wasn't that excited himself. While he and another high-school friend went to the game I tried to listen on the radio and catch a little on the tube while the kids played. I get so pumped during games - I actually made Romney cry twice when I yelled. So, we basically killed them - 44 to 6. They didn't get a single touchdown, just two field goals in the first quarter. I was bouncing off the walls with energy, waiting for Troy to get home so we could jump up and down together. When he finally came in the door, he didn't look that excited. He was totally in shock. He had these big wide eyes and raised eyebrows - he just looked like he couldn't believe it. What a fun game. I hope the team's confidence and energy continues for some more W's for the season."We're glad that we can all be good. Next time we go to the aquarium please help me to get a Steve Irwin Crocodile Talking Guy. I really want one for my birthday. Amen."
CTP was so funny yesterday - he got on the phone with his friend, B. My heart kind of welled up just watching his happy little face, feeling so grown-up because he could chat on the phone too. He began by trying to tell B about his snack at school that day, which was spaghetti squash, and B could not figure out what he was saying so I walked into the kitchen to hear C repeatedly shouting, "SPAGHETTI SQUASH! SPAGHETTI SQUASH!" (I'm pretty impressed with his preschool, aren't you?) After that topic C decided he wanted to mention all the new groceries he could see in the pantry. Then the conversation sort of died down so they resorted to roaring at each other as loud as they could through the phone to scare each other, and then bursting into giggles. Pretty funny.
A great moment of the evening - hanging out in the locker room. Kinda stinky, I have to admit. But it was fun to see the gear and all the decor that encourages the team. Here's Misty getting excited about quarterback Brian Johnson's stool. Hey, who wouldn't be excited? My most embarassing moment of the evening came while we were in the weight room, where Coach Whit was finishing up his workout, and Tami wanted to take our picture. She told us to pose with the big heavy chains hanging on one of the racks, and I thought they were attached. I picked the thing up (it was so dang heavy!) and leaned on it, and of course it was not attached. It came crashing down, everyone stopped to look at me, including Coach, and I turned bright red, and then Tami snapped the photo. I will not be including that picture in this entry, by the way.
CTP has done and said some funny things this week. Troy's favorite was overhearing him playing and saying, "Attention all herbivores! Attention all herbivores!" No idea on the context of that one, but it was pretty funny. My favorite was at the park yesterday - C was swinging and R was climbing a 12-foot ladder to a slide and I was running back and forth between the two of them - a common park dilemma, by the way - and I was explaining to C that I couldn't push him all the time because R needed help too. He said, "Mom, you to do it all." "You want me to do it all, huh?" "Yeah." "I'm trying, honey, I'm trying!" That made the mom next to me laugh. "Aren't you supermom already?" she asked. Also, C has gotten into telling jokes to his friends. "Why did the dinosaur stand on the tiny rock? Because he wanted to get rolling! Get it? Get rolling! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" This joke actually makes some sense, but it's the only one that did. The rest were a bit random, but he sure thought they were funny. And I loved his addition of "get it?"
I think I made some dopey comment a couple of weeks ago (still in the middle of August, mind you) that I thought that our high summer heat was gone for the year. Duh. Of course it wasn't - it got up to 98 or something like that on Monday. But then a cold-front came through and we had two days of pouring rain - my friend Becky was so funny. She said, "Huh. I wonder what this strange moisture is, coming from the sky?" It has been such a dry dry summer here, we forgot what rain was like! The past few days have been around the 80 degree mark (ahhhh.....) and though I'm sure we'll get up again, I really do think this time that our upper 90's days are gone for the year. I have a desire to pull out the sweaters and start baking pies already, but I need to just settle down and enjoy wearing shorts without sweating to death for a couple of weeks. Here's C with our neighbor friends enduring the heat last weekend in a makeshift tent. They always want to build forts in the living room, but our couches are starting to show the strain a little.
I have tried to cut my kids' hair by myself ever since C was a baby. Once I gave in and took him someplace, and they did a horrible job, but it was still better than what I do. I think C has only one scar on the back of his ear from a very early attempt, so that's good, right? C's hair fianlly reached the "unpleasant" level this week, and I caved and took the kids to Cookie Cutters - a hair shop specifically for kids. Okay, it's a little pricey, but it was fun! And we even managed to get a cut for R too, though it was tricky. It took the stylist and myself to keep her distracted enough to not freak out. I loved the fun carnival-ride type chairs and the bubbles at every station. They also had DVD players at each station as well, but it didn't really help R and C could have done without it, but they had a good time. There was also a slide, video games, and a balloon for everyone. Not where I'll take the kids once a month, by any means, but I can see a mid-winter outing for haircuts.
