Wednesday, June 28, 2017

This Funny Kid of Mine

Okay, both of my kids are funny. 
But if you sing "This Funny Kid of Mine" to the Tune of "My Funny Valentine"... it works.  So.

Dawson got a camera for Christmas from his grandpa. As a result, he has taken pictures as well as videos of random things. He has also started a YouTube channel which I just can't bring myself to talk about right now because at any minute he will say "Mommy, I have another video for you to load" and I'll break out in hives. It's a lot of work for me, him having a YouTube channel is all I'm saying. 

One day as I was saving pictures and videos from his camera to my laptop, I came across the masterpieces I've decided to include in this blog post.
Sometimes I'm a busy gal. This means that all manner of shenanigan's can occur at any moment by either or both of my children. Many times the boys have asked to ride Evan's old crib mattress down the stairs. This is not a new form of entertainment, am I correct? Because I've talked about similar things before. When they've asked, I've always let them, until the last time they did so resulted in a tearful Evan telling me that Dawson rode over his foot with the mattress. (I've never let my children go up front at church to the altar and ask for prayer for these things after they happen.) 
That being said, Dawson had the great idea of talking Evan into donning his bicycle helmet so that I would let them ride the mattress down the stairs again. I agreed. This is because I'm an excellent mother and great role model.
Surely it was at this point that Dawson asked Evan if he was ready.
And then he went.
And then it was Dawson's turn, with commentary.
That's actually all I have to say.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Crested Butte: The Vacation

There's something about reading the words "Crested Butte" that can hardly be tolerated by immature people like myself. One has to snicker and say "butt". Now that I've done so, I can move on with this blog post.
Of course I took our obligatory road trip selfie. We hadn't quite made it out of the garage when I forced my peeps to joyfully commit to said picture.
This was our second excursion to Crested Butte and it generally takes me 3/4ths of a blog post to work up to using big words like excursion. But since we've been here before, clearly my word power range is amplified.
We stayed at The Grand Lodge, 
whose entrance has this ginormous chandelier. I need this hanging in my living room -who cares that it's actually slightly larger than my house. 
Once we were all checked in, we immediately set out for our favorite coffee place called First Ascent. I've not yet discovered the relationship between that name and coffee. 
It was on this walk that we came across this twisted concoction of hillbilly hippie. I was extremely motivated to run up to the driver and say "Hey! I'm from Indiana too!" But his tire rims shouted out "California", so I refrained.
Sadly, the coffee shop was closed and the suggestion was made to try a different location so we did. This is us waiting patiently for our drinks.I actually had to use this picture instead of the original which made me look like I had a double chin. 
There's a free shuttle bus that takes you from town to the lodging area so we rode it frequently because we're lazy.
It was on one ride that I caught a glimpse of Evan sitting like this:
Something about his being so dutiful screamed out to be documented on digital HD.
This has nothing to do with anything, it just made me laugh.
Swimming is the main attraction for all of our vacations. So if you are reading this and you don't own a pool or a hot tub, we can never visit you. Unless you live in Hawaii. Only exception. Wait. Or Alaska. Or Italy. Listen, if you live in the U.S. just get a pool okay?
I had to borrow this photo from the internet which explains the snow on the ground and the steam coming up from the hot tub. I never got a picture of the rest of the pool area because Jason frowned on my insistence of bringing my phone with me into the hot tub. Eye roll.
The pool is indoor and outdoor. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as being exotic. Right up there with the fact that the tiny refrigerator in our hotel room actually worked.
There's a pizza place there called The Secret Stash. The decorations are very eclectic and I thought I might get kidnapped by a Hindu statue before leaving but the pizza was terrific. 
On day 2 I got up early thinking how awesome it would be to go for a run. So I did.
Only the 4 mile run ended up being uphill the entire way back. This resulted in a sweaty, stinky, sunburned, uncomfortable me.
But the view on my run was excellent.
When I finally got back to the hotel room Jason asked me what took so long to which I replied that I had first been kidnapped by the taliban but when I escaped a Colombian drug lord chased me through a hidden area riddled with land mines where I fell down a well which took rescue workers 4 hours to get me out and it was actually on the news! Would you believe he was unmoved by my story? So I told him the whole run back was uphill and he asked if we could go for a hike. I said yes. 
This year was the first year since Evan was born that we weren't able to use a hiking back pack to haul him around because he's too big. With that in mind, we made the decision to forgo all of the mountainside hiking trails and go on the paved recreation trail that leads to town. Dawson took it upon himself to take a short video of our setting out.
Dawson also took several superb photos during the hike:
My absolute favorite:
Me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me. It's so artistic, it's delicious.
 And that ends his moment of glory. I took this picture. So.
A certain little brother conned his big brother into hitching him a ride.
During this hike, I used the opportunity to take picturesque photos of a certain drink for a sweepstakes I plan to enter. But Evan was getting a tad jealous of all the camera time the drink was getting.
I love these hikers.
The path ends near a park where we let the boys play for a bit and I hid behind a slide and did  squats in an attempt to shrink my thighs and firm my backside but Dawson was extremely embarrassed by this for some reason and wouldn't claim me as his mother until I was finished.
We finished our time at the park and finally made it to our favorite coffee shop during opening hours.  We went upstairs and found the same backhoe that enamored Evan two years ago.
2015:
2017:
Later that evening we ate a place called The Slogar. Please leave me comments below telling me what kind of food you would expect to eat at a place called Slogar. 
On day 3, our final full day in The Butte (hahahahahahahahaha!), we rented a pontoon so the boys could go fishing on Taylor Park Reservoir. Now, it's a beautiful place to be sure, but we left at 6 am to get there in time to be on the lake for 5 hours. It was -1,000,000 degrees below zero. Or maybe 40 degrees outside. Yeah. So I was going into hypothermic shock.
But the boys got to fish and caught nothing. I blame the stock market.
Somebody got really tired because he only sees 6:00 once a day.
 
He perked up when Daddy told him he could drive. In the meantime, I discovered that I could get blood flowing to my extremities if I moved around a lot.
If I only had 10 more degrees I could have nearly been perfectly happy.
Our five hours finally came to an end and we made it back to the dock.
They have these hummingbirds at the docking station/office and I was determined to make them love me. Aren't they cute?
On the drive back to the hotel, there was advanced silence.
At the entrance to the hotel, Jason thought he was funny getting our picture in front of the fireplace that wasn't working. It still warmed me up.
Day 4 was spent on the road going home. But the drive is so beautiful I was still taking pictures. See how I can take an average, ordinary turn sign and make it look extraordinary by putting it in a picture with my face in a rear view mirror? People pay big money for that.
I'm thinking our time with the Butte (heeeheeeeheee) might have come to a permanent end because there are other ski towns to explore and more pools to canon ball. But I really can't in good conscience end this post without this picture of the most creative name for a store ever: