if you don't want to wait in a line at the car wash.

if you go to the car wash on a rainy day there's no lines.

who knew?!

 poor chaser man is still terrified.

tells us all to close our eyes,

and then asks every few seconds if it's over yet.

it's the saddest!

mama max always holds his hand.

i love their little friendship.

also, i love my washed car.

well, the outside.

the inside is a WHOLE other story...

when it snowed and we were dressed for NOT winter

look at 

their faces though.

go back and look again.

it just gets funnier and funnier every time.

in fact, i might have to even get up to go pee and come back again.

just to be safe.

and then it started snowing.

like some FREAK blizzard out of nowhere that lasted for 10 minutes.

and we were freezing!!!

in fact, everyone around us was freezing.

nobody in the entire zoo had coats.

there were little girls sharing their dad's coats,

huddled together like the bats in the snake house.

it was insane.

and all of us utahans that left the house with our thermostats reading 62* were looking at each other like "what the??!!" but no one was judging anybody else because NOBODY was dressed for it.

like we were thinking it was spring or something,

and not february.

especially brennan in his shorts,

max with no big coat {the girl who's lips turn purple below 70*},

chase with bright red, numb fingers and cheeks, and nose,

and me with no socks on.

we've never left the zoo so fast in our entire lives.

which was great because i couldn't push that double bob with three kids riding in it up one more hill.

nobody EVEN wanted to ride the train.

everybody always wants to ride the train.

but even chase was all, "forget the train!!!!!"

and i was thinking about all those pioneers that pushed their handcarts across the plains without cars and coats and northface and stuff,

and let me tell you, that 80* heater setting has never felt so good blasting through the vents of our car EVER like it did that day.

except chase cried all the way home because i don't think his hands thawed out until we pulled into the driveway.

so my nerves were shot.

which worked out great for the kids,

because it meant that they got to watch sesame street and have any treat they wanted WITH lunch,

like they didn't even have to wait until they ate all their lunch to have their treat,

because i was just so desperate to have them all be completely and utterly quiet.

it our wonderfully warm house.

the land of greatest imaginations {that one time i passed out WHILE riding my bike}

max always ends up in the princess section.

where she stuffs her library bag full of about 20 angelina ballernia books,

including the christmas and easter angelina ballerina.

lately, brennan and i have been camping out in the bug/dinosaur aisle.

where chase pulls out about ten books that he can grab from the confines of his stroller,

at arm's length,

and then drops them down onto the floor.

in the masses or one by one.

whichever.

usually it's just faster than popcorn popping.

the Dewey decimal system and i have become great friends this summer.

GREAT.

just sayin.

before we leave we always end up at the fairy tales and fables.

my very favorite place in the entire library.

where magic meets every story i've ever loved,

and where my heart gets to greet every story i've ever hoped to love.

goldilocks

peter and the wolf

rapuzel {the original}

robin hood

aladin

the fox and the hen

the three little pigs

cinderella {not the disney version}

and the list could go on and on and on and on.

there is just something about feeling the REAL pages in a book,

smelling them, turning them, 

that take me to the land of greatest imaginations.

the land where all readers love to be.

and i just love that i get to take my kids there with me.

every week during summer.

also, i love to tell them the story about how when i was 10, 

and i was riding my bike home from this very library in the hot utah summer,

and it was SO HOT.

did i mention it was hot???

it was HOT.

H-O-T.

like suffocating HOT.

and as i pedaled my bike up sego lily drive,

i passed out.

right into the grass on the sidewalk.

BAM.

there she goes.

or there i went.

whichever.

heat and i have never been friends.

but that cold.

well, you know what they say.

it never bothered me anyway;)

have mercy.

i promise i'll never say that again.

wait...

"if you take a mouse to the movies..."

the women took the kids 

to the movies.

and the men went to applebee's to watch the world cup.

brennan didn't move a muscle the entire movie,

max got bored about half an hour before it was over,

and chase discovered a new and convenient way to eat popcorn.

i just kept thinking,

"if you take a mouse to the movies..."

or a toddler.

whichever;)

and parks and stuff too.

it's the january thaw ya'll.

where most utahans don't wear coats.

and your kids get to see the light of day again.

and parks and stuff too. 

ok some people wear their coats.

but not if they're going from their car to the store.

not worth carrying your coat around inside.

melted snow=motes around the sand diggers. 

chase had to get new clothes on when we got home. totally worth it.

then we all collapsed and sat under blankets for the rest of the night.

until i made homemade clam chowder.

which all 3 of my kids hated.

sean and i ate ours.

and tried every bribe under the book to get them to eat theirs.

and then when brennan started dry heaving

we knew we were sunk.

so sean started passing out buttered toast and jam.

no dessert served.

pity.

chase liked the bacon.

he kept getting up on his stool and stealing handfuls of it.

can't blame him.

who doesn't love bacon?

no one.

{if you have ever seen my kindergarten picture,

the one with the different colored hand prints as the background,

you  would know that chase is my TWIN. right down to this very face.

i will dig it out for you sometime and you will be like "oh my GOOOOSH, they are twins."

i swear. i was laughing so hard about it that most of my pictures were blurry.

we are kin. and i love it.}

...

so feeding my kids i did not like tonight,

except i really loved making what my kids did not like tonight. 

especially because my kids played toys at the table together the entire time.

with no fighting.

no whining.

and no crying.

just chatting,

pretending,

and everything in between.

and we all know how miraculous this feat is when dinner time 

always falls at the same bewitching hours of every day.

so i sat there frying bacon

and chopping my idaho potatoes,

and it was heaven.

that is

until they all started crying after they took their first bite of my homemade chowda.

that was not so nice.

devastating really.

in a nondramatic way.

except sean and i mostly laughed about it.

b/c you could tell they truly despised it.

hated it.

want to barf it.

and it was just funny.

so we ate our chowda and stifled laughs,

looking at each other doing the shoulder shrugging laughs

between bribes of course.

and like i said,

none of which worked.

but let's just remember this:

bet you can't guess who's at the top of that tower;)

the skinny red one sprayed snow in your face.

after kindergarten got out yesterday:

16 gloves,

8 coats,

8 hats,

8 snow pants,

16 boots,

6 sleds,

and a partridge and a pear tree.

my favorite sled is the penguin,

but you're not supposed to be over 60lbs to ride on it,

which i remembered about halfway down the mountain with chase on my lap,

so i clenched up my body really stiff like

for the rest of the way down,

hoping that would make me feel like 60lbs to the sled.

it didn't pop,

so it must have worked:)

and it was the smoothest ride my bum felt all day long.

i so badly wanted to tempt fate and do it all over again,

but i couldn't bear to face it popping again like last year,

and being left with no penguin for anyone to ride,

so chase and i tried out every other sled there.

the blue one made you spin round and round like the tea pots,

and worry that you were going to tip over and bonk your head.

the shark one wasn't really a shark,

but it kind of looked like a shark,

because the writing on it looked sharky to me.

the green one went the furthest,

especially with two kids on your lap.

and skinny red one always sprayed snow in your face because your boots fell off the sides all the way down.

chase said "WHEEEE" every time.

even the time when we went down on the skinny red one,

and my boots and his boots sprayed snow in our faces.

nobody whined.

nobody got hungry.

nobody cried.

nobody had to go pee.

or poo.

it was warm.

it was cloudy.

there was no wind.

and everybody ran up the hills with their own sleds,

with smiles on their faces

for

2

hours

straight.

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

in january.

even with the christmas tree gone from our big room.

who knew it could be?

i have never had so much fun with my kids in my entire life.

and max woke up this morning asking what time we were going sledding again today:)

zippidy doo dah, zippidee ay,

my oh my,

what a wonderful wonderful day.

these are the things vaccums/vacuums were made for.

note to self:

get baby popcorn BEFORE shopping at target.

i used to know this trick.

it's weird how you forget stuff that you used to do.

with your other kids.

and then remember it later,

like when you're standing in the check out line at target,

after you've spent an hour and a half walking through target with a whining,

cart escaping baby,

and you're all,

"is that popcorn i smell!!!"

"popcorn! how could i not remember the popcorn!?"

"i used to get brennan popcorn!"

because you used to stop at the food center first.

to buy popcorn.

so that your baby wouldn't whine all through target.

amateur.

that's what i was thinking about myself on thursday.

except for when i put him in his car seat to go pick up brennan and max from school,

and i handed him the bag of popcorn,

knowing that popcorn was going to end up on my floor.

KNOWING

that 

it 

was 

totally 

going 

to 

be 

worth 

it.

and it was.

it absolutely was:)

amateur?

i think not.

these are the things vaccums vacuums were made for.