knowing what it feels like {Olympic Park}

-friday october 18th, 2013-

you know the movie 

"a league of their own"

where they go to the baseball museum at the end,

and all of the ladies are there with their kids and grandkids,

and they're looking at the old baseball pictures of themselves and their teams,

and all of the memorabilia from their heyday of playing women's baseball during the war?

well that's what it was like walking through the 2002 salt lake city olympic 

memorabilia museum with my mom and my kids.

because when i saw the skiers in the black and white pictures on the wall,

i was scanning the pictures for my mom.

i just wouldn't have been surprised to see her in one of them.

and then she was like,

"Emily!!!"

and i thought to myself,

welp, there she is. i bet she found herself in one of those old pictures.

but then when i got over to her i realized that she wasn't in the picture,

but that she should have been.

because she was all,

"i was there! i did that! 

my senior year of high school! 

1963 and 64!"

and i was like,

"no way!"

and she was all,

"yes!!! and back then

we bought these punch passes to ski,

and your card had 10 punches,

and to do Thaynes Shaft one time 

it took TWO punches,

but it was so totally worth it,

so you did it because it was awesome,

and you went up in these mining cars,

and then up an elevator,

and you'd come out on top of the mountain, 

and then you got to ski down,

and i did this!

{pointing at the picture with a big, huge happy smile on her face, beaming so proud.}

can you believe i did this?!"

and i was just so happy to be there with her.

watching her hold chase in her arms.

telling us about a part of her life that i had never heard about before.

you know,

like one of those moments when you remember that your mom is a real person,

who had a real life before she was your mom,

and then you realize that your kids won't see you like that for a really really long time.

and it was just one of those great life moments.

2 minutes. 

tops:)

the kids were fascinated by the zip liners that would swoop down on cables right across the long jump.

i'm pretty sure they thought the green jump slopes were giant slides.

my favorite place to stand at the bottom of anything,

is right there at the bottom of those jumping slopes.

they make you feel so small.

but in a good way.

and for a minute i try to pretend what it might feel like to be Olympian.

walking in front of these massive slopes for the first time.

and how amazing it must be to stand at the bottom of them.

and then i think about how it's too bad i never wanted to be an Olympian

because that really must feel amazing.

but then this time,

i stood there staring at my kids stare at those slopes,

and it hit me.

i already know what it feels like:)

autumn's front porch.

-thursday ocotober 17th, 2013-

the falling leaves delivered us onto autumn's front porch, 

like sipping cider 

on a wooden rocking chair

with a field 

of pumpkins 

at our 

feet.

it was like some kind of paradise

that you only see in the movies,

or a martha stewart magazine.

and i just felt like the luckiest person alive.

 and then they did that about 20 more times in a row.

but my favorite part of the entire hour 

was the ten minutes where brennan and i laid under that beautiful tree.

looking up into its leaves.

i told him that if he laid there with me,

still as still could be,

it would be good luck if a leaf fell on him.

as long as it fell there without either of us moving.

just straight down from the sky on top of us.

so we laid there,

and max and chase would come and go,

and he and i would not move a muscle,

and the wind would blow,

and the leaves would sift themselves from the limbs to the lawn,

and then ever so often,

some would fall right into our hands.

or brush us across our faces.

or miss us right at the very last minute,

when we were sure one was going to fall right on top of us.

and brennan would giggle and belly laugh next to me,

and we wouldn't move,

we would just lay still as still could be.

except when chase wanted to body slam us.

or when we caught the lucky leaf.

and then when we came inside to put chase to bed,

two black spiders jumped off of my coat in two different places of the house,

one on my bed, and one on the stairs,

and i was glad that we were done playing in the leaves for the day:)

GASP.

the day the waitress told us she looked good naked {the scarecrow walk}

-thursday october 17th, 2013-

the walk where i decided we needed to move to park city.

but by the end, 

we were freezing our buns, 

and i changed my mind.

i give you,

a 

SCARECROW

photo gallery...

the skiing scarecrows

were my favorites.

only in park city:)

imagine a hillside full of yellow brushstrokes.

that was probably a week ago.

wah!

and then we took the kids for hot chocolates at mcdonald's, 

where the waitress told us she was a gymnast in her youth,

who never had kids,

and still looked great with her clothes all off.

true story.

the ladies and chase all sat in our own booth,

and we put the kids in their own booth behind us.

with halloween oreos for everyone to pass around.

relaxing lunch with kids on a whole new level:)

so relaxing that max spilled her hot chocolate all over the table,

and i didn't even know it.

and brennan and blake wrestled on their side of the booth,

and no one but us could really see them,

although we pried them off of each other every 5 minutes or so,

just to be grown up like for a minute,

or when one of them punched each other in the crotch and someone started crying.

whichever.

i also learned that the southwest chicken salad my mom ordered 

was better than the chicken bacon ranch salad i ordered.

but that i would have been better off just ordering a hot chocolate for lunch instead.

except brooke's was watered down.

i always forget how much i love park city.