Mt. Bachelor, how I love thee.

For President's Day weekend we stayed at Sunriver with the Billingsley crew and had a BLAST!! We used to make this trip every year but for some reason we missed the last couple of years. I don't know what we were thinking because we love this mountain and always have such a great time there. It's a great family friendly resort with plenty of easy runs for the kids. But what we found this year was that the kids have gotten so good at skiing that they don't really need the easy runs anymore. Some of us parents even had a hard time keeping up with our kids.

All weekend long we were amazed and pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is getting to take our kids skiing. It used to be an all day struggle trying to keep their mittens on their hands, their hats on their heads, their jackets zipped up, their skis un-crossed and smiles on their faces. Just as soon as we would accomplish that they would have to go to the bathroom. So we would trek to the lodge in our ski boots, strip them down, take them potty, try not to drop mittens in the toilet, put a fake smile on our faces and go outside to start all over again. We would take one run on the bunny hill, holding them up all the way down until our thigh muscles literally caught on fire (It's true! I have the burn holes in my ski pants to prove it!) then they would be hungry. So off to the lodge we would go again.

I know that this doesn't make skiing sound fun. But when you're teaching your kids to ski it's a different kind of fun. If you understand that your hard work will someday pay off, you will do it happily because when your whole family can hop on the ski lift and ski together it is all worth it. Words can't describe how much fun it is. Have you ever had an experience that you wish you could just bottle up and save? Where you're thinking, "I should record this so I can live it over and over." But you're having too much fun to get your camera out, plus a camera just can't do it justice anyways.

On our third day of skiing Jantzen (the youngest in our crew) was doing really well on skis and we felt like she was ready to branch out a little and try some runs other than Marshmallow and Dilly Dally Alley. If you don't know what those runs are like, let's just let the names speak for themselves. They are beginner runs and mom and dad were getting a little bored with them. So everyone headed out together to take a few runs on the other side of the mountain. Over there we found sunshine and beautiful views but no crowds. We were in heaven! It was so fun to ski with everyone together and listen to the kids' "Woo hoo" and "Woop woop" as they skied down.

Later that day Keaton took me to the summit (pictured below) and proceeded to "own me" all the way down. It's awesome to see him skiing so well, but it's a tough pill to swallow when I can't keep up with him. I still remember when he was three and Chris and I put him on tiny little skis and would push him back and forth between us while he put his hands on his knees.

Dang you Keaton anyway! Could you at least PRETEND to not be so good?
Anywhooo...that was our weekend and we've been talking about it ever since. We have vowed to not miss another year and if we do, then we're gonna punish ourselves with...with...with...well, I don't know. But we won't go easy on ourselves and it won't be pretty.

Hellooooooooooooooo everybody! I'm baaaaaack.

Finally!

Ummmm, yeah. I just realized that it's been over a month since I last blogged.

And it's been almost two months since this happened. So here's the report on my half marathon. Heather and I went to Vancouver the day before the race and took some classes to learn about chi running and about stretching and strengthening exercises for runners. That was very informative and fun. It was raining really hard that day and we, being desert dwellers, were kind of freaking out about running in that type of weather. But the next day was dry and a perfect temperature for running.

The race didn't go so well for us, neither of us were feeling too stellar, but we muddled through it and we survived. I have no plans of running another half marathon, but would love to do some shorter races. We applied to run in the Hood to Coast, but that race is so popular, that it's very hard to get in. We didn't. We have hopes of running it in 2011, though. We'll see what happens.

In November Chris got to go on a "guys trip" to Playa del Carmen, Mexico with his dad, brothers (Spencer and Robbie) and his brother-in-law (Brian). They had a lot of fun hanging out without any women telling them what to do. Chris tells me that he would have preferred to stay home and rake leaves with me, but I'm pretty sure that's just my consolation prize to make me feel better about not getting to go.

Actually, I'm positive about that.

You can't look at this picture and believe that he'd rather rake leaves!

Dear Chris,

If you're going to lie to me, please try to make it believable. Maybe tell me that you rode to the moon with Elvis or something. That's something I can believe!

Love,

Jodi
P.S. I'm sorry that your baby brothers can grow more facial hair than you.

P.P.S. Please tell me that you don't wear a speedo like they do.

We're still alive. The end.

Just kidding! You didn't think I'd let you off that easy, did you?

Nope, I'm going to make you read every last thing about what we've been doing. So sit back, relax and listen up.

We took another trip to Utah. Are you surprised? Didn't think so. We're looking into having a subway installed between our house and Heber City. With all the gas we use driving there, we figure it might be cost effective.

I had my Scentsy Convention in Salt Lake City and Chris had his 20th class reunion all at the same time, so we couldn't resist the opportunity to go kill three birds with one stone. Scentsy, the reunion and catching up with the Wrathall family.

This is the only picture I took of the convention. I know it doesn't look like a convention...it looks like I took my 5 year old daughter out clubbing! But Scentsy had a party to celebrate their 5th anniversary and all the families were invited. It was called Cirque de Berserque and they had all sorts of performers doing cool stunts and entertaining our kids. Jantzen tried really hard to resist the dance floor, but in the end she gave in and danced her little pants off. This is at Mirror Lake, where Keaton caught an albino trout and earned his fishing merit badge. It was so pretty up there! We packed a picnic and spent the day relaxing by the water.
It was so nice.

This is at Provo Falls on the way up to Mirror Lake. So pretty!

I'm such a sucker for these hand in hand daddy/daughter pictures.

I also like to try to take nice family pictures for those Christmas cards I never send out.

But Carson....

apparently....

doesn't.

Photoshop, anyone?

Check out this cool slip-n-slide! We borrowed it from some friends to use at a church activity for the kids that I'm in charge of. It's actually from an old billboard. Well, I got it home and decided that it just wouldn't be right if we left it folded up in the car. A good Primary President would test the product before she turned a bunch of kids loose on it, right? So I hope the Snells don't mind, but we had a blast on it! I love this kind of fun. No batteries, no remote controls, and no sitting around looking at a screen.

We had to use a little dish soap to make it extra slippery.

Now we'll just sit and watch for the grass to die from a Palmolive overdose.

To the 4th of July and beyond!!!

Oh my stinking heck!

We have had so much fun lately that I don't even know where to start.

It's been one party after another here at the Wrathall household. This is a picture from Keaton's birthday party. His birthday was actually in March, but since our house was totally torn apart in March we postponed it until June, when our house was only partially torn apart. Partial is so much better than total.

Then a couple of days later we had Carson's birthday party. His birthday is in December, but since it's so close to Christmas he always has his party in June. Don't you love how we celebrate our kids' birthdays at random? That's the thing about being parents. You can do whatever you want!

Next up we have our encounter with a snake on our front porch. Remember the sign on our front door that says, "Thou Shalt Remove Thy Shoes"? Well, he didn't. And this is what we do to those who don't obey. He is still in the freezer and he gives me a heart attack every time I try to sneak and get some ice cream.

I scream for ice cream!

Sorry, I just couldn't let that one pass.

Party number three is Daniel's going away party. We managed to pull off a surprise, which is always fun. I can't believe the year is already gone, and we put him on a plane yesterday to head back to Germany.

Goodbye Daniel! We'll miss you!

Don't forget to put schlupfer on your po!

So once all the parties were over it was time for a little trip.

We camped one night at Maryhill State Park in the Columbia River Gorge. That was fun until the sprinklers came on at midnight and then stayed on, hitting our tent every sixty seconds for the next three hours.

The next day we hiked the Eagle Creek trail to Punchbowl Falls and took a dip in the frigid waters. That was SO fun! There were a couple of cliffs to jump off of and the boys all did it several times.

Eagle Creek is one of our favorite places on earth. We go there almost every year and we never seem to get tired of it.

It's gorgeous!

And of course, we had to take a "more bars in more places" shot. Because we were about to lose our tallest bar.

For some reason, Jantzen wasn't excited about taking this picture.

She had a frown and she wasn't afraid to use it.

Then as if all of that stuff wasn't enough fun, we met up with my mom and sisters and headed to the beach for the Fourth of July. We got there early in the afternoon and just hung out all day playing in the water and the sand and the cooler full of food. Some of us ate more sand than food.

But I won't mention any names...

Jace!

Some of us ate more food than sand...

Me!!!

Some of us had weird battles on a log suspended over a fire. Some of us played with fire.All in all it was a great time.

Amen!

Surfing Day

Yes, you read it right. This old mama is a surfer girl. We rented a car, which included a free pet gecko on the ceiling, and drove to Tamarindo for a day of surfing. Rich and Dawn came with us, but said that they'd just watch us. They had never tried surfing and didn't think they were interested. But by the time we got there we had talked them in to giving it a try. So we all signed up for lessons, rented surfboards and headed to the beach.But before I could surf I had to try some coconut milk.Hey Chris! Take my picture with my surfboard!

Come on, Jodi! Show some spunk. Do something funny.

Ummm. Okay!

Surfing was awesome!! Dawn and I both got up on our first try, but after that I couldn't get up for awhile. Finally our surf teacher, Fau, told me to just relax. That turned out to be good advice because after that I had no problems. That was such a good workout that we were all so tired and sore by the end of the day. We were wishing we had saved our massages for surfing day. And by the way, Rich and Dawn are talking about buying their own surfboards now because it TOTALLY ROCKED!

That night we had reservations for The Italian Restaurant so we hurried home, did a 5 minute glam-up and went to dinner with salt water and sand in our ears and belly buttons. Shortly after dinner Chris started to feel really sick. We had a very long night that night and learned something...Don't drink the water!

This day was the long awaited fishing trip with Rich and Dawn. We had to get up early to meet our boat on the beach at 6am. Can you believe how gorgeous the view is at that hour? I normally don't think anything is gorgeous at 6 am, but this deserves an exception, don't you think? Oh, and yeah, it was already warm out too.

We had rented the boat for five hours and REALLY wanted to catch some fish. So right away there was a little bit of tension in the air. You can tell just by looking at this picture. These are two really tense guys. No fun going on here.

This is a mahi mahi. We hooked into this guy fairly quickly. And I use the term we very, very loosely here. I had no idea how this was going to work, but apparently our job was to sit and watch while the captain drove and the first mate worked his butt off changing out hooks and baits and things on all the fishing poles. Then when they get a fish on we, the overpaying tourists, have the privilege of reeling it in. It kind of reminds me of taking a four year old fishing. But don't get me wrong. We had a blast. And we probably wouldn't have caught anything if we had been trying to do it all ourselves. Especially since we've never fished for mahi mahi or wahoo.

After we caught the mahi mahi it was time to focus on some other types of fish. Rich was really hoping to get a wahoo. So we fished and fished and fished until our time was almost up. We were getting bored and hungry. But we all agreed that a bored and hungry day in Costa Rica is still better than a day at work. Now the tension was really starting to build because Rich hadn't had a chance to reel anything in yet, and Chris and I were feeling guilty about it. The captain was looking stressed and the first mate was changing lures constantly in an effort to hook a fish for us. Then all of a sudden, we had one! The captain could tell us what kind it was before we could even see it. "It's a wahoo!" The boat came to life and Dawn and I drew our cameras out faster than an old western cowboy. "Wahoo! Rich got a fish!"

We took the fish back to our hotel and they cooked it up for us that night. It was so good! And this is coming from a non-fish eater. So you KNOW it must have been good.

But before dinner, we had some massages scheduled at those huts I mentioned earlier. Chris was a little nervous because he had never had one before so I assured him that he would be covered the whole time with a sheet. OOPS! Apparently in Costa Rica it's customary to use only a beach towel to cover you. It was a bit... how should I put this? breezy.

After bearing it all to the massage therapists I was feeling extra care free, so I let Dawn talk me into Meringue lessons at the pool. See that guy and girl in blue and yellow? Their job is to make fools out of the American tourists. Job well done, guys. Job well done. I'm sure they have lots of good laughs in their break room.

We're baaaack!

OH. MY. GOSH. Costa Rica was like so totally rockin' dude!

We had so much fun, I don't know where to start. So I made a plan and I'm gonna stick to it gosh darn it. I'll post a little bit each day for the next several days. That way you won't get too bored and I won't be sitting here all night typing out all the nitty gritty details that you don't care about. But I probably won't get to go back there for a long time so I have to record every little cotton pickin' thing so that I can relive this vacation over and over. Bear with me.

I guess I'll start with this
picture of our pet gecko. He lived in the light fixture on our balcony. See his bulging belly? He eats all the bugs that go in there. I think he's pretty smart.

And this is a howler monkey that was near the beach at our hotel. I hear they're pretty harmless, but when they start howling you'll feel like you're in Jurassic Park or something.We had a long and miserable overnight flight down there and arrived in Costa Rica at 7 am. So our first day there was spent mostly sleeping, lounging by the pool and doing this:

We were at an all-inclusive resort, so it didn't take long for us to find the food. And it was good. And Jodi was happy. And she looked like a pig. A very tired pig. But a happy tired pig. And it was good. Did I tell you that it was good?

We wandered down this path and found the beach. On the way to the beach we saw these little huts where people could get massages. We took note of those huts and promised ourselves that we would definitely need to visit that sacred place.

Our resort had four restaurants. At one they served Oriental food. It was called The Oriental. At another one they served Italian food. It was called The Italian. The third restaurant was a buffet. It was called The Buffet. Now hang in here with me. I know this is getting confusing. Maybe I should make a chart so that you can keep all of this straight. Now here's the kicker. The fourth one was called The Snack Bar, but it wasn't just snacks! It was meals! So confusing, I know. All the guests were outraged because they couldn't figure out where to get the food they wanted. A cryin' shame, I tell ya. A cryin' shame.

So back to the subject of food. (This subject may be visited several times over the course of the next few days.) That night we ate at The Oriental. We had Mexican food there. HAHAHA! Oh, I can't fool you. We had....Oriental food there! But we were too sleepy to enjoy it. I think we were in bed and asleep by 8 o'clock. Party on!

Surfs Up!!

Notice any changes? Tonight my friend Heather educated me in the fine art of cutting and pasting. Not like kindergartners do...like people with actual computer skills do. I really can't believe I've gone all these years without knowing how to do this. It's quite embarrassing, actually. But anyways, I have some exciting news to share and I wanted to roll it out with a little bit of fanfare, so now I can! Drumroll please....
For our 15th wedding anniversary in November Chris and I will be celebrating in the sunny and beautiful land of Costa Rica! And because I'm not too humble to boast, I'm posting the link to the resort that we'll be staying at.
Go to http://www.occidentalhotels.com/grand/Papagayo.asp
I'll be expecting all of you to visit the website and drool all over your keyboards, OK? Oh, and sorry about the Beach Boys music. I just couldn't resist. And the tropical surfer background, too. And I'm apologizing in advance for the countdown thingie that I'm hoping to post, too. (If I can figure out how) By the time we actually leave for this trip you are all gonna hate me and will probably vow to never ever visit my blog again. But I feel like I can brag about this one because we rarely get to take trips like this. Like once every 15 years. If we did this every year and were torturing you with the details I could see how that could be nauseating. But I think you can handle it once every 15 years, can't you? And be happy for us?? OK, thanks I appreciate that. Cuz we're going anyways.

Random ramblings

OK, so it's been awhile. I've been busy. Let's start by going back to last week. On Sunday (Mother's Day) Chris had to leave for Portland for a haz mat class. On Wednesday morning, Keaton left for his field trip to the coast. After school that day, Carson, Jantzen and I packed up and headed down to Portland to enjoy the free hotel. It worked out perfectly, because there happened to be a crazy heat wave while we were there, and the pool just happened to be outside. We met up with Dana and Jennifer to experience IKEA for the very first time. That was fun, but one hour of child care is NOT ENOUGH TIME to go through that store. The kids found that they could fit inside the lockers and I was tempted to lock them in so I could finish my shopping. But no. When it came right down to it, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Cousin Cole came to the hotel to swim with us after IKEA. I'm not sure why the kids chose the hot tub over the pool when it was 95 degrees outside, but whatever.

While in Portland we also BOUGHT A CAR!

On Friday afternoon, we met Keaton's bus in Troutdale, put him in the car and headed to Springfield to see our new nephew/cousin, Jace.

On Sunday was his blessing, and like the angel that he is, he slept through the whole thing. On Monday we packed up and came home. Gas prices are so crazy high that I don't know when we'll ever get to leave the house again. We spent so much money on gas, I can't even bring myself to total it up.

In other news...

We had a spider day on Wednesday. I think it began when Chris picked his shorts up off the floor and put them on, just like he does every morning. It didn't take too long for him to feel a little tickle "down there". Needless to say, all clothes were off and the spider was dead in about two seconds flat! (I'm sure he loves that I'm sharing this.)

Then, when Carson was leaving for school he discovered something in the garage. You see, back in the fall I found this most amazing and huge spider that I had ever seen. So I did what any good mother would do. I captured it in the kids' bug catcher thingy. This spider was so fat, that it looked like its abdomen would burst. Carson took it to school for show and tell. Other teachers were asking to show it in their classrooms. It was quite a big deal at the school. And even for a while after, teachers would ask how she was doing. Not too long later, she made a nest inside the bug catcher then died. We set the cage on a shelf in the garage and promptly forgot about it. Until Wednesday. We had a scene that brought back memories of the movie "Arachnophobia". There were webs all around the cage and the shelves that it was sitting on. And suspended in those webs were hundreds of tiny little spiders. EEWWWWW!!!!! We had a spider holocaust with the bug spray.

On Thursday I had a body composition test. While I won't share the results, I am relieved to know that I am within normal range for my age. I'd still like to lose some weight, but maybe I'm not as fat as I think. I'll have another test done right before I run the half-marathon in October to see what all the running is doing for me.

Well, that about covers it for the last couple of weeks. I'll be back in a month or so. haha