Still alive

We are still alive , it is summer here in this beautiful mountain valley so that means you spend every second outside enjoying because you never know when the snow will start again. These are the beautiful flowers that are popping up all over the valley.

A boy and his best friend

Josh loves his tractors, he loves them so much that he demands that he jumps with them.

Dance Recital

Teton Bike ride

Last year some fabulous friends took us on a bike ride, I blogged about it last year and I would do that cool thing where you link it to that post but I just barely know how to turn on the computer so I will stick with just reminding you. SO this ride winds through the Teton National Forest , they plow the roads the month of April and no cars are allowed just walking or biking. Once again this year we went with a group and biked it. We did not make it the whole way this year because this was Lexis first time to bike it and she was struggling, she did make it about 5 miles and I was pretty proud of her to do that. The next week I went with some friends and we did the whole 17 miles with a VERY strong head wind. It was awesome and I wish that I could have done it one more time before they opened the road up, but next year right.

Easter

Easter was an indoor affair this year seeing how it snowed 63 inches that week, hideous, absolutely hideous. Not much to blog about, still have that dang tooth ache that I had last in last weeks blogging, going to take care of that tomorrow, yea!

Baaaaaaad mommy

You know when you have those experiences as a mother that after it is all said and done you are so ashamed of yourself? Have you ever wished you could just push rewind and start over? I had a lovely experience the other night and while some would not tell their tale and others would laugh and not care, I will share to remind, shame and humiliate myself so that hopefully I can stop and think the next time. I am setting myself up to make everyone think I have done some heinous crime, while not a crime against my country but a crime against my children's hearts I did commit.
The Scene of the crime: High School auditorium, watching a performance from a professional dance company.
The victims: Sam and Lexi.
The weapon: Pride, words, and stubbornness.
To preface my story long ago I was listening to a morning talk show and the women on the show was talking about how she never ever went on little outings with her daughter (mommy daughter dates) without them both returning home in tears. I felt so bad for her and swore to my heart that I would always enjoy my outing with my little ones and the we would never return home in tears, oh so naive, so innocent.
When I heard that there was going to be a Dance company coming to our little High School I was so excited to take the girls for a little mommy daughter time, they were also so excited they love dance and they love to feel special. We left the house in great spirits got great seats and settled down. As most know I live in a small beautiful town, if you have EVER lived in a small town then you know what I mean when I say that EVERYONE knows EVERYONE and they are all some how related. I grew up in a town like this and now I am raising my kiddos in a town like this, I love it and would not have it any other way, but you always have to remember that wherever you go there is always someone you know:)
After we sat down and waved and said Hi to everyone around us the performance started. The first couple dances were great we were enjoying our time enjoying the entertainment. I was a little distracted at the women in front of me, everyone time her kids did something that she did not care for instead of just talking to them she was "yell whispering". I was embarrassed for her and her children. Another back story to help you understand one of the reasons the night was so hideous. I HATE SCENES, I hate it when people create scenes. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF! I have always been this way, it makes me so uncomfortable and honestly I think that most of the time they can be avoided by just talking to one another like you are human, and have found that my children respect me more when I talk to them civilly as opposed to yelling and talking down to them. OK , off soap box on with story. Intermission comes and tell the girls to get there wiggles out and run around with there friends. They do as asked. All seemed to be well the lights were going down I was looking for them so that they could come sit with me, Lexi plops herself next to me and starts whining. I can not even understand what she is whining about because one I am ignoring her she tends to be very dramatic and a very hot temper so she gets angry pretty fast and two I am still trying to find Sam. All of a sudden there is Sam and the lights go down, the show is ready to go on. Next thing I know Lexi who is on one side of me and Sam who is on the other start to tear(sp) in to one another, I am humiliated because they are so loud, people are trying to watch the show and they are having a full on argument. I very quietly and nicely whisper to them both that it is not important and to be quiet, this was not good enough for either they continue to argue their points of why Sam had hurt Lexis feeling and why Sam felt it was not her fault. I want to die at this point, people are looking, or maybe no one really was but I felt like the spotlight was on us and we were on the stage. I give Lexi that "look" and say please stop you are ruining this night we will leave if you do not calm down. She folded her arms threw herself in to her chair, was she mad , yes, but was she being quite, yes. Sam on the other had would not let up, she was mad and she was not going to let it go. I give her the "squeeze" on the knee. you know the one you do to try to warn them hoping they will quietly get the hint, well Sam got the hint but she also got hurt and she was going to let everyone know, she starts yelling oh my leg you hurt my leg aghhhhhh. I am now thinking that my heart is going to beat out of my chest I am sweating I can not breathe, did I tell you I am petrified of "scenes"? This is where ugly words came in to the scene, I look at her tell her that she has ruined the night and to go out and wait for us in the hall or go to the back of the auditorium because I did not want to be with her. Horrible, YES! Oh and I said that all very quietly no yelling, see even stupid things can be said civilly, I think I may even had smiled at her. She gets up sobbing and goes to the back of the auditorium, at this point I know that I have overreacted but I was mad and humiliated, pride was blocking any rational thinking. Lexi at this point starts to sob because she loves her Sammy and does not want her banned from us. I give her one of those look again and she muffled her sobs. I turn my attention back to the performance fooling myself that I was going to enjoy it. there was a couple of problems, I knew that I was wrong, pride and stubbornness were not allowing me too make it right and the humdinger of it all was I could here Sam SOBBING in the back. That is right, she was crying so hard in the back that you could hear her over the music. This presented a problem, if I was to go back and talk to her then I would once again be involved in a "scene" and well then I would have to let go of my pride. After 3 dances trying to listen to the music and not hear my child's cry in the back and Lexis to my side I decided that we were just going to leave. I stand up where once again I want to die because now everyone is looking at me but as I walk to the back I see some moms comforting Sam, shoot me now. Luckily I could not see their faces, I know they could see mine. I said lets go walked out with two sobbing kids, and then I started sobbing myself. I walked the whole way to the car crying. We got in I told them I was going to the store and that they were to sit in the car. As I walked through the store the night replayed in my head, I could see all that I had done wrong and all that I could have done better. I remembered how I swore that I would never come home from a special night with my kids crying. I calmed down went back out to the car where I was greeted by the saddest little girls ever. Sam blurted out that she was so sorry and that she ruined everything and then Lexi blubbering that no it was her fault, I then started crying and apologized. I told them how it was in fact a lot of bad choices on my part, we talked about how we all could have made better choices that would have changed the outcome, we then held hands and laughed while running through a field of wildflowers. Oh wait no, we still have 2 feet of snow on the ground. We searched and found a little pizza place that was open and went and had a good laugh and ate some yummy desert.
SO there it is, I am ashamed and sad. We are going to have a retry this week at Jr.Miss. Keep our fingers crossed all goes well.
Please ignore all misspellings and bad grammar, I have a tooth ache and yes that protects me form having to write properly.
Oh and if you are a "Scene" creator do not be offended at my words, your choice is your choice, also do not be alarmed if when you are creating a scene I will quickly exist and pretend to not know you, you are EMBARRASSING yourself............thank you.

March

We spent some time in Utah visiting family. We visited the graveside of a beloved prophet.

Tried and tried to get a picture of my kids in front of the temple, finally just started to snap pics and laugh because truly this is what my kids are like so why should they "pose" for a pic. Not one picture of them all looking at me or paying attention.






Two of my little monkeys got hair cuts, one I was excited to get cut the other makes me mourn my babies little curls.





Lots of skiing.


Josh trying to learn.
Bum shots, oh wait, no these are Steve helping Josh, honest mistake.


This little one got a concussion this day, story to come later.

This one snuggled up to daddy one day and they both took a nap.
Lexi FINALLY can ride her bike with out training wheels, and she only screams half the time while she cruises around the block.
Josh taught him self, no joke, he went in to the garage and taught himself how to ride his bike.


So Lexis concussion, the story is somewhat funny. We were skiing and I always have the girls go down the mountain first so that I can make sure we get to the bottom all right. Steve was at the bunny hill helping Josh to ski. I am cruising down when I hear from a patch of trees a lot of screaming, the funny thing is that I knew right off it was Lexi because she has one of those screams that are easy to recognize, but I tried to ignore it, not sure why I just figured she was being dramatic. As I got closer to the trees I could tell that something was wrong, I could not go in to the trees because of my snowboard so I kept yelling to Lexi to come out, she would just yell back where are you mom over and over, I thought that was weird because there was only one place I could have been and that was right outside of the little group of trees. About this time a nice women came and asked if she could help, she went in to the trees but Lexi was still not making sense so I decided to take off my board and hiked in, when I got to her she looked fine so I asked her if she was screaming just because she was mad or because she hurt herself, she said that she was screaming because her head hurt because she took a nap in the snow. That was the first warning bell that went off, then as I was putting her helmet back on I saw the dent in the helmet and asked if she had hit a tree, she said that she was going too fast tried not to hit a tree and then fell asleep in the snow and started dreaming. She said that when she woke up she did not know where she was, after all that I decided that she should be checked out so I took her down the mountain and they called the ski patrol, they were so kind to her and asked me what happened, I told them what she said and then Lexi starts to argue with me that she never said that. I was so embarrassed and promised them that she did indeed tell me what i had told them, it apparently had not knocked the sass out of her. After a checkup they decided that she was fine a definite concussion and a whole lot of personality. They told me that i needed to follow up with our family doc when we got off the mountain, but here was the problem, Sam had a concussion the prior week and I was SO embarrassed to show up at the Docs again with another head injury, so they told me that she was going to be fine and that I did not have to follow up pheww. Oh and I would tell Sams story of her head injury but it was not as interesting:) It happened at school, she told me that she was blind for 2 minutes after it happened, it also did not knock the sass out of her either, oh well.