A Utah Family Travel Writer's Adventures with Altitude
Already at 7, my daughter Hadley’s domestic prowess is surpassing my own. Her fuel was fired when she returned home from visiting my parents at Christmas with many of my domestic goddess mother’s crafting items in tow.
A glue gun!
Wreaths!
Ribbon!
Glitter!
Fabric paints!
Weird netting stuff I don’t know what to call it!
Rafia!
Those are her exclamation marks, not mine.
But it gets worse CLICK TO READ ON AT MILEHIGHMAMAS.COM
One of my fondest memories of growing up in Calgary is sledding The Gully across the street from my house. Of all the destinations I’ve visited, I’ve never found a valley that remotely compares to (in Jamie’s words): “that snow hill of death.”
Note: This is the same man who, when we visited a few years ago, brazenly said before launching off a jump, “I have a few days left on my health insurance so I may as well do this now.”
Basically, The Gully renders your senses obsolete.
It snowed two days before we arrived in Calgary and that was the only time it snowed during our entire trip. Shortly after we arrived, the kids and I headed to The Gully, bringing back a flood of my childhood memories.
From the trek.
To scoping out this blissful bowl.
To playtime.
Where I took one of my favorite new pictures of Bode.
Because those cheeks are so darn squeezable.
Quite predictably, Adventure Girl fearlessly careened down the hill while Bode took a more cautious, responsible approach. At one point, she started tearing down the hill, right in the path of Bode and me.
We threw ourselves out of the way and Bode unleashed a furious rant.
“HADLEY, YOU ALMOST KILLED US”….(pause for dramatic effect). “AND THEN YOU WOULD BE WITHOUT A BROTHER AND A MOMMY.”
At least someone in this family is the voice of reason on The Snow Hill of Death.
Blogging is a great way to record our family’s history but one thing I don’t do a great job of is making videos.
So, when I stumbled upon this mom who does annual New Year’s Day interviews with her kids, I thought there’s no better way to start. She had a great list of questions to help commemorate the year and also your child’s likes/dislikes in a cute format.
Some of her suggested questions:
1. What is your name?
2. How old are you?
3. What is your mom’s name?
4. What does your mom do during the day?
5. What is your dad’s name?
6. What does your dad do during the day?
7. What is your favorite color?
8. What is your favorite thing to eat? (what don’t you like to eat?)
9. Who are your friends?
10. What is your favorite song? Can you sing it for me?
11. What is your sister’s name? (this is fun because they don’t always say the name correctly)
12. What is your favorite place to go?
13. What is your favorite thing to do?
14. What do you like about your Mommy? (Daddy, sister, etc.)
15. What do you want to be when you grow up?
16. What is your favorite book?
17. What does (sister/brother) like to do?
18. What are you most excited for in 2012?
I don’t expect any of you to sit through my kids’ interviews (about 4 minutes each) because, let’s face it–stuff like this is for the grandparents (though hearing Bode’s sound business plan for his future vocation and Haddie singing an unintentionally abridged version of Silent Night may be worth it).
I encourage you to think of a fun way to mark the beginning of 2012.
Bode interview
http://youtu.be/hCM6lsAXfug
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCM6lsAXfug]
Hadley Video
http://youtu.be/UuOEiaQqoi0
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuOEiaQqoi0]
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And yes, I know I jumped ahead to New Year’s without even detailing Christmas but my head is still reeling from our 22-hour drive back from Canada, the pile of laundry and the Christmas decorations that need to get taken down.
No complaints from me, though. I’m just happy to be home after a decidedly hellish drive back where they closed the freeway, I thought I was going to die during Jamie’s suicidal detour and we almost spent New Year’s Eve holed up in a seedy Wyoming hotel (details later). We miraculously made it back to Denver and celebrated with KFC and Martinelli’s at midnight.
OK, so maybe it was only 8:15 p.m. and we watched a YouTube video of the ball dropping on Times Square from 2011.
Not that the kids noticed anyway. When we poured Bode his drink, he proclaimed, “I’m going to drink dis…and den I’m gonna get craaaaazy!”
Apparently 2012 will involve a Martinelli’s intervention for Bode.
As for me, it is our tradition to go out for Chinese food in Canada and my fortune cookie read:
You will soon be confronted with unlimited opportunities.
After the tough year we’ve had, I’m looking forward to it.
Happy New Year!
The Food
We’ve crammed a lot in the past two weeks, including baking and delivering all of these goodies to our friends and neighbors (offerings included Christmas French vanilla cake pops, caramel toffee squares, Almond Rocha and whipped shortbread).
We’ve done this for several years now and when my neighbor Monica opened the door, she exclaimed, “I really like this Johnson family tradition!)
She’s not the only one (7,000 calories later).
The Nice Hadley
Hadley has been participating in her class choir after school to perform Christmas carols at a local retirement home. She had a lot of fun singing, dancing and kickin’ it with the boys (see bottom right corner).
But what I was most proud of her for was the way she worked the room afterward, meeting and delighting the seniors. The girl knows how to work it when she wants to.
I had a memorable chat with a sharp-as-a-whip, respectful, funny 95-year-old man, Cliff. He was a college professor for a number of years and has been a guest columnist for the Denver Post this past year. We made a great connection and Bode and I plan to start visiting him regularly to play board games (Bode is obsessed).
With board games, not Cliff. But guaranteed, Cliff isn’t going to be the kind of guy to let him win.
The Bad Hadley
Hadley and Bode get along really well most of the time. Except for when they don’t. They both value their personal space so last week, each of them wrote messages on the white boards in their rooms, banning the other from entering.
Bode’s said something along the lines of “No Hadley.”
Keep in mind the kindergartner’s writing abilities are a bit limited.
Hadley, on the other hand, wrote a soliloquy about why Bode should not enter her room. Ever the artist, she also illustrated it.
Me: “Is that a picture of you KICKING BODE?!!!”
Her: “Yes, I’m kicking him out of my room.”
Me: “Maybe that’s not very nice.”
But I didn’t interfere. A couple of days later, she erased the picture on her own and I praised her for it.
Me: “I’m proud that you removed that picture. It’s not nice to even joke about things like that.”
Her: “But I wasn’t joking.”
Jury is still out if she made Santa’s “nice” list this year.
My family has had quite a year of multiple hospital visits (heart surgery, anyone?) and ongoing misfortunes that would render even Murphy (as in the “Law”) speechless.
I resolved to kick 2011 to the curb by doing my holiday shopping and preparations early so I could feel like I had at least something under control.
Oh, how wrong I was.
To support our elementary school, I decided to have my kids purchase gifts for each other at the two-day traveling holiday toy store. The idea was to send them to school with money and let them pick out a gift for each other.
Sound easy? Apparently The Easy Button does not exist for Murphy’s Law.
My son Bode goes to morning kindergarten. The toy shop was in the afternoon. No problem, I just brought him back to school and had him pick out his sister Hadley’s gift. He ignored my suggestions of jewelery and went straight for a dinosaur egg that hatches in water
Gotta give the boy credit: he’s looking for a win-win gift.
However the other problem was that Hadley had the money for both presents and she had not yet done her shopping. The nice volunteer assured us they would set Bode’s gift to the side, ring it up with her purchases and then discreetly put Bode’s gift to his sister in his teacher Mrs. C’s** box for him to later bring home.
I forgot about it until last week when I was putting the finishing touches on all our presents and realized Bode had never received the gift.
I called the school secretary Mrs. M.** and explained the case of the missing dinosaur egg. She promised she would call Mrs. C. and also gave me the name of the volunteer who ran the toy store.
Not even 15 minutes later, Secretary M. called back.
“We found out what happened,” she said in her best sleuth voice. Turns out instead of delivering the dinosaur egg to Mrs. C.’s box, the volunteer had put it in the same bag as Hadley’s gift to her brother.
As Hadley was riding on the bus home from school, she found it. Knowing it wasn’t hers, she gave it to the eager boy sitting next to her.
Now this is where the story gets really suspicious. The boy to whom she gave the dinosaur egg just happened to be Mrs. C.’s son.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
Mrs. C. came home that day to find the dinosaur hatched in a glass of water. Her son divulged Hadley gave it to him and she thought nothing of it. Until she received the phone call from me.
I was relaying the escapade to my husband Jamie later that day and he queried, “How many of JeffCo’s tax dollars were wasted from all the time it took to chase that dinosaur egg down?”
I’m part of the blame for the $20 million deficit.
In the end, Secretary M. was extremely remorseful. “I’m really sorry. There’s not much we can do about it at this point. The Egg has been opened.”
That’s school code for “The Mission Has Been Compromised.”
But let it be known that I’m onto them.
**Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or guilty.
One of my favorite parts of Christmastime is introducing my kids to all of my favorite holiday shows. On Saturday, I was working on my laptop while distractedly watching “Frosty Returns” with the kids.
Someone on the television broke into an off-key song.
“He’s a terrible singer,” I observed.
Hadley (totally offended): “You’re talking about FROSTY.”
Good thing it wasn’t Santa.
Now that I’m more than seven days out from the glories of my previous week, I’m starting to have some perspective on the situation.
One that does not have anything to do with toilet views.
The first several days of our Thanksgiving break were actually great. We met with our besties Tina, Nolan and Rowan at Family Sports Center, a 1500,00 square foot entertainment center in Centennial where we played ’til our heart’s content.
A favorite were the knock-down, drag-out fights in the bouncy sports arena. Do you see Hadley in the green?
Now, look to her left on the ground where you’ll see Bode in flight.
Perhaps this was a pre-cursor to busting his wrist.
But I’ll tell you what: I was astonished he could get up on that pedestal and hold that knocking block, which was 10 times his size.
His buddy Nolan was much more gracious and let Bode serve up a few wins.
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On Wednesday night, Bode showed early signs of the plague that later struck our family so on Thanksgiving day, he and Jamie opted out of our annual hike up Turkey Trot. They encouraged Haddie and I to have a girl’s morning out so after doing some food prep, we raced outta there before they could change their mind.
And raced up that mountain–it’s seriously not an easy hike.
Since it’s such a challenging and long(ish) loop, we usually only do about an hour of it to an overlook of the city. But this girl wanted to keep going. Two hours later, we arrived back at the car, exhausted and happy. I realized we are fast approaching our Benjamin Button moment. If you’re not familiar with the love story, Benjamin was born an old man and grows younger through the years. The women whom he loves is just the opposite and for a few, brief fleeting years they meet together in the middle as equals.
As Hadley blazed up that trail, I realized it’s not very long before she will be surpassing me and I will be the decrepit old woman.
As we hiked, I saw what looked like a mother and daughter. The daughter was in her mid-20s while the mom was likely in her 50s.
I pointed them out. “Do you think that can be us when you grow up, Hadley?” (brimming with pride and sentimentality).
Hadley carefully observed them before reluctantly saying, “Yeah, I guess. If you can keep up with me.”
Better enjoy it while I can.
Hadley has had the exact same personality since the day she was born: spirited, fun and oh so stubborn.
She is so headstrong and has a great ability to read people to get what she wants. This can be both a good and a bad thing. In fact, when she was just a few months old my pediatrician picked up on this and said it would be tough to parent her at times but it would serve her well in the boardroom later.
Is this supposed to be a comfort?
I love to snuggle and much to my chagrin, Hadley has never been a warm ‘n fuzzy kinda child. My resolution? Ever since she was a baby, I’ve always held her down and forced Family Snuggles out of her. This has become a nightly ritual as she giggles her objections to us.
When she was 1 year old, she and I were bouncing around on my bed before bedtime when she stopped, plopped herself down on my pillow, put her arm out and announced, “SNUGGLE!” Shocked, I asked, “Did you say ‘snuggle?’” She nodded and repeated herself again. I didn’t hesitate a moment longer and dove right on in like an attention-starved puppy. With tail wagging.
Now, lest you think I had converted her to Family Snuggles, think again. She laid there for her obligatory 10-second snuggle as if she was counting down the moments. She then plopped back up and announced we were:
“Alllllll twue.” (through)
In Haddie speak: “I gave you what you want so can you pul-ease stop attacking me, Woman?”
Six years later, the girl still knows how to work it.
Halloween Partying
I did double-duty at the school on Friday that started with the costume parade and class parties.
I’ll have better pictures of the kiddos later but we opted on a dinosaur costume for Bode and Hadley went as the White Witch (Narnia is her favorite movie).
Jamie would like me to add he was not a part of the dinosaur choice because he said it was too “cutesy.”
I say what is a KINDERGARTNER if not cute?!
My horror
As I was waiting for the kids’ costume parade in the gym, I struck up a conversation to the gal next to me whom I swear I’ve never seen before. A few minutes into talking, she mentioned her twins–one boy and one girl.
And then it slowly started coming to me. You know the one: the dreadful feeling when you realize you somehow know that person but had forgotten them. I tried to cover my tracks by saying, “Wait a minute. You live in my neighborhood and our kids were at the same bus stop last year.” Nice.
But it got worse. The woman knew everything about me. “I saw you on The Marriage Ref and you totally should have won etc. etc. etc.”
My bad memory and Jamie’s pumpkin are ruining my life.
Norm
And the most popular kid in second grade is…
Bode.
You know. My kindergartner.
Going to school with that kid is like going to school with Norm from Cheers. His besties in kindergarten adore him and after volunteering in Haddie’s class, he and I eat in the lunchroom with her. This time, I kid you not, the second grade boys fought over who got to sit with him. Then, afterward, they begged me to let him stay and play Yoshi on the playground. As they were lining up, they insisted Bode give them all high-fives.
I guess sometimes, nice guys do finish first.
My Insanity
My friend posted a fabulous tutorial on how to make Halloween cake pops. If you’ve never heard of them, allow me to enlighten you: these little cakes on a stick are nothing short of moist and amazing (this, from a non-cake eater). And so I thought they’d be fun to make for the kids’ Halloween party.
There was nothing fun about making them.
Really, it was my fault. Between the kids’ two classes, there were 50 pops. And then my ward’s trunk-or-treat was that night and I’d signed up to bring a treat. Add in the women I visit teach and I was well over a hundred.
And so I made three different cakes: red velvet, vanilla and spice and spent the entire day slaving in the kitchen. I’m not exaggerating: THESE LITTLE GHOSTS TOOK ME SEVEN HOURS TO MAKE.
The positive: They were met with many rave reviews.
The negative: Some kids took them but didn’t bother eating them. I wanted to grab their little sugar-stuffed cheeks and scream,”DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG THOSE TOOK ME TO MAKE?”
Perhaps becoming emotionally invested in a treat is dangerous on many levels.
After spending seven hours on my still-recovering knee, I could barely walk. But the caveat came when I was carrying the laundry down the stairs later that day. Workers had been there cleaning our carpet and the floors were still damp. I slipped. I slammed. I slid. I threw out my back and injured my arm.
I’m going as myself for Halloween this year.
Because that is scary enough.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. Learn More
