Common Mom

We certainly didn’t waste a minute this weekend!!! We started off Saturday with a bang by meeting a couple other families at a small amusement park in the mountains. It’s called Santa’s Workshop and is obviously Christmas themed. Santa is available year ’round for the kids to tell him what they want! There’s even a post office, so you can send mail postmarked The North Pole

Here are the kids at the North Pole - this pole is frozen year ’round.

Princess and I took a spin, literally, on the airplane ride. You can steer yourself completely sideways on this thing! It’s kinda freaky!

N and Dude on the Candy Cane Rollercoaster. This is amazing because Dude has decided he does not like fast rides or rides that spin. For him to decide he wanted to go on the rollercoaster was huge! He and N stayed on there 4 times in a row! I was way excited because I really wanted him to get on a rollercoaster before we get to Disneyworld later this year.

Princess and I had to take a couple spins on the coaster as well.

J, Princess, and Ia took a spin in the police car. Princess is usually the only girl. It seems that none of our friends are capable of producing a girl! But she loves it - she fits in great, and the boys are really nice to her.

Especially J - who has to “take care of her” even though she could probably kick his butt if she wanted to Is this a glimpse into her future???

Dude and Hubby enjoy the chairlift skyride around the park. They look really low in this picture, but they’re actually really high. There’s a point in the ride where you 180 and double back, so I got this picture.

In addition to all of those rides, Princess kept me VERY busy! Hubby doesn’t really like spinning rides, so I get the honors . . . which is fine with me cuz I like ‘em. We took one trip on the bobsled, 9 trips on the Tilt-A-Whirl (which is Princess’s favorite ride!), and about 6 spins on the Scrambler along with all the other rides. Now I understand why my parents always refused to go on the spinny rides! My brain was MUSH after all that . . . and doing it at 8000 feet in altitude doesn’t help at all

Princess had been invited to a birthday party Saturday afternoon, so Hubby and Dude dropped us off at the party after the amusement park. She spent the next 2 1/2 hours jumping and diving and hanging and running around at a trampoline party. Needless, to say, she was d-o-n-e DONE at the end of all that! Not even a huge piece of suger-filled cake could keep her awake. She was convinced that the “things” in her goody bag were tattoos, but it turned out they were stickers. That, of course, did not prevent her from putting them all over her arms and hands. And she INSISTED that she sleep in them . . . she wanted to leave them on until school on Tuesday, but I told her she needed to take a bath before then for sure.

Sunday morning was Duma’s morning. She and I walked the mile to the park and worked on some training on the way and while we were there. I was so proud of her! I was throwing the ball with her off the leash and she totally ignored a golden retriever that was roaming around the park. If I told her to come, she would come without a second thought - very difficult for a 9 month old lab for sure! After we did a lot of training work, we walked up to the pond and she got to play around a bit. I take the 20 foot leash for that because I don’t trust her totally yet. And for a lab, she’s a huge chicken! If her feet aren’t touching she turns back immediately - doesn’t like to swim! She’s a great swimmer, but she doesn’t like to - NOT normal for a lab. But she does love splashing around in the water.

She also thought it would be fun to dig in the mud and pull some of the reeds out of the water. This is an “early” photo before she really got muddy I let her hang out in the water for quite a while to clean off a bit before we headed back home.

Sunday afternoon we got to go to a friend’s house for homemade ice cream and a BBQ. YUMMY! The same families that went to the amusement park were there, and we had a BLAST! All 6 kids play so well together, which gives us adults time to just hang out and relax.

Monday rolled around and we were up bright and early for the babysitter that was arriving at 7:15 a.m. She was so nice to agree to get up early on the Holiday and watch the 4 kids while we played in a golf tournament. We didn’t win, but the 4 of us shot a 65 in the bestball tournament. Our team handicap is 11 (The guy on the right is as close to a scratch golfer as you can get . . . the other 3 of us have at least a 30 handicap).

Pretty good looking group if you ask me! I think we should have won just because we coordinated our team uniform

And in between all that fun? We did 8 loads of laundry, finished cleaning out the office closet, winterized the camper, and bought a new Toyota Highlander I MIGHT show a picture of my new baby one of these days!

How about you? What fun did you have for the holiday weekend?

A bad day on the course is better than a good day in the office

We made it. It was loads of fun!!! Summer is here…