Austin Ironman: It was the Best of Trips, it was the WORST of trips.

Saturday was the long-awaited Ironman race for my darling Hubby.  I was thrilled to go because we were finally going to visit my very best friend and we were so excited to let our kids play together.  (She has a daughter just a little younger than Munchkin Girl).  However, things did not quite go as planned and to an outsider, this trip would probably be considered a monumental disaster...Consider the evidence:

• The day before we left, Munchkin Girl and I came down with terrible colds.  We were both hacking away all night and literally didn't fall asleep until 3:30am the first night.  She woke up every 15 minutes with painful couging that made her cry and sob in agony.  I had no medicine for her cough and was helpless all night.
• Hubby flew down two days later for the Ironman and Frontier LOST his bag.  This bag contained dozens of items to do the Ironman, such as shoes, clothes, etc.  He briefly considered running naked but decided that was a poor option.  On the other hand, we'd already spent thousands of dollars to come to, and he'd spent hundreds of hours training for the grueling 6 hour race.  In the end, he bought all new stuff and did it anyway, which was a huge expense for us and quite a fiasco to drive all around Austin in search of the correct gear.
• After the race, we drove almost 2 hours to San Antonio to take the three kids to Sea World.  They were so excited to go.  To our dismay Sea World is closed during the week.  Who knew?  It was like a Vacation moment...I swear I almost pulled a Chevy Chase and demanded they get Wally World/Sea World open for us.  We ended up going to the San Antonio zoo, which I don't recommend.  If you've ever been there, you know why.  I won't go into detail.  On the way home, we got stuck in traffic and it took us another three hours to get home.  The kids weren't thrilled at all to be stuck in dead-stopped traffic for three hours.
• Lastly, my parents were taking care of the dogs and they got into a teensy fight with a skunk.  All I can say is Yuck.

Amazingly, I still consider it to be a FANASTIC trip.  People always say that during adversity that you find your true friends.  I always knew my friend was a true friend, but this trip brought that out in new and incredible ways.  Consider the evidence:

• We show up sick.  If I'm being honest, I wouldn't have been that thrilled to have sick house-guests.  We had medicine everywhere and we were both coughing constantly.  Not my friend.  She opened her house happily to her germ-challenged friends.  I quote, "I don't care if I get sick.  I'm just happy you're here."  She wasn't just saying it.  She meant it.  It's pretty nice to have someone care that much about you.
• In trying to figure out where everyone would sleep, she literally offerd to sleep on her screened porch if needed.  Again, she meant it.  She would have literally slept outside.  Luckily, we didn't need to take her up on this offer, but she still gave Little Buddy the nursery and put her own daughter to sleep in the Pack and Play in the Master closet.  Her poor little girl didn't even get to nap most days because my Little Buddy was sleeping in her bed, but she did it happily. 
• Before I came, she loaded up on my favorite cereal.  I was so happy.  I love my Quaker Oat Squares.
• After the bag came up missing, she and her husband changed all our plans, dropped everything, and tried to help us find it and her husband spent the entire day helping Hubby at the airport, checking in at the race, and eventually at the bike stores buying all new stuff. 

There are dozens of other ways she was awesome and the best hostess ever, but I can't type forever.  Research shows that women who have supportive best friends have better marriages, are happier, and live more fulfilling lives.  If that's true, then I'm set for life.  I hope all women have a best friend like mine.

The other good news is that our little girls got a jumpstart on being BFFs.  They took every opportunity over the 5 day trip to hold hands.  This went well of course until Little Buddy decided to tackle them and ruin the moment.  Oh well, probably won't be the last time that'll happen.

Craft project on a rainy day

Hubby had to work this weekend and it was raining, so I decided to finally get around to a craft idea I'd been wanting to try out for awhile. 

This project is kind of like painting, but with a twist.  The idea at the end is to allow the kids to sort of paint, but have a paint "mixture" come out of squeeze bottles.  Stick with me, you'll see.  For it, we mixed equal parts of salt, flour and water.  I used 2/3 cup of each and ended up with two bottles with plenty of mixture.  At first I hated wasting so much of my salt, but I realized that an entire cannister of salt is only $.53 from the store so it's a really cheap project. 



Munchkin Girl loves to help me cook, but I'm a bit of a germ freak, so it's nice to have a project that we won't have to eat later. I let her do all the pouring and stirring.  


Once everything is mixed up, you pour it into plastic squeeze bottles.  I found some at Walmart for just a few bucks.  Then you have plastic bottles with this sort of gooey mixture and you can add Tempura paint so they have several color options.  Then you cut up some cardboard squares and she can now squeeze colored goo onto cardboard!  I used a cardboard box from some yummy dried fruit I get from Costco


Finally we were ready and voila!  Almost a full hour of fun of squeezing "paint".  She loved it and really like the final product.  This whole thing sounds like a lot of work, but only took about 10 minutes to prep and was definitely worth it!

Airplane and Traveling

Well we're off!  It's really against all my Mommy instincts to wake up Munchkin Girl at 5:30am and pull her out of bed, but that's exactly what I did.  And she was thrilled!  All went well until the plane took off.  She was cuddling her baby when the head suddenly fell off.  She started SCREAMING!  I don't blame her.  I imagine it's scary when your treasured dollie is decaptitated.  The problem was that it rolled to the lady behind us and she wasn't too keen on getting it for her, especially since there was turbulence and she had to reach down and feel around and try to find the doll head.  In the meantime, Munchkin Girl couldn't stop crying and wouldn't listen to reason at all.  I tried to assure her that it was fine, but she was seriously terrified.

The lady finally sucked it up and bent over and found the doll and that crisis was over.  Changing planes went fine and thank goodness for portable DVD players!  The travel after that was great with Munchkin Girl, but my parents are with us since we're visiting my brother and they sometimes they remind me a lot of the Seinfelds.  Our bags were coming off at baggage claim and my Mom pulled her bag down.  The handle wouldn't come up and she started panicking.  And I mean panicking.

"My bag is broken.  It's broken!  It won't work."  She was yanking it with all her strength, over and over again and sure enough, nothing was happening.  I'm not sure why it was a reason to panic, but she's my Mom.  I help her, that's what I do.  I quickly realized that the levers were both down so the handle was simply locked in place.  She doesn't travel much, but still.  Mrs. Seinfeld needs to calm down.

We did get to see the beach after we arrived and Munchkin Girl loved every second. 



She collected shells, ran out into the surf and giggled, and even buried her legs in the sand.  We found a bunch of shells in one place.

"Jackpot!" I said.

Munchkin Girl laughed and kept collecing an entire bucket-full of shells.  Later, my Dad came over and said, "Watcha got there?  What are you collecting?"

"We're looking for Jackpots Papa!  Here's a Jackpot for you!"  she replied and handed him a seashell.



Then, when I was putting her to bed and we were gathering up all her stuff, she said, "Mommy, let's not take Lucy to bed.  Her head might fall off."
Smart kid.  It's going to be a fun weekend.