It's Over

My Stat counter and I seem to agree, people are over me telling the internet how awful my life is and what a terrible person I am. Back to delusions of perfect-ness!

That being said, I have one last thing to add. Today I went to library after lab. My big toe *MAY* have turned off an entire bank of computers. Several students may or may not be very angry with said toe, depending on whether or not the above scenario took place. I say, if in fact the aforementioned event DID occur, I performed a valuable service. I'm pretty sure from now on they will all hit the save button more regularly. You know, assuming I *actually* turned off 30ish computers...

OK, back to how I'm *so* fabulous.
Got a math test back today.

99%

 Yeah, I'm rocking my inner geek. I really needed it after last week's 88%.

The Hubs picked me up from school and we grabbed a pizza from Costco. Even though we called ahead to order, they gave us an old pizza. I was seriously hungry while picking up the pizza so I decided to order a churro as well. It was speaking to me. It said, "don't buy me. I'm old and crusty!" It turns out churros don't lie. It WAS old and crusty. Next time, I will listen to the churro. You'd think he could have given me heads up about the pizza...

We went home and that's when I noticed it: The Baby has started to talk in sentences! I KNOW! I'm so excited! We can start treating her like a real person now! I'm going to put her on next week's dish-washing rotation. She said, "I want pee-za!" Which I think means, "I want mommy to take me to Italy." It's a good thing The Hubs has me to translate. He thought she meant she wanted pizza. 

After dinner, The Hubs and I were feeling guilty about our plans to ditch our kids and go on a date, so we took them (and two of my sisters) with us on our "Race The Sun Hike". The Boy thought it was great fun to try to finish our hike BEFORE the sun set. I'm not sure he fully understood the concept. The Boy thought if he kept telling the sun he was winning, he would win. Um...yeah. The sun won. Thank goodness for twilight! (Not the kind with sparkley vampires.)

SIXTH ANNIVERSARY

So, I've been married six years. Yeah, I never thought it'd last this long, either. 

Just kidding! 

Sort of. 

I'm kinda attached to The Hubs at this point. It turns out not only was he a good first husband, he's going to be a fantastic ONLY husband, which I think is brilliant news. (He's pleased as well.)

We're going on a major trip in November, so we played it pretty low key this weekend. Saturday morning we took a pretty hike around the Snake River Canyon, back behind Hidden Lake and around to other other side.

 We accidentally missed our turn and ended up scaling some rocks.

But not these rocks, 

which is what we were faced with at first glance. 

(Going down, not up. I took the picture AFTER we had safely descended.) 

The hike itself was fun and we did it in an hour, which included an orange-eating break. Here's how we ACTUALLY got down.

We liked this hike so well we took the whole family the next day. 

     Saturday night we took our buy-one-get-one-coupon to Canyon Crest Restaurant, supposedly the best restaurant in town. My humble opinion is the only thing they are "best" at is charging lots of money for OK food, and possibly the view. Matt's steak was pretty good, my fish was pretty good, but not $20+ a plate, good. Glad I had that 2-for-1! We ate on the balcony so our view looked like this,

AMAZING.

Watching the base jumpers taking leaps off the bridge all night was also pretty cool.

After dinner we went home and put our kids to bed, since I hadn't seen them very much this week. Our day finished off at the church, de-lousing the nursery, since the week before there'd been a case of lice and it took that long to get permission to disinfect it.

A pretty good day. I'll take it. :)

PICTURE OVERLOAD

Here are some pictures from the Grand Canyon.  I should have put them in the last post, but I didn't have them downloaded yet.

Here's The Boy, looking happy (finally)

Me and The Baby, cozy in her sling. 

The Boy looking pensive.

 Obviously I'm in the car with a sleeping Baby, because I would not have allowed him to stand on the wall that separates sane folk from certain death.

And here's one to prove The Hubs came with. (And that The Boy was grumpy for most of the trip.)

And some smoggy views, for kicks (thanks Cali, for the pollution distortion)

The End.

The Grandest of Canyons

The day before our planned migration, I had the brilliant idea to leave THAT DAY and stop over at the Grand Canyon instead of going directly to St. George. I've never seen it, despite it being the biggest tourist draw in the entire state. Amazingly I convinced The Hubs it would be a good idea. He may have since changed his mind...
I can't decide whether to curse or thank www.hotwire.com for making it possible. Honestly, who reserves hotels without it these days? I got all our rooms at close to half off. :)
I called a good friend to tell her our crazy change in plans, and she offered to watch BOTH the kids so The Hubs and I could run around like headless chickens finishing up last minute details in the morning. (THANK YOU THANK YOU, S. You're a lifesaver and a super hot pregnant lady, btw.) We left town at a little before two in the afternoon. (Did I mention we made the decision to travel a day early on the day we traveled? Yeah. With two kids. I don't recommend it.)
We arrived at our hotel with super cranky kids and reasonably calm parents. After baths for the kiddos, getting them settled in bed wasn't a big deal. That night was a little rough on the 'ol parents, as the bed was SUPER soft, and we're just not used to that level of "luxury". We like our sleep numbers at 100. :D
Anyhoodles, I woke up early and attempted to exercise but nearly died from the elevation. Sea level to rim of Grand Canyon=HUGE difference. So after 30 minutes, I got everyone up, dressed and down to breakfast. All that plus packing the car took THREE hours. We didn't drive into the canyon until 9. (Well, into the park. I doubt I'd be typing if we'd actually driven into the literal canyon.)
It turns out the Grand Canyon isn't so much fun with little kids, but my expectations were super low, so it worked out. Here's a sample of the day:
"Hey! get back from there!" "WHY??!" "Because, you silly boy, you'll fall in!"
and
"Look Mom! A SLIDE!"
"NOOOOOOOOOO! Not a slide. Canyon. CAN-YON."
Almost no hiking took place, which is just as well. (See above reference to elevation changes.)
The Hubs and I have been talking about doing Havasupi for an anniversary trip. After this little experience, I mentioned I'd like to do some Blood Doping before the planned hike. The Hubs is NOT on board with that plan. Needles, you know. Oh, and the part where blood is involved. He's not so into that. Sometime remind me to relate "The Uterus" story. It's a GREAT one, for, you know, embarrassing my hubby.

We continued on to St. George in reasonably good spirits, visited some cousins and Aunts and Uncles and turned in with a little more difficulty than the previous night, but nothing this super mom couldn't handle.

To Be Continued...
I'm done blogging for the night. Despite this being Mother's Day, it super sucked for me so I'm going to bed so it can just be OVER already.

Hiking With Babies

Saturday was a perfect hiking day. Overcast with a slight breeze and temperatures in the high 60's.
As the title may suggest, the parents over-estimated their parental powers and supposed they could take a one and two-year-old on a reasonable 3 mile hike. The parents are idiots. 

There's a super-cool hike not far from us that ends, we are told, in a geological formation covered in Native American Hieroglyphics. I cannot confirm this report as we didn't get anywhere near close enough to tell. We borrowed a backpack for hauling S (thanks Stina) and put V in the baby wrap, and headed out. DH and I thought we timed it so the baby would fall asleep while we walked. We are, as I previously stated, idiots. After three different wrap-carries and liberal use of both pacifier and bum patting, we ended up just carrying the baby in our arms. Further complicating things was the toddler who kept saying, "I want down, Dad. I get out now. Go on ground!" And then, "Carry me!" Yep. So not even half way to our destination, we turned around carrying both kids and the kid backpack.
Ah, the lessons of parenthood. I learned if you want a good upper body workout AND cardio at the same time, take your babies on a hike. :) Oh, and take along some ear plugs!
DH and I have plans to return sans kids later in the week. Hopefully I'll have some cool pictures then.