When normal is never normal

Pre-post tangent:

These two were supposed to be reading, but instead were going through the small piles of "next size up hand-me-downs" clothes I had put in their room.  They came down stairs..."Hey momma!  We're both airplanes!"

I keep typing out these long posts about why we went to the Grand Canyon, but they're all too wordy and have a million different random tangents.  So, here's the jest:

I can't quite pin point the how and why, but Ben and I have felt an "exploration" pull.  We want to experience all that we can in each place we live and embrace this unique life we have.  In a way, we hope that our normal is never normal and our kids remember weekends in San Diego at the zoo or camping along the Colorado River or soaking up time with friends and family visiting.  Most of all, we want it to be normal to explore when we have an opportunity.

I'm still pondering over how this affects The Shear Academy.  I want our kids education to look pretty on paper and I would love to answer the "How do you homeschool?" question with a clean, one word answer.  But our life is unique and that makes our kids education unique.  Ben and I hope and pray that our adventures give them a better education than any book or length of time sitting at a desk can.

Then again, kids are really good at keeping one humble.  I asked each of the kids on our way home from the Grand Canyon what their favorite part of our little trip was:

Alison: "The hotel!"

Eli: "Playing my DS in the car."

Colin: "Taking a nap in the car."

Me: face palm

The thing I think we often forget about kids is, they're kids.  We expect them to think and act like adults and quickly get frustrated when they aren't up to par.  I wanted them to be wowed by the Grand Canyon (or as Colin called it, the Big Canyon) and be thankful that we took them on this once in a lifetime adventure, but they have no perspective to compare to.  Kids absorb everything as norm, so even the Grand Canyon computes as "Yep, there's a canyon.  check.  Oh look, a squirrel!"

"who's muscles are bigger?"

The Grand Canyon...from Ben's phone

These are their favorite shirts and it made it super easy to spot them!

In the month we've lived here, I've driven to Phoenix 3 times (and going again next week!) and I learned very quickly the cardinal rule of this route: If there is a rest stop, TAKE IT. If there's a gas station, FILL UP ON GAS.  If there is a restaurant, EAT.  You get the idea; traveling through the desert equals NOTHING and there are literally 2 stops in between Yuma and Phoenix.  Not sure you have to pee?  Doesn't matter.  You stop.  Ben snapped these while I was trying to get a puppy to pee that would.not.pee.

Staking out the perfect trail to hike in Sedona:

love my Eli's smile...

Selfie:

I love this one because it takes you a minute to realize that there's a dog on Eli's head.

"You have something on your nose"

Our boys have a thing with hoods...if there is a hood on what they're wearing, they have to have it on their head.

Just to keep it real:

Since being home, I just want to go back.

You may have noticed in these pictures a difference in Alison and Eli's hair.  It's a sad story for this momma.  It all started the day before our trip.  Eli's hair tends to get a "three stooges" look when his bangs get too long.  I decided I would make them a little shorter; just a little trim.  I don't know what happened, maybe I wasn't paying attention to the guard I put on, but his hair got real short, real fast.  Eli started saying, "I don't like it!  I want my bangs back!  I can't be batman without my bangs!  I really don't like it!"  Yep, it was bad.  So, I did what any mom would do, and I just started making  stuff up to make it all okay.  In my "you look awesome" pep talk, I told him that it was perfect Grand Canyon hair.  Big mistake.  Alison heard me say that and decided that she too, needed Grand Canyon hair.  Well, it is about to be a zillion degrees here in the desert, so I agreed to cutting her hair short for the summer.  I thought I was being smart and took her to Walmart that afternoon, since it was a more substantial cut.  Not smart.  Not smart at all.  We got a young girl, which I thought would be a bonus (again wrong) and told her we wanted a shoulder length cut.  All was fine and dandy until she started adding "layers".  I thought I was going to have a heart attack and kept telling her "that's enough" but she would just say "let me just fix this one thing..."  I really, truly have not been that stressed in a long time.  When she finally stopped mascaraing Alison's hair, it took all my mommy strength to smile and tell her she looked beautiful...because that's the truth...she's beautiful no matter what her hair looks like.  She gave my girl a "mom" haircut and we will not be going back there.  Alison handled with such grace; I was so proud of my beautiful girl.

Our trip to the Grand Canyon

Long posts to follow...you heard that right, posts...because when you go to the Grand Canyon with 3 kids and a dog, there's a lot to share.

A post to follow will share more of why we took this crazy trip.  The short story for now is Ben's command told him to take a week off before the guy he's replacing moves and Ben said, "Hey, do you want to go the Grand Canyon?" and you never, ever say no to someone offering to take you to the Grand Canyon.  He booked a hotel and that was it.  We really didn't plan much, but tried to view it as just an opportunity to see it and plan to go back to really explore.

Tuesday, I picked up a few books on the Canyon at the library and that was my school prep for the trip.

Wednesday morning, while Ben cooked breakfast, I threw some pj's, a change of clothes, some movies, snacks, dog food, coats and a giant box of waters in the car and we were ready to go.  I realized that morning how the cross country move changed me.  I was excited that morning and packing us all up seemed like no big deal.  Moving made me excited to see new things and made me comfortable with traveling/packing, which I am so thankful for because a year ago I would have been stressed that morning.

We hit the road, with the destination of Flagstaff.  Our only plan for the day was to go star gazing at night (big thing in Flagstaff).

I was spoiled this trip because I didn't drive for one minute and we were all together!  

The drive was interesting; every part of Arizona is different and it's so fascinating to watch it change as you drive. 

We were 45 min away from Flagstaff when we saw a sign for Sedona.  We started talking about how we were supposed to stay there on our way through Arizona while moving and we could see how beautiful it was from the highway.  We made a literally split second decision and exited for Sedona.  No plan, but we had to see it and it was the best spontaneous decision we ever made.

We pulled over at a hiking spot, found a short trail on the map and started walking.  

The most fun thing I have ever done.  Hands down.

I fell in love with Sedona that day.  It was so beautiful and had a really fun downtown area.  We found dinner at an outside cafe that was dog friendly.  Actually that was another one of my favorite things about this trip; every meal we ate outside so Maya could be with us, but I thought it was really fun.

We took the scenic route up to Flagstaff (also a great decision) and stopped at Dairy Queen for a little treat.  Alison exclaimed, "I've always wanted to go to Dairy Queen!!!"...can it be true that she's never been to Dairy Queen?

Colin fell asleep on the way to Flagstaff and star gazing never happened.  I guess that will have to go on our "next trip" list.

Thursday morning, we drove up to the Canyon!

At the visitors center

Walking up to the South Rim

Seeing the Canyon for the first time

Ben and his mini-me

There really are no words to describe seeing the canyon and pictures don't do it justice.  Your brain almost cannot compute what you are seeing, so you have to just stand there and try to soak it up.

We hiked a little on the path around the South Rim.  It was slightly nerve wracking with the boys and no railing along the path.  The rules were: no running or goofing around and the closer they were to the right side, the happier I was.

This was the closest I let them get to the ridge.

We stopped for a snack and Colin turned into a ninja.

  

 

On our way back, we ran into a couple also walking a dog.  We had seen lots of people with dogs there and each time, Maya would hide behind us.  Something about this dog pushed a funny button in Maya and she started acting like we've never seen her.  She ran up and started licking the dog and trying to play with her, as if they had been best friends forever.  This couple was so sweet and gave Maya some treats while we talked for a bit.  

Meeting Maddie the Pitbull

Then the craziest thing happened...people started stopping to look/pet/take pictures of the dogs!  Um, we were standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and they are taking pictures of our dog! 

 

  On the way out of the park, we saw some elk right by the road.

 

We stopped in Phoenix that evening to try In-N-Out burger.  Everyone around here raves about this place, so we thought we should eat there just so we know what their talking about and can say "yes, we've been there".  It was nothing to rave about, but we checked it off the list.

On the way home, we added at least 3 more items to our trip list.  This short trip was completely worth it and I'm so glad we were spontaneous, but in the future, we'd like to take an extended trip back to Sedona and the canyon and camp.  Okay, camping may be a few years down the line, but at least go back for more time and do more hikes.  Ben and I would LOVE to hike down to the bottom of the Canyon, so that is also a future bucket list item.

Ben vs. Jen...for my dad

The way Maya reacts to Ben, it seems like she has been abused in some way by a male in her shelter life. She is also very freaked out by water and darkness, but that's another issue. Ben has been the one to give her table food (she LOVES chicken and we often have little scraps from the whole chickens we cook...don't worry, we don't give her bones) and made a point to do special things for her each day to try and earn her confidence that he is caring and won't hurt her. She is slowly getting better, but she still backs away when he comes close to her or reaches his hand out to her. My dad has been offering us some advice on training her and encouraged us to give her some time to be fully comfortable with us before we try anything major. Plus, she's not running away or peeing all over the house, so it's okay to wait a little bit. But it's never too early to find what is reinforcing to her. She's kind of a picky dog and doesn't like the doggy treats we bought her. One morning we fried some bacon for breakfast and decided to see how Maya felt about it. Within minutes, I had her sitting for me. Yea for bacon!

Eli's 6th Birthday!

 

 7 am, Eli runs in our room and goes straight to Maya's crate to tell her it's his birthday.

He was not messing around this birthday...there was no waiting for breakfast or any activities, he wanted to open presents right away.

His "cheese" face somehow changed overnight

Alison wrote him a sweet note and gave him 11 cents ;)

After presents, all he wanted to do was build Lego's in his Batman Pj's.

I really don't know how long it takes kids to build these sets, but this one is for 8+ and it took him less than 2 hours with no help from us.  I think he's pretty genius, but I'm kinda biased.

We finally convinced him to change into some new clothes so we could go out and celebrate.

First stop, Toys R Us.

We found a light saber that he had really been wanting and a rocket Lego set.  He picked out a book this week at the local book fair that came with a Lego spaceman and he felt like the little man needed a ship.  Good thinking.

Eli's birthday theme request was "cheese".

Stop #2: Chuck E Cheese

Chuck E Cheese on a Monday during the school year is the perfect time to go.  There were only a few other people and we never had to wait for a game. 

Stop #3: Arizona Donuts

Spontaneous, non-cheese, stop for a little treat.  This place has the best donuts (sorry Ringo's) and also makes burritos.  Donuts and burritos...you read that right.  But before you judge, the burritos here are one of the best things I've ever eaten.  The movers requested this place for lunch the day we moved in and we are SO glad they led us here.

Eli ate his sprinkle donut and built his space ship while Ben made pizza.

 Colin was Ben's sidekick all afternoon and followed him around asking if he needed a helper.  Ben graciously let him help in everything he did.

 Cheese pizza and cheesecake party!

Eli said it tasted like super cheese cheesecake.

 

After dinner, we took Eli's new scooter out for a spin.  We walked down to the mailbox and he was excited to find mail from Nana and Grandaddy.

Then we explored an abandoned hummingbird next in our front yard.

The thing I love about Eli's birthday is how easy it is to please him.  He's excited about simple toys and is completely happy with no hoopla.  I personally enjoyed a day with my favorite Bubby.

It's funny watching kids grow up.  I had no idea that my baby boy would be a quiet, shy kid who loves being at home in his pj's.  We affectionately joke that Eli is a little like Amelia Bedelia; he takes everything literally.  When he got up yesterday, I asked him if he felt older, just being silly with him.  He very seriously examined his body and said, "I think my legs did grow last night!  But...my arms...are still the same."

Happy Birthday, Eliot James!  I am so thankful I get to be your momma!