Annual Trip to Chimney Rock

During another fun day of this:


...Eli went over the waterfall, fell backwards off his inner tube, hit his head, and all tubing was pretty much spoiled the rest of the day. Of course, if I would have had to predict which one of my kids was going to have some sort of tubing accident, it would have been Eli. (here, here, and here)

We still enjoyed being lazy in the river, ...


...climbing on the rocks,...


...and enjoying nature.



We went on a fantastic boat tour of Lake Lure that included several very important landmarks (where Dirty Dancing was filmed) and ended with rain.



We ended the trip with our annual meal at that Mexican restaurant in Chimney Rock.



Unfortunately, Michael had to point out the phallicism of Chimney Rock, and since we will now never be able to get that image out of our heads, we may be moving our annual camping trip to a new location next summer.

Annual Trip to the Beach

These photos are from August. Rest assured, we did not go swimming in the ocean in January...







Michael decided we needed some of those boards (that I'm forgetting the exact name of right now), and the two older boys definitely enjoyed them. I can take or leave the ocean, but I definitely don't mind a good day of beach-reading and photographing my little toothless cutie:

Funny Facebook 2014

October 3, 2014 ·

Rylan: "What are you doing in there?
Me: Peeing.
Rylan: For that long?
Me: Yes.
Rylan: When I go pee, it never takes that long.

I may have been hiding out in the bathroom...




October 2, 2014

Cole: I don't like stir fry. The vegetables in it are gross.
Me: Stir fry has whatever vegetables you want in it.
Cole: No, stir fry has whatever vegetables YOU want in it.

Good point...




September 29, 2014 ·

Rylan: I don't like green beans.
Me: Try putting ranch dressing on them.
Rylan: It would take ALL the ranch dressing to get me to eat green beans.




September 8, 2014 ·

Cole's description of his first hockey practice: "It just hurts a lot."



August 17, 2014 ·

Cole singing the Wizard of Oz: "Somewhere over the combination of a clear solid or a liquid and light particles..."




July 25, 2014 ·

Cole: I didn't mean to hit you with the shopping cart, but I did laugh after I did it.




July 10, 2014 ·
·
Cole to Eli: "Let's hug."
Eli to Cole: "Better not. I feel a fart coming on."



June 25, 2014 ·

Rylan just asked, "What's the name of that one restaurant? With the McFlurries?" I have mixed feelings about what this reveals about our family....




May 27, 2014 ·

Eli just shouted, "When will I get to eat this damn lollipop?"



May 9, 2014 ·

Cole: "I'm AAAIG. Academically, artistically, athletically, and intelligently gifted."
Me: "And humble."
Cole: "I know what that is...sarcasm."

On working full time

In my ideal world, parents would only work 30 hours a week instead of 40. Combined they'd get paid for a 60 hour week - more than the 40 hours an individual would work but so much more manageable than the 80 hours of two typical full time employees.

Similarly, sometimes I think about how much better off the world would be if every household had one person working full time and one person staying at home. Better for the environment. Better for relationships.

Before I went back to work...

• Dinner got made every night, which meant less trash and less factory farmed food.
• The house was always clean and the laundry actually got done.
• Michael and I both had more hours for freetime.
• The weekend was spent relaxing, rather than hustling to get chores done.

Things I've figured out since I started working:

• I have our groceries delivered through a company called Papa Spuds. They provide locally grown produce, milk, eggs, and meat, and it's delivered once a week right to our front door. It's the best thing in the world.
• I have the boys sorting their own laundry - both dirty and clean.

Things I have not figured out:

• when to clean the house
• how to balance getting stuff done on the weekends with getting to spend time relaxing and enjoying each other's company
• how to get enough sleep

Rylan Says...

"I got a card flip at school today," Rylan announced forlornly when I picked him up from school today. "It was just because I forgot what Ms. Hunter told us to do after each person finished reading their Rainbow Words, so I did the opposite."

"What did Ms. Hunter tell you to do?" I asked.

"She said to say, 'Good job.'"

Uh, oh!

Self-Identifying

The other night, Michael called me a nerd.

He was helping me plan an activity about characterization in which I would have my students make inferences about me based on things I've said, things I've done, or choices I've made. I said, "Do you think they could guess what table I sat at in high school?" 

He said, "I think they could figure out that you sat at the nerd table."

I said, "I wasn't a nerd in high school."

Of course, if you asked most of the people I went to high school with, they probably would say I was a nerd. It's just that I personally never self-identified as a nerd and certainly wouldn't have listed "smart" as my defining characteristic.

Michael asked me, "So if you aren't a nerd, what are you?"

"A hippie," I replied as if it were obvious.

Michael disagreed, seeing as I don't smoke pot or listen to jam bands.

"Okay, maybe we have different definitions of the word hippie. Maybe a better word to describe me would be crunchy. Granola."

"I could see that," Michael conceded.

Environmentalist. Yogi. Gardener. Bike-rider. Folk-music lover. That is how I self-identify.

Thinking of this conversation, I asked the boys tonight, "What do you think is your main talent? How would you describe yourself? Nerd? Athlete? Artist? Musician? Dancer? What?"

Eli said athlete, which I was not expecting, but his answer might have been skewed by the fact that we were coming home from soccer.

Cole said geek, which he insists is different from and better than a nerd.

I think it's interesting to think about how others see us versus how we see ourselves. How do you self-identify?

Epic Journey 2014: Chicago

While vegging at Lake Michigan, we spent one day exploring the streets of Chicago. Pardon my phone photos. I took oh so many...


Recall that after several hours exploring Nauvoo, my kids were begging to be strangled. Contrast that with the many, many, many miles we walked aimlessly around Chicago, doing pretty much nothing the entire day, while my children were amazing, wonderful angels. The difference? Cousins.

Cousins make all the difference.