I made an attempt today to bribe the kids to do their chores. It worked. It took them until 7pm to get their rooms clean, but still, it worked, yay. While they had been dragging their feet all day, I checked out some of the entertainment options that are included in our Get Out Pass. I looked at hours and driving distances. The Rush Funplex was in Syracuse. I've never been to the Rush Funplex before, never heard of it, but let's see, it's toddler friendly, it's almost an hour away, and it was for a 2 hour pass. That would get little kids out of the house for probably atleast 4 hours. Corey might appreciate that so he can catch up on consulting hours, seeing as he spent a lot of time this week looking for a replacement for the van. So, with the rooms cleaned, we headed out to the great unknown in Davis County. I don't think I've ever been to Syracuse.
The kids were thrilled to take their first semi long drive in the new van. Time to watch a movie! Cause we never get to watch movies, right?! "We love this van!" So they watched and I listened to Megamind on the drive up. That one is a good one, very funny and clever. I like it when movies have lots of clever things that the grownups can appreciate. Really funny flick. So, we arrived at 8, redeemed our pass, and then tried to figure out where to go inside. I thought I'd take the boys to the bounce houses, but Owen saw the bumper cars on the way in and insisted Wesley take him there. Wes did. Owen tried to drive the car. He kept crashing into a wall. The Funplex attendant tried to help him. Owen didn't like that, and that was the end of their fun at the cars. I was over with Daniel, who liked the balls in the inflatable "connect four" game.
So he sat in the balls and played with the balls. Sure, Daniel, that can be a ball pit for you, whatever makes you happy. Luckily this was one of the least interesting attractions, so other funplex passerbys didn't mind this game being monopolized by my one year old.
Soon Natalie came and found us, and with her leading the way, Daniel followed her into a bounce house.
They could use better lighting here. The sun was barely setting so they hadn't turned on the night time party lights. I had to concentrate to not loose the kids. This was about when Wes brought Owen back from the bumper cars. Poor Owen was a little sad. He didn't want to do anything. He had tried to be confident and brave and try something new, and it failed. He wouldn't go in the bounce house. He just stayed close by my leg. It was 8:30 and he seemed ready to leave but I was going to try and stay the whole 2 hours. Hey, there are some fun lights over at the rollerstaking rink! Daniel ran over there, he thought it was a dance floor.
I was slightly concerned he'd get run over, but luckily it wasn't very crowded, so I just let him run around. Daniel led the way that time and Natalie joined him.
Ok, we're done with that, what else? Another bounce house, this one was a farm theme. They turned on the lights. They were red lights above this bounce house.
Then Daniel led us back to the connect four area. Three kids in a boat of big balls.
They had fun pushing the balls up the floating and having them roll back.
We went to check in on the other kids. Natalie climbed a ladder. I looked for the kids - they had been waiting in line for trapeze swing that lands in the foam pit.
Daniel and Owen looking at the fun the big kids are having. Yeah, you guys probably can't go in there, you'd sink in and get lost!
I told Natalie she could keep climbing the ladder rope thingy, Daniel was leaving for the dance floor again. I'll be right back... Owen went with him! Yay Owen!
Then back to the foam pit. We found Sophi, Lily, and Abi. They had a look of "uh oh" and "this is not good" on their faces. And Sophi didn't have her glasses on her face. I asked Sophi if her glasses were with her shoes. No. Then I could surmised what had happened. Yes, she lost her glasses in the foam pit. Someone coming off the trapeze swing hit her in the head and knocked them off. Oh drat. That was at 8:50.
Owen and Daniel were done with the bounce area and we were going to go buy a pizza or something to kill time while I waited for the second hour to finish up. I told them to try and find the glasses and I'd be back. The little boys got distracted by the arcade on our way to get pizza.
Lots of flashing lights and pretend cars and motorbikes to ride! A little boys dream land.
"Vroom vroom!"
After 20 minutes of pretend driving in the arcade, never putting in a coin mind you, we finally made it to the pizza parlor. I ordered a large cheese pizza. The kids came and said they couldn't find Sophi's glasses. Oh well. Then they said "The pizza's still not ready?!?!" Sorry, I just ordered it... the boys got side tracked by the arcade. Soon the piping hot pizza was done. The kids ate it up while I went to report Sophi's lost glasses to the lost and found. They clean out the foam pit in December, but kids find lost objects all the time, so I gave them my name and a description of Sophi's glasses and we'll see if they turn up. If they do get found I think there's a good chance they'll be bent or broken, esp since they got knocked off near where the trapeze rope riders land. After eating pizza, Natalie and Sophi pretended to play games in the arcade with the little boys.
There was a mom with her kids at the skee ball area and Daniel wanted their balls. I kept him away so they could finish. Then she swiped her card to play again. The balls didn't come, so I guess she thought it didn't work and her kids were off to another game anyway, so she left, then after a minute, all of a sudden, here came the balls! Sweet! What a tender mercy!
This could keep these little guys entertained for hours!
Yay, looks like I'm gonna make it unscathed until 10. I wasn't sure where the older kids had gone, but I had the little kids covered, so I trust we'll all find each other again. It was so fun to watch them. They weren't strong enough to roll the balls up the ramp, and they didn't know that that was what you're supposed to do anyway, so they just rolled the balls up the ball return the whole time, it was super funny. Here's what it looked like from Daniel's angle -
Isn't that funny? So cute. And then you can see Owen behind him, bending down and peeking up the hole -
Owen only had one ball, but it kept him quite entertained.
Natalie and Sophi playing a game. This one it looked like they were actually doing it, so I don't know how that worked since they didn't have any game tokens or credits.
Owen taking a break from his skee ball game to go pick up the Player 2 gun and join some guy who was shooting virtual buck deer.
The guy didn't give me a "Hey, get your kid away" look, he didn't look at me at all or seem to mind, so I didn't stop Owen from pretending he was participating. This game had a zombie option - you could shoot zombie deer and bears. Woway to go zombie culture, you guys are everywhere!
I made it past 10pm, and as I feared, the Rush employees didn't really check the wrist bands to see what time my kids were supposed to be done. I feared we might be there until 11, but at 10:20 the 3 older kids came back from the go karts.
They didn't do the miniature golf, laser tag, or bowling, so I'm glad they were able to make it off without the little kids following for a little bit so they could enjoy some of the more advanced activities.
Ok - 10:30 pm and we headed home. This was a good activity. And it was a good deal with the Get out Pass - we redeemed seven 2 hour passes, normally $17 each, so that would have been $119, so with this one activity alone we've already gotten our money's worth for the month, yay, go team. (Well... not counting the $80+ it's going to cost to replace Sophi's lost glasses...) I guess we'll need to do a few more activities this month to break even. Still, I like the Get Out Pass, it's like a timeshare for family fun - we're already paying for it, so it makes me want to use it. I'd like to do a Saturday activity like this every weekend this year. That might be a little ambitious of me, but we'll see, maybe I can do it.
Hey, exciting news - it's a snow day! We had a huge storm last night and the streets not plowed. Here's the snow level out our small balcony door
Mucho snow! I have carpool Monday mornings so around 6am, as it continued to come down, I asked if anyone with 4 wheel wanted to trade me. But then we got phone calls that Canyons school district was cancelling school. And all of our carpool families have kids in Canyons, so even though we hadn't gotten word that Granite school district was cancelling school, we all basically decided to cancel it for our families. None of us wanted to go out and drive in that mess. I was glad to have another day to get the work done that we didn't get done on Saturday. I was super productive and it was great to have the kids home to help. We started to rearrange bedrooms last weekend and today we took care of the finishing touches by moving out the train table and switching a dresser for the ikea shelves. And the kids are always excited when the move the mirrored dresser away from the wall, cause they get to make funny faces.
Natalie got stuck behind the dresser in the laundry room while I took pictures of Abi. "Hey! You can't leave me here!"-
We let her out and took her picture - almost a little cyclopse
Pretty fun
Some kind of troll?
or Quasimodo?
We almost made it across the hall when Ethan saw us "Woah, pause. My turn..."
Looking good Eth
Nice.
So, yeah, Abi was happy with the room arrangement. She took up a small desk from the basement to use and a little table and chair for Natalie, so they both have their own little desks in there. Then I asked Abi to be my maid and she worked hard for over 6 hours. I agreed to pay her $10 an hour. I think I probably got a good deal. I have told her I'd hire her, but she's just not consistent. But I was glad to get her help today, hooray for a day off of school!
We really did a good job clearing things out today. None of my family wants the white dresser anymore. So we took it apart and put it outside. Once it was outside, we put the drawers back in and I kept it on the driveway instead of the curb, cause I'm not ready to put it up for grabs. I'm posting it to the classifieds to see if anyone wants a good deal on it. But that makes anotherone of my DIY's that I'm kinda sad that Corey and the kids are so willing to toss aside. Corey is also very ready to say goodbye to my black kitchen table, which I also have some fond feelings for (sniff) but that's ok... I will let it go too. We've already ordered a new table for the kitchen, but I thought maybe we'd keep this black one outside for any summer BBQs or something. But I get it, you really want to get rid of it. We will... Give me a few more days. Goodbye diy dresser. I liked you (and am still considering bringing you into the basement, but I'm trying really hard to change my default of saving and collecting any and all kind of storage containers...) But if I keep it in the basement, I don't think I'd keep the mirror with it, so it looks like for sure there will be no more funny faces (2013, 2020).
Corey said we should put it on the curb so someone can take it tonight. Ok, but no scavengers take it tomorrow, I'm bring it back to the garage before Monday's clean up trucks come and I'll take it to donate to the thrift sore. Same with the filing cabinet, cause it's a perfectly fine and functional filing cabinet, and there's no need to throw it away.
It was good to get the kids outside. Peter was eating a package of blueberries, he's cute. And I love how he squats. There were lots of kids out playing in the street. A neighbor, who is also clearing things out, gave us like 10 things of bubbles so the kids were having a party with that, and she gave us 3 remote control thunder tumbler toy cars too, which was great. They were all out playing with that, fun! And they were jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes, and another neighbor kid gave them a dozen balloons....
It's been a fun freebie evening. Corey and I cleared out old boards from the 2016 ice rink... so since that's been 3 years, they were all really nasty and moldy and blech and lots of spiders and bugs and ick, so that was nice to clear them out. I raked until dark and used the huge mattress bags to hold all the pine needles! It is so clean back there! One of the cons of the pro of having a yard full of tall tress is, the pine needles. So I'm quite pleased with how hard I worked and with how clear it looks at the moment. I dare say it might look nice and pine needle free for a few weeks, so that is fun. (Pine needles shed all year, so it's always "fall" around here.) The kids also went over to a neighbor's yard for a movie and s'mores. I love where we live and the people we live around.
As I worked, I listened to a Jody Moore podcast, The first one that she recommends to bring you up to speed on what she teaches "Five Lies About How the World Works". And I didn't think about it until I started typing this, but I am having thoughts about the dresser and table that are not facts. It's okay for me to be sad to say goodbye to them, and it's okay that no one else is sad. I'm excited to start to examine my thoughts and work on myself more. I've been taking a break from Holly's EJC community since all the Covid quarantine started, cause I was not making time to do anything there. But now I'm ready to start working on me a little bit since I've been listening to Jody the past 3 days. I started on Thurs with #251 "Emotional Switch"... cause I was moping as I drove all the way out to the RC Willey warehouse by the airport to pick up the missing box 4 from our delivery. I thought of polo-ing to my sisters to complain about my grumpy feelings, hoping talking it all out would help me start to turn it around and feel better, but as I thought of them listening to me vent, I was sure my SIL, if she were to reply, would tell me something she had learned via Jody Moore. So instead I decided to go straight there. Honestly, I wanted to know why I struggling so much with being happy about getting the new triple bunk beds. I felt like something was wrong with me for not being happy or grateful about this. But after listening to Jody, she would say that it was just the thoughts that I was thinking about the bunk beds, and evidenced by my grumpy mood, it was clear that my thoughts were not serving me well (if what I want is to be happy). You'll have to listen to those podcasts, but they really helped me! Then I just looked through it at random again on Friday and listened to #246 "Perfect Robots". And we'll see if I get to articulating my thoughts here or not.... And then this morning I listened to #242 "Emotional Reality" as I drove to Seagull Book today to pick up the Pilgrim Hypothesis (so excited to read that!) and I love the idea of bricks in our emotional reality wall that we fill in with something to verify the reality of how we view things. Also in that one she mentions the podcast roadmap, so that's what I started with tonight. Then tonight I listened to Episode 87 "Start Here: Five Lies" as I raked. So there's a plug on what I'm learning right now, I like it - good stuff!
Tuesday May 3th - 9:00 p.m. departure time to head back to the US. Still had a ton to do - cleaning and packing. The kids still went to school that day (I won't do that again - messed up packing and I think was the main contributor as to why I didn't finish) I still had a lot to do, but at 5:00 we took a break for an interview with Start Up Chile, for their records, of our experience.
Corey played Illapu on his saxophone, I tried to clean and pack more, it was almost 6:00, and the owner was coming to get the keys and we still weren't cleared out. Corey said "Well, we gotta go, I'll come back and finish it tonight" - I hated leaving things in an un-finished state, I felt unfinished myself, the kids had gone straight from school to a friends house, Lily didn't have shoes, Abi's hair was in her face, but we were off, and I felt like "Well that sucked" - bad way to end the whole experience, in chaos and stress and feeling unsatisfied with the state of things. But what to do, the plane was leaving so we had to go.
In Rodrigo's car on the way to the airport.
Rodrigo helped us carry and check in our luggage. Suckers for the kids from their Sunday Loot - sticky mess - Abi's hair in her face, Lily's got no shoes on and two suckers in hand to keep her quiet - I couldn't find them in the packing mess.
Baggage all got checked in okay, but we didn't have a boarding pass for Lily to be an Infant in Arms, so Corey went to take care of that at the Delta Help office while the kids and I sat and they sucked their suckers.
Got the ticket for Lily, we're good to go! 8:00, plane leaves in an hour, we're good on time, we're gonna make it!
Or so we thought... one last and major glitch at the Chilean Police Department of Investigation Stations: I hand over our passports and Chilean ID cards, they look it over and we're ready to officially part ways with Corey and the boys until we meet again in Utah, but no, "You need to go talk to the PDI Office." The kids and I waited at the gate while Corey talked at the office.
Waiting and waiting for an hour, ...isn't it fun to wait, Lily?
Corey talked in the office with the head honcho who did not look up at Corey, talked to Corey while he looked at his desk papers, did not listen with any empathy, compassion, or understanding or rational thinking, he just kept repeating, "Nope, nope, she can't go..."
Corey calling people at Start Up Chile to see if they can help us out. 8:45 - a guy from Delta comes looking for us, he walkie-talkies the plane to tell them we're stuck with the PDI and aren't going to make it... Oh dear, how is this all going to end? Are we going to loose our tickets and have to buy new ones? Um, that's gonna be around $4000 bucks which we'd rather not spend... come on, guys, give us a break!
In he end, common sense did not prevail. they would not give me and my 4 kids permission to pass because I was attempting to travel with Corey´s children without him without written permission, and I can´t do that under Chilean law, which, we found out, applies to us since we have temporary visas and Chile National Identification cards. Who knew!
Said the head of the police there "You´re practically Chileans..." Well, we´re flattered. But we think he had a chip on his shoulder or some bone to pick, so we were the lucky ones last night. ¨She can´t go without permission...¨ Corey ¨Here I am! I give my permission!¨ Nope, nope, no good. Funny how being there in person giving permission doesn´t hold any weight, you gotta get a typed document that´s notarized and signed.
I told the kids to show me their sad faces... I think Joe wins.
Chile´s National motto has taken on a new meaning for us "Por la razón o la fuerza" Last night that Police chief chose strength, to show the strenght of his word, over reason. Come on buddy, a little common sense! You can look at us, hear us speak, look at our US passports and know we are not Chileans, give us a break. Pretty funny. ¨I´m sure it will become more funny the further we get away from it¨ (-name that movie!)
Luckily, Gabriel was there to save the day by providing the children with food and shelter for the night while Corey called Delta who I will always love as an airline, they switched us to the same time and flight for today with no fees, and then Corey & I went back to our apartment to finish up packing and then this morning we went to a Notario to get a notarized paper for each of us so that we could each travel legally with permission of the other, on flights without each other with our children. Such drama! It makes a good story. I'll give the details of our Wednesday soon.
There is a desk in Corey's office, and that desk had a piece of glass over it to protect the wood. That piece of glass broke yesterday. I picked up the items that were on top of the desk, and then instructed Joseph to take the big piece and Melodie to take the smaller piece and go put them in the garbage bin. And it was in these circumstances that I learned once again that Melodie is a goof.
She couldn't take the glass out to meet it's untimely death without trying to make it feel like it reached it's full potential and made a difference in this world...
Hence, she pressed her face all over it. (Those two pics above were my favorites, you can tell how hard I'm laughing by how blurry the picture is.)
We were both laughing so hard we had tears. Joseph said he thought it was funny, but didn't know why we were crying about it.
Part of it was that she had to try not to laugh for the blow faces to work, so as she tried not to laugh I had to try not to laugh so I wouldn't make her laugh as I looked at her with the camera. And trying not to laugh, of course, always makes people laugh even harder. And she thinks her dad is weird! Well, he is pretty funny, and that must be where she gets it from. And I betcha no one she meets at school tomorrow would ever suspect there's such a silly girl behind her shy and quiet demeanor.
Mel's just great. When I go grocery shopping, I'll tell Mel "I'll pay you a candy bar if you clean while I'm gone...." and she'll readily agree and have the house spankin' clean when I get back, and is awarded a Skor or Heath candy bar (chocolate and toffee, yum! she's a girl after my own heart). It's a win-win situation.
Love you Mel, thanks for making me laugh. I'll miss you as my babysitter and helper and friend while you're at school tomorrow!
