The Power of Prayer

Last day of February, and as the calendar page is about to turn, my brain turns to thoughts of spring. 50 degree weather, kids in school and husband out of town on business=long afternoon walk. While walking I saw this little lady surrounded by patches of snow and brown plants and I thought-- "I bet she is praying for an early spring."

5 blocks later I passed a house whose willow trees had started to bloom. And I was grateful a lady with more pull with the powers that be was a like minded sister.

Skates and Arrows

Two dollar Tuesday, an empty rink, a surprise visit from an out of town sister, and a necessary skate repair for the other equals a very fun, impromptu trip to Xanadu. (No, not the place where Olivia Newton John and her sister muses reside. Rather, the one attached to Hollywood Connection in West Valley.) I don't think all three of us have ever been on skates at the same time. It was fun to see my sisters and roll around the rink for a while.


Before planning our Xanadu adventure, we had promised the boys we would take them to do some archery tonight. I have had the information bookmarked on my bookmarks bar all winter, thinking it would be a great indoor activity to let them burn off some energy during the snowy season. Alas, we are at the end of February and still haven't had a chance to try it. (Seems to be the theme of the weekend. We were in the same the boat with our Rock climbing adventure). The boys had a lesson with the most patient gentleman who walked them through the technique- getting both boys to improve their shots and had them begging to come back to practice every day.

Skates and arrows, not a bad way to wrap up the last hours of our 4 day weekend.

Monkeys on President's Day

2 LITTLE MONKEYS CLIMBING ON A WALL. ONE HAD A ROPE AND WASN'T AFRAID TO FALL.
We finally made good on Romney's birthday present, a month pass to the local rock climbing gym. (Yes, his birthday was 3 months ago--what's your point?) With no school today, cold temperatures, and two very stir crazy boys, it seemed like the right time to bust out the gift certificate and have a climb. It is really set up to be a "bouldering" gym--meaning no ropes. But Romney is inclined to get what he wants (Usually, only because he isn't afraid to ask for it.) and he didn't want to boulder, he wanted to clip in. The man (I use that term very loosely-- he was all of 20 years old) at the desk explained how to boulder to both boys and started to walk away. Romney said, "Um, excuse me, but when I come here for my school, we use ropes. I like that better. The guy liked Romney's chutzpah and dug out a harness and a let down the ropes to let Romney clip in and showed Bill how to belay him. William decided he would prefer to boulder. Both are like little spider monkeys. William (our very cautious son) bouldered to the top of the wall over the window (well higher than the "allowed" bouldering height) more than once. Romney climbed tethered for a while before wanting to be set free. All in all, they hung in there (pun intended) for about 2 hours before succumbing to hunger and fatigue. Luckily for these two monkeys, whose parents are not as inclined to climb on stuff, they have relatives who are. They need pointers and practice. Any climbers out there, say those with WALL RATS experience have time to come to the gym and climb with our monkeys? Anyone, Anyone, Edwards, Louie, Anyone?



Romney insisted I film the process of him climbing, falls and all. So for your viewing pleasure, I present our youngest monkey in action:

Valentine's For Geeks

Valentine's Day. Another one of those holidays that seem like an invention of the corporations of the world. Not quite as bad as Christmas, but close. At least that is always how I thought I have felt about Valentine's, but this year I have morphed into a perplexingly strange and different person. I don't eat meat, or dairy. I like chocolate. And I willingly participated in the Valentine's frenzy. (Who the hell am I?) Not only did I participate, but I prepared. As soon as Bill would leave the house (remember since he works at home, that isn't very often without the rest of us coming with him.) I would break out his present. A book that would serve as my 90 page love letter of a card. Filled with question prompts, I added my answers over the course of the week to let him know which personality traits, memories and qualities I love about him. For the boys, the night before was spent whipping up "pink" eggs to be scrambled in the morning. Not to mention digging out the giant heart shaped cookie-cutter and dying the pancake batter pink as well. Served with strawberries and strawberry milk the next morning and it was a manly "pink" breakfast for my three men. (Remember, I don't eat that stuff, so it was truly a labor of love.)

Bill got me a card and a nice bouquet of flowers. The boys gave me an orchid plant they had picked out and made me cards. Romney's card had a "pop-up" and said "Thanks for being a great Mom" on one side, and had a colored hand on the other with the question "Need a helping hand?" William's was geek-tech. He put his new scratch programming skills to use and made Bill and I a "virtual" card (See below. It is pretty awesome!). My other geek, Bill, spent an hour figuring how to convert it from a .sb file to something that I could post on blogger. And that, my friends, is true love!

LOVE!

Having gotten our "freak" on the night before, in morning light we needed something more "normal" to do. So sans mustache and skeleton sweatshirt we drove to Red Rock to do a little hiking. When inversions of terrible Orwellian level air pollution and temperatures in the teens have kept a family indoors for a month, heaven is 70 degree sunny skies and miles of trails.




We picked a 4-5 mile hike up Pine Creek. We hiked past a homestead (does it count as a "homestead" if the home's foundation is made of concrete? I didn't think so either, but hey, I don't write their brochures.) and ended up at a couple of mini-waterfalls and crystal clear pools of water. The boys bouldered around on the plethora of rocks that soon over take the clear marked "trail" and we wound our way back to the original path. The best way to spend a February morning, ever! What a treat to be outside with out looking like Ralphie's little brother in the movie "A Christmas Story".

We grabbed some lunch and snacks at Whole Foods (Hint: If you ever stumble upon dehydrated Kabocha pumpkin chips, buy them! They are delicious!) and met Anne and Q at the hotel's lazy river pool for some more outside time. Anne and I gabbing away while the 4 boys floated along the river. They dried off and we headed to pick up our tickets to the "événement principal" (French- as a tribute to the Cirque du Soleil show we would soon enjoy). My dislike of crowds prompted us to shop for souvenirs before the show, before the crowds would all "Exit Through The Giftshop". William chose Beatles socks, Romney chose Beatles guitar picks and a talking stick for him and his teacher, Bill also wanted the picks and I wanted vintage inspired looking bag. We were all decked out and ready to go. Only issue, we still had an hour until the show started. What to do? Hit another "free" show first. We walked to the Bellagio to watch the fountain ballet and back just in time to take our seats and prepare to be entertained on grand scale.

The show! There really are not words capable of describing what the experience of being in the audience is like. It is a beautiful, emotional, artistically inspiring, life affirming event. Every sense was treated and stimulated in new and exciting ways. Stunning vignettes that all tied into each other while remaining unique and separate works of art followed each other for 90 minutes, tying in Beatles history and 20th century events. Inspiring! I feel like I need a spiritual philosophy. The philosophy of following"All You Need is Love" more clearly. Since nothing could quite compare to that experience, we decided to eat dinner and call it a night. Dreaming of all the new characters and colors and creations we had just witnessed.

Vegas Freaks

42 hours, 2520 minutes, 151,200 seconds... hmmm...how much fun can we cram into 151,200 seconds? Apparently, A LOT! is the answer to that mathematical sounding question. Using each and every one of those precious seconds was the goal of this mini-vacation, and I believe we were successful. I mean when you are walking all over a town full of drunk grown-ups with kids who look like this, how can it not be fun. (Trust me, the responses they got from wearing the mustache and the sweatshirt were so comical, I could have just listened to those for 42 hours and had a blast.-Let it suffice to say that small (and quite large) children were brought to tears at the sight.)

After lunching with Steve and Lisa in Cedar City, we drove straight through to Vegas. We checked into our amazing condo and hung out long enough to drop the bags, investigate the pool(s), and watch the AREA 51 "Janet" flight (trust me, this is big deal to ALIEN loving boys) land at McCarran before we headed straight to Caesar's Palace, the promised home of talking statues of Greek Gods and Goddesses here on earth. (The boys are really into the Percy Jackson books and Greek Mythology. However, even being big, BIG fans of all things Greek, didn't stop them from giggling at 20 year old statues with clawlike-jelly hands waving indiscriminately in the air as they spun around during the show.)

Elvis was also in the building at Caesar's Palace, in a memorabilia store singing Karaoke, to be exact. He was incredibly gracious for a dead guy and let us take a photo with him. I wasn't sure he would oblige as it would prove the conspiracy theories of his faked death correct. I guess he has more important things to worry about, as he is now relegated to sing bad karaoke in a mall.

Photo ops abound in the city of sin, and we just couldn't resist this goody with images that depict Bill's full identity. "Superman" and a Barber pole in the same window meant standing like a chump posing while his wife's yells of "smile" echo through the cavernous hallways. After embarrassing ourselves indoors, we felt like we should take our act outside (and enjoy some 60 degree evening weather) and let the boys watch the Mirage Volcano explode. The fun of going with kids, they think these types of things are the coolest things ever, not the cheesiest, and the excitement is contagious, and the jading of seeing things a million times falls away.

When you find the perfect bumper sticker, and you love your car, do you a.) buy it and then stick it on the car thereby ruining both paint and resale value b.) buy them and stick them on yourself, allowing comparisons of the size of your rear end with that of a vehicle or c.) take a picture and let it live with the rest of it's bumper sticker friends? I think the answer is obvious to all of those who a.) love their car and b.) do not love their "trunks".

Bucket List item: Visit the Freemont Street Experience. Check! Too bad I have been there before (with Bill) and have ZERO recollection of having ever seen the place in my life. Did I mention, I don't drink or pop pills? Yup, gotta love that randomly-selective memory of mine. The good news of a bad memory-Bill gets to take me to all kinds of "new" places. I am willing to put money (get the gambling allusion here, huh, huh?) on the fact that if you wanted to hang out with impersonators of Brett Michaels (Of which, there were shockingly many. Is he that popular?), Paul Stanley, and Elvis all at one time in one place, Vegas is the only place where that could possibly happen.

Did I mention that Anne and Quentin drove 5 hours through awful Friday Southern California to Vegas traffic to hang out with us for those 151,200 seconds? How cool are they? Even cooler when one knows that they are going to do it all again next weekend (same show, same city) with her parents. The coolness factor jumps even more knowing that Q (possibly Anne, though less vocal) hates Vegas. Cousins he likes. Vegas not so much. Cousins won!


Shy (I promise also not-drunk) William hitting the air guitar hard during the Freemont Street Queen Tribute is your reward for getting to the end of this blog post. Your Welcome! --But please, don't tell William.