Category Archives: adventure

I can do this… I think I can do this… Can I do this?

“Mommy, I have a question.” she says to me as we settle down in her room for the night. She’s had a bath, has fresh PJ’s on and has her head lying on her little sheep pillow.

“Ok, Ry, shoot.” I respond with a smile and a bit of a chuckle. {where does this kid come up with this stuff!?}

She sits up on her knees, looks me square in the eyes and says “So, how was your day?”

I pause for a quick second and actually think about it. I tell her I had a great day and ask her if she knows what my favorite part of it was.

“No, Mommy, what was your favorite?”

“My favorite part of my day was the special night we had tonight. We played ball outside… We laughed a lot… We ate ice cream… We read books… We had fun tonight, didn’t we?”

She smiles and says “yea…” lays her head down on the pillow then taps the bed right next to her and says “One more minute…”

As I lay there I think, I can totally do this.

This time next week Andy will be on his way to Alaska for his EPIC Alaskan Fishing trip with his dad and best friend. So while he’s off traveling the great state of AK for an adventure of a lifetime, I will be playing the single mom role.

With nights like last night it’s easy to think, “pshhh, this will be nuthin’!”

But then…I think back to Saturday. Oh how easily it all comes back to me.

The crying.
The screaming.
The hitting.
The timeouts.
More crying & screaming.
The anger.
The frustration.

The overwhelming feeling that I’m an awful mother who can’t even handle her own child.

Can I really do this? By myself? For 12 whole days?

Last night was great. Maybe it’s all mental? I was “ready” to have a fun night with just Rylee and me. Maybe it was the promise of ice cream after dinner?

By no means am I any sort of expert in the way of parenting, but here’s what I do know:

I am going to go into next week with a smile on my face and a freezer full of ice cream.

Hungry Goats & Party Hats

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Last week we went to a birthday part out at a local farm place. We had a great time. They have one of those “goat walk” deals where you can feed the goats. Of course we went ahead and spent a ridiculous amount of money ($1) for a tiny bit of feed. Ry had a blast.

I don’t know who would actually fill up one of those buckets…it would literally cost $100!

Rylee and Daddy petting the goats.

Well, that one kind of freaked her out!

Trying out the goat feeder pully-system thingie. It was a hit.

A view of the goat walk.

Lots of goats lined up for some food. Rylee only liked the “little ones”.

She was totally digging her birthday hat. She still wears it for breakfast each morning.

And NO this does not mean we are getting, or even want, any goats. So don’t even suggest it…Mom.

Snow Much Fun!

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So, yesterday we awoke to snow on the ground. And in Eugene, a whopping 2 inches that’s gone by noon will shut down the town. Normally the snow doesn’t scare me and I’ll drive to work. Normally when there is snow like this Andy’s school gets closed so he doesn’t have to work. Normally when that happens that means I am driving by myself…No little monster distractions coming from the back seat. So normally, I don’t get a call from Andy telling me that our road is pretty nasty and his 3/4 ton Suburban is sliding all over the road.

{The view from our back door.}

But Andy didn’t get the phone call that school was cancelled yesterday, so he headed out at 6:30 am like he does every morning, so I got the phone call that our road was pretty nasty, so I decided I’d work from home with the monster because I didn’t want to drive. {And yes, I did get a good amount of actual work actually done}

Turns out Andy’s school was cancelled that day, only the district’s auto-dialer system was down so none of the teachers knew that. So they all showed up. Let me tell you, personally, I LOVE it when my husband drives his Suburban that gets 13 MPG 45 miles one way to work, so I know he was stoked. Despite their annoyance they made the best of it and went out for breakfast.

Within 30 seconds of Rylee waking up so noticed the snow and instantly said “SNOW! SNOW! SNOW!” then asked if we could go play outside. Then about 5 minutes after that she told me she wanted to build a snowman. Then during breakfast she told me she wanted to catch a snowflake with her tongue.

The cute was killing me.

{“What do you mean we can’t go outside yet!?” Like the clippies? We were killin’ time waiting for Daddy to get home. All her choices.}

I told her we needed to wait for Daddy to get home before we went outside because he wanted to play too. After that, she kept trying to trick me, telling me Daddy was home, telling me she heard him drive up and that we could in fact go outside.

So, when he did get home about 11:30 am, he wasn’t in the door 30 seconds before Ry was getting ready to go out!

{OK Mom, I got my boots ready!}

To say this girl was excited to go play in the snow would be a huge understatement!

So, we went out. It lasted a grand total of 25 minutes before she was done with the snow. But that 25 minutes? Was awesome.

We had a snowball fight.

We Made a snowman.

And we went sledding.

{This video could also be titled: Where Mama gets Mauled by a Wolf}

Post Summary: Snow Days are fun…especially when it’s followed by a 3 hour nap so mama can actually get some work done! Oh and that Rylee and Andy are pretty much the cutest ever.