Category: Uncategorized (Page 33 of 118)

This morning, my clock radio woke me up to the sounds of “Any Which Way but Loose.” Seriously? Is that song still around? Now I’ll have that stuck in my head all day.

The joys of vacation! I’m sitting here in our hotel room with the BYU game on the tv, one child “driving” his cars around the room, and two kids playing spinner at the table.

I wanted to record some of the highlights of our vacation before I get back into real life, and forget. We spent a week in San Diego. We went to Lego Land for two days and Sea World for two days, and spent one day at the beach. The rest of the time has been mostly travel.

Hotels–First off, let me just mention how highly I recommend the La Jolla Shores Hotel It was beautiful! When we finally got there, (after a VERY LONG drive from Las Vegas through hours and hours of horrible traffic), we were tired and grumpy, and hoped we were in the right place. They took care of us, got my parents in their room, and us in our room quickly. When we came back a few minutes later to request two queens instead of a king (darn), they were nice and accommodating. It was a gorgeous hotel, right on the beach. They set up chairs and umbrellas for us on the beach when they asked us. They had a beautiful pool, and even ping pong. I felt like one of the beautiful people while we were staying there. Our room was free, from the package I won, but I wish I could stay there EVERY vacation. Usually we try to stay in the crummy hotels first, and end in the nice hotel last, but this time it didn’t work out that way. We walked to dinner one night, and enjoyed Jeff’s Burgers and frozen yogurt.

The other hotels were….fine.

Legoland was fun. We haven’t ever been there before, and while it is geared for the younger kids, even our teenagers had a good time. The first day we went it was just us and Grandma and Grandpa

Since the park closes at 5 (winter hours), we didn’t get to do everything, but highlights were the pirate land where we could ride in the boats and squirt each other. The kids also really liked the little boats where they can drive themselves around the pond.
My boat, however, was not going anywhere. I was with Jenna in our little yellow boat, and everyone was passing us, or bonking into us. She was telling me, “push on the GAS, mom!!!” like I don’t know how to drive a little boat. I had to call over a Legoland worker, who told me to push on the gas pedal. There is NO power to the boat, I tried to tell her. One of the girls there got to put on waders, get into the pond, and PUSH us the whole way around the pond. Then they let us go again in a different boat, one that worked.

The mini land is amazing, with all those lego buildings. And the HUGE animals out of legos just got me thinking, “If I were to build one of those, I wonder how much it would COST me,” I guess I just think like a mom.

We returned for our second day on Thursday, Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law, when she heard us talking about going to San Diego over Thanksgiving, wanted to come, and really wanted to do something very UN-Thanksgiving-like. She lost her mom this year, and it’s very hard to celebrate the holidays without her mom. So, we were happy to go to Lego Land on the holiday. We were hoping that it would be totally UNcrowded on Thanksgiving. That was not the case. It wasn’t completely crowded, but there were still plenty of people there, and plenty of waiting in line.

Oh, I’m not done expounding on our trip, but it looks like the game is getting exciting, so I should really watch the end, and I’ll blog more about the trip later.

–Oh, and you’ll have to excuse the many typos and the weird picture placement. I’m using the laptop with some dodgy internet connections, and things are pretty darn slow. I’ll do better next post, I promise!

Saturday night we spent in Las Vegas. It was quite the experience. I’ve been there with Ryan before and with friends, and last time we drove through with the kids, but we haven’t taken the kids on the strip before.

So there we were, with my kids and my parents. We started down by Treasure Island and made it all the way down to the Bellagio to see the water show.

We passed Caesar’s Palace. There’s so much to see, but most of it is not appropriate for kids. Every bus or taxi that goes by has scantily clad women, and there are still guys handing out flyers. Thankfully they avoid you when you are walking with kids. The highlight of the night, however, was seeing Donny.

We may even do a show together one day; The Donny and Paige show. Maybe the Paige and Donny show. We’ll have to see how it all plays out. First he’s got to win his Dancing show, and then we’ll talk.

Anyway…Then we came back, crossed over to the Venitian, and went inside to see the “outdoor” look of the shops there. By then, the kids were tired of walking, and we were all pretty much spent. We barely made it back to the parking garage without one or more of the kids collapsing into a tired heap.

In quite a contrast, Sunday morning we went to church in Las Vegas. Inside, it was pretty much like every other Mormon church, with the organ, the singing, and the people. We were welcomed, and asked if we were visiting, and we felt very much at home. I was glad to be there. I was grateful that we were able to take the sacrament and hear the speakers. It was nice to know that even in Las Vegas, only a few miles from the over the top consumerism and selfishness and glitz of the strip there were normal LDS people in church on Sunday, keeping the Sabbath day holy and trying to do what is right.

And you know, what happens in Vegas…

We are getting ready for a trip to San Diego. Remember way back when all of you nice people took the time to vote for my cute kid picture?
Well, we’re going to take that trip. All told, that “free trip” will cost us quite a chunk of change. Because they give you a trip, but no tranportation, and only 3 nights hotel, and only passes for 4 and we’re a family of 7…. anyway, it should be really fun! We plan to go to Lego land and Sea World and the beach, and spend some fun time with family. Speaking of family, my parents are going, as well as my brother and his family are meeting us there for half of the week. So it’s turning into QUITE the production, and should be a blast.

But as I was thinking about it, I realized that we have a big time question. When you have a 6 year old, do you still take a stroller? I have never gone to an amusement park without a small child, so the stroller’s just been automatic. Even when we went to Disneyland two years ago we had a stroller. John can walk just fine, and did fine hiking all over Yellowstone without a stroller, but this is an amusement park. We’ll be at the park ALL day, and he may get tired and want to rest. But more importantly, where would I stash all of our stuff? Without a stroller, where do you put the water bottles, snacks, jackets, extra socks, more snacks, hats, sunscreen, drinks and all that stuff? A backpack? And who would have to carry that backpack? The mom. I don’t think so!

So, people with children who aren’t little any more, what do you do? Do you take a stroller anyway, just to haul all the stuff and the occasional tired child? Do you divvy up all the snacks and make everyone carry their own fanny pack or back pack? Do you leave stuff in the car and then go back to the car at lunchtime? Push a shopping cart? Please share your solutions.

Don’t you just hate it when you’re getting ready to go to bed, and your hair looks FABULOUS? What’s up with that, hair? I mean, how many people have I seen today, and the hair wasn’t looking quite right, and NOW? NOW is the time you choose to look smashing? There’s something wrong with that.

I feel a glimmer of hope today. After yesterdays doom and gloom post, there should be some hope, right? All the kids went to school today. All of them. And I have no doctor’s appointments scheduled for today after school or anything like that. They are are just at school. And I feel hopeful that I may actually get through this without getting sick. But I’m not going to count on that. Just hoping.

I went to my vein follow up appointment yesterday. It’s been two weeks since my left leg vein was zapped, and it feels really good. SO much better than my right leg did at two weeks.

The bad thing is, I was really enjoying the “no exercise for two weeks rule”. Seriously. I didn’t have to worry if I should put on work out clothes every morning, and if I could squeeze in some kind of exercise in the morning. It was GREAT! And there was NO GUILT! None. I couldn’t exercise–doctor’s orders. So there was no feeling bad about it. But that’s over, and now if I want to goof around on the computer all morning instead of exercise, I will feel like the big fat lazy girl that I am.

Darn.

Has anyone seen my kids?

Is there anyone actually reading this old blog?

(chirp, chirp)

That’s what I thought. The amount of comments has been underwhelming lately, and when even my MOM isn’t reading, that’s pretty sad and depressing.

What’s happened to my readers? I did have some readers, didn’t I?

A friend of mine who actually gets comments on her blog suggested I install a site meter or a counter of some kind so I’d actually know how many READERS I had, instead of just assuming that since there are no comments there are no readers. I’ll admit I tried to figure out how to install one on my own. Without involving my tech support guy. Because he was probably out of town, or at work or something. I didn’t do it right. But I think that might have just made me more depressed.

Sigh.

Have we all just gone the way of facebook and twitter? We can only read a maximum of 130 characters, or whatever it is?

Do I need more jokes? More contests? More embarrassing stories? More blood and gore? Or maybe I just need to not care so much if there’s anybody reading here or not.

This week we will add an extra member to our family. But only for the week. We are welcoming a Japanese exchange student into our home for a one week program. A whole year would be very daunting, but a week we can handle. I hope. I keep telling my kids every night at dinner that when we have our Japanese student, “this kind of behavior” will not be acceptable. I’m hoping we don’t a)SCARE the kid, or b) SCAR the kid for life. He comes on Thursday night and he will be with us for one week. Mostly they have field trips and activities around the city every day. They are going to work on a farm, go up to Park City, and to this is the place state park. We just have to take him and pick him up from BYU every school day, (we have a carpool in place), then we’ll get to entertain him in the evening and on the weekend.

But what to do? If you were only in Utah for 6 days, what are the essential things to do?

Temple Square?
Thanksgiving Point?
A Corn Maze?
Boondocks?

We have some different options, but we’re not exactly sure what to take him to. We kind of want to ask him what he thinks and let him decide. The kids want to take him EVERYWHERE and do EVERYTHING, but I think they are just using him as an excuse to go out to eat at their favorite restaurants.

What would YOU want to do if you had only a few days to see Utah?