How to get more sleep.

For years after I had kids, this question would have applied to me and Daddy J. For those who may not know, Miss D was a terrible sleeper until well after two years old. As in she never, not once, slept through the night until she was about 2.5. Ugh.

Now the littles were better sleepers as babies than Miss D was, but there were still two of them, so even a good baby that only wakes up once or twice a night is a PITA when there are two of them waking up once or twice a night each. Throw in a few wakeups where one woke the other one up and, well, you get the idea.

This post, however, is not about me getting more sleep. I do keep waiting for that magical time in old age when you no longer stay up until 3:00 in the morning like a teenager and miraculously wake before the sun happy and well-rested. But this post is how to get more sleep for two of my kids who desperately seem to need it.

First up: M-Moo. This is a child who likes to sleep. If left alone, she will easily sleep 12-15 hours a night. She would also, if she didn't have active sisters, nap at least an hour a day, maybe 2. But right now she's getting barely 12 hours of sleep at night and no naps. And she is my most whiny, crying child. Now maybe she would still be whiny and crying if she got more sleep, but on those rare occasions when she manages to sleep in past oh-dark-thirty (when her early bird sister, K-Wiggles naturally arises, full of piss and vinegar), or on those days when she takes a 2 hour nap in the car in the afternoon (like yesterday), she is a totally different child. More resilient, more happy, so much less apt to cry at the drop of a hat, and way less whiny.

But I can't figure out how to get her more sleep. My only idea has been to revert to car naps and have lunch in the car for the littles every day at 12:00 noon when I pick 'em up from school, then drive around until M-Moo falls asleep, which usually doesn't take long. It's an option, I suppose.

K-Wiggles seems to need the least sleep of anyone. She definitely bows her head come 6:00 p.m. and is ready for bed, and gets totally hyper if we keep her up later than that. But she's always up at just before 6:00 a.m., 7:00 at the absolute latest. And she almost never naps, even in the car, unless it's really late, like 5:00 ish, in which case I think it's just that she would go to bed for the night that early if I could organize it!

My next problem is Miss D. Miss D begged and begged to be a "lunch buncher" and in January I finally relented. So now, M-Th, Miss D goes to school from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. It's a long day. It just is. And she comes home tired. And it gets worse as the week progresses. By Thursday afternoon, she's a sobbing mess. This afternoon she must have broken into spontaneous tears totally out of proportion to some very minor event at least 5 times that I can think of. The kind of "dissolve-into-mama's-arms" tears over something little tells me that she's just exhausted and can't cope.

But I have no idea what to do. Obviously a nap is not going to happen when she gets home at 3:30. And if it did, I think she'd be up so late at night that I couldn't cope! She has only one extra-curriculur activity during the week and that's 1/2 hour of karate on Wednesday. I honestly don't know how these 4 year old kids do it who are in dance twice a week, swimming once a week, skiing on the weekends, etc. Miss D just can't hack that kind of schedule (never mind that I won't do that to myself either!).

Miss D goes to bed most nights between 6:00 and 7:00 and I think she gets up about 7:00. I have no ideas for helping my kids sleep in in the morning. K-Wiggles is up at crack of dawn and she knows to get herself a snack and put on a quiet movie. But somehow the other girls just know that she's up and they pop up too even though they could use an extra hour of sleep.

I thought if I posted all this out I'd see some magical solution, but I don't. I guess we'll keep hammering on the early bedtime and hope for the best. Now aren't you glad you read all this?!

Feeling too much like a grownup.

It's been a bad couple of months in the grown-up news department. Thankfully nothing too bad in my immediate family, but my friends, both IRL and online, seem to have had a rash of heavy stuff happening. Between divorces, infidelity, and hospitalizations, the holidays were very rough for some of my friends. And now drug rehab, a domestic violence situation, unemployment, foreclosure, and a death in the family are making things very difficult for some people I care a lot about.

I can't help feeling blessed that I'm not dealing with anything nearly so serious -- though I do wish my kids would stop peeing on the floor! It sometimes feels like I'm way too much of a grownup just knowing that these things are happening in the world, never mind happening to some people who are very important to me. I wish there was more I could do to be helpful or to ease their burdens or make it all go away, even for just a little bit. It's a helpless feeling watching people you care about go through tough times.

*sigh* Sorry for the heavy post, but I just got a lot of bad news today and it's bumming me out. Tomorrow will be another day, right?

Sorry for the posting slump lately.

Things have been, well, busy. Truth-be-told, I've been uninspired to blog the last week or so. I haven't had time to take any pictures, and even if I did, I haven't had any time to upload them or edit them. I always feel the blog is better when there are pics.

So what have we been up to? The girls went back to school on Monday. Their Uncle Marc from Michigan flew in on Saturday and has been entertaining the girls to no end. Too bad the snow has been totally crappy for his visit. He's been snowboarding anyway, but it has definitely not been the best conditions.

As tradition dictates, Uncle Marc, Daddy J and I went out for Sushi on Monday night. We went to a new place that just opened a while back that we haven't tried before. It didn't bode well when we were the only patrons in the place and the TV was on an blaring! But we asked them to turn it off and put on some music, then some more patrons showed up and it got better. The food was absolutely fantastic. Marc and I both love sashimi, and the portions at this place were absolutely gigantic! And the rolls we had were really good too. And finally, the place passed Daddy J's ultimate test -- the chef created a special non-menu roll for us that was terrific! All that and the price was about half what we're used to paying on our sushi pigouts!

Today was the Chinese luncheon at the girls' school. They have been studying Asia this month. Daddy J signed up to cook the stir fry for the luncheon (ok, I signed him up, but he went). I bought him a new electric wok for Valentine's Day so he would have one for the luncheon (he loves to stir fry, and the electric gets so much hotter than a wok on the stove). The kids chopped all the vegetables and Daddy J stir fried away. Other families brought homemade potstickers, homemade spring rolls, a chicken dish, rice, green tea, and a bunch of different sauces. The kids seemed to really enjoy it!

The kids have also been studying the orchestra this month, so I got tickets to take Miss D to the Lollipops concert that the Utah Symphony puts on for kids in March. We'll go early and go to the "instrument petting zoo" that they set up in the lobby to let the kids try the different instruments before the concert. The theme is "cowboys," so it should be interesting.

And that's about all that's been going on, besides work, which you definitely don't want to hear about. There you go... three days of posts, all in one post!

An exhausting, but fun, day of skiing.

This morning I had to take Miss D to her ski school. She's been doing Saturdays from 9:00 to 3:00 all winter, twelve lessons in all, through our locals' program at The Canyons. It's been great for her skiing, and great for us to have someone else take her up on the hill all day!

Today, Daddy J decided he wanted to stay home with the littles and told me to go ski. (I think he had an ulterior motive, as his friend (our friend) Marc is coming in tomorrow and he's probably racking up points so he can go ski with Marc -- but I'll take it!).

Anyway, I took Miss D up to ski school, but when I got her all settled, I just didn't quite feel like hitting the slopes. So I went down to the coffee shop, got a latte and a chocolate croissant, bought the latest issue of O Magazine from the general store, and sat in the cafe for about 45 minutes totally enjoying myself and the relative peace and quiet (well, at least no one was saying 'mama' every five seconds!).

After that, I did put my boots and skis on and headed up on the mountain. I skied one run with Miss D and her little class, just to see how she was doing. Then I headed out. I find that skiing is becoming more and more a social experience for me, so going up by myself feels kinda weird. This morning I decided to do a "grand tour," heading out all over the resort, skiing the groomers and just having an easy day of it.

I got all the way out to the farthest reaches of the resort when Daddy J called to say that he was on his way to the hill with the littles and could I meet them at the locker room and help him take the littles skiing!?

So I high-tailed it all the way back in (about a 30 minute trip altogether) and Daddy J and I took M-Moo and K-Wiggles skiing. Amazingly, they did great! We must have covered 5 or 6 runs on the bunny hill/poma lift. My back and thighs are killing me from bending over the littles while they skied or rode the poma. But they did great! Neither one of them can turn worth a damn, but at least they're not afraid to go down the hill, and they can both pretty much ride the poma on their own.

It looks as though our dream of being able to somewhat ski as a family next year may actually come true. Miss D was totally independent today, putting on and taking off her own skis, and riding the lift without assistance from her coach. By next year she should be fairly reliable, leaving Daddy J and me to help the littles. For a wanna-be skiing family, this is a huge milestone! And to have all the kids enjoying themselves skiing is a huge relief, after K-Wiggles didn't even want to try skiing for the first half of this season.

Oh, and the littles made a big impression on some of our skiing buddies that we happened to run into at the beach (you know, the large outdoor patio area that is super warm on a 40+ degree winter ski day!). We sat and had a pitcher of beer and the girls polished off two large orders of french fries and three bottles of chocolate milk.

We topped off the day with a trip to Ruby Tuesday's (mama wanted ribs, and that was the most kid-friendly rib place we could think of in P.C.). Now all the girls are in bed (and Daddy J must have fallen asleep down there), and I'll be heading down to SLC to pick up Uncle Marc.

Hope all of you had a great day too!

A lifelong love of knitting.

I don't remember exactly when I learned to knit. I do remember knitting my first sweater. It was at my grandmother's house in England. I don't remember how old I was. But I remember my mother and grandmother helping me with the casting on, counting the stitches, picking up the stitches I dropped. I remember the soft, grey wool with the pink and purple ribbons of angora or something like it woven through. I still have that sweater somewhere, though I think the moths have taken a bite out of it.

Anyway, at Emma's birthday party last week, she gave the girls these little round Knifty Knitters. I have never seen them before, but after looking at them for about 2 minutes, I could clearly see how they were a cute way for beginning knitters to start crafting!

So the other day, the girls and I got out their Knifty Knitters, I scrounged up some yarn from the craft room, and we made baby hats. Two big ones and one little one. A pink one, a green/blue one, and a purple one. They were an instant hit. To be sure, the girls couldn't manage the whole thing by themselves, but Miss D could do a fair amount of it with a little bit of help, and it was quick and easy for me to make the hats for the littles.

Now all our babies have warm little hats for their heads. I need to go online to their website and figure out what else we can make with these little looms. Miss D especially is excited to be making her own baby things. Maybe I'll get even craftier and start teaching her how to sow baby clothes. Or maybe we should make some fleece baby blankets, with tied ends like a lot of people here in Utah (and maybe elsewhere?) like to make as baby gifts. Oooh, that's a good idea... off to WalMart we go!

Oh, and I'll take some pictures later and show you what we've been making!

The toys are officially PURGED!!!

Yesterday was a rough day. I woke up in a "blah" mood and stayed that way pretty much all day. The kids and I got on each other's nerves and, well, it just wasn't a good day.

So last night I hunted around for some ideas of things to do with the kids to make today a better day. I even wrote them down. My kids love projects, any kind of project, so my list had a couple of "go to Home Depot" type projects too.

This morning, the kids got up, dressed, ate breakfast, and we started our first project: purging the toys from the playroom. We started with stuffed animals. I told them all to go downstairs and each choose ten stuffed animals they wanted to keep, and the rest we were going to give away.

Guess what? They actually did it! Who knew? They were excited to go through all the stuffed animals and put them in the give away bag. I rescued a few more sentimental ones to add to the ones they had chosen to keep, so we're probably still upwards of 50 stuffed animals (where do they all come from?!), but still, we filled a large lawn/leaf trash bag with stuffed animals to donate.

Then we moved on to the assorted "bins" of "stuff." My playroom at one point was fairly organized and almost everything had its own place. But over the past six months, with Carmen being here to help keep things tidy, but not knowing where anything goes, we had accumulated about 3 or 4 bins' worth of "stuff" with no homes. So next we dumped out all the bins and had a go at the "stuff."

I filled a tall kitchen trash bag with "stuff" that we no longer need but that wasn't really fit for donating. Everything else got a home.

We tackled the bookshelf and donated some baby-ish books that the girls no longer use. We tackled the play house and organized all the baby-doll stuff and the kitchen food and cooking utensils.

We even tackled the girls' bedrooms, finding homes for all the stuff in there too.

The only thing left to do, playroom-wise, is the dressup closet. I put all these neat hooks on the wall inside the closet, but somehow everything has wound up on the floor of the closet. We also have a lot of dressup accessories that need a home, but I've got a set of wire-mesh shelving that I will re-purpose to hold those. Hopefully I'll get to it tomorrow.

It feels very good to have that done (it's needed doing for a long time now!). Tomorrow we are tackling Miss-D's closet, putting two low-hanging closet rods in there so that she can reach all her clothes that are hung up. While we're at Home Depot getting that stuff, I will also pick up a bunch more Sterilite box-container-thingies. I'm finding them so useful for storing stuff in a way that the girls can find it.

If I really get organized tomorrow, we will take pictures of the things where they go, print them, head off to Staples to have them laminated, and then hang the pictures in the spot where the toys go. This should help immensely with the "I don't know where it goes" response to "clean up the playroom!"

Oh, and the girls all want haircuts tomorrow too. I can't believe tomorrow is already the last day of our Presidents' Week break from school. The girls are ready to go back to school, but I have to admit it has been nice having them home and not having to be anywhere first thing in the morning!

Perhaps I'll have pictures of the newly-purged playroom for tomorrow.

Visitors!

Our friends the R's from Steamboat were here again this past weekend. This time they got to stay an extra couple of days because of the school holidays and we got to go skiing together and have several lovely dinners together. Carrie made a wonderful Valentine's dinner for us all and really dressed up our frozen pizzas last night with a terrific caesar salad! We ate well this weekend, for sure!

Despite the fact that they have visited us more than a few times over the past couple of years, I have failed miserably in taking even a single photograph to memorialize their presence here with us. This time, though, I managed to grab the camera and snap three pics on Valentine's morning before my batteries died (crapped out from the b'day party the day before). Luckily, Daddy-J also grabbed the camera one night (after the batteries were re-charged) and caught the girls playing "ready-set-go" before bed!

All the girls were so adorable together. M-Moo especially took a shine to Melissa, and could be found each morning (after getting out of bed) snuggled up on Melissa's lap while they watched movies. Miss-D especially enjoyed having some older kids around and not always having to be "the oldest" in the house. And even K-Wiggles peeked out of her shell a few times to play with the girls and talk to Carrie and Tony.

Seven of us had a great time skiing on Monday. It was fun to see that we will someday be able to ski all together as a family and hit the entire mountain. Lauren and Olivia, just 9 years old, managed to ski everything from 9990 to Canis Lupus.

Here are the couple of decent shots we got...










I just realized we didn't catch Lauren in any photos. She wasn't feeling well, poor thing, so it's probably just as well. Hope she's feeling better today.

New nightgowns.

I happened to be at Carter's the other day, and saw these adorable ice cream nightgowns on sale. The girls have been very into wearing nightgowns lately, so I decided to grab three and surprise them on the way home from school. They were so excited, it was like Christmas morning!

When we got home, they put them on, and they wanted me to take their picture. So we tried a photo shoot. I have had very little success getting a decent picture of all three of them, so I took about 100 pictures. This one was the very first shot I took. The rest are absolute and total crap! Go figure!


K-Wiggles' expression isn't the greatest, but in all the rest of the photos, she's squinting her eyes and making her "cheese" smile. Ah well, I guess I'll keep trying. At least I like the "sister hugs" quality of this one!

Emma's Birthday party!

I got the chance to take photos at our friend Emma's birthday party yesterday. I've been spending some time with my camera, getting more familiar with its settings and how to set it up for various different lighting conditions. At Ian's b'day party (Emma's little brother), I got very little that was useful. But yesterday, I got four shots that I'm pretty happy with!

Anticipation...




Blowing out the candles...


Smoking candles...




Presents...


Happy Birthday Emma!

A posting drought.

Sorry about the dearth of posts here lately. I've found myself up to my eyeballs in work these days, and every spare moment I have is spent with my kids or my husband. I have no idea if things will settle down soon or not, so I won't promise more-prolific (or less-prosaic) posts in case I just can't deliver. But I do come here every day, sometimes multiple times a day, planning to post...

A thought for today...

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball ninety million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

-- Douglas Adams (quoted in Dawkins' "The God Delusion").

New bike stuff.

A very boring post today, but exciting to me! I've been doing a good job this week of getting on my bike on the trainer and doing some spinning at home. It took me forever to get around to bringing my bike in the house (had to clean it first) and get it set up on the trainer, but I finally did it.

I noticed, though, that having my mountain bike tires on the trainer was very noisy and was also quickly wearing all the tread off my rear tire. So today I determined to go out and get a "trainer" tire for my bike. Eventually, I'll get another wheel that will be mounted with the trainer tire, so I don't have to swap the tire every time I put the bike on or off the trainer. But for now this will do.

While I was at REI (thanks Kerry for that suggestion!), I also got a new seat. I've been noticing the need for a new seat and finally bit the bullet and got one. I haven't tried it yet, as my bike isn't back on the trainer yet -- waiting on Daddy-J to get his tire levers in from the garage to help me get the new tire on the wheel. But I"m hoping it will make biking even more comfortable!

Oh, and while I was at it I got a floor pump -- we've needed one for ages. I'm very tired of pumping up tires with my tiny little portable pump!

And with that little burst of energy, I think I'll go tackle my kitchen desk, or at least one shelf of it.

Be... Do... Get...

I have various "life" projects I have been trying to work on these past few weeks. I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I'm not immune to that feeling we often get in January to re-commit to things we know we should do and want to do but never seem to find the time.

I've recently been working on a personal inventory, trying to figure out what things are truly important to me, what my goals are, and thereby be able to tell if I'm spending my time on the things I truly want to be spending it on.

In that spirit, I have taped the following to my bathroom mirror...


Be . . . committed.

Do . . . what it takes.

Have . . . what you want.


That's it. Just thought I'd share in case it helps anyone else.

Me and the girls and a movie!

At about 3:20 this afternoon, it suddenly seemed like a good idea to take the girls out for a movie. I looked online and, voila, there was a kids' movie about dogs and a hotel and well, it was at 5:20, perfect. So I threw the girls in the tub (no hair, just very dirty feet from the fieldhouse this morning), wrestled them into their jammies, and off we went.

We stopped at Coldstone for an ice cream dinner (how healthy!?), and hit the movie with about 15 minutes to spare (it's a quirk of mine that I hate to miss the previews -- ask Daddy-J).

We saw Hotel for Dogs. Now remember, we don't have tv, so I know nothing about this movie. I do know that it's a kids' movie, 'cuz my kids have gotten Hotel for Dogs toys in their Happy Meals. Thankfully, the girls are still mostly blissfully unaware that the toys they get in their Happy Meals are marketing gimmicks to get them roped into something else... they just like playing with the puppies!

Anyway, the movie was actually really cute. There were almost no scary bits at all (which is good for my K-Wiggles, who tends to get scared). There was enough going on that M-Moo mostly sat still and paid attention (as much as she ever does at a movie). And Miss D was totally enraptured. She loved the movie.

Oh, and it was my first experience with Zac Efron, who I guess is some kind of tween (or teen?) heartthrob? Cute enough, but not really my type anymore. Reminds me of Rob Lowe or Robbie Benson from back in my day, with a kind of girly-face thing going on.

NEWay, all that is just to say that we had a good time at the movies, enjoyed Hotel for Dogs, and now they're all three fast asleep in Miss D's room.

Don't Divorce Us.

This made me cry today.


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

More on the God Delusion

Still more interesting stuff today. Finished Chapter 4 "Why God Almost Certainly Doesn't Exist." Some very funny stuff in here... Dawkins really tickles my "dry" sense of humor.

Dawkins did a lot of deconstruction of the Intelligent Design variant of the God/Science issue in this chapter. It was remarkable how all of the arguments for Intelligent Design fail to account for the fact that someone/something would have had to design the designer! I also thought it was really interesting to read Dawkins' excerpts from some of the theological writings on "irreducible complexity." I had thought this was an old term, but apparently it was coined in 1996. It's a term that refers to the argument that some things (like eyes, wings, etc.) are so irreducibly complex that they could not have evolved, thus there must be God. The problems Dawkins sees with this argument seem to fall into two main categories: (i) the proponents don't have a rigorous way of determining if something is truly irreducibly complex other than "I can't imagine a way for it to have come about in incremental steps;" and (ii) a God that could "design" something truly irreducibly complex would have to be so complex that it would in turn have to have been designed.

Another thing that struck me in this chapter was the "gap" arguments. I have heard people in real life talk about "gaps" in the fossil record and how that must mean that evolution couldn't have happened. Dawkins so thoroughly dispatches these "gap" arguments, essentially calling their proponents intellectually lazy. "There's a gap in the record, so there must be God = there's a gap in the record, so don't go looking for explanations or evidence or anything else that might explain it."

I said yesterday that there's a difference between a non-believer and an atheist, an important difference. I am an atheist. One of the writers Dawkins talks about (I can't remember which one and I'm too lazy to go look it up) being a "radical atheist" so as to distinguish himself in the minds of his readers from all variants of agnosticism or non-believerhood.

I find it interesting how my gut instinct has been toward atheism for a long time, at least 20 years now, but that intellectually I haven't taken the time to do the reading and research to solidify what I really think. Dawkins references so many other books that I want to go read now too.

As always, so many books, so little time.

The God Delusion

Interesting book. I'm not finished yet, but I'm very much enjoying it. Dawkins writes with little sentimentalism and some might find his style condescending or pedantic, but I find him refreshingly blunt. It is interesting to find all his references to various philosophers and theologians that "ring bells" for me from back in my college days. He seems to be great buds with Daniel Dennett, who was very influential in my thinking (and my Honors Thesis) back in the day.

I find myself laughing out loud a lot at some of the things he's written. I already knew I was an atheist, but it is nice to "know" why I am, and that I'm not nearly as alone as I thought. I do need to do an internet search to see if Dawkins has written anything since the inauguration, when Obama included "non-believers" *gasp* in his remarks -- apparently the first reference by a U.S. President to the fact that there are people who don't believe in God. I was so excited to have even a glancing reference to "my people" in the speech that it took a while before I realized that the term "non-believer" wasn't sitting quite right with me. I'm not a "non-believer" in that I don't believe in God. I am an atheist. I believe God doesn't exist. There's a difference, and I don't even think it's subtle.

I am really enjoying Dawkins' explications of "theism" "deism" "agnosticism" and "atheism." Very interesting stuff.

Anyway, I'll save a full review for when I've finished the book (I know, you can't wait!).

Teaching moments.

This is a real-life conversation that occurred in my car yesterday (G'pa Larry can attest, he was there).

Miss-D: "K-Wiggles, say 'M-Moo, you're a poo poo head.'"

K-Wiggles: "M-Moo, you're a poo poo head."

M-Moo (very upset!): "No I'm not."

Miss-D: "M-Moo, say "K-Wiggles, you're a ta ta head.'"

K-Wiggles (very upset!): "No I'm not."

Miss-D: "K-Wiggles, say 'M-Moo, you're a loo loo head.'"

K-Wiggles: "M-Moo, you're a loo loo head."

M-Moo (very upset!): "No I'm not."

Miss-D: "M-Moo, say 'K-Wiggles, you're a doody head.'"

M-Moo: "K-Wiggles, you're a doody head."

K-Wiggles (very upset!): "No I'm not."

Lather, rinse, repeat.


Can you see where this is going? Seriously, I love when Miss-D channels me and tries to help one of her sisters work out a problem with words. She's getting pretty good at it, and sometimes it even works.

But why oh why does she feel the need to teach them how to fight and call each other names? As if they don't somehow already know how to do that?! Ay-yi-yi!

Tubing at Soldier Hollow

G'pa Larry and I took the girls tubing at Soldier Hollow today. In all my years of living up here in a ski town, I've never ponied up the money to go tubing. But boy oh boy did we have fun today. We went for the full two-hour session from 12:00 noon to 2:00. I lost count of how many runs we did, but it was a bunch!

I, of course, got an amazing workout dragging the littles up the hill. Can anyone explain to me why they built the lift and the tubing hill so that the bottom of the hill doesn't meet the bottom of the lift (you have to hike up to the lift) and the top of the lift doesn't reach the top of the hill (again, you have to hike up to the top of the hill)? I mean, if you're going to pay all that money to put in a lift, or pay all that money to use the lift, it ought to take you from where you are to where you need to go, y'know?

Anyway. There was no line (gotta love Wasatch County on a Sunday) and the girls had a blast. We went down the hill in just about every combination you could imagine (though I think ultimately M-Moo may have been the only one to go down alone, several times). The lifties and attendants were very helpful, and even a couple of dads or g'pas took pity on my sad self and helped lug the littles up the hill. M-Moo, for the second day in a row, took a digger on her face (fell out of the tube coming off the lift), but she was a trooper and only cried for a minute or so.

By the end, everyone had wet their pants (ok, except me and G'pa!), but we all had such a fun time. We will definitely have to go back. Oh, and it didn't hurt that today was 35 degrees and sunny sunny sunny! What a beautiful spot for a tubing hill, too.

P.S. What a game, huh?!