Climbing Mount'ns

Well, we all know that I recently lost my mind but I think I have found it again.

That is the one thing about life - when things get hard and tough, we find the way to get back up and dust ourselves off and keep going.

As I was telling Tamara, I don't think I fully found my marbles until this morning when I saw the face of that person near and dear to me and what they were going through - it put everything into even clearer perspective.

Sometimes we get wrapped up in ourselves and what we are going through on our own that we forget to see what others go through.

This person just needed some time and space to just be and well, I screwed that up. And I will be forever regretting it.

That was my mount'n that I had to climb.

The other mount'n climbing that went on was a couple weekends ago with the kiddos.

You see, one of the restaurants was having a Winter Wonderland celebration - with bounce houses, slides, obstacle bouncy-thing, goodie bags, and Santa! I thought that this would be a good idea to take the kids to - yeah, I know stimulation overload but I figured it wasn't going to be that big. You know, Island living and all - maybe not everyone heard about it. Also, Mr. Big had the day off so I wouldn't be alone.

Well it rained a bit. I thought we weren't going to go. It cleared up and the kids were getting restless so we tried it.

The first 2 minutes of it were a complete success!!

Afterwards, not so much.

Between Silly just running up the slide without regard for the fact that only 2 kids could go at a time, Buddy's melt-down and being sent to time-out next to Mr. Big about 3 times - I was ready to go home.

Then Mr. Big intervened. (I think he saw the next melt-sown He saw the putt-putt course attached to the restaurant and said "Let's take them to putt-putt"

I gave him the "are you nuts?" look and asked him "Really? Do you think they would handle that?"

His response "You don't know until you try". And so we did...

There were a few hiccups along the way like Buddy flipping out because he couldn't get the ball in the hole. Or Monkey swinging the club so much that he knocked Princess's glasses off her face (luckily they didn't break). Oh and the melt downs at the end when it was time to stop playing. Promises of drinks and sno-cones and goodie bags weren't working too well.

Until the word SANTA was mentioned.

I was initially going to avoid it because well, there is usually a long line and my kids don't do too well with lines. We didn't have the luxury of having access to a Quiet Santa here. But once again, I tuned to my jolly giant and thought - let's try.

We were very lucky because there was NO line - this was easy for the kids to interact with Santa and Mrs. Claus and even get their pictures taken...

She had a blue sno-cone..enough said

Yeah, Princess said she was too big for the individual picture with Santa but said okay to the group picture...

This was a multitude of mount'ns to climb because it had to deal with a very public outing, new activities, and lots of stimulation. In between the ups and downs, the laughing and the crying...it was a great day. I couldn't have asked for more - time with my kiddos and Mr. Big all rolled into one - priceless!!

Oh, in case you were wondering about the whole "mount'n" thing - well, a friend of mine was surprised that when I responded to her question as to whether or not I've gone skiing/seen snow I told her that the closest I had come to snow is on the top of a far away mountain in Nevada but I pronounced "mountain" like "Mount'n" - I didn't break down the word into the syllables and well, she loved that and laughed and so this was kinda in tribute to her as well.

And yes, Tamara is totally my blog crush and if I were to ever meet her I think I would just be speechless and shake in my flip-flops.

So this will be my last post of the year...I will stalk you all but this is it for me. Until next year that is.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, good tidings on whatever you celebrate and have a Happy and Safe New Year!!