Re-Possession

The kids are back in our possession.

Corteo (Cirque du Soleil) was amazing! Another great production from them...and not at all too clowny. Daughter gripped my hands like she was about to jump out of an airplane at 40,000 feet when she saw the clown guy come out (what's the use of having a phobia if you can't pass it along to your offspring?) but once she realized he didn't look like "one of those" clowns she was fine. Son thought the whole thing was wonderful - especially the uses they had for rubber chickens. No comment.

Here is daughter ready for the show. We (I) did her hair all "Cirque" which she complained about from start to finish. Luckily she is still without a vote in this house.

This morning I was up early because the heat was miserable. And I was trapped in the sheet. Couldn't get out, had a minor panic attack....and ended up crawling out the top of the sausage casing I had created in my sleep. And hubby slept on. Amazing skill.

We left early for a canyon up in the rocky mountains for our hike. It was a well known trail so we wanted to be there early. My 50lb hiking pack was stocked, and we were all set!

It was a fairly gentle 2km climb up to the falls. We saw the lower falls first, then went to the upper falls (2.6km). There is a further hike I thought would be just DANDY to try...you go up to a view of the entire valley. Good in theory. We probably made it about 1km up the practically VERTICAL path before I gave up. Carrying a 50 lb pack up a constant hill with 2 whining kids for another 2 hours (one a tiny cup of yogurt for breakfast) wasn't going to happen. We turned around and decided to stop at a little area just after the upper falls for our picnic.

This is where my over planning/packing/carrying crap around paid off. Son ran down a big hill...at the bottom of which was a rocky pile and a little stream. He did just fine even though we both said, "That's not a great idea. He's so going to bail. This is going to hurt.".....then daughter tried. She made it down the path. Past the stream. And head first into the rock pile. We were still about 1/2 way up the path so I instructed her to sit down and breathe till we made our way down there. She was wailing pretty good.

Son was ever so helpful in telling me, "A___ fell!". Yeah, thanks. I didn't think she was imitating a moose in heat with her crying for fun.

"When you run like an idiot down a hill, you fall like an idiot down a hill."

That would be a direct quote from my very own lips. Don't worry though, I did take her over to the nice cold mountain stream, washed her off...and dug into my pack for the first aid kit. She was fine. Her hands are ground up pretty well but otherwise she's fine. Could have been worse, I told her she's lucky she didn't use her face to stop with.

Here is the proof. Perfectly fine 10 minutes after what is now known as the "great fall of '08"

We trundled on. Determined to find a good spot for a picnic. Hubby wanted to sit on the logs by the path....but I have this thing about people watching me eat. Specifically strangers watching me eat. So I dragged him down the trail to find some "promised" field that the sign said we would find eventually if we went that-a-way. Well, 5 minutes down we came to a corner and he declared himself done. So....we sat in the middle of the patch and had our picnic. There were no other hikers in that area and we had the spot to ourselves. Other than the critters.

And we totally did not feed the wildlife.

Any photos you may see below with birds consuming what may appear to be miniature marshmallows, corn nuts, peanuts, or bread crusts with traces of peanut butter & jelly is purely coincidence.

These were Gray Jays and they were cheeky little monkeys. Playing on a hunch....while daughter was eating her sandwich hubby and I advised her to stay very very still. And it worked. The bird went for her food. It's in the top 10 things of funniest shit I've seen. People freaking out at birds is wonderful entertainment. Every time.

___________________________________________

Theft in mid-flight.
___________________________________________

Mine?
_________________________________________________

Gross error in judgement of space v/s object.

___________________________________________________

Fattest chipmunk EVER.

_______________________________________

The rest are randoms from the hike.

8km (about 5 miles) and the city kids are DONE.