Calgon, Take Me Away!

Okay… between the 3000 calorie burning boxing game and sledding into a tree yesterday, I’m in pain.

This morning we were up before the girls were… 7:30. Not bad. I decided that I would make the coffee this morning and give Chris the morning off. I pour myself a bowl of some high-fiber/high-protein grain and splash some skim milk over it.

M2 came downstairs and Nickelodeon was back on. Zoey 101 was playing. Apparently a repeat as they claimed this was a “stupid one” – but watched it anyway. Chris headed off to an a.m. meeting for an hour and I played time-keeper for each of them to ensure they had equal “Webkinz and email” time. Chris was back and it was more Uno Attack. I love that game!

After I made sure they ate at least half of their portions of veggies on their lunch plate (come on… it was sugar-snap peas. It’s not like I gave them broccoli or lima beans), we bundled them up and headed back to the snow tubing mountain. We didn’t tell them where we were headed. It was a surprise.

Once we got there, Mollie got excited. I told her that now that Chris was here with us, I would be able to go tubing with her and if Meggy wanted to stay behind, Chris and she could do something else. Meggy decided to watch us come down the mountain once to see if she wanted to give it a try.

Mollie and I picked up our individual tubes that would zip us up the mountain. I made sure she was comfortable with going up the mountain alone, as there was not a group tube to go up (being that they had 6 and 7 year olds doing it, I knew that she’d be fine). Once we were up at the top of the mountain, Mollie started to look scared. I offered to walk down the mountain with her and she said no. I told her we could go down together on the family tube and that if she didn’t like it, we wouldn’t have to do it again. She agreed. We could see Chris and Meggy at the bottom of the hill (only because of Chris’s red vest), but they weren’t able to make us out. As we started down the mountain, I felt like this was going to be the one and only time down and she didn’t seem to like it. I was trying to show additional excitement to let her know that everything was going to be just fine. Halfway down the mountain, she started laughing. All was well.

Once we were down at the bottom of the mountain, the first words out of her mouth were, “That was so coooooool. Can we do it again?” Meggy, not being able to see us as we came down, was having nothing to do with it. Chris and she went back to the arcade and Mollie and I continued to tube down the mountain – together, of course – an additional 16 times.

As we got in the car to head home, they were already planning their next trip to see us. Bumper cars, tubing and horseback riding are their future plans.

This parenting stuff isn’t that bad…