The Sad Truth

A sad reality has begun to be apparent in Tone' and my life recently. I'm sure it has been present for quite some time, but we have been in denial and ignorance and have only just become aware of the awful truth.

We are not cool and hip like we once were.

Yes, it's true, and I'm sure many of you saw it coming long ago, but were too nice to say anything. It started dawning on me a couple months ago while at church. A friend was lamenting to me about the purse she just bought and how uncool it was. Upon inspection of the purse I said, "It's cool! It's so sleek and practical, and it's black!" To which she replied, "Yeah, you're a mom, of course you think it's cool"

Ooooooooohhhhhh.........

The light turned on: I then realized that girls now carry around those butt ugly, brightly colored, huge pleather purses with massive buckles. NOT COOL to me, but apparently very trendy these days.

Then, I started looking at my clothes. This is where it gets embarrassing.

I am so uncool!

How did this happen??!!

Part of the problem is that the new mom in me threw out all my shorts that were of questionable lengths, thereby reducing my shorts supply to some hand me down, baggy, 5 year old ones, a couple board shorts, running shorts, biking shorts and 2 pairs of climbing shorts.

Not, as you can imagine, a decent looking shorts wardrobe.

The next problem is that none of my shirts fit me anymore as my body has, well..... changed a bit in that area. So I have exactly 3 t-shirts that fit and a couple dressier shirts that somewhat fit. Other than that, the rest of my shirts now come to my navel. ( I can't stand that word, by the way, but bellybutton sounds too informal) ((Haha!))

My fears of being uncool were comfirmed when I was talking to Tone' and he said, "But hey, we're still hip and with it!" To which I replied with, "No, Tone', I really don't think we are anymore."

His confidant look fell and he lamented, "Yeah, I know, we really aren't anymore, are we?"

You know what, though? I'm just fine with not being cool anymore, and I think Tone's okay with it as well. It's weird, we hit our thirties and suddenly felt all grown up and not concerned with what other people think. Of course, we also started having children when we hit our thirties so that may have something to do with it.

Seriously, who has time to care what they wear when it's just going to get stained with icky, sticky jelly faces, booger noses and the occasional poop?!

With all that said, I did realize that I needed a wardrobe overhaul as, even though I no longer desire to be "cool", I would like to look put together.

So my hip and with it friend Angela took me shopping at Old Navy last week and we had a fun "What Not to Wear" outing where she enjoyed being Stacy and I had fun trying on everything she threw my way. Oh what fun it was and boy it sure would be fun to do that more often, but I think this was a once in a blue moon occurance.

It did end up being successful and I now have:

5 pairs of shorts, 1 pair pants, 1 hoodie zip sweatshirt, 2 hoodie quarter sleeve shirts, 7 shirts, 1 tank top

Total: $181

That is alot of money, especially for this frugal mama, but don't you worry I didn't actually spend that much! After a %15 off coupon, the $75 gift card from the US Bank/Albertsons deal, birthday money and money from a generous friend, I only spent $35 of my own money!

Now I feel good when I leave my house, even if I am covered in slime of some sort and driving away in my '96 minivan carrying my Dave Ramsey cash envelope wallet.

I now understand, there are different kinds of cool, and for me, cool is being practical.

Lukas, the Ladies Man

While my friend, Estie, and I climbed the other day Lukas took advantage of the situation to kiss on Estie's 4 month old little girl. He wouldn't stop going up to her, holding her head and giving her a big smack on the lips and nose. She tolerated it pretty well, but he eventually went to far and made her cry. Sorry Peytra, boys do that sometimes.

Looks like we'll be keeping our eyes on these two...

Hope her daddy doesn't see this post! :0

More From Sweet Home

I couldn't post tons of pictures of Uncle Ed and then leave out two very important people, so here are just a few more pictures from our wonderful time in Sweet Home.

Aunt Anita and little Lukas, who loved snuggling up to her.
Nikolas and Luke's Great Grandma Gibson. Grandma lives just a few minutes away so she came over to spend some time with the boys. Luke was especially loving all the extra attention from her:)

And of course I had to add one more picture of yet another adventure Uncle Ed took Nikolas on in the 24 hours that we were there. They rode this tractor all over the property and Nik had a blast driving it, as you can well imagine. Uncle Ed let Nikolas do the driving quite a bit and just corrected the steering wheel when they were headed for a tree or ditch. Which, I imagine, was alot.
This has become a classic Lukas pose: shoulders raised, one foot up and a finger in the bellybutton. Strange, but cute:)

That's all from Sweet Home!

Just a Big Kid

The boys and I discovered something about Tone's Uncle Ed.

He's just a big kid:)

From the moment we arrived he was creating some new and fun way to play. While Aunt Anita was out to a funeral for a couple hours Uncle Ed decided it would be fun to let the boys slide down their stairs on some cardboard. We were having a bit of trouble getting the cardboard to stay put, so off Uncle went into the garage. He came back with a staple gun!



Of course, then there was the issue of not being able to get up the stairs, so Uncle had to pull Nikolas up with a rope.

Aunt Anita, if you are just hearing about this, know that the boys had a great time:)!!

Lukas was a little apprehensive, but he was still having a lot of fun.

Thanks Uncle Ed, for entertaining the boys, I'm sure we will be visiting you more often now as you are definitely the fun house!

Good, Clean Fun

From the moment we arrived in Sweet Home after our rather unpleasant trip to and from California, we felt right at home at Uncle Ed and Aunt Anita's home. They had pulled out their grown boys dump trucks and were ready for some little boys to play. In fact, Uncle Ed didn't just watch them play, he joined in! He immediately started pulling out tools and material and built this coaster. It took all of 20 minutes and then all three boys were sailing on down the gravel driveway. I'm still not sure who was having the most fun!

Of course, mama had to give it a go. Little Lukas rode with mama and he was none too impressed with my driving skills. He's a smart boy.
Then Nikolas was ready to take the reins on his own. I have a feeling Nik is going to be one of those kids who gets their license on their 16th birthday....
It would have been really fun if I had a video of these two careening down the driveway. I can imagine most of you moms would have been thinking I am just a little bit crazy for letting my boys go down on this thing, but hey, he's wearing a helmet!

Faster Uncle, Faster!

Oh to be three again and have people tote you around. Must be nice.

I have a feeling I may hear some frequent requests to go visit Uncle and Auntie quite soon:)

Road Trip Gone Wrong

For the past ten years I have been joining my climbing friends every spring for a rock climbing road trip. Last year I missed it as I had a 5 month old and wasn't up to climbing par yet, so this year, being our tenth annual road trip, I was determined to go.
I can see how it might have been a fun trip, but unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. I was pretty much doomed from the start as my two high school babysitters I was hiring to go with me and help decided to drive seperately which left me to drive 13 1/2 hours with a 3 year old and a 1 year old by myself. See how this could be a bad start?

Amazingly, the boys actually did really well and I amazingly didn't crash as I was constantly looking back at them and handing them things.

Then our plans to climb near Lake Tahoe were thwarted by thunderstorms so we kept driving onto Bishop, California where there was off and on rain. That night Lukas had a disgusting runny nose going and Nik came down with a bad cold and cough and kept me up all night in our tent. I was worried for his health out in the cold so the next morning I decided to climb for the day and then head on home. Yep, I drove over 1500 miles to climb for one short day. Sad, I know. It was a great day of climbing though:)

The view of the Sierras

Lukas was enamored by little Grace, another climber to be. He kept kissing her and holding her head, which she didn't like very much. They both wanted Dave to hold them, apparently he's a babe magnet:)

Lukas climbing at the crags

Nikolas climbing on a 5.7 with some aide from mama.

Notice Lukas below? He was screeching and pointing at the rock until Sam picked him up and held him up high. He's my little climber to be:)

We then left Wednesday night and headed over the mountains stopping after 5 hours of driving and getting a hotel at 2am. Then off again at 9:30am and headed for home. I called Tone's aunt and uncle who live in Sweet Home and asked if I could stay with them for the night making my trip a little shorter and they said, "yes" so I was feeling better about the day. Then, naturally, something had to go wrong. As I was driving over the high Siskious on the California/Oregon border my van lost power and I had to pull over to the side. Right at that time a thunderstorm rolled in and it started lightning and pouring down rain. There I was, stuck on the side of the freeway in a thunderstorm with two little boys and a long way from home. Thankfully, I have AAA! They towed me 100 miles north to a little town called Canyonville where I spent the night in a little hotel. The next morning I got a call from the mechanic who couldn't find anything conclusive about what was wrong with my van but said it was running fine and up hills too. So off we went down the road again and eventually made it to Uncle Ed and Aunt Anita's home.

Their small town lived up to its name, home Sweet Home :)