spring fever

Well, I made it out alive, folks. Just barely. Spring has sprung and my nine day tap-dancing-fire-eating-two-shows-nightly-and-don't-forget-to-tip-your-server extravaganza is over. Our long week involved a three hour hike over crevasse, waterfall & sandstone and an overnight visit to ole Kansas City for what could have been a little heavier on the blues and BBQ for this lady but ended up more Crown Center kiddo-pool oriented. Then with a couple of ear-splitting play dates thrown on top of that...things blossomed into a regular ole Spring Breakdown. Or a future 28 day dry-out at Hazelden....however ya want to look at it.

I had to crack up at the munchkins with their hiking sticks. They walked like little Trojans over those endless slippery Ozark rocks(as I twirl said mustache)...but slept like tiny blond angels that night. Just the way me likey. My thighs were quivering jello the next morning, when I finally made it to the kitchen, but it was fun and gave us an opportunity to venture out and see the area since most of the time I am trying to hide from it. Thank you, urticaria. There was a cave the locals call the Devil's Icebox...black as pitch and three stories deep but Mama picked up the pace and avoided this claustophobe's worst nightmare. W. begged me to let her see "the center of the earth", but I said nope and promised them a Barbie flashlight and a couple of Wal-Mart parkas for next time. Yeah, right.




It wasn't an over water bungalow in Bora Bora, but it was better than nothin'. We actually had an up on high, fab view of the purdy city lights from our K.C. hotel room that got Big Daddy and I all verklempt & nostalgic for our past life. But it was nothing that a box of Corbett Canyon couldn't cure. The kids experienced an art making frenzy called Kaleidoscope at Hallmark Headquarters and a tres cute Wizard of Oz collection while we were there. Well, let's just say it was charming the first time we toured, but after my rotater cuffs were yanked down the yellow brick road and my back was balled up on the miniature Dorothy Ruby Red Slipper slide for a gazillion times...I felt like the Flying Monkies had beat the stuffing out of me.

And don't even get me going on the not one, but three birthday celebrations we had for my youngest over the course of the last two weeks. We did a kid thing for her, of course, then had to coordinate the extended fam's schedule for yet another made with love, scary as hell to look at homemade cake sugar overload. Between that and our traditional birthday Taco Night with the Mags and T. puking tomatillo on me afterwards, I think I have just about been there and done this one, folks. Yep, little Curly-Top, when she wasn't blowing chunks, was celebrating like Oprah and her big 50, for God's sakes. Awash in all things pink and princess. Just the way she likey.




The flu struck W. immediately after the school bell rang recess, so she snotted up a storm most of the time. Thank the universe for Tylenol though. That stuff's like crack for kids. One snort full and they're good to go for anything! It sure helps us old baton-twirling gals out. Of course, being the organized super-mom I am, I forgot my digital camera and ended up shooting most of the trip on my Razer. Now if I can come up with the 50 bucks it will cost me to email it to myself, I just might have some nice memories to blubber over when I'm old and gray. Oh, wait a minute..that's right. I'm already there.