We’ve all been handling the transition of moving differently. Mike and I are just plain tired. Matthew’s been a tad more emotional than usual. Kayliana is completely pumped about her new freedom and is getting into EVERYTHING (and throwing monster tantrums when we have to stop her). Zachary, ahh, Zachary, he’s coping by being just a little extra wild. I love that child, but oh my goodness, he’s definitely added to my exhaustion lately.

So, with this added wildness, I wasn’t that surprised when a friend texted me from the school, “Just saw Zach, head down, all sniffly, in the office.” I responded, “Hurt sniffly or in trouble sniffle?” “In trouble. Poor guy.” Ruh-Roh.

 When Zach and I were headed home from the bus stop I brought this whole thing up. “Well, Spencer was whacking me, so I had to whack him back.” We discussed this for a bit and then I reminded him of the Golden Rule to which he quickly responded, “Well, yeah, mom, do to others what they’re doing to you.” Funny how different his interpretation is!

Speaking of getting in trouble, I guess I’ve been a bit of a rebel lately too. Last week, I FINALLY got to do something that I’ve been SO excited to do. Instead of driving down the hill to meet up with my old neighborhood running partner-friend, I said that on Wednesdays from now on, I’d be running in my new ‘hood. (I’d still join in for Mondays and Fridays though). I couldn’t wait to go run on the golf course trails.

The morning was gorgeous and the views were breath-taking. The golf course grounds-keeper crews were busy ripping around in golf carts and riding on huge mowers, getting the place ready for the day. A few gave me a friendly wave as I ran by. Then, just as I come over the top of the hill and the view (and the hill) literally take my breath away, a golf cart comes charging straight at me. The older gentleman, “Max” (his name tag told me), quickly turned the cart to block my path.

“Uh, good morning!” I say brightly.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” he snaps.

“Going for a run, [genius!].”

“You can’t be here. This is private property.”s

“Oh, really?! We just moved to the neighborhood and I had several people [two] tell me that as long as no one is golfing, you can run or walk on the paths.”

“Who told you that?!” he barks. Um, really, you want names?!

“Some neighbors,” I respond vaguely.

“Well, you can’t be here, this is private property.” (Yeah, we’ve covered that). “You need to leave right now.”

“Uh, OK. So, which is the quickest way out of here?”

“I don’t know. Just go back the way you came and get back to your house as quick as you can.”

Dude.

So, I turn around and start heading back up over the hill, which was a little awkward since I couldn’t really make a quick exit – especially knowing that he was watching me and it was kind of a huge hill. He eventually turns around and heads in the other direction. I keep running and about 5 minutes later hear the buzz of a golf cart coming up behind me. I was just about to step slightly off the path when good ‘ol Max FLOORS it, practically running me off the road and yells, “ON YOUR LEFT.” OK, you’ve made your point, Mr. Power Trip.

Eventually, I come up to a hole where they’re setting up some sort of awning/tent thing. There’s Max again with a few other employees. Max ignores me. I smile politely at the other men and one even says cheerily, “Mornin’! Great day for a run!!” Yeah, tell Max that.

I’ve asked a few more neighbors about this sitation and they’ve all said that they’ve either walked the golf course path for years or see others doing it. I think the difference must be that they go AFTER the golfing is done for the day not BEFORE. I can understand that in the morning, they’re busy getting the course ready, but not once was I disturbing any of their work. And, like, I said, several empoloyees waved at me like this happens all the time. I think I’ll call to find out the real story…I just hope Max isn’t the big man on campus.

And, my final, story/update for today. Because moving two weeks ago just wasn’t enough for us, we went camping this past weekend. Actually, we’ve had the trip scheduled (with five other families from our ‘old ‘hood’) since October, so we weren’t about to let some little activity like MOVING, stop us from partaking in the fun! This was Kayli’s first camping trip, but I knew it’d be a good way to start out, since we had PLENTY of extra people around to help out watching her, etc.

We picked up the boys from the bus on Friday, and headed straight to Lincoln Rock State Park (near Wenatchee, a 2 ½ hour drive away). Unfortunately, the weather was gray, a tad drizzly and a lot windy for the first couple of days. But that didn’t stop us; we had SO MUCH FUN. Saturday was a BIG day: The kids had a large pine-cone collecting and throwing contest. We removed Zach’s training wheels and along with two other kiddos in our group, we had a riding 2 wheel bikes/group therapy session. Zach still has some practicing to do, but he did pretty darn well! We also played a game of baseball (turns out I ROCK at baseball) and a HUGE game of kick-ball. It was tons ‘o fun. Both nights we, of course, had a campfire and made s’mores and Saturday night, after the kids went to bed, we played a cut-throat game of charades.

We’d been told that there was a high wind advisory through 8pm Saturday night. We planned that if it was still crazy windy at 8:02, we were SO filing a complaint…against the National Weather Service, I guess. Anyway, we crawled into the tent around 12am where our kiddos were all sleeping soundly. Shortly after we got into sleeping bags, the wind picked up and it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. We could hear the gusts building and had about 10 seconds before the gale would hit our tent – shaking the walls, whistling/wailing around us and practically caving the tent in on top of us. Yeah, this woke Kayli up and for about 10 minutes, every time the wind hit, she would shriek in terror from her porta-crib. Eventually, I told Mike the only option was to pull her onto our air mattress and have her sleep between us. I’ll admit that the wind was so strong, I was even scared. At one point, Mike went out to check to make sure we were still secured and that nothing had ripped off.

At dark o’clock (I have no idea what time it was), Matthew suddenly sat up and over the din of the wind announced, “I’m going to throw up.” I quickly got him out of the tent and into the storm where he puked next to our tent (I prayed that the wind wouldn’t blow it on to our tent or US!). We walked to the restrooms and got cleaned up and went back to our tent where my next prayer was: I REALLY hope that this night tops the WORST EVER NIGHTS we have camping EVER. I think we got maybe two hours of sleep total.

Sunday morning, we woke up, bleary-eyed, exhausted and discovered that the storm had blown through and FINALLY it was sunny and 75. Matthew felt totally great and we spent some time all hanging out in the sun before packing up to head home.

Unfortunately, though Matthew was fine on Sunday, he woke up yesterday morning not feeling well, and he STILL hasn’t been able to keep any food down. L Just a little bit ago I heard him throwing up in the bathroom. He flushed the total as I walked in and said, “Goodbye, last night’s dinner.” (Two tablespoons of rice. My kids do seriously rule at puking). I REALLY hope he gets better soon. Not just because it’s lame to be sick but also because tomorrow night is his first playoff baseball game. AND we’re playing the ONE team that we’ve actually beat! (Last week during that game, Matthew got an RBI and another hit, and eventually, for the first time all season, got to score a run)! So, please, pukiness, go away. Maybe if he’s not better, they’ll let me play!