It's What Saturday's are For

It's been a week.  Quite a week.  Quite a draining, emotional, crazy cycle week and frankly, I am glad to have it behind me.  Without going into too much detail, let's just say that stress and chaos make me feel sad, depressed and honestly, hopeless.  Sometimes the chaos seems to be localized in my own head which doesn't help either because it creates a problem trying to communicate the issues.  Doesn't anyone else get what is going on inside my head?  Oh yeah, its my head.  Seriously, I am ready to pack my bags and take a vacation from my own self for a while.  Yeesh.  I would really like to blame it entirely on hormones.  Yeah, those raging little buggers that find it funny to toy with you even into your  almost 30's.  Gotta love the week where your face looks like it just took its first look into puberty and you feel so crazy that even a toddler's outburst in Target seems justifiable.  "You go ahead and throw yourself on that floor, I understand and it is totally not crazy to scream and hit things because you could not hold those sunglasses.  I am with you!"  I even had a moment wondering what would happen if I totally joined in with her.  "Whatever, we are already getting the once over by everyone in the store at this point I am all in, AHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHH (flailing arms and whining noises)."   It's just been that kind of week.

The mountains were just what I needed and yesterday all of us Longmires packed our backpacks and headed to Golden Gate State Park.  My first thought when we got to the park was, "How have I lived here for most of my life and never been here?"  Wow it was beautiful and so close to Denver.  The weather was perfect and cool, we could not have asked for a better morning.  Lily simply could not wait to go hiking and told us that very fact all the way up to the trail, "Daddy, packack, hikine, muntain, packack!"

It was a beautiful hike up to the Forgotten Valley.

 The Valley is an old homestead that still remains intact.  It was built in the 1800's when a Swedish Family came and settled it.  Gosh I just love history and it is so cool to step onto the property and see the primitive way people used to live.  Boy do we have it easy.  The original farmhouse is still there.  You can't go in, but they set up great porch swings that you can sit on and look out over the pond on the property.  Ah what a life, so peaceful, so serene.  Just what I needed.

Lily was on and over everything.  I am loving my camera and trying to capture her every moment, but many times it is a challenge trying to capture the constant movement.  There are those times though where everything alines and I get amazing pictures of this little precious being.  Exhibit A, B, C and D.

Gosh what a cutie!

After exploring the entire homestead and finding miscellaneous mountain treasures, we headed back.  Miss Independent was all about "hikine" on her own so we let her manuever her way over the bumpy, rocky trail for a while.

It was short lived considering we only went 30 feet in 10 minutes, but she had a blast picking up every rock, running back and forth and jumping off of all the big flat rocks she could find.  She LOVES the outdoors and I LOVE being out with her.

Ahhh, last week is over, time to start fresh.

The Churchpark

A couple of months ago, when we were in the throes of moving and life transitions, poor Lily Grace was suffering with terrible separation anxiety.  It was never worse than when we were at church.  I don't know what it was about, but Bob and I didn't get to attend a full church service for well into 2 months.  We laughed about it because we seemed to always win the "bad kid lottery."  If you are scratching your heads, its where you're sitting in church and that little number starts flashing at the bottom of the screen.  You could be in the middle of a sermon, but when the lottery flashes you have to get up and go.  Oy, that was Bob and I so many times that I ceased to be embarrassed about it.  I started walking down the aisles with my head held high like, "Yeah, thats my XR6, I win today!"  There was just no two ways around it.  Sadly, church started having a stigma around it and when we would pull in, Lily would start the water works.

So one day after church Bob and I had a parental brainstorming session and my Sales/Marketing/Problem Solving husband came up with a brilliant beyond brilliant idea, the churchpark.  You see, Lily LOVES the park and all its playtime fun.  You say park and her little face just lights up.  So Bob and I took on the greatest rebranding campaign of our short parental lives.  We aggressively started referring to church as the churchpark. "Lily are you ready to go to the churchpark? Oh look, there is the churchpark!  Lily we are gonna go play at the churchpark! Churchpark, CHURCHPARK!"  Call it manipulation, call it smart parenting whatever, but by golly, it has worked.  Since we have moved, we have gone to a new church every Sunday.  Lily cannot wait to go to the churchpark and tells us so non stop.

 We have not won the bad kid lottery once and normally we have to spend our energy convincing her that "no you can't stay at the churchpark all day."  The rebranding has gone so well, that Lily talks about going to the churchpark all week and will go to whichever church with whoever wants to take her and not miss Mommy or Daddy one bit.

Bob says it's his greatest career achievement to date: Rebranding the church.