What to do now?

SO...it has happened. I had this awesome full time job that I absolutely loved. It has been constant for the last eleven and a half years. All of the sudden out of the blue, (well not so much out of the blue but it feels like it) my hours are cut in half and I have all of this time to myself. Where are the kids, why isn't anyone asking me a endless questions....how come nobody is calling "Mom, Mom, Mom???"

Quiet....I had almost forgotten what it sounds like. Aside from my two crazy dogs and my killer cat Lucy it is just me. So the question is what's next? I thought I had it all figured out and I worked a tutoring job all summer to have students lined up for this school year but as luck would have it things don't always work out according to my plans. So I am still tutoring one of my students during the school day hours. I have no desire to work when my kids are home. After all my favorite job is still watching out for my kids. They are numero uno in my book. Hopefully the tutoring agency I work for can find a few more students for me to tutor during the day.

I did interview for a parateaching position at my kids school but never heard back so I am guessing that is a no-go at this point. So I have been searching KSL and Monster.com looking for the perfect position that will fit my little tiny window of time that I have.  I only have a few requirements. I only want to work from 8:30-12:30, I want summers off and two weeks for Christmas, a week for Thanksgiving, Spring Break off and any other school holiday or sick day my kids have I don't want to work. By the way if my kids forget their lunch or a report or their cross country outfit I will also need to run home and get that for them before I make my way to the "office." Am I ever going to find my perfect job? So far no luck but this morning I had a revelation....well, not so much a revelation more like an idea. I am going to paint again. It has been about three years since I did anything serious with my art and I think it's time. I could even go out and plein-air paint during the day...I have never had this luxury before. Intriguing.

We will see how this goes. I love painting and if I can get a little better at it I have all these ideas for projects I want to work on I just need more experience. I am going to enroll in a few art classes and see if I can't get my skills up to what my brain wants to be doing. So I have a plan. Keep your eyes out for new art. So I will keep tutoring dyslexic students for the Dyslexia Center of Utah and try my hand at being a real artist. Deep breath, here we go.

String Lake Paddle Boards

 Jackson Hole Day 2- String Lake Boating

 This year we headed up to String Lake for a day of fun on the lake. Troy rented us paddle boards and we had a raft to float around on. The kids had a blast trying out their balance on the paddle boards and enjoying the nice warm day. The water was a little chilly but you hardly notice as you fall in after loosing balance on the paddle boards. Refreshing! The twins are Jake and Marie's newest set of twins (Greg and Will)....they roll in multiples.

 Superman Jonathan came up with this awesome idea. It worked....nice superman sunburn lines after our fun day.

 Chortney, Mom and I all brought our paint supplies and did a little plein air painting. It is fun to get out and paint away. Luke my little nephew took a turn painting with my paints. He did a few nice rocks as well. It is fun to have little budding artists. He was very cooperative once we figured out I was going to help him dip into the paints with my paintbrush.

 Paddle boarding with the cousins. We had three boards and it seemed like just enough to give everyone a few turns out on the water. Sometimes you had to paddle around extra cargo...poor Chandler had both my boys attached.

 Troy was trying to help Marie figure out the whole paddle board thing. She was doing great until she got a little help from behind. A friendly shove from Baden send her overboard. Oh the joys of having so many cousins around. She gave him a good dunking afterward. They are still both friends.

 Ali was so proud of her bare handed fish catch. She was going after minnows and doing a spectacular job of hand catching those and then she came up with this big guy and was very pleased with herself. We passed him all around so everyone got a turn holding the slimy little guy. Ali tried hard to keep a little pool of water in her hands so he wouldn't dry out. Luckily he lived through this harrowing experience of being caught by a 6 year old with 18 cousins wanting to hold him.

 Not to be outdone by Ali, Rachael caught herself a cute little frog. The frog got lots of attention as well. Luckily for him he can breathe air. A little boy not with our group convinced his parents that taking the frog home would be a great idea. Poor froggy....don't they know it's illegal to remove anything from a national park?

My kids and I took a little hike around part of Jenny's Lake after our String Lake adventure was through. We enjoyed the scenery and did a little bird watching. Another fun day with the cousins in Jackson Hole.

Snake River Float Trip

 So here we are again....my families yearly reunion to Jackson Hole....

What would a trip to Jackson be without a run down the snake river. Oh my goodness the kids had so much fun. We had two float trips....the upper snake was for the benefit of the young ones. All of the grandchildren rode down for this portion, even Kate who is four months old took this float trip. I didn't even know they made life jackets that small.  So two boats, stacked full of children floating down the smooth clear waters of the upper snake river.

 Our family has 19 grandbabies now...Five girls and fourteen boys. The odds are slightly in the boys favor but the girls we do have are adorable aren't they!!!

 The second half of the float trip was the 8 and over crowd. You have to be 8 and a strong swimmer to dare conquer the lower portion of the snake river. We rent our own boats and my two brothers guide us down the river. Notice I did not say safely guide us down the river....usually there is a boat flip or some sort of rafting incident. Nobody has died yet so I guess they are doing a good job. This year we got lucky, the water was really low, so no flipping and  no incidents of great importance. Phew!

 Two of the favorite parts of our float are add-ons that we do but the professinal rafting guides don't allow....the families who pay a guide to take them down look on at us with pleading eyes, or maybe they are looking at us like we are crazy but either way, we have more fun.  First stop is the mother of all rapids on the Snake. Big Kahuna! We float down in our boat just like all the other float trips but then my sneaky brothers pull the boats over and the kids (who dare) hike back up the river and jump in to float through again in only their life vests. I know, I know, I know....scary, yes. You should see the looks of terror on their sweet innocent faces right before they are enveloped in the great initial wave of the rapid....terrifying....then they eventually (hopefully) pop back up again and get jostled around a bit more before finally coming out the other end of the beast.  It takes them a good five seconds to realize they have lived, then another five seconds to finish coughing all the water out of their lungs they inhaled while trying to keep their feet heading down stream....then it happens. The smile, the grin of all grins and followed closely behind the, "THAT WAS AWESOME!!!" Hands raised high in the air, fists pumping...I wonder if they are exhilerated by the ride of the fact that they have survived their near death/drowning experience. The crazy thing is they all go back for a second round. Ahh, kids, you have got to love them. So this ranks high on their list of Jackson favorites. 

 The second river rafting add-on that we get to do while the other rafts float peacefully by is cliff jumping. They have found a spot on the side of the river with a big eddy, a very tall cliff and a nice deep pool at the base. I haven't been on the river for a few years now (having babies and taking turns watching said babies, etc....oh and being terrified of the river because I have floated the snake after being overturned before, scary.) So the newest addition is the high dive and low dive as the kids have dubbed them. So, Ty asks me as we are climbing into the boats if he can go off the high dive when we get down there, I said sure if he dared. He assured me he did dare and was all excited. When we got to said "high" dive I was a bit surprised at what "high" really meant. He meant the really high dive. Holy moly kid! He did it, it was high, super high. Since bother my boys got up the guts to jump off this cliff I decided I had to do it as well.  Well, you know how things look taller from the top of them than the bottom...this proved true in this case. My plan was to just rock climb up there and jump right off. My brother spend five minutes dinking around up there goofing off and trying to jump off...I though he was acting but really I think he was trying to get up the courage to actually do it. He swan dove off the thing which is crazy but it did take him a minute to get up the guts. Standing at the top looking down I know understood why it took him so long to get his dive on. The only reason I ended up jumping was because you could literally have not climbed back down the rock ledge we scaled to get up to the high dive. In the end I just sucked it in and jumped, I hate to say I screamed the whole way down but I did. It was such a long drop I actually had time to take a breath and scream a little more before inhaling a mouthful of water on impact....not a good idea to go in screaming. So I sounded like a little pansy girl but I did it. I am terrible at guessing heights but I would say 25 or 30 feet....the high dive at our pool is about 12 feet high and that feels tall to me when I go off that so this was a big leap. The boat floating by really were looking enviously at us while we were cliff jumping. It really is a lot of fun, when you are not terrified.

 The mass chaos that is our Jackson trip was well tamed as we loaded and reloaded the boats. The banana dingy was a big hit. The cousins took turns rowing this little baby down stream. Amanda and Jonathan guided it successfully through the Big Kahuna and didn't even dump....I was impressed. They often rescued random cousins who had floated away from their main boat. That is another fun activity that we can do because we rent our own boats. The cousins jump out at just about any point in the river and float down on their own. They have fun attacking the other boat and pirating whatever loot they can. Fun times were had by all. It is nice to have such multi-talented brothers. Attorney, CPA, and licensed river-guides....who would have thought?

Fun and safe trip was had by all.

Alpine Rock Sliding hike

 Alpine Rock Slide! Oh my fun. My three kids 6, 9 and 12 loved this rock slide. The water was chilly but refreshing after the hike up the pavement road. The slide is only on the right and it really is a smooth ride down. Start in the middle and off you go. Don't try to slide down the left side and I am talking about looking at this photo when you are standing up there you would want to slide on the left waterfall. The wide one.

 This is the rock you climb up to get to the waterfall. Probably not great for little ones but our 6 year old had no trouble with it. I have to say I was quite nervous sliding down my first time and inched my way about halfway down before the moss got to slippery and I had to just go. It was quite the adventure and the kids couldn't get enough of it.

 This is a photo of where the pavement ends and us heading out of the little trail on the left. So the road opens up into a circle and you keep going onto the dirt trail that heads straight ahead of where you have been walking. Then take that little left to get to the falls.

 Walking back from the fun. The kids found multiple pairs of broken sunglasses at the bottom of pool under the rockslide.  We hiked back down so much faster than hiking up.

Driving directions: Head North on Alpine's Main Street and then take a left on Fort Canyon Road, which you will follow for about one mile.  At around 1836 Fort Canyon Road you will see the big gate. After you cross a small river surrounded by foliage there will be a gate on your left leading to a field full of construction equipment.There were a few other cars parked there so we knew we had found the right place.

Finding the actual waterfall was a little tricky but we did it on our first try. You will hike up through the no trespassing road and it will be dirt- a little ways up it will turn to pavement. Then dirt again for a bit then pavement again. Stay to the right when the road V's but it doesn't really matter because the left just loops around and joins with the main road again. Keep going further than you feel like it should be and the pavement turns into what could have been plans for a cul-da-sac. If you continue onto the dirt road straight ahead of you there is a little trail off to the left and into the trees. It's like ten feet from where the dirt road starts. You can hear the waterfall by this point, actually a lot of the walk you can hear the water but we heard people laughing so we followed their voices and we were there. It is just a short hike up the little dirt trail once you get off the pavement. The pavement was probably at least a half mile. Well worth it and the cool mountain water quickly cools you off once you start sliding. There is also a little swimming hole above the waterfall to play in.

Thanks to Monyca my friend who posted her trip to this fun place. I saw her pictures and couldn't believe they were in Utah. We just had to give it a try for ourselves. Glad we did!!