Mama..mama I'm coming home......

So sad, so sad...and a little relieved. I've had more exercise on this vacation than I have in the past 5 years....

And let's put this to rest right now...me...in shorts...
This was taken when we were on the pink jeep tour Sunday morning...bouncing around the red rocks...awesome good fun, awesome good pics....










This is one of my favorite pics...click on it to make it large and check out the hummingbird feeding on this agave plant...I don't know how they do it without getting drunk!! (Agave plants make tequila, babies....)
More pics and details on the way....Petrified Forest, hiking Cathedral Rock, the Grand Canyon...and that's just the last three days...we haven't talked about our Harley rides where we got to see the ghost town taken over by the flower children, and all the swimming in the creek behind the house, and just how completely wonderful this house is. Honestly...I hit it out of the park again on finding a great vacay house.

Overall I would highly, highly recommend coming here on vacation, and I would highly recommend this house...

Leavin' on a jet plane........

I'm standin on a corner in Winslow Arizona....

it's such a fine sight to see.....

GREETINGS bloggers...still with me? I'm out here in sunny, sunny, sunny Sedona (high temps have ranged from 95-115) with the fam. We've done so many things....

let's see...

Flight on Friday was uneventful. Car rental was smooth, getting out of Phoenix was a breeze. We even took in Montezuma's Castle on the way up...
It didn't get bad until we got to our first house...

A little house in Clarkdale, AZ - the plan was to check out Jerome and generally relax....sounds great yes? NO. We walk into the house and ... covered in powder. A crystally yellow/white powder. On the floor, on the furniture, on the bedding, on every exposed surface. Ummmmmmm....whodawa?? Ummm, yeah...a fire extinguisher had exploded in the place before our arrival. Are you eff-ing kidding me??

So we have to find another place to stay. Now I'm hot, I'm tired, I've been up since 4am and my relaxation mecca is covered in a substance I can hardly breathe...

WHAT?

So we find a hotel in Sedona - basically the only hotel pamphlet I had in my little vacay folder (yes, I'm that gay), and it turned out just fine. Hell, I slept Friday night away. Two beers some pizza and a pillow.

Saturday was 115 degrees, people. Even the lizards are staying under rocks...but us? We hike West Fork. And pick up the Harley...

Now I could recount every nook and cranny of this vacation ... but I refuse to be that relative we all have showing the slides on the living room wall at grandma's....no, that's not me (well, not yet...I'm so subjecting you to all the details....like dinner with Colleen and Michael...hooray!)

But so far, the most important part of this trip...was when we were literally standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona....
The kids didn't find this nearly as entertaining as the kev-head and I did....but I can tell you this... we bought more souvenirs here than any other stop on the trip...and we've hiked and biked and hung out with hippies...we've fished and swam and come home to the electric company on our rental property because beavers took out an oak tree that took out power lines and snapped the electrical pole right outside Alex's bedroom.

Okay...what???

First a fire extinguisher....now beavers???

Who does this happen?? The good news is that we were hangin' at the Petrified Forest when the power was out for hours...the bad news was that we had the electric company outside our windows and in the woods cutting up the beaver disaster for the evening. Whoops...no naked hot tubbing that night.

NOT.

Seriously...we did what we would have done anyway - sat outside, drank wine, ignored the children until they begged for dinner....

More later...Grand Canyon tomorrow....more pics, more info....all to come. We're having a blast...

King's Island trip...

Because I'm a glutton for punishment and CLEARLY not busy enough, we took off after Owen's game on Tuesday night (they won - we're 11-0) ...and drove to Indy to my sister's house. We were taking off for King's Island bright and early Wednesday morning. Me, the boys, Jen, Charles and Gavin and my parents....

we actually left the house on time, which is a miracle in and of itself. The ride there was fairly quick and uneventful. King's Island has a wonderful feature called preferred parking. It's only $5 more than regular parking, and quite frankly I can't figure out why EVERYONE isn't doing it. We were literally right outside the entrance to the park which was fantastic, because my sister bought enough food for an army and we were able to bounce out of the park for a bit and eat lunch. Considering the bottle of water I bought inside the park was $3.50 - not having to feed my two growing boys at an inflated rate was quite a savings!! (if you click on the pics they'll enlarge for you!)
Fun in the sun was had by all and no sunburns - why? Oh yeah, I bought sunscreen all right - SPF 70. My sister was totally making fun of me, of course, but we are leaving for the desert next Friday, and I don't need me or Alex peeling away or still suffering burns from a one-day trip to King's Island. It was very hot but not unbearable - and it made the water rides and the water park all the more necessary and fun. I managed to hide my feet under the seat so my shoes weren't squishy and stinky all day...you know you're old when THAT's your main concern about the water rides. Kev-head was just disappointed I wasn't braless wearing a white tank top. Good ole' Kev-head....

My parents took off earlier than we did - we of course closed the park down. I got to do one of those lay down roller coasters - I've never done one before. It was pretty cool....I actually liked it better than a lot of the others. Some of those wooden coasters - holy mother. They should be giving you some sort of muscle relaxer before you get on and then whisking you off to a masseuse or chiropractor table when you're done. I was seriously adjusted in ways that I shouldn't be. If I can scan in the pics that they take while you're on the coaster I'll post them hear. The look on my face isn't fear, folks, it's pain. Utter and complete PAIN. Again, you know you're old when.

Another fun part of the day was that the cicada's were out in force. You'd just be standing there minding your own business and one of them would "buzz the tower" and you'd see people everywhere ducking and dodging. People everywhere were invading the personal space of perfect strangers to pluck the orange-eyed suckers off unsuspecting victims who were just standing in line minding their own business. One landed on my leg and got halfway through Delirium with me before bailing. Sissy. That's the only ride I've ever seen with a height MAXIMUM.

Fun day, got back to my sister's late and came to work this morning at a relatively decent hour all things considered.

Highly recommend the park, but anyone under 30 should stay away from the wooden coasters...unless you're really in shape or have a physician or masseuse on hand.

Holy busy schedule batman!

OMG

Seriously? Seriously....mama has been working her fanny off both at work and at home. I've been getting complaints about my absence, but there's nothing I can do...I've just not had it in me lately folks, and I didn't want to bring too much lameness to the blog. I've been so geeky these days I'm *pretty sure* my cool card (what little coolness I had to begin with) has been revoked. The things that have been fun or cool to me lately - you guys would go cross-eyed over. It's not fun and it's not cool and if I don't snap out of my geek stupor soon, I may never recover. Ever.

But we did upgrade our database this weekend and it totally worked except that I had to hunch over computers for 6.5 hours and manually uninstall and reinstall the old client for the new. THAT is definitely NOT FUN. But it's done and it works and it wasn't seamless...some hiccups here and there but mostly good stuff...cool stuff...geeky cool stuff. And now I'm working on another upgrade that is very uncool but sooooooo cool if you're a geek, involving things like yum and mono and bzipping stuff. Very uncool...do you see what's happening to me?

And next week? Next week I'm going to move the whole network to a gig backbone which is the coolest.thing.ever if you know what a gig backbone is, and I'll be dual teaming my nic's and omg someone please make it stop. I try to listen to cool music while I do my geek stuff but I don't think that's bringing back my coolness anytime soon. I'm in a quicksand pit of geekiness and no one is throwing me a rope, or a stick or a vine or anything so I can pull myself out.

And I was so busy I started this on Tuesday and didn't get to finish!! Oy yoy. Update on King's Island coming...and Carol's in town...hooray!!!