Fun Friday.

Today marks the end of hunting week. We had high hopes, as every year, of sending Hank off into the forest and having him return with an elk, but it was a dry season.

But, as every year, he came back renewed and refreshed to focus on our little family. It’s always a bit of a retreat for him to pull away from the day-to-day and realign with the important stuff. The small stuff. The really really good life stuff. (Last year, if you remember, was the institution of Family Game Night.)

To honor the realignment, we declared today, Fun Friday.

First on our agenda? Gym-magix. The rest of us know this to be gymnastics, but for the little guy, we go with it’s magic name.

The kiddos do some stuff in the gym, then become the super-bus-train and head on outside to some more fun stuff.

And oh yes. Fun Friday requires a fun ‘do. Like this one, brought to you courtesy of The Sandman. Seems as though he wrestled in his sleep and lost.

Fun Friday also requires Fun Decor. Pumpkins, as it were, who stand at attention like soldiers and send the small-fry-gymnasts off to battle rings and the trampoline and some somersaulting apparatuses. Apparati. Apparatussese.

Son of a biscuit. A plural apparatus, whatever it’s called.

The return from said battle.

And then the battle cry…

We love the superbuth!

You can just see the lisp happening. It’s Fun Friday with a bonus. I mean bonuth.

Also on Fun Friday? A fun rogue ball. It was shown a thing or two before we could leave.

The only way to stop the darn thing was to pin it between his head and the “wall”.

Whew.

Next on Fun Friday’s agenda was to stop by the CrossFit gym, to see the WODders in action. Today’s WOD was called “Derek Harner”, in honor of baby Derek, whose mom CrossFitted like a champ right up until the day before he was born. Everyone was required to run with a medicine ball to mimic the belly that his Mom sported throughout those last few months.

A CrossFitter, so very much enjoying the med ball carry (shouldn’t he be carrying that lower and more in front-er?!), and the mom, so very much enjoying her lightened load. And what’s left of her black eyes. But that’s another funny story from a different Fun Friday…

A demo of the box-jump-burpee. They only had to do 40 of them… in addition to all of the running and weighted pull-uping and handstand pushup-ing.

And then, since they weren’t tired, they did some more Fun Friday stuff.

Pure awesomeness.

This was all done by 10:30 a.m., folks.

Ready for our next Fun Friday thing? Lunch with the ‘Fish.

Yep, we took over the visitors’ table in that cafeteria and shared some good times with that boy, right in the middle of his school day.

And after a quick smackdown of our food during their 20-minute allotment of feasting time, the little guy decided to throw out some tummy zerberts and then ran away, only to be caught by Daddy. It went from this…

To this…

Quicker than quick. Oh let’s just have another look-see, because omaword I just laughed so hard I snorted. Hank looks like he’s in hell.

That’s a well-practiced pout, there. I could sit, heck lounge, on that bottom lip. Gracious mercy, but that’s funny.

Whoo-ee.

Ok. Just a little bit more, because we just couldn’t stop, yet. We squeezed in a fast trip to drop Hank off back at home for work, and then jetted to the library before Pouty Pouterson’s nap could happen. He morphed into a sumo wrestler right before we went in.

But I quickly diverted his attention to the books with CDs for storytime/naptime/however-you-want-to-say-Mommy-free-time, and he Jekyl and Hyded back to the feisty redhead more familiar to me.

He picked out something about a monkey, and something about a frog…

But then? Then all bets were off.

He found a Diego book.

 

I joined him on the red chairs and we read.

And then we came to the part where Diego said, “Flap your arms like a bat!”

So he did.

I was so ready for a nap.

But he was ready for a drink.

Somehow, miraculously, we made it back to the car and home again, round trip in 45 minutes.

Looking at these pictures makes me wonder what our family looks like to those outside of it? It seems like we go about 90 MPH, doesn’t it?

Maybe we do.

But when we slow down, it is so sweet. Every day, I get to snuggle up close with the feisty two-year-old, and let me tell you, he cuddles up better than anyone I’ve ever known. Those quiet moments send him off to sleep for a couple of hours (and me, too, usually, for a much needed 10-minute power nap), and when he wakes up, it’s time to walk to the park where the ‘Fish will soon dismount from his school bus and we scamper off to football practice, or the gym, or homework time in the kitchen while dinner gets its final touches.

It’s a life that I cherish. Through pouty moods and tantrums, running like crazy and snuggles under fuzzy blankets, I sit and steep in the richness of these moments and think about things like, “Was it good enough, today? Were they loved enough? Am I a crap Mom?” And then, “Yeah. It was THAT good. And tomorrow, they will know again, just how much they are loved.”

Just keepin’ it real.

So here’s what I’m thinking… sometime in the spring, I’d like to offer a down-and-dirty workshop for the Mamarazzis out there. A day of learning how to use your camera, and how to capture those day-to-day stories that you have and you will cherish. I love reliving my days, a little heart-and-soul reflection at the end of the day to see the small stuff.

What do you think?

Comments

comments