The Trials of a Busy Mom

Month: October 2014

San Diego

Back in the summer, I won a radio contest. The prize was “a trip to San Diego”. Really the prize is 2 nights in a nice hotel, 4 passes to SeaWorld, and 4 passes to the Wild Animal Safari park or the Zoo. So, no, it’s not a Free vacation, (since we had to pay for gas, 3 nights hotel, passes for the other two of us, and all our food) but it is a reason to go on vacation. So, for our fall break, we headed South. We picked up Megan from Snow College and made our way to Las Vegas on Wednesday night. Somehow we lucked out and got the BEST two room suite in the whole hotel. It was HUGE! The kids were So happy that everyone got a bed (or a sofa bed) and no one had to sleep on the floor. Free dinner at the hotel that night and they all frolicked in the pool. Not good to have the first hotel be the best, and I didn’t plan it that way. I’ve been burned by hotels before, and I always worry that the “good deal” I booked will be another crap hotel, but I did pretty well on this trip.

The next morning we drove and drove and drove to San Diego. When we finally got there and checked into our hotel (which was ok, but nothing like the first one. And the GPS took us through a sketchy area of town to get there, so I was worried!) and then we went to a lighthouse/museum and visitor’s center right on the coast. 036

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It was beautiful. WE had fun looking at the waves before the tide came in.
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At the visitor’s center, there was an armor display, so we “put on the armour of God”.

The next day we got up early, had breakfast at the hotel, and then went to Sea World. We had hoped that since it was Friday, instead of Saturday, it wouldn’t be as crowded. The temperature was perfect, around 75-78. Not TOO crowded, but of course we saw a family we know from Highland and kept running into them all day.
232 We went on the rides (Atlantis and the Rapids ride and the skyride and Mantis) and saw the shows243 (the pet show, the sea lion show, and the Shamu show) and had a fun day.
390 I noticed a skyride I didn’t think I had seen before, and really wanted to go on that. It was so beautiful to go up and over the bay!

The Seamore and Clyde sea lion show was Halloween themed, and I don’t think they had gotten it quite down. The Sea Lions didn’t really want to do all the stuff they were supposed to do. Oh, well.
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The Killer Whale show was great, as usual, even with their conservation plug.
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We were not sitting in the splash zone.

Of course, by the end of the day, we were pretty dang tired. We wanted to see the penguins and I got us sidetracked into the turtle place AND the shark place.
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We wanted to see EVERYTHING, and since they closed at 5 for fall/winter hours, we had to really hurry.

Then we made our way to the Catamaran Resort and Spa, the hotel I had won. It’s one of those fancy places right on the beach that we normally couldn’t afford.
Wow. Beautiful! I had to pay extra to get a larger room with two double beds and a pull out couch, and I’m SO glad I did. We would have been tripping over each other and miserable in the standard room.
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Out in mission bay with the ocean on one side of the street and the bay on the other, and the hotel opened right up to the beach. There was even a wedding there on Friday night. As we were playing on the beach, the wedding was happening right there on the grass.
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Saturday we went to the San Diego Wild animal Safari park. We’ve never been there, so we chose to go there instead of the zoo. It was really a great place, but SO spread out, so there was a ton of walking.
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One of our favorite things was seeing the lion cubs playing with their parents. SO adorable. And SO close. The Lion came RIGHT up to the glass where we were standing. Amazing.

The tram ride was great, too, as we saw so many animals! We took SO many pictures.

By the time we got to the tiger trail, everyone was just worn out. And those maps are not easy to figure out and we ended up walking up to the Condors when we didn’t want to, backtracking, etc. We had all just reached our grumpy points. We just had to find the nursery and see the baby cheetahs before we could call it a day. Adorable!
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Back to the hotel so we could go to the beach, then out for dinner at a yummy mexican place right by the hotel.

Sunday we went to the Church historical Mormon Battalion site. I love how interactive it is now.
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John got to put on the gun, canteen and hat.
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WE even found an ancestor who marched. George Coleman from England. I’m pretty sure he’s one of our Coleman ancestors.

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Panning for gold was cool, too.

We were sad to leave. Even sadder that we still had 13 hours in the car before we would get home. We stopped in St. George this time, and didn’t deliver Megan to Snow college until the afternoon on Monday, so she did miss one day of classes, but she’ll recover.

GREAT trip with the family.

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Play for the old home ward

Late this summer I went to the funeral of a dear friend’s mom. Afterwards, I stopped by my parent’s house, and I said, “Mom, don’t expect me to sing at your funeral”. My mom is nowhere near needing to have a funeral, by the way. She and Dad are still doing well and are very healthy, but when they are still healthy is the time to discuss this stuff.

“What?” she said, “but I was planning on having you girls sing something, maybe have Lori-Kay play the flute.”
“It’s just rude to ask someone to sing when they have just lost their mom. Or their grandma.”

She just looked at me like I was weird (I get that look a lot).

“I have an idea, Mom. If you want a musical number, how about we do something while you are ALIVE to be able to hear it.” And then I had an idea. “How about I get a group together and we play something on the bells?”

So I asked my friend Liz, who also group up in the Butler 8the ward, and her parents are still in that ward, if she would like to play a small group number in the home ward. We found a song, found a date, and found a couple other people from our bell group who could do it, and made a plan. Of course, two of the 5 ended up dropping out because they had other things going on on that date, but we were able to find others to fill in. A few practices before our regular rehearsal and we were ready. So, on Wednesday night, I borrowed our director’s bells (just two of the boxes), and hauled them to the car after rehearsal. Hauling the bells in the worst part of one of these things.

This morning, we all met at my parent’s ward, rehearsed a bit before the meeting, and then were ready to go.

My parent’s ward has not changed much in the 22 years since I got married. People get older. Some people have died and a few people have moved away, a few younger families have moved in, but not a lot. During sacrament meeting, it was SO QUIET. Wow. Compared to my ward, it was like silence. And sparse. The whole middle section was almost empty when the meeting started. I’m not sure why their ward is dwindling. If I were to come back to my current ward (where we’ve lived for 13 years now and in that time it’s split twice) in twenty years, I doubt I would recognize as many people. But people in my parent’s generation tend to move less, I guess. They raise their family and stay in the same house.

It was fun to see so many people I know and recognize from my youth. Some I am friends with on facebook (yes, my home ward has a facebook page), and some I see when I visit my parents. Some I had to really think about to remember who they were, since they have aged 20 years from my memories, and one lady I didn’t remember at all (she seemed to remember me), but it was nice to be back.

The comments were all so nice and they really appreciated that we could come and play for them. It was a special experience for me (and for Liz). I’m grateful for my musical friends that they would give of their time and talents to help us perform something like this.

Some days are like that

Argh!!! Whiner alert. Look away.

No alarm. Woke up at 6:55. Grabbed clothes and brushed my hair and teeth. Ran downstairs and grabbed John. The two kids I normally pick up in the morning before my early morning chimes class were not there, they had given up after 10 minutes of waiting, I’m sure. CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.

When the kids have a drink break after 20 minutes of playing, I put on some makeup. It didn’t help all that much, but at least I knew I had tried.

In addition to throwing myself together in about a minute to get to school to teach, I ran out to the car and the steering wheel was adjusted WAY high because hubby was working on the car last night. I didn’t have time to fix it, and I hit the windshield wipers on. Finally figured out how to get the steering wheel the right height, but the windshield wipers WILL. NOT. TURN. OFF. No problem. It’s dark. Got to school in my frazzled state. Taught from 7 to noon, and then went back to the car. Since I hadn’t eaten breakfast, I was looking forward to a hamburger or something that I didn’t have to make myself from a local fast food establishment, but couldn’t do that with the windshield wipers furiously swishing back and forth IN THE SUN! People looking at me like I’m an idiot because I don’t turn off my wipers.

ARRRRGH!

I really wish I had a cookie.

That is all.

Murder party

For Natalie’s birthday party, she wanted to do a How to Host a Murder party, but one that was clean. Luckily, I had purchased a printable story a while back, and so I could just print that out and they could use that. Most of her friends are girls, so some of them had to play boys, but they didn’t mind. My pictures are so dark, since they were in the basement and my camera had decided it didn’t need much flash. Megan took a bunch of pictures with the fancy camera she had checked out from school, so I’m sure she got some good ones.

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If the amount of laughter is any gauge of how much fun they were having, they had a BLAST.

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I love how some of the girls dressed up for their characters!

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No cake for this girl. I had told her that she’d have to make her own cake if she wanted one, and we just all ran out of time. Cupcakes from the freezer did just fine.

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They even sang happy Birthday to her. They sang a LOT, these girls.

Fun, but LOUD, evening. So glad she had fun.

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