Sandy Eggos

We were able to escape to San Diego again this year. Oh how I love that place. We mostly did the usual stuff, but this time we did a day at Sea World and spent a little bit of time down where the rides and games are on the boardwalk.

To my dismay, two days before we left our Denali had to go into the shop, so the kids and I crowded into my mom's and my grandparent's vehicles, and Thor drove down a couple of days later since he had to work anyways.

Maison was a brave boy and touched the sand and the water. Madeline was brave too, until a wave knocked me over while I was holding her, then she was only brave with her dad.

Here are a few pics of our trip, the rest are in my Flikr

On my 31st birthday

I donned my not so itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini and shoved myself into a wetsuit to take a surfing lesson. And now, let me tell ya, it kicked my butt. First of all, I'm not a huge fan of swimming in cold salty water (I'm not a fan of swimming in cold unsalty water, either). And that water was killer in my eyes, up my nose and in my mouth. But it was fun. I like a challenge. I just need to work out for a year before I think about trying it again. Maybe then I won't have to cut my lesson short because I don't have the stamina to get the board back out past the smallish waves to where the instructor is waiting for me. And maybe then I won't be so mortified when I find out I have to PEEL the wetsuit off, outside, next to a patio bar with a bunch of people sitting right there.

This is what Thor must have looked like most of the time, feeling my pain as I crashed off the board.


and here's what it looks like when I crash off the board-


But I did get up. Quite a few times. Not on any big waves, mind you, but I did stand on the board, and coast towards the shore. So, I guess it was more like mini-surfing.

Max's Birthday

My youngest nephew turned 9 a couple of weeks ago. Holy guacamole. He has eyelashes to die for and a great laugh. He got the standard cake/swimming/pinata summer birthday shindig, which the kids all love. Madeline thinks all birthdays are supposed to have a pinata, even her grandma's. I made him a dirtbike cake (which was cute AND yummy, a birthday miracle!) since he's an awesome dirtbike rider and he got some money, giftcards and tiny remote control cars for gifts.

Playing in the dirt

So, I'm sure this is a "you had to be there" story, but here it is all the same.

On one of our days in Utah, we decided to go out as a group on a ride up a mountain trail while we had a couple of machines rented. Thor stayed at the campsite with Maison and the rest of us went out- Dad in the ranger with Madeline and my nephews, Mom on the 4-wheeler, and me on the dirt bike. We were going up the hill and back. Well, a wrong turn, and another wrong turn, turned our little ride on the easy trail into a 2 hour trek on not so easy trails.

We had no map, no water, no cell phones. After awhile, I knew we were in trouble when my dad took us out onto a main, main road, which we weren’t allowed to be on. And we knew dad was really lost when he pulled into a Fire Station to ask directions. Too bad the station was closed. At one stop my mom told me we were on the other side of the mountain kinda by this town that I knew was far, far away. I started to get a little bit panicky because I knew Thor was back at the campsite with Maison wondering where his whole family had gone. So, we headed back out onto this road, which just so happened to be on the route of a bicycle race. As the bicyclists were huffing and puffing up this gigantic hill, here we all come buzzing along side them in our off-road vehicles. By this time, I had taken over the Ranger with the kids and Dad had jumped on the bike, and as we were slowly buzzing by these hard working bike riders in their spandex, the kids were laughing and waving at them. And some of them actually took their energy to wave back. Oh. My. God. Our ridiculousness was cracking me up. I could not stop laughing and my mom was doing the same behind me on the 4-wheeler. The kids, of course, thought the situation was totally normal.

We ended up cruising through this beautiful area with beautiful houses where we saw deer in someone's front yard. We eventually got back on an offroad trail and dad found someone with a map and figured out how to get back. By the time we got back, I was holding poor Madeline's head up in this huge football-like helmet with my one arm while I drove with the other. She somehow managed to fall asleep sitting up in an offroad vehicle while driving through the forest.

In the end we decided we had a blast. And that if we wouldn't have gotten lost we would have spent most the day trying to decide who was going to go where with who and on what.

Ahhh, memories.

Trip highlights with a zillion pictures

This was Thor’s first time towing a trailer and thankfully it went really well. Especially for how far we towed it. Once, on the way home, a gust of wind caught it unexpectedly, but that was the only scary thing that happened.

The first night that we stayed in the camper, the kids went a little cooky when the beds were pulled out. I tried to get a picture of them in their undies sitting nicely on the bed together, but by the time I got my camera they had turned into monkeys.

Our first night in Colorado we parked the trailer at Thor’s parents’ restaurant. We were a day early and the campground didn’t have any openings. We ate a lot of our meals at the restaurant over the next week and we discovered that Maison LOVES green chili (but try to give that kid a bite of chocolate cake and he just shakes his head, “no.”)

When we made it to the campground where we had reservations for the next 6 nights, up in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, it was not at all what we expected. All dirt, no trees, no fire pit, and our spot was right on the highway next to the large sign that lit up our trailer at night. Whoa, was Thor mad.

But we made the best of it for a night and found a better, prettier place for the rest of the nights where we felt like we were actually in a campground and not at a truck stop .

We had a really great time visiting and eating and shopping with Thor’s family. We got to see a semi-truck dumping asphalt tip over on its side in the restaurant parking lot, which was exciting. The kids got big kid bikes and I think Madeline’s vocabulary (and attitude) expanded just by her thinking she was a big girl with her big bike. And Maison put a lot of miles on his pink doll stroller.

We even took a trip into Denver to the zoo, which if anyone’s wondering, is a great zoo. Nearly as nice as the San Diego Zoo, but smaller and doable in a few hours, all for the price our tiny zoo in Las Vegas. Elephants, giraffes, lions, and a pig faced turtle. Everything we look for in a zoo. Madeline hurt her foot just before we went, and since she refused to walk we rented her a stroller. Which Maison decided to push. And Thor or I ended up pushing Maison’s empty stroller.

We left Colorado as early as we could on Thursday and drove 10 hours straight through to Duck Creek for a few fun days of playing in the dirt.