I can be civil

I have never hidden the fact that I hate nature and yet every now again I seem to forget that fact for two seconds and then I end up smack dab in the middle of it. This week was one of those moments.
I promised the boys an adventure to the civil defense caves and high on the promise of a free adventure we set out. I should have turned back the second I noticed that the marker for the dirt path was shaped like a tombstone but I kept right on navigating down a trail that jiggled half of my beaver teeth loose. The trail head was marked with an identical tombstone marker and this time it did not go unnoticed by Thing two. Again I ignored this little sign and instead cheerily bundled up my posse in hats gloves and hoodies even though the air temperature read 96.

The Cave entrance

We got to the opening and you could feel the cold air rushing out and my spidey senses began screaming things like hey moron don't do this. Turns out my spidey senses must be calibrated to rude so I ignored them in the name of  not to being bullied. The first two seconds in I realized that this was a horrible plan. We couldn't find the good head lamp so we were stuck with our cheap 5 buck Walmart specials. These are fantastic if you want to light up the three inches above your head that you are incapable of seeing but unfortunately we needed much more light. It was then that I realized that there was a possibility we might stumble across the body of a beaten dead bum. I instantly tried to figure out a way to get the crap out of there but then I realized that saying hey fellas I don't want to maybe find a dead body just sound nutso so I carried on. While I was trying to keep my panic in check Thing One so rudely interrupted me to tell me he was afraid of getting eaten by a bear. It was all that I could do to not scream some of us have real fears you little punk so why don't you just shut it. I didn't do that. I calmly explained that obviously  this cave was way to cold for a bear to live in and even managed to leave out the part about however it would be the perfect temperature to hold a body in thus making time of death predictions harder to pinpoint.
By this point Thing Two realized that he was in his element on steroids- things that he had to climb in a pitch black area so he couldn't be told not to attempt life threatening moves. He kept moving faster then our tiny beam of light could keep up with and I just knew he was going to get lost. Thing One couldn't keep up with his maniac brother and blamed it on the floor conditions and asked why don't they come smooth this floor out? I good suggestion if you ask me.  Luckily for us the rocks were slick as snot so when he almost fell to his death for the third time he slowed down and slinked his little gloved hand into mine.
Now that I had Thing Two under control Thing One had decided that while the cave might be too cold for a regular bear it was most defiantly the right temperature for a polar bear so we needed to leave immediately to avoid its angelic white jaws of death. Being that I am married to a super genius he took the opportunity to show the boys that he could breath like a dragon and distracted both of them long enough to move forward further into the icy depths of the mountain.

Dragon breathing

I am not sure how long we had been in there but I was starting to have genuine sympathy for the Chilean miners who got trapped for all that time and was worried that could be my fate. I was of course not prepared for this because they had tuna fish to snack on and I had stupidly failed to bring snacks. As I was trying to avoid a panic attack Thing One so rudely interrupted me to show me some randoms thing on the ground. I am not sure if it was ice or mold. He was insistent that it was Coyote hair but he pronounced it like a dad-gum local so it rhymes with goat. It was then that I realized I was failing as a parent. I mean how did I miss this? And you guessed it it brought on a whole new wave of things that was most certainly going to eat us.

Cave of wonders mystery substance

 I was not sure how much more I could take when Jebus took mercy on my soul and we could finally  see the light of day. All of us were ready to leave and we scaled those rocks as fast as humanly possible to get the heck out of dodge.

So lets recap- nature sucks, I am raising wannies who don't know how to pronounce words, and the forest service really needs to come do some serious maintenance to that cave.  

 

Well that's a first

I don't know how it happened but somehow someway summer has ended. Oh sure the signs have been there for weeks. Things 1 and 2 are suddenly super annoying, not to me mind you, I adore my children and would never daydream about dropping them off in Mexico while screeching out my windows ADIOS SUCKERS! No they are  annoying to one another. There has been a constant low toned wailed that just tag teams between the two of them until the beatings are so severe that head trauma or sudden death is eminent and they have to find me to avoid either one. They also are the wrong color. They have gone from the albinos that belong to me, the palest human being on the planet, to a brushed bronze. The evidence is in the form of  very pronounced lines all over their bodies. Bums as white as freshly fallen snow glare down the hallway mysteriously attached to incredibly tanned torsos and legs. Its hilarious but you will just have to use your imagination, I don't want to loose my endorsement with subway over this. As a super bonus they also reek, not the normal puppet funk that they normally have. No this is like a stench that is beyond words, stench that comes from hours in the sun running feral  with other neighborhood kids. So I shouldn't have been suprised when I realized that today was the day to send them back to school but I was.

This is a year of firsts for us.
Thing one is now in middle school and no longer considered an elementary school kid. This means that for the first time my kids are at two different schools. Now They come home at different times and they don't share a principal or common peers. They no longer have one

anothers backs and won't have the same assemblies. This is the year that I have to admit that our little is big and that all too quickly he will be gone. This was also the first time I have ever been terrified to leave him. His school is huge! We only have one middle school so they merge 6 elementary locations into one massive building. I got lost twice trying to drop him off. I had no clue where I was and almost had to trade in my street cred to ask a 6th grader where the hell I was. Good thing I didn't since I later learned you can't say hell in school.
They survived though. They found their way around without the other guy, the bus brought Thing one home in one piece, and no one died.
So take that summer stench! We survived the first day of school.

soul chucking

So I have not posted in a very very long time. I have spent countless hours not sleeping and even more hours pondering what is to become of me. Our lives are in turmoil but only because we are suffering from first world problems and so everyday instead of posting the funny thing that I ear marked for this little spot my energies are spent worrying about what I am supposed to do. I don't have answers and I am seriously thinking about hiring survey monkey to send out a quick test so that strangers can decide my fate.
So here is a recap of our Saturday from a few weeks ago.
Myers got recruited to make a little cash for selling his soul. Everyone has a price and it turns out his is exactly 100 dollars. For the said monies he was required to drive to Idaho Falls pick up a company car and then drive it to Dubois Idaho where he would throw candy to the masses in a parade. We are a tight knit family so the boys and I went along for the ride but since we are awesome we went for free. This is a little recap of our day.
8:00 am- we leave Rexburg in a mad dash so that we can arrive to the main st branch at the appointed time of 8:30. Since we are running behind I did not have time to eat breakfast. This is only important for later in this story.
8:30 we arrive on time by some miracle or speeding. Ok it was speeding. We are rewarded with our promptness by waiting for 15 minutes for the girl with the keys to the van to arrive.
8:45 am we head into the desert where I learn that Dubois is an hour away. Suddenly I think I should have held out for some type of reimbursement.
9:10 We are now safely in the middle of nowhere when Thing 2 announces that he has to pee right now! We decided that the only thing to do was pull off the side of the road and allow him to whiz like the locals do. You know on tires. Myers reasoned that since we had made up some mad time and since we didn't have to be to the parade route until 9:45 we would be safe. Thing 1 sees his chance to weedle outside so he seizes that moment. I am not an expert as to the particulars of outdoor relief but I figured that it did not require much effort. The boys hiked down the embankment and slide behind some overgrown sage brush risking life and limb in the name of modesty. Joke was on them because all they did was walk around to provide a full frontal view.
9:45 we arrive at the branch and pick up the other guy who is to help and head to the sight.
10:00 The parade should have started but instead all I am seeing is a bunch of people milling around.
10:05 I start my rant about how being on time is everything and if these people worked in my kitchen they would all be fired.
10:10 I am now angry because the other guy we picked up is just talking and not even looking irritated. FINALLY the guy wonders over to which Myers asks when the show is going to get started he said 10:30. WHAT!?! When they sold this thing to us we were told the parade started at ten. Now my lack of breakfast is becoming a big big deal.
10:11 I am thinking about what I could eat and getting ready to be all hangry when I witnessed a real live horse boner. I am not sure if you are aware but I believe horse boners to be good omens so I settled down and then prayed that my boys would not notice the magical mystical world of nature at full attention next to us.
10:26 The line up for the parade route is starting so the boys and I snap this little picture.

Someday Brenen will give me a real picture right? It was during this little photo op that I noticed this.

That is a human in a chicken suit holding a flag. I am not sure what it all means but I laugh endlessly.
10:30 turns out they do know the value of time and the thing kicks off. In seconds we are throwing 35 pounds of candy out and 400 I-phone speaker things.
10:40 We catch up to the chicken since he is walking in scuba flippers and we take this as a sign to take his picture of close

Still don't know what this all means. Observe though that the parade route goes through neighborhoods.
10:43 we circle back and drive half the parade route over again since it was so tiny.
10:45 the parade is over we are a hundred bucks richer and our senses have been fed
So there you have it. Some day I will know what I am doing with my life and then perhaps my posts won't be so sporadic. That was a lie they will still be.

Sugar Sugar

Every now and again when my world is silent and I am alone with my thoughts I take a good hard look at my life. A few weeks ago I found myself in this very situation. My sister was in town and we were planning a girls afternoon and as soon as I left work I was to call so that we could meet up. My sister decided that the place to rendezvous would be Nelson's custard. My mom invited me over and said that if I hurried she would buy me ice cream. Oddly enough this offer did not leave me squealing tires and yelling angry slurs at unsuspecting idiots unlucky enough to find themselves in the crosswalks. I found this troublesome until I found the reason why. My belly full on ached and there was no way that I could fit another thing in there. I tried to be optimistic and convince myself that it was because it was full of nutritious leafy things when it reality it was full of a brownie and a cookie and a half a creme brulee cause you know I practice restraint. It was then that I started to feel like maybe just maybe I had a problem.
I stumbled upon a video a few days later about giving up sugar for 30 days and for some stupid reason I thought hmm this could be a good plan. I once looked into a program called whole 30 where they ask you to give up everything but air and allow you to eat like 3 twigs a day so long as they don't have salt on them. They have this rhetoric about how fighting cancer is hard but giving up sugar and all manor of delicious things is not so with that cockamamie idea floating in the old noggin and bolstered up by the staff of Buzzfeed I made the announcement at work that I was going to give up sugar until the end of June. Let it be said that this is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever done and I have done some cosmically stupid things.
So here we are skidding into the end of day 8 and there has been much weeping and wailing and swearing. I would like to tell you that I feel better but lying really isn't my thing. I would also like to say that the cravings have subsided but last night I caught a whiff of a nilla wafer and Lord knows if I had a soul I would have sold it right then and there for a tiny snackrell of it.
So now you know why the posts have dried up. Focusing on anything other than not licking the popsicle drippings off the sidewalk has not really happened for a while now.
So here is to another 22 days of torture and suffering so that I no longer have to introduce myself with the number of days I have been clean.

Oh mother!

I know that I have failed to write for a long time. The problem is we saw you two weekends in a row which means you heard all my good stories and not wanting to bore you to death I held off writing and only now have I realized that I have fallen way way off course so here we go.
Today is mother's day. Normally I hate this day. There is a part of me that is convinced it was a man who created it because what woman would put a holiday on a Sunday? This day is all about  go sit in church in an uncomfortable dress and try to keep your children quite so that other people won't know that your children are hooligans! Um no thanks. For years I convinced Myers that church was optional on that day and my plan was starting to work and then mother guilt crept in. That and I was losing my footing on conference days being optional as well so I bite the bullet and let mother's day attendance be mandatory once more.
I am starting to think that maybe I should rethink my aversion to this holiday because truth be told he really hit it out the park this time.
I woke up to breakfast in bed and these

As I was shoving the last of my breakfast into my gob he came into our room and the boys presented me with this.

I showed great restraint BTW and did not have this as a second breakfast. This is proof that I am growing as a person.
But the absolute best part was that he got the kids ready for church and let me sleep for twenty extra minutes. In mom time this is like an extra 29 hours of sleep. I was feeling like the most pampered human being that ever existed and didn't even mind that I had to go to church.
Twenty minutes into church however there was a small hiccup. Thing two hates to wear ties and normally he wears a clip on but today he had one that was tied on and he began to fuss with it and soon was turning purple and since you know this being the day of mother's I thought I should do my duty and not let him die. It was then that I discovered Myers dirty secret. This is how he had "tied" the tie.

I don't have words. Keep in mind that he ties a tie on himself at least 5 times a week. Or does he? Now I am not really sure. I laughed it off and as I was trying to conquer the cube I made another shocking discovery. The length of the tie was not even close to correct.

Observe the shame and that this is a baby length tie.  He told me that nobody would find out as long as he kept his coat on. Spoken like a true man. Luckily for us all I had chocolate to stress eat.

The truth shall set you free

This week I had the opportunity to drive down to SLC to attend a chef presentation. It was billed as a chance to meet local chefs,see new products and see new techniques. I am old and tired and the only one with clearance to drive a company car  and so my reaction was meh-. Minion on the other hand is still young, LOVES to go on car rides and loves them even more when he gets paid to be a passenger so he talked fancy and convinced me to drive his Miss Daisy self.
I will admit the trip there was a whole lot of fun and even though it was taking forever I thought that maybe he was right in pushing me out of my comfort zone. And then we arrived to our destination and immediately I changed my mind. As soon as we stepped foot inside I got the sinking feeling that I did not belong and as I tried to convince myself that I was being silly introductions started and all be if every person in there was not giving themselves fancy titles. When it came to us I squeaked out what I was doing and could feel the hot glares of disapproval along with the internal dialogues as to why a glorified lunch lady had been invited. If the floor had suddenly turned into a portal to another realm I would have been eternally grateful but I think I have offended every nerd in every galaxy and so no good turn was to be given to me. I am not sure if you know this but in the BC time ( you know before children) I was on the fast track to food glory . I was running in circles that if I played my cards right could have ended up in some amazing things. In fact as newlyweds watching the food network one Sunday I recognized people I was associating with in my former career. Unfortunately kitchens and family life are as good a combination as peanut butter and olives, so instead I rambled down a road that has been far less glamorous.
The seminar continued and as I tried to decipher words choked out by one of thickest french accents I have ever heard my shame led to questioning. Maybe I should have stayed the course, maybe I should have tried to be in high end pastry and lived up to the potential, maybe maybe maybe... The longer we went the more my former training kicked in and suddenly I realized that all was not lost. I still remembered these techniques, I still knew the language and could actually perform all of the tasks. I wanted to tell these chumps with their fancy titles my discovery but we were limited to questions not life affirming discoveries so I stayed quiet.  Right about the time that regret was starting to set in though a funny thing happened. I realized that I was bored. The idea of meticulous placement of singular berries was not thrilling but tedious and monotonous. The beauty of a correctly made ganache somehow had been dimmed and I was having serious difficulty in not pretending to have a seizure or some other medical emergency so I could leave.
So even though I am capable of creating this

What I am most proud of creating is this

Because with this title I get to have awesome conversation and endless adventures and smells that could kill a horse.

Monkey business

I have not seen my person since Christmas and have been trying to get to Boise since October so setting aside all rational thinking and subjecting ourselves to what can only be described as road torture we headed to the other part of Idaho. The drive would have been a whole lot less crappy if we had not just returned from a whirl wind trip to Salt Lake City two days prior but hey you are only middle aged once so we soldiered on.

Sammy has been talking about his beloved auction for months so we decided to check it out. Only Sammy was still in the aforementioned city of Salt Lake so we went with out him. You would think that Karma would punish us for such an egregious act but it was quite the opposite. We were blessed with this.

You are seeing a real live monkey. What you are not seeing is that she is wearing a diaper. I really wanted to take this picture but wondered if that was bad manners. Luckily for us all my BIL decided that monkeys in public trump manners so he snapped this. Two seconds later this monkey got thirsty since she was eating a salty pretzel, which you know is probably part of her native diet so she turned to her companion and stole her Snapple. She stuck her monkey tongue in there and then wrapped her whole mouth over the opening and then resumed her snacking. I was appalled since monkeys have no business drinking Snapple but then a far worse crime happened. The girl straight up just kept drinking out of the bottle without so much as an obligatory wiping off of the germs. I judged her for her creepiness, silently of course sine what do you actually say to that? 

Remember how I said it was weird that Karma had blessed us for leaving Sam out of the equation. Turns out she was just a little late.

We went swimming and as I was sitting on the deck wondering why people even like to swim Thing Two came over and announced that he had puked in the pool. I have dealt with a lot of weird comments in my 10 years of mothering but this was a new one even for me. I walked over and sure enough he had spilled the contents of his belly right there on the edge of the pool. He had almost made it out but the thirty pieces of red vines rolling around in his guts must have slowed him down. I grabbed a towel and got what I could off the concrete and then walked out to inform the front desk. He said it was OK to keep swimming and I thought sure why not if I kid can whiz in the pool surely a few chunks is fine to. Turns out not so much. We ended up being the reason the pool was closed for the night. They did let us walk across the parking lot and use the other pools hotel. That was an awkward walk of shame to say the least. Hi we are the creepy parents who let their kid swim in his own vomit but we promise promise swear that we won't hurl in your pool MKAY MKAY. 

Perhaps none of this would of happened if only I had given him the obligatory wipe down from germs. You win Karma you win.

The culprit. You can tell I am a good mom since I fed him MORE sugar after he vomited. 

The non Puker