Grown Up Bribes

February in my family is filled with promises and plans for The Cabin. 

If we just work really hard for the next 13 days then we can go to The Cabin. 

If we do all our chores and clean our house, then we can go to The Cabin.

If we get plenty of sleep leading up to it, we can survive on just a few hours a night at The Cabin. 

This year was no exception. Over President's Day weekend we were fortunate enough to be invited by one of our favorite family friends to go to The Cabin. 

Where we ate too much, slept too little, and laughed too hard. 

This year we perfected the game of werewolves and learned who is good at lying (me! Grandma Huggie) and who is not (Katy - aka The Giggler) and who looks like they're lying whether they are or not (Josh) and who isn't really sure if they are lying or not (Dad). Any game that can keep all of us playing (even The Old Ones) until 2am is a winner in my book.

While we were there we went tubing at Soldier Hollow, which is always a blast (even if Tommy looks like it isn't). 

 

Church on vacation is always something....special. But this Sunday was maybe the hardest Sunday of my life. I sortof thought that with the cousins to distract the boys I'd listen to the meeting, but poor Little John who hadn't slept properly in days simply wasn't having it. He cried. And cried. The overheated and overcrowded chapel was unbearable. So we cried in the hallway instead. 

We did enjoy the rest of our day, and the weekend (though exhausting) was well worth it. 

I know your family is cool, but my family is extraordinary cool.

Already I am ready to do it again - here's hoping it comes again soon!

"Camping"

We do plenty of real camping, so I don't feel too bad about putting this "camping" in quotation marks.

And I definitely don't feel about how much fun it was!

This year's addition to my parents ridiculously perfect backyard is the fire pit.

So after setting up camp

And forcing my baby to sleep

We started the fire and ate s'mores.

Then rigged up a projector to watchee show. After dark (aka sleep deprived). ON A SUGAR HIGH.

Let me tell you, there is no better way to watch The Muppets.

Camping in the backyard was definitely one of my favorite nights.

Vacation by the numbers

3: number of new careers we discovered for Josh. You know, just in case he wants to go back to school anytime soon. he doesn't.

5: number of $1 toys we bought at Target to keep the children entertained for the drive.

Unknown: the number of $1 toys from Target it would take to keep the children entertained for the drive.

14: the number of times John smacked his head on the metal bars of the crappy hotel crib every night before falling down and either falling asleep or passing out. I'm not sure which....

4: number of  sunburned part lines in my hair. I was trying to move my part regularly so I wouldn't get sunburned.

8: number of incredibly talented dolphins performing at Sea World.

1: number of rest stops we used to get out and stretch our legs. It was 1 too many.

2: number of pictures we took with Tommy and Mr. T. in Vegas. Poor Tommy was traumatized but too tired to know it.

3/4: number of hamburgers eaten straight off Tommy's plate by a seagull.

0: number of tide pools we saw. Wrong time of year I guess.

3: number of "real life" errands we ran on vacation.

7: number of waves crashing over Tommy's head before he stopped thinking it was fun.

69: dollars spent on salads.

15: hotel waffles baked and consumed.

Awards Ceremony San Diego

The awards for:

Best New Common Candy: Raspberry M&M's.

Important Life Lesson Learned: peeing on it doesn't help a jelly fish sting.*

Cutest Freaking Baby on the Planet: John Boy. People from Salt Lake to San Diego and everywhere in between (Vegas!) agree. This kid charmed everyone he came in contact with.

Longest Drive Ever: Vegas to Civilization in California. Long. And hot. And decidedly not pretty.

Secret Talent: Non-Splashing. We sat and front and center in the very middle of the soak zone of every show and never did get wet. Tommy and I even walked down to the space in front of the front row during the splash song and didn't get wet. We thought it was just a fluke until we sat in the splash zone in every other show and still didn't get wet. Now we know it's a secret talent.

Favorite New Genre of Food: Hippie. Trader Joe's, Chipotle, Tender Greens. We like hippie food.

Best Smelling Public Restroom Between Here and the Ocean: Maritime Museum on board the ship. Not even kidding. That bathroom smelled like roses (not literally - but figuratively) and probably had a rainbow coming out of the windows.

Most Emotional Person in Sea World: Me. Shamu made me cry. And then the dolphins made me cry. And then the dude wearing a wet suit doing flips into the pool made me cry. And then the lady tied to the roof wearing wings made me cry. Then not eating lunch where I wanted to made me cry. So..... there's that.

*Just kidding. I didn't try that.

Some of Each Please

Fact: Josh and I are so painfully indecisive that we nearly didn't go on vacation because couldn't decide where we wanted to be.

Fact: I become the anti-Amy when it comes to vacation. I don't want to plan or write down anything beforehand. I don't want to make a schedule or know what we're doing or when. I just want to show up with no expectations and enjoy whatever happens.

So we had a wide-open day today. But people had suggested some things so they were on our list. Mormon Battalion place, La Jolla, Tide Pools, San Diego Temple, places to eat, etc.

So we got up this morning and got in the car while I googled some of those to pick where we went first.

We read somewhere that low tide would be in the morning so we headed off to find tide pools first, then La Jolla for the seals and an impromptu dip in the ocean. apparently Josh is physically incapable of getting that close to the water and not getting in. also incapable of watching the road if the ocean is in view. dangerous.

We went to the temple, and to best buy to exchange our broken DVD player for one that works (we hope!) because the thought of driving home terrifies us all. We got some lunch at this totally awesome mexican restaurante that gives out bull horns instead of burger king crowns. We went to the beach again because it had been nearly 3 hours since we were there last - unacceptable! - and we headed to the Mormon Battalion place. I was really surprised how cool that was. I don't know why I'm always surprised to like mormon stuff, but I am. Tommy panned for gold until the missionary left, then realized that he was standing in front of rocks and water and immediately started in on his favorite hobby. duh

Then we went - surprise! - back to the beach this time in beachwear ready to swim in the ocean. We built a sandcastle, burried Tommy (because we had no beach towells and the poor boy was teeth-chattering cold) and I got stung by a jelly fish. I wildly successful trial run at the beach day we have "planned" for tomorrow.

But the highlight of the trip for Josh is still the free hotel breakfast waffles.

Sea World

We planned to spend an entire day at Sea World because Tommy (aka the boss of this and every vacation from now until eternity) loves sea creatures and we were pretty confident he'd walk around with a look of awe and amazement on his face.

But the night before we went I said something about it on facebook and the responders (who I totally trust) were preparing me to not be blown away. So I started to panic and worry about what else we'd do instead.

As is usually the case when I panic it was entirely unnecessary. A bunch of other people told us they (and their kids) had loved Sea World and Tommy was over the moon. And so was Josh. And John just wanted a bottle so we keeping him happy was easy. It was beautiful.

Somehow we accidentally showed up at the park exactly 30 seconds after they opened. (If we had planned that we might have arrived by noon.) You could see our parking spot from the front gate and we were on the first rounds of all of the Sesame Street rides. Which is exactly where we started.  Tommy loved the rides and thought it was hilarious to make the Elmo car fly high up in the air exactly the way I remember doing to my mom on Dumbo. I have been to Disneyland once in my life and honestly I was too young to remember most of it, but I swear I can still hear my mom's voice going "oh no! higher? and higher? oh no! we're too high!" because I was so much braver than she was. We probably could have stayed on sesame street all day long. We rode the rides there, then swore we'd come back before too long and set off to see the penguins and Shamu.

The whale show was surprisingly amazing to me. The animals are HUGE and beautiful and so incredibly smart. I couldn't believe what they were capable of and I couldn't believe how ridiculously emotional it made me. I may or may not have teared up. #whatasissy

From the whale show we headed straight for the Dolphin show.

*side story: one time josh and i went to sea world with some friends while on a cruise. we only had a few hours there and the friend reading the schedule thought the Xs in the box meant "no show at this time" instead of "show at this time" and we missed EVERY show except the dog show. we went to sea world and watched a dog show and nothing else. that's why the shows mattered to us this time.

The Dolphin show was so extraordinarily cheesy that I still can't figure out why I was so impressed. the dolphins did cool tricks, the divers did cool tricks, the cheesy girl stood and waved her arms around to show how happy she was. It was all very nice. But impressive? Hardly. So why did I leave and immediately look at the schedule to see when the next show was so we could see it again? I don't know.

After seeing more animals and exhibits we accidentally walked past Shamu again just as it was starting. So we went to watch a few minutes of it one more time.

Side Note: I wish I had known that you don't have to wait in line for these shows. The stadiums are HUGE HUGE HUGE and you are going to get in even if you walk in 5 minutes after the show starts. Don't waste your time waiting in line.

More animals. More food. More sunscreen. And we were off to see the seals, feed the flamingos and watch a 4D elmo show. And that's when we learned that Tommy hates glasses and that he will gladly sit through a blurry movie if Elmo is in it and water squirts out of the seats in front of you.

After the seal show we realized we probably wouldn't make it back to re-do anything and made our first efficient plan of the day. A path to see all the remaining exhibits on the way out.

We were finally over tired and way too sunburned to stay out any longer and decided to come home and order pizza before falling asleep.

We would go back again and again if it wasn't so crazy expensive.

I've never been so glad for my dear friends to be wrong.*

*They weren't wrong, they were simply warning that they weren't so impressed and hoping that we weren't disappointed. I have good friends all around.

So many stories so little time

There I was whining on facebook about how my husband would rather stay home and potty train Thomas than go on vacation with his week off work (over our anniversary!) and with the support of 300 of my closest friends I planned a vacation anyway. That was 3 weeks ago.

That's why we are in San Diego right now. Thank goodness for facebook!

Unless you're a stalker a creepo or a robber, then we are already home from San Diego. Or we haven't left yet. And we have a pit bull. Besides, based on the amount of stuff we have with us we there's nothing in our house anyway.

But the thing about going on vacation is that before we even got here there were at least 29 stories so funny they couldn't be left off the blog.

Like the one where we told Tommy we were going on vacation and he saw me packing his swimsuit so he started begging to go to the "ay-cay-shun-poo!" (vacation pool) and I promised him we would. And the look the face of the people in the Fillmore Carl's Jr. when he asked if we were at the ay-cay-shun-poo now.

Or the one where one or more adults in the vehicle had a tiny meltdown about a Jim Gill song wherein everybody "yodles".

Or the one where we told Tommy that we really were going on vacation but we had to go to Stinky Vegas first and he and Johnny got in a hysterical laughing fit about "Stinky Vegas" repeating it at least as many times as we listened to Jim Gill try to yodle.

Or the one where we got lost in Vegas and walked around for what felt like 10 hours in what felt like 900 degree temperatures at bedtime only to learn that M&M World was 7 miles away and our hotel was on top of some kind of awesome twilight zone where Mr. T. and Mario/Luigi are across the street neighbors and only one of them charges you to take their picture.

Or the one where Tommy (who we often call Mr. T. you know....T for Tommy. Pitty the fool. It's clever.) and I got a picture with Mr. T. in Vegas.

Or the one where we stopped at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere to change a diaper and there were no changing stations so we changed all the diapers straight on my lap (naked bums on my lap. ew.) and an old lady with a dog made Johnny cry.

Or the one where we set "nakie TOMMY!" (he's apparently a superhero whose super power is posing like Buzz Lightyear before taking off running into busy streets.) loose at the St. George splash pad because it was too hot to keep driving.

Or the one where we FINALLY landed in our Vegas hotel room (dingiest yuckiest dirtiest place on the planet. I still do not heart Vegas.) and Tommy immediately ran to the bed, put on Josh's sunglasses and jumped up and down like a maniac chanting "Vegas! Vegas! Vegas!"

Or the one where the hotel (which I chose partly because they said they had a crib) didn't have a crib available for John so I went shopping all by myself in the middle (ok early part) of the night in a strange city where the (male) cashier's nails were long and pointy and he spoke with a creepy vampire lisp and asked if I wanted him to paint my fingernails because "that's such a pretty color". #iambrave #iambrave #iambrave

Or the one where we found the perfect place for dinner and a walk along some kind of marina and a park with the ocean and Tommy chased the birds and threw the rocks and everybody came home smelling like ocean. (Except for Tommy because he rode home in his bare nakeds which was only the 2nd funniest thing ever because he had just finished throwing rocks in the OOOOOOO-SHIN MOM.)

See? So many stories. So very very little time. Probably at some point there will be a ridiculous number of photos about this trip on the blog.

In the meantime instragram is proving to be quite lovely for my obsessive photo documentation needs.

St. George: Sleeping

It sounds stupid, but watching my boys sleep was a highlight of the Spring Break trip for me.

John was tired enough to sleep as we walked....and walked....and walked and walked.

Josh snuggled Tommy to sleep every night. Then came over to "my" bed sometime around midnight.

Because the snuggling quickly turns to sleeping. And Tommy can miraculously take up a whole queen sized bed.

St. George is so hot....

Read this in your best "yo mamma so fat" voice ok?

St. George is so hot I wore 2 pair of sunglasses. But didn't realize it until I was looking through the pictures later. For real.

St. George is so hot we used a (slightly used) burp cloth to shade the boy.
So he wouldn't DIE. Because it was SOOOOO hot!

St. George is so hot we ran the air conditioner in MARCH!!!

St. George is so hot we changed diapers in the trunk - because that's where the shade was!

St. George is so hot even Johnny (in his sleep) tried to get a tan. 

St. George: Dixie Rock

We would've stayed here all day long.

But it was cold and Johnny got bored (or tired? or cold? or hungry? or all of the above) quickly.

Sometimes we try to look like we care about where we are and why it's important. Tommy dutifully looks up to see what he's supposed to see and then we can move on to the fun part.

Tommy was over the moon because 'ROCKS!!!!!' Seriously, heaven. Go ahead and pretend this next picture as zero evidence of Tommy eating dirt OK?

It was a lot colder than it looked - especially in the caves (or shade really...)

Josh was equally thrilled and couldn't get my boys high enough off the ground.

"Come on! Mom! Climb!" (both Josh & Tommy's favorite phrase of the day.) 

And when you can't climb any higher - at least you can peek. 

Meanwhile, lame-sauce mom is all over the cuddling in the cave-shade for the sissy pants.   

Tommy climbed up on this ledge and wouldn't get back down. "Look mom! A cave! ooooooohhhh a cave!"

But then I found a rock and bribed him to come out in the sun for a bit. "Look mom!  A rock! Oooooohhhhh a rock!"
Because, you know, there were only 9,300 million rocks there.

Then I went up a little stairway to the end of the world and felt like I was going to die because it was so high. And Josh said "here! I'll toss you John then Tommy and I will climb up!"

I came back down and refused to let John go up there. So Josh took  Tommy instead.

  

And they liked it.

So John & I joined them.

I'm not kidding Tommy would think he'd died and gone to heaven if we stayed for just 5 more minutes. The rocks were perfect for scrambling around on. He felt like he was climbing but he wasn't so I let him. He picked up rocks and threw them. He picked up other rocks and broke them with his bare hands (he has some serious muscles.) He went up high, and down low. It was beautiful. (Minus the piles of broken glass he wanted to play with...that was not beautiful, but we distracted him without too much effort.)


I would go back to St. George again just for Dixie Rock.

St. George: Swimming

The first day we got to St. George it was a bit cool for outdoor swimming with an infant. So we dressed up the boys, dragged them across the rainy parking log (barefooted) and threw them in the pool.

Then I remembered that this is John's first time swimming and got out to take some pictures of my adorable swimming boys.

John loved it - sat around in the floaty thing all day long.

Meanwhile, Tommy went "swimmeeen! swimeeen! in the swimeen pool!"

For real.

We got this new floaty/life jacket thing and once Josh pried Tommy off his shoulder, Tommy was kicking and kicking like a maniac. All over the pool, back and forth more times than I can count. It was AWESOME.

And now I'm fairly confident that I can take both boys to the pool all by myself this summer.

Because really, Josh isn't doing anything in this picture. So you know, 1 second, an hour at the pool. That's the same.

And obviously Johnny doesn't mind the swim gear.

Plus it was only better when we were outside. (Minus the part where John screamed and wouldn't stop because (I think) the chemical in the pool was so strong.)

It's gonna be a great summer.

St. George: The Food

I have an idea for you.

Tell Facebook that you're somewhere cool (or at home) for a limited time and ask people what you should eat and do. Then try to do it all in 3 days.

You'll die. I promise.

But that won't stop you from eating so many good (new!) things that you'll never want to go home.

Because lookit.

Cupcakes from 25 Main (1 bite of 6 cupcakes is  more than 1 bite...)

Is there something better than eating Cafe Rio in bed? I think not.

Tommy ate at least 1.5 boiled eggs every morning for breakfast. This kid is gonna go NUTSO at Easter.

Mongolian - hideous picture of me, but the handsomest dude I know is sitting on my lap anyway. So.....

Oh the fortune cookies.

Sometimes I drink wicked things while looking out of the corner of my eye to see if I'm  gonna get grounded.

We were there for 4 days. I ate at least 4 sandwiches.

Um sweet potato fries with marshmallow dipping sauce? Wow.

And even in St. George, Subway makes the best sandwich.

I didn't know it, but Yogi Berry (our little yogurt shop here) sucks. This place was AMAZING.

Miraculously I didn't gain any weight on this trip. (I'll wait while you applaud.)

Because oh. my gosh. we ate good food and I did (almost) zero dishes the entire week. I could go the rest of my life not doing dishes. (But I could not go the rest of my life eating fast food...so....)