Category Archives: adventure

The time I broke my toe. 4/20/13

The first rule of trapeze is to listen. They told us this often. When I listened I was doing things I’d only ever dreamed of. The one time I didn’t I broke a toe. You have to LISTEN.

We used to go to Circus Circus in Las Vegas and watch the trapeze show. As a child I would look up at those artists and marvel. They were magical and so sparkly in their fancy outfits.

So when a friend suggested we go to a class I was ALL over it. It took some convincing for Jon to get on board. He was worried about my recently “fixed” back, and my tendency toward epic clumsy. Legitimate concerns.

If you know me or have read this blog at all you know that epically clumsy describes me well.

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How is it that this is Jon’s first time, and he lands all sorts of wrong, and he doesn’t get hurt? AT.ALL. He landed on his head!

IMG_8340Jon after my crappy landing, “I thought you would be better at this. What with your lower center of gravity, and carni blood??…..”

Hmmmmm……… It had me laughing. You know, since I am short, and am very distantly related to some circus performers. Carni blood. Hahaha!IMG_8345Me. I land a little wrong, and break stuff. This is me breaking my toe. Yup. I am indeed smiling. Thinking to my self, you idiot. Way to NOT listen. Jacked up both feet and my right hand. I like to make the most of my self inflicted injuries.

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We got to go up five times. three practices, and two catches. I broke my toe on my second failed landing. IMG_8392 IMG_8431

So I made Jon go, and he was the only guy in the class. BUT he had fun anyway. He is not allowed back though. Day two of whining about the pain, and I have dubbed him the fun sucker. My computer programmer is not cut out for physical strain.

I apologize to his mission companion who had to deal with him when he first started riding a bike from being in a car. So very sorry.

Emily was asking if we would want to go rock climbing with her and Josh. I told her I would, but Jon’s not allowed. When I told Jon he said, “Thank you. I love you.”IMG_8486 IMG_8488 IMG_8496 IMG_8497 IMG_8499

But man! He was a sport, and did AWESOME!  Really awesome!

IMG_8501 IMG_8503And he really did have so much fun. Until the sore muscle announced their full body presence. “There is NO pain free way to breath! ”  (hahahahahaha!!!!!)IMG_8505 IMG_8536 IMG_8540They missed documenting my first catch, which is kind of a bummer since it was SO much better than my second one. Meanwhile I got TWO catches which is AWESOME! Especially since I had to climb the ladder three times with jacked up feet and hand!

IMG_8552 IMG_8555 IMG_8556This is my holey crap I did it face! Even though I had already been caught once, it was still shocking that I didn’t mess up!

IMG_8568And me landing wrong. Again. I decided I need to go back for another lesson to work on my landings.

IMG_8582My broken toe, and trashed paint job. And my jacked up hand. Learning to fly the trapeze was not without blood, sweat, and tears. 😉 Well except the tears part. There was WAY too much adrenalin for tears, or pain. The pain came later. And that’s when I noticed that I jammed a couple toes on my other foot. Sweet!

IMG_8585 IMG_8588 IMG_8590Jon, Janice, Sally (Master mind behind the outing). and her lovely friend Cassidy (SP?).

IMG_8591 IMG_8599Since we could see it from the trapeze school, we took a small detour on our way home to check out the Gilbert temple build. SO pretty!

IMG_8605How my toe looked when we got home.

1IMG_8608And how it looked the next day. So pretty. It’s not too bad until a child steps on it. Then the inner cursing flys. Ice, tape, and ibuprofen have been good to me.

So how did I convince Jon to do this? I told him it’s what I wanted to do for our anniversary date. He’s picking next year.

Seven years later and Jon is still willing to do crazy stuff for me. Ya, he’s a keeper.

 

 

 

Family photos April 2013

I love the photos we got this session. Shannon did such a great job! I brought my laptop so I could reference some poses I wanted to try out (Just two). Kaylee and Regan thought it was fun to pick out our poses and tell us what to do. So we did lots of poses.
IMG_7949I had the children do their classic hug each other’s heads off pose. They seriously hug like this multiple times a day. They love each other so much.

IMG_8049Good idea in theory. Too bad I’m a Shorty, and Jon is not. Those 12 inches make photos tricky sometimes. I am up on my toes, and Jon is SO hunched over. 🙂

IMG_8109Kaylee insisted on this one, and I kinda like it.

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I wanted a photo of just Jon and I. Jon was in a silly mood. This was the best photo of just us. It’s not what I had in mind, but quite visually descriptive of our relationship. We tend towards the silly and playful. And yes, he did in deed drop me (just the once though.). Hahaha!

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I love capturing their sweetness towards each other as well as their moments of sibling torture that are inevitable between siblings. Regan was NOT in the mood for a sister kiss and she knew it.

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And she LAUGHED and laughed. He was all,’KAYLEEEEE!!! I so mad now!’ Poor kid. We were all laughing, and Jon and I LOVE these two photos so much.

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This one is getting blown up for the living room, I am still deciding on the Kiddos individual photos for the living room.

IMG_7961This one. This one makes my heart happy. Enough said.

Spring festival

The first weekend of this month we got to take the our children with their cousins to a school spring festival. We took them all last year, and were excited for the opportunity to go again.

The children had crazy amounts of fun. Jon, ours, and I were all wearing our adoptions t-shirts. We got lots of attention wearing our hoping to adopt shirts while carting 5 kiddos around. I spoke to several people about it, and didn’t hand out a single adoption card!!!!

I really need to be better about that. I am going to try my hardest to channel my friend Joyce in that regard. She is AWESOME at handing out cards!  In fact last night I had a random chick come and ask me about my hair, then she noticed my hoping to adopt shirt. Well good thing Joyce was there otherwise I would have missed another opportunity to hand out a card!

Back to the festival of fun! This year we did the giant slides, and the older boys did the giant hamster wheels. They waited in line (with uncle Jon) for over half an hour while I took the younger three to three separate things!

092 086 067 057 048We did lots of line waiting.

045She gets SO SO red in the heat. For each ride we would let the children hold on to and hand over their own tickets. They loved that.

038 034 031We ate lunch there. It wasn’t the best, or healthiest meal, but the kids loved it, and I didn’t have to do much so that was nice.

030The hamster wheel photos are out of order, and I don’t feel like fixing them. Watching the boys climb in, figure it out, race, and then climb out all dizzy, was a highlight for all of us. FUNNY!

028 026 023 019All three of these guys were OVER waiting in line by the time it was their turn. Sad for Jon since he waited with them for THEM to ride, and didn’t get to climb in a ball himself. Now THAT would have been FUNNY!

017I LOVE LOVE LOVE my double stroller. This is how we roll with three kiddos. I had ALL five kids extra stuff i.e. water bottles, and three kids riding the whole time. I made a rule that Nathan had to hold on to my running strap. This was to prevent him wandering off, and it WORKED.  We could NOT have done festival day without my awesome stroller.

014 012 003 002 106We ended the day with homemade snow cones. Jon did ONE cone by hand and then decided that it was going to take far to long, and far to much effort to shave the ice the “old” way. So he totally MacGyvered our shaved ice maker to be speedy. And it was! The kiddos thought it was crazy cool.

101Pictures are again out of order. Sorry. Also don’t mind our construction crap pile. The kitchen ceiling needed some lovin’.

098 095A picture of why I am van hunting. 🙂 I NEED a van. Also Kaylee was in the shade the majority of the time, and well hydrated. Poor kid, it’s not even summer yet….

But we all had FUN on our little family adventure to the spring festival.