My Olympics

Watching the Summer Olympics inspires me to be more active and attempt athletic-type things. But the reality is simply this:


I could NEVER do that. 


While I like to be active, my abilities are limited with average (and even slightly below-average) performance at waaaayyyy above-average effort. 


I propose a new Olympic event. It's called Mom-lympics. The events will be as follows:


1. Moving Target Pigtails
2. Work-Family Balance Beam
3. Couch Cushion Diving
4. Swimming in Circles (a specific rule here is that you may only use one limb for actually swimming, and must have at least 4 kids you are responsible for)
5. Wet Toddler Steeple Chase
6. Speed Stain Removal
7. Matching Sock Search
8. Creative Drinking
9.  Unevenly Matched Bars
10. Weightlifting (you have to lift each of your children 10 times while singing a Disney tune)


Gold is awarded to the parent who is still laughing at the end.

sister-wives

There are sisters, and there are sistas. 

This post is about the latter. The women in my life who complete me, and who are my closest companions. The ones who understand what makes me tick, and who love me anyway when they don't. These are the women whom share my family and my cooking (which is saying something); who parent my children and who don't mind me parenting theirs. These are the women I want to grow old with, laugh with, cry with, breathe in life with.

I had the privilege of spending two weekends IN A ROW with these amazing people. 

The first weekend was near Ojo Caliente, NM, in a little VRBO house that must be the spiritual epicenter of the universe. The sense of peace and eternity was amazing. It was balm for the soul to just sit and soak in the timelessness of that place.

We spent a lot of time talking, eating good food, and spent time in both Santa Fe and Taos. If you have never been there, go. Both places are beautiful, especially with the Native history and influence in the area. Plus, the artwork, architecture and jewelry are second-to-none.

This peace was good preparation for the following weekend. My sister-sista and I drove to KS with our combined five kids to visit our cousin-sista and her three. We visited a farm where our grandad grew up and is still owned by Mom's cousin; we played and went swimming and ate freeze-pops and had movie night outside on the lawn. We managed a few minutes of adult conversation spread over two days. We really did look like sister-wives with our eight children all blended together like the Sneetches after their stars got all mixed up: 

". . . . Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew, whether this one was that one . . . or that one was this one . . . or which one what what one . . . or what one was who."

 I love the expressions of everyone watching the pigs. "What's it doing, Mama?"

 

 These two littles look an awful lot like three mostly grown up bigs did.

And since it wasn't chaotic enough, we added fire. A whole case of sparklers. 

Ahhhhh. This is what lifetimes are made of. Thank you, sistas, for feeding my heart. 

Once Upon Allison Reunion

On July 4th, we drove 10 hours to the booming burg of Alpine, AZ for the Allison Family Reunion. In addition to seeing long lost mostly related relatives, we enjoyed good home cooking, hours of catching up conversation, four-wheeler tours, sight-seeing pit stops and a small-town Independence Day Spectacular (Allison Float in the town parade included).

I should note that no 20 hours on the road with three children isn't necessarily my idea of the ideal vacation, but ours travel well with the in-flight movie of their choice. (For those of you who believe I am bending to sorrowful, head-shaking lows by offering nearly 4 hours of screen time each way, I do not apologize. You may consider yourself to be the chauffeur for our next trip sans electronics. Please be prepared to wipe mashed banana off the ceiling, provide snacks at 20 second intervals, play the 'smelly feet' game, be nearly deaf after 2 hours of 21-month-old screeching, sing "wheels on the bus" a bazillion times--with motions--and say "black probe droid" five times fast.)

Here are some photographic highlights of the trip, in no particular order: