Cousins and Grandma

Visitors

A week ago, the kids and I came back from a long trip away from home. Anyone who has seven kids and has been gone for a week knows that you have a lot of clean up, sorting laundry, and work to do when you  finally get home. Well... we hadn't done all the work yet, and the house was still a mess. In fact, a little before we got home, Jonnie piped up in his carseat and said,  

"Mom, I'm pooped."

"Okay," I said, "We'll change you as soon as we get home."

"You're not going to throw me in the bathtub," he said worriedly. (He hates to bath!)

"No. We'll just change your diaper, okay?"  

Well, he was asking if I was going to give him a bath for good reason.  We went to get him out of his carseat and realized he had done more than just filled his diaper - he had a poop explosion!  It was everywhere!  We spent the next half hour cleaning everything up, and then I jumped into the van again and ran to a job interview. By the time I got home, I was exhausted. The kids were exhausted. I decided we would clean the house the next day.

BAD IDEA. The next morning I let the kids sleep in, and as I'm sitting on the porch couch enjoying the peace and quiet of the morning, here comes a big shiny suburban pulling into my long driveway. "Who is that," I wonder. Pretty soon, out pops our good friends Mark, Paul, Steve, and their Dad.

Now, let me paint this picture a little more clearly.  I'm sitting on the couch on the front porch, lounging while I look up job listings on my laptop. I have no bra on yet, I haven't combed my hair, brushed my teeth, or put my makeup on. The porch is crowded with furniture we are storing for someone as a birthday surprise, and EVERY room in the house is messy. Every. Single. One.  In fact, when I came home, I had dumped my suitcase on my bed frantically trying to find something I needed from it before I left for my job interview.  I came back from the interview and shoved everything onto the floor before I fell into bed, exhausted. The room was bombed.  I'm not the world's best clean freak housekeeper to begin with... but that day, every room looked awful.  The food storage we had relocated to the playroom while we were working on a project was all still sitting there. The huge beanbag full of foam squares had broken the week before we left and since I didn't have time to sew it up, the kids had them scattered everywhere downstairs.

Mark gives me a hug hello and walks into the house to see how the basement turned out, which he had helped us do the drywall on. He goes downstairs, where Amanda is still sleeping.  I awkwardly give the others a hug and excuse myself for a minute while I go get my brassiere on. When I come back, Steve says he wants to see the house so I start showing them around, cringing at every room we walk into.  We go upstairs, and meanwhile Amanda comes up to the main floor, oblivious that we have visitors. When we come back down, she is sitting at the dining table in her nightgown eating a bowl of cereal, totally unaware they were even here.  They all want to see the work Mark did down in Amanda's room too... and Amanda is freaking out because her room looks about as good as my room.

Ugh. Normally, I love visitors. But sometimes I think I need to get one of those signs on my door that says...

"If you come to see me, come anytime.  If you came to see my house, make an appointment."

I can just imagine the stories they had to tell their wives when they got home.

Oh well....

Oh the joys...

We've been staying at Joe's place the last few days and when we're there, Jonnie sleeps in the same room as we do.  Unfortunately, here is what our night consisted of last night.

Cough, cough.
Cough, cough.

And a little later...

Cough, cough, cough.
Cough, cough, cough.

Being away from home without my medicine cabinet is NOT my favorite thing, and I normally always bring a few basics with me when we travel north. The climate and elevation change always seems to get the kids with one sickness or another. Who wants to wake up your hosts at one in the morning asking for some Vicks?

All night long it was the same thing.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough.

Needless to say, I'm tired.

Good thing I can take a nap :)

Stillness

Tuweap overlook of the Grand Canyon, photo by me, of course.

Fun fact for you - I'm afraid of heights. 

No, that's not true. 

I'm petrified of heights. Yes, I think that says it a little better.  

Have you ever driven on a mountain road when it's zig-zagging up the side of the mountain and one side is up against the side of the cliff and the other side is a sheer drop off and every time the wheels on the car spin they shoot a bit of gravel off the side of the road and you can watch it fall gently down the side of the mountain as though it hasn't a care in the world nor does it know that in a moment it will be pummeling into the earth below and as a result will probably no longer even be a rock but a bit of powder for the wind to blow away? (And yes I know that was a run on sentence but that's about how much goes through my brain every time the wheels on the van turn, so pretty please, bear with me.) It scares me to pieces and I really prefer that Ryan drive on these roads, when I am asleep, and never tell me we ever drove on that particular road in the first place. 

But I'm straying. Fear of heights is not what this is about today.... it's about our outing to the Grand Canyon, which thankfully did not entail a drive up a zig-zaggy cliff. 

So, lucky us - and I mean that - we had friends and family come visit us for the weekend and they took us on a drive out to Tuweap (or Toroweap as you sometimes see it spelled).  This particular view of the Grand Canyon is stunning, and totally worth the long-ish drive to get there.  The pictures I took really don't do it justice. 

Ryan and Jonnie, overlooking the Colorado River

So imagine this. Me - petrified of losing someone over the edge, and 15 kids -  7 of whom are mine, all running loose at the edge of a 3000 foot drop off. My idea of a fun time!

For the first 20 minutes, I panicked. A lot. And told myself to breathe. A lot.

Because otherwise I was a little bit out of my mind.

But after they got all their wiggles out from the car ride and got tired of looking over the cliff, they started running around inland. Then, I was finally able to enjoy it. 

The Grand Canyon is breathtaking, to say the least. I simply cannot wrap my brain around 

how this river cut so deep into the sandstone, and between the wind and rushing water, the canyon was 

formed.  It's incredible. 

It's also peaceful. And still.  That is probably what struck me most - the stillness.

After the kids all went back to the truck for lunch and I knew that Ryan had Jonnie, I had a few moments to just sit. And look. And as I sat on the ledge looking northward, I knew that somewhere down below branches were rustling in the wind and a bird was fluttering by. There were probably even chipmunks running around, or a lizard lying in the sun. But I couldn't see any of it. Everything was still, and being there helps your mind become still too. 

Enjoy the pics.  I hope that just for a moment, you can imagine being there, and enjoy the peacefulness and stillness that we need in our lives every once in a while. 

Hugs,

Rachel

PS... there are some other shots of the kids there.  Thanks for coming to visit us y'all!

Laura, sitting at the edge of the drop off.

See the boat in the water near the bottom of the picture? Yes, it's there. Look again.

Here it is "up close". Now, I have a super zoom camera, and this is as close as I could get to the boat. 

Hopefully this gives you a perspective of how deep and wide the canyon and river are at this point. 

(There are deeper sections of the canyon.)

And a few more just for fun. 

Ty, Ta, Ash - three buddies.

Boston, enjoying a nice cold root beer. 

Jonnie and Braelin in the "peek-a-boo" rock.

My cousin Kaitlyn stayed the weekend and went with us.  Fun to see you Kait!

Red Milk, and Rude!

Originally posted April 1, 2009

The thing with having a toddler who can say anything and everything, speak in paragraphs, tell jokes, and repeat scenes from movies he hasn’t seen for weeks, is that he never shuts up. For all his big vocabulary, the phrase “It’s time to be quiet” somehow escapes his understanding. 

“I want some red milk!” has been one of the sentences I’ve heard most today.... that along with “Mom - she’s being rude, rude, rude!!” 

I’ll explain. The chili peppers (my children) and I are traveling. A friend left half a gallon of red Tampico for us. Ever since then, Braelin has been asking for the “red milk”. And since I’m trying to keep him somewhat quiet (ha ha ha!!!) at the hotel we are staying at, I keep giving in and letting him have a few more sips. End result?  Barf. Red barf. All over the tile. And he insisted on cleaning it up himself so it is now smeared ALL over the tile. At least it’s not on the carpet - and hey -- he wants to clean?  My kid? Wants to clean?  He must have a gene none of the rest of them picked up because this is NOT normal for my kids. My kids are the ones who get “bathroom-itis” every time they have chores to do.  You know -- the sudden urge to sit for a long time in the bathroom hoping someone else gets the cleaning done before they get out?  Well, it’s a named  and frequently contracted disease at our house. 

So anyway, now you know about the red milk. Want to hear who is being “rude?” 

Of course, not many of you have 7 children to go on long car trips with, but I’m sure most of you have at least one. So, multiply that to get 7 kids in the car with all of the fun that goes with it. 7 times the potty breaks, 7 times the “are we there yets?”, 7 times the kids who just don’t like to be cooped up in a carseat! 7 times the running around when we do get to where ever it is we are going and stop.

Thankfully - my kids are actually really good in the car. They’re used to traveling, but Braelin with his enormous not even two year old vocabulary has said “Mom, she’s being rude, rude, rude!!!” far too many times for me to count today.  (She being Daisy - bet you couldn’t have guessed that!) The day ended with him screaming the whole way through Zion’s National Park.  Good thing I was still smiling and having a fun time.  It’s really been a great day with lots of good memories too.  I’ll tell you more about those in another entry. 

So, wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote.  Here’s a quick run down of what’s been happening with us.... 

I am feeling better.  Much better.  Good meds help :) Lots of sunshine and avoiding stress is critical to daily function but I AM functioning. I get up and dressed and can interact great with my peppers. 

I am still NOT up to crowds. Social anxiety still very high, which means homeshows are out of the question. 

I eat chocolate.  Lots of it, turns out. But since I found Healthy Chocolate -- it’s all good.

We are selling our house -- or at least trying to. We had a buyer, but that didn’t work out -- so if you know anyone who wants a cute house with a huge yard in Roosevelt -- send them my way :)  Ryan will be manning an open house this weekend!

We found a house in Hurricane, UT that we LOVE. Very cute, old historic home with a fabulous yard. I am so ready for a warm winter!  Here are some pictures  Of course - we sort of need to sell the house in Roosevelt before we buy this one.  “Thy will be done.”

Meanwhile, I could not stay at home trying to keep it clean with the four little ones at home. I was going crazy, and I’m already crazy enough! So, the kids and I moved down here to Southern Utah for the time being. We are here there and everywhere, thanks to a kind brother, aunt, and sister who have let us stay in condos, guest houses, and way cheap hotel rates.  More stories to come ....