Christmas

For the first time in at least seven years we had a tree! Isn't it amazing how time flies? It wasn't until I sat down and really thought about it that I realized so much time had gone by without a Christmas tree. I always justified it as not really necessary since the kids spent every other Christmas at their dad's house and the years they were with me, we spent Christmas at my parent's B&B and they ALWAYS had a tree. Truth be told, there were more than a few years when it was either buy a Christmas tree or presents. The presents always won out. I managed not to miss a Christmas tree, or so I thought. RockCrawlinChef's brought a lot of positive things into our lives, not the least of which was the tree. But I'm especially thankful about the tree.

I love the smell of a live tree - it reminds me of Christmases as a kid. Have I robbed my own kids of that memory by not having a tree for so long? Lord, I hope not. This year has been so different than years past, and Christmas was no exception. The kids and I always had GREAT Christmases, just the four of us and our family, but this year blew all the others out of the water - at least for me. We actually celebrated four times in a 24-hour period - how crazy is that? I suspect that will be the standard from now on, too.

RCC and I each had a non-negotiable, don't-even-consider-asking-me-to-change tradition; luckily, they worked out perfectly. My non-negotiable tradition (well, besides Baking Day) is Christmas Eve at Grandma Mary's. As much as I hate crowds and noise, I live for the crowded chaos of Grandma's on Christmas Eve. Food in abundance, kids in abundance, "butt space" lacking (gotta claim your spot early), wrapping paper flying and kids "oohing" and "aahing" and yelling out "thank you!" - what could be better?

RCC's non-negotiable was Christmas Morning at his parent's. Luckily, his youngest brother is a sleeper-inner and we weren't expected over there too early, which gave us time to open our own presents under the tree (another benefit to having a tree - whoda thunk?). Christmas Morning at his parents was the polar opposite of Christmas Eve at Grandma's, but still a ton of fun. I enjoyed watching everyone open their gifts without the distraction of ducking the flying wrapping paper and elbows as kids tore willy-nilly into their gifts.

By 11:00 am, we had three of our four celebrations down and headed up to the Lodge for the final one. Christmas at Mom's is kind of a combination of both Grandma Mary's and RCC's parents; the kids still tore into their presents, but with Mom handing out the gifts it was much more controlled and we were able to see pretty much everyone open their gifts.

Sadly, Bill's mom had been admitted to the hospital in New Mexico the day before and he'd driven out to be with her, so we missed getting to spend Christmas with him, but he'll come home to plenty of gifts and some left-over Shepherd's pie.

The non-stop 24-hour celebrations took their toll (or RCC and I are getting old) though, and we fell into bed well before 7:00 pm. The kids teased us about our early bedtime, but didn't stay up much longer than we did. As with everything else so far, our lives are melding pretty darn well and I'm so excited about our new life. I'm not sure it gets much better than this!

Baking Day!!!!

One of my all-time favorite days of the year is our annual Baking Day (which really has turned into baking weekend with all of the cookies we have to make). My Girls, Staci, Robin, and Sue, come up from Littleton to join my family at mom's lodge (www.allensparklodge.com) every year for a day of baking and catching up. I met my Girls through my boyfriend ten years ago. The boyfriend is long gone, but the Girls and I are as tight as ever. We're not the call-each-other-every-day friends, but the you're-part-of-who-I-am friends. Even though we only see each other a couple of times a year, it's always like we just parted. This is probably one of my favorite traditions and it always amazes me how quickly the year flies by. Baking Day is the only day that the Girls and I can guarantee that we'll get together now that we're not playing soccer multiple times a week. It seems not so long ago that I was driving down to Denver three times a week to play, but in retrospect it's been two break-ups (me and Robin), one marriage (Staci), two children (Staci), one relationship and step-son (Robin), and one engagement (me) ago that I was making that thrice weekly drive.

What I really love about Baking Day is that I get to spend the whole day with amazing women that I don't get to see nearly enough any more. I think as we get older and our lives get more complicated and busy, it's important to have traditions like this, not just family traditions. I'm always sad when the Girls pack up to go back to Littleton at the end of Baking Day, but immediately start looking forward to next year.

Losing her nose-ginity

To finish up our wild, hectic weekend...

I had promised Ashee-butt that when she turned sixteen she could get her nose pierced. So...she's sixteen on the 13th and I took her to get it done on Sunday. The piercer that I wanted to do it was off, so we wandered from tattoo shop to tattoo shop until we found a place that would do a minor with her parent's consent. $65.00 and one hole in the head later, I had a happy daughter (even if her eye was still leaking a bit - so were mine - it was a heck of a hit to the wallet).

Christmas Caravan for Kids

What A Weekend!
Busy, busy, busy…Wow! Not quite sure where to start with my non-weekend. RockCrawlinChef and I had been planning for over a month now to join the Christmas Caravan for Kids to benefit the Marines’ Toys for Tots program, so I guess I’ll start there…

Friday night, late…
We had actually planned on picking up the trailer on Thursday night, but Mother Nature wasn’t on our side at all with all of the snow and ice on the road. RCC finally got home from the shuttle, grabbed something to eat, checked his email and we were off to his parents’ house to pick up Tinkerbell’s trailer. We got an early start, about 9:30 pm. We knew that the trailer lights weren’t working from when we brought Tink home, so our first stop was WalMart to pick up some emergency trailer lights, which we found (hallelujah!) and hoped we wouldn’t have to do too much wiring in the dark. We got lucky and found temporary magnetic tow lights that we just had to plug into the truck’s wiring and the lights would attach to the trailer magnetically. Whew! At least we knew we’d be legal (sort of – still haven’t gotten the trailer registered) to tow Tink to the fairgrounds.

Once we got to Johnstown to pick up the trailer it was good and cold and dark. We managed to snap the bolt that holds the crank handle on while we were trying to crank up the trailer foot, but RCC’s dad is a rock star and had a whole bucket of bolts that we dug through until we found a replacement. We got the trailer hooked up to the truck and pulled it out into the cul-de-sac to attach our make-shift lights only to find out that the cord was about four feet too short! Ugh! With a flash of brilliance, we found that we could attach the trailer lights underneath the trailer near the original lights, run the cord up and over the axle and along the support beams and get plugged in – barely. There wasn’t much slack for things like turning or raising the front of the trailer. After some fine-tuning, we managed to get enough slack and still have visible lights. Our fingers and toes were damn cold, nearly frozen, but we did it (and I didn’t even whine too much about being cold) and were on our way home at midnight or so. I think we finally got parked and into bed about 1:00 am. Just a few hours to grab some sleep before we had to load the girl and get goin’!

Saturday morning, early…
The alarm went off and RCC was out of bed like a shot. I’m not sure he got any sleep – he was like a kid on Christmas Eve, just laying in bed marking time until it was late enough to get up. I, however, took my sweet time getting out of bed – four and a half hours is just not enough for me! Of course, we were so organized, we didn’t have Tink actually running and there were a couple of things, minor of course, that needed to be done. Things like putting gas stabilizer in her fuel cell, along with some, you know, fuel and hooking up a battery. We stole the battery out of our Toyota Celica in hopes that it would have enough cold cranking amps to turn her over. We were wrong. She tried, but there just wasn’t enough juice in the little Toyota battery to turn over her bad-ass Chevy engine. Yikes, quarter ‘til seven and we don’t even have her started! Off to WalMart for a new battery. RCC was taking this all in stride – I think I was more stressed than he was at that point. Ten after seven and he’s installed the new battery, I’ve sprayed starter fluid in her air filter and we’re ready to give her a go. And…success! She started, reluctantly, but she did start. While RCC babied her and tried to coax her into idling, I got the trailer ready. I’m sure my neighbors appreciated hearing me drive the trailer pin out with a sledge hammer shortly after sunrise. They surely appreciated it as much as listening to RCC rev Tink’s engine while trying to warm up her engine.

I was a bit nervous about loading her since it took three of us to get her loaded when we brought her home, now it was just me at O’God thirty. Loading went beautifully and we were off, only thirty minutes or so behind schedule! Did I mention that it was only in the single-digits weather-wise while we were doing all of this? We had to actually scoop the snow off of Tinkerbell before we started on anything.

We still needed to stop and get more fuel for both The Bitch and Tinkerbell, but thought we’d decide on the way which gas station to stop at. The Caravan was leaving the Cracker Barrel at 8:00 am and heading over to the park-and-ride at Berthoud for line up there. Because of our late start, we by-passed the Cracker Barrel and fueled up at the Johnstown exit, choosing to meet up with the Caravan in Berthoud. Putting fuel in Tink was quite a chore – RCC had to climb up on to her like a monkey and reach down as far as he could while I stood on tippy-toes, reaching up as high as I could to hand up the gas nozzle. She’s tall anyway, but then we put her on the trailer and she became damn massive! I’m sure we put on quite a show.

The meet-up in Berthoud was impressive, I thought, for being early on a Saturday morning in December and still in the single-digits. Once we got organized in Berthoud, we headed off to Longmont to meet up with the last group from Northern Colorado. All told, we had twenty or so 4-wheel vehicles in the Caravan from Longmont to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.

The ride down was uneventful, but a lot of fun. I love seeing the looks on people’s faces when they see Tinkerbell on the trailer, towering over The Bitch. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of kids still talking about the monster truck they saw on the highway Saturday. When we pulled onto the Jeffco grounds, we were waved out of line and directed to a place where we could park and unload Tink. I think the most fun I had all day was climbing up into her and re-joining the line of 4-wheelers and off-roaders to hand off our toys to the Marines. The looks on the Marines’ faces were priceless when they saw us coming and a couple of them insisted that we “ramp” her – that is, put her up on the RTI (Ramp Travel Index) ramp to test the flexibility of her suspension.

Well RCC, indeed, ramped her and scored a 913, winning the ramp competition. When a truck is ramped, the driver drives one tire up onto the ramp and continues up the ramp until one of the other three tires comes off the ground. At that point a measurement is made and plugged into a chart along with the wheel-base measurement to come up with the score. Tinkerbell maxed out the ramp – she made it to the top and could have continued another few inches before leaving the ground, but the ramp was too short. It’s kind of scary watching the trucks on the ramp because the cab tips so far over in some cases that it looks like the whole vehicle is going to roll over. I guess occasionally they do tip over.

We spent the afternoon, which had warmed up beautifully, wandering around looking at all of the other vehicles and watching the Marines’ 7-ton trucks get filled up (we filled two with toys). It was a blast and I can’t wait until next year’s Christmas Caravan.

More "Firsts"...

RockCrawlinChef's youngest brother just turned 10 on Sunday and as I was thinking about it, I experienced a few "firsts" during his party...

• First time I've ever seen balloons blown up and used as masks...
• First time I've ever had a future brother-in-law who is younger than my youngest child (wow)...
• First time I've ever attempted to play a game on Wii (scary)...

I also realized that there are a few life lessons I could learn from him...

1. If you're not hungry, don't eat (could be part of the reason he's so skinny - I might try it)
2. Play (probably another part of the reason he's so skinny - I really should try it)
3. Do everything with gusto (hmmm...)

So even though I felt rather old, I tried something new (Wii - scary) and laughed a lot.

Our "First" Thanksgiving

RockCrawlinChef and I have had a lot of "Firsts" together in the last eight months, but this is one I'd been looking forward to for a long time - our "First" Thanksgiving. Let me tell you, it was everything I'd imagined it would be and then some. The timing between meals worked out perfectly; my family's dinner early in the afternoon and RCC's family's late evening...it was perfect. We're talking about hosting dinner next year with the families combined - should be interesting! Thanksgiving went so well, I'm ready to take on Christmas!

I've always had a lot to be thankful for, but this year I seem to be extra blessed. Just a few of the things I'm thankful for:

My family, old and new. I'm surrounded by wonderful, pure-hearted people who improve others' lives just by being around.

RockCrawlinChef - I don't know how I managed to survive so many years without his love and support; he is the perfect balance for me.

The Heathi: Digger - even though he's a teenager and occassionally makes me absolutely ape-shit, he is a good kid with a good heart who doesn't deserve the shit he has to live with every day with his disease. Ashee-butt - she stresses herself to the max trying to be the peace-keeper between everyone and usually succeeds. I just wish she didn't feel the need to take on that responsibility. Must be a second-child thing. She's smart, beautiful and can think for herself (which can cause conflict on occassion) and I'm so proud of her. Monster - Ugh! Another teenager, but, again, one who is a good kid with a good heart who can make less-than-satisfactory choices. I wouldn't be who I am without The Heathi and even though I threaten to kill each and every one of them on a daily basis, I couldn't live without them in my life. I'm so unbelievably proud of the people they are all becoming.

I'm thankful that, although Monster and Ashee-butt couldn't be with us, they were together in Arizona. I think it's especially important that Monster have his ally with him during the holiday. He's never been without his siblings, and even though he's down there with his dad, step-mom and half-sister, it's not the same as having the people you've depended on your whole life.

My friends, who are also wonderful, pure-hearted people who have greatly enriched my life.

My life, which has, after years of struggle, has taken a big turn for the better and continues to improve every day thanks to my family and friends. I've had so many opportunities this year that I've not had in the past and I intend to take full advantage of all of them!

A Girl and Her Gun

Last night I watched one of my favorite movies, The Shooter, with Mark Wahlberg (my, has he grown up nicely!) which always reminds me of my dear friend and fellow Gun Diva, Tara Janzen. Tara and I have been shooting buddies since I helped teach a firearms class she was taking for research seven or eight books ago (it's been awhile). The movie always reminds me of when we were learning to shoot long-range, 1,000 yards, after she built "Kid's" sniper rifle. I would swear that the original Bad Boy who taught us to shoot long-range was a technical advisor for the film, as some of the phrases are straight out of his mouth. Each time I hear, "Slow is smooth; smooth is fast" I hear it in his voice, not Wahlberg's.

Although I love the movie there are just a couple of things about it that make me absolutely insane. First, the minute your head comes up off the rifle, the lens covers go down. Should be automatic. If not, that's 10 push-ups :) Tara and I only had to do a few before we remembered to flip the lens covers down. Second, while Wahlberg handles his weapons well, he's missing the connection with the weapon. I would not have even noticed had I not seen someone develop that connection and it makes all the difference in the world.

I was at the range with Tara and the Bad Boy getting ready for an upcoming match when I got the best gift in the world; I got to witness, first-hand, the connection being made. There is something absolutely wonderous and magical when a shooter and her rifle become one. Tara had been shooting and took a break so I could shoot. When she laid down with her rifle the next time she just breathed herself onto it. Between one breath and the next she and her rifle joined; they were no longer two discrete critters, but one living, breathing unit. It took my breath away to see the birth of Tara the Shooter. Before, she had been Tara who shoots.

That was a couple of years ago and I can still close my eyes, see the range, watch Tara lay down behind her rifle, take a breath, lay her cheek against the stock, exhale and become one with her rifle. I've been lucky enough to witness this a couple of times with her and each time it takes my breath away; it is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.