Jump Higher

There are many milestones to reach with parenting.
Sleeping through the night.
Potty-training.

Among these and many others within the Clan lies the learned skill of trampolining. Trampolining is actually a fussy term for flips and acrobatics on the backyard 14-ft trampoline.
 This is actually our second one, our first one was used and abused so often that it wore holes in the nylon, threatening to release a stray ankle or elbow into the ground below.

{Which reminds me:does anyone remember the old school trampolines, the ones with the straps crisscrossing across the face of it? I went on one trampoline like that as a child, and quickly got my foot caught in the strap. Scared the crap out of me. }

As a mother I have sat patiently in lawn chairs watching in anticipation each child master the skill of the perfect front flip. At first was Doe, who mastered the skill readily and with little effort. But let's be clear, she was the type of child to get up at 6 am and go out on her own into the backyard and do flips by herself. Again and again and again.
 I had to tell her that she was not allowed out on the trampoline when I was in the shower or when I left them to run an errand.
Within months she was doing back flips, jackknifes, forward rolls, diving rolls, double twists and on and on...which is all better than her literally climbing the walls and wrapping herself around furniture and appliances.
And also running into traffic.

Tank took his time mastering the skill set. He was a bit more fearful of the contraption, acting casual as he hung onto the supports. You could see the fear in his eyes. But in his own time he became a skilled acrobat.

Because of early vision problems in pre-school we were referred to a vision therapist who recommended doing activities such as gymnastics and acrobatics to work on his peripheral vision and 'his place in space'. He loved tumbling and eventually started doing his own types of flips. At first he would do sideways twisters, not fully symmetric, and always land on his side, but in time he would flip in tandem with his sister.

So imagine his joy when his younger sister and biggest competitor, Bump, decided that this was the summer she was going to master the front flip.

Front flip for those unaware: Involves jumping straight up and then flipping completely forward, landing with both feet standing up on the trampoline. This is the elementary skill set required to do more complicated maneuvers.

Today was the day for a crash course. And I was sitting there patiently watching her, as I had done before and again, (because they always begged me to be their audience), it struck me how time has brought me to this point.

Last baby. Last front-flip skill instruction. Sort of bittersweet.

As I sat dreamily watching her from the patio Tank came outside to investigate. What followed was a comedy of sitcom proportions. Yet again I am near prompted to contact TLC and see if they want to make a reality show about us Olsens.
But we have no disabilities or quirks or socially unacceptable behavior.
We don't belong to a cult, we aren't married to sister wives, and we don't have a large pumpkin patch in Oregon and spend our days beating the sh*t out of each other with verbal warfare.
We're just plain old Amurricans. Who like to squabble but not in a mean-spirited Roloff sort of fashion.

Tank took up his post on the trampoline while his sister was jumping repeatedly on it. He would lazily call out instructions.

"You're not going to get anywhere in Life if you don't jump higher".

Deep esoteric thinking there, son. That needs to be made into a t-shirt.

After a few minutes of good-natured squabbling and shooting soft barbs back and forth, the volume got turned up.

"Bump you are the hardest child to teach. I was able to do a flip a whole year before you did!"

Bump (pausing for comedic effect): "Well...maybe because you didn't have YOU for a teacher."

I usually don't encourage insults among siblings, but that one earned a LoL and a "Good one, Bump!" from the impartial Mother.

Tank would get increasing screech-like in his instructions, shouting that she wasn't doing it right, that she needed to get over CLOSER TO THE SPRINGS TO JUMP HIGHER and OH MY GOSH YOU ARE NOT LISTENING YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO GET THIS. WHY CAN'T YOU LISTEN?

After 20 minutes of listening to Tank's commands, she was starting to show progress. When she would jump she would not bend her knees but jump jackknife straight, only to pull her knees up at the last minute as she started her front roll. She would land time and again on her heels and fall back. Donk. Donk. Donk., Donk. Donk. Fall backwards and land on her back, long blonde ponytail swishing. Baby hairs around her scalp starting to appear and her angelic face looking all the more angelic haloed by golden strands as the Tank's demanding style became more voluble.

In a tear of frustration Tank got off the trampoline and went into the kitchen, where Doe was inside baking cookies. He was squawking at her to come help their sister, because she "wasn't..." and "she won't..." and "Can you come out and show her because she...". Doe breezed past her brother out the back door across the patio all the way speaking under her breath said to Tank "Stand back. You've done enough."

"Bump" she said "When you do it, you have to ACT like you're grabbing the air" and she did a grabbing motion with both arms.
 She came out in her Sunday best, walked over to the trampoline with a Charlie Chaplin expression her face and did a perfect rolling dive. Walked back off the trampoline and back into the house. Duly impressing her sister, possibly inspiring her form, and frustrating the hoo-haw out of her brother.

Bumpo started in again mimicking the air-grabbing motion, and again landed on her butt, Donk. Donk. Donk.

Tank again started to criticize.
Bumpo in her lowest point said "Shut your pie-hole".

"I don't like that language!" I sing-songed.
Really to no one in particular.
Doe came out again and then determined that her Sunday church clothes were not really appropriate for jumping, so she said "I'm going to change into jumping clothes" appearing later in a tie-dyed shirt she'd made and shorts.

Meanwhile, as a bit of a reprieve, Bumpo took to climbing up the aluminum support beams that once held up a 'safety net' that my children quickly punched holes in with their bony feet and knife-like elbows and knees. She would shimmy up the beams, across the top support and then hang upside down, arms flailing nearly as much as my heart as I watched.

She mocked her brother as he was a bit more wary. He would do the shimmy but not release his arms. Finally he did, and even for a split second let them dangle below his ears. But just for an instant. Then self-preservation set in. And the reality of hanging is: upside down on an aluminum bar the diameter of a shower curtain rod did not bode well for the continuance of the Olsen name. Which is true because he is the only male out of this side of the clan. Different pressure on him.

"Everybody should a fear of jumping and breaking their neck" he said so matter-of-fact. Like, helloOo?

After the somewhat humbling experience of watching Nat crawl like a gibbon across the aluminum support structure, the return to flipping instruction recommenced.

Higher.
Faster.
Hush, she said.

"You're not going to make it without me" he proclaimed with such finality that we all believed that he might be on to something.

Meanwhile Doe returned (after putting another tray of cookies in the oven) and touched on an announcement that Tank had made earlier.

" 'Legs of Steel'....What does that even mean?" she queried.

The harping and language became coarser.
Until I came up with the brilliant Sermon theme from last week: "Speak Life. Not Death. If you aren't encouraging or lifting each other up, you're speaking Death. Speak Life."

Bumpo: "Yeah Tank. Speak Life."

All the while, Bump never stopped smiling.
Fun day.

Moab... with a side of Lorazepam

Well scheisse it's been over two weeks since me last journal entry. And I watch with sad abandon the viewing numbers on my blog go down down down. Sigh.

Je regrette.

It's been busy though. Kids schedules are insane.
Swim team soccer 3v3 soccer basketball track.

I have been fortunate to stay on top of things as of yet, minus a minor hiccup that occurred while Beloved was on his second full-week business trip in a row.

The highlight of our Family Summer Holiday was to be a quick road trip to Moab, Utah. Moab is barely a day's drive away, really only about 6-7 hours. But we got a late start our first day (Sunday) and chose to spend the night in Grand Junction. We used Beloved's points and stayed at the Hampton Inn, which was pretty much par for the course in American travel. You got the fluffy leaf-patterned duvet, the poofy pillows, the shower curtain with the large white grommets. Not bad.

After our Continental breakfast (always fruit peanut butter toast cranberry juice and two cups of coffee) we buckled in for the last jaunt into Moab.

It was with a certain amount of anxiety that we drove into Moab. It was the end of June after all, and the overwhelming consensus of everyone we talked to was that Moab was going to be hot. Hawt. Hot. HahahaHahohohot.
And sure enough, upon looking it up on Weather.com the overall forecast was going to be
Sunday Hades
Monday Global Core
and Tuesday Equatorial Summer.
So, nicer by the start of the week ;).

Saturday night found me in my bedroom scowling over my pack list and in a bit of a snit about even having to go anyways it's going to be so HOT.

But I did. And it was hot. But I survived. And in the end we had a good time.

But not without its moments of utter terror.

The plan was to drive into Arches the first day of leaving Grand Junction.

                                                                  It did not disappoint.

The Three Gossips 

This is about 40 minutes outside of Moab. 

The Tower of Babel 

Balanced Rock 

Skyline Arch? 

Hiking in to see Landscape Arch

Landscape Arch. Due to a section of the arch calving off and shattering below, hiking underneath the arch is now prohibited. 

Wow is it hot. About 105. Lots of water on board. 

But it still makes for some purty pictures I believe 

Tank was totally in his element. He was scrambling over rocks, hiking up into all over the rock formations, and basically taking years off my life. But he loved it. 

The children trying to hike up into the crevasse where that rock is blocking the path. 

Meanwhile here's me trying to look pretty

Tank chases a lizard into the underbrush.

Pine Tree Arch. My personal fave :) 

The children see a roadside attraction that they must climb to explore. 

They free-climb into the back of this keyhole. I am on the other side of the ravine and it is about a 20 ft drop from their trail. Sometimes I just had to trust. 

  After a long day of hiking we decide to return back to camp where we are met by an assortment of blue-bellied lizards. These are called 'fence lizards' and are harmless, except for the fact they like to surprise you in the vault outhouses on-site. With many unknowns in those outhouses, having two lizards jump at your arrival is about enough for you to lose your bladder.

Sunday night was spent getting camp set up. We found a site in Goose Creek, about ten minutes outside of Moab. The site we chose had two large trees on the south end of it and we set up our two tents under those.

Camp. Making spaghetti...

Sunset 

western view. Goose Creek is a BLM site and has about 20 sites. At night a boat tour lights up the canyon walls for a night boat cruise. It's kind of neat. 

Beloved reading by camp lantern light. My favorite book of all time, 'Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. He cannot put it down.

first mistake: setting up the rain fly. (If you say that in sort of a malevolent whisper it sort of captures how that decision impacted our evening). Dude. It's not going to rain. So chill with the plastic tarp and the Glad-lock seal action on your tent. 

second mistake: not getting in the river to cool off. Silly girl. It's less than 500 yards away. Stop with your ninnying and get into God's golden answer for the overheated. The kids all went to the river and slept like kittens. Me? I slept like an overheated house cat. Big mistake. Lesson learned. 

third mistake: trying to go to bed hot. Not like 'BringingSexyBack' hot, mind you, but rather going to bed intemperant and sweating. Honestly I was sweating in areas that I never knew I could. I felt like I had been coated in Vaseline and then laid to rest on a hot buttered down jacket (ie, our sleeping bag). It sucked. At about midnight to the sounds of my husband snoring blissfully I grabbed the car keys, undid the windows and crawled into the backseat of our Suburban. How desperate was I? I was asleep in an unlocked car with the windows down in a public campground off a major highway near a national park in my skivvies. I was desperate. I woke up pissed. 

And after a fitful night's rest I unfolded myself from the back and got going with our day. Breakfast (after a dinner of spaghetti) was a bowl of Cracklin Oat Bran and a large glass of orange juice. Then nothing but gallons of water for the next 8 hours. 

Canyonlands 

Grand View Point. Pretty much a straight drop from where Rachel is walking. 

If it's an overlook someone has to throw something

Bumpo looking very much at home. Notice the whistle 'round her neck. This whistle could prompt an entire other blog entry about compromise, trust and common sense. But that is for another day. 

Mesa Arch. 

Pretty sick. 

Mesa Arch again. There's my Doe. Had we taken the time to go to the Visitor's Center we would have learned that climbing across Mesa Arch is in fact strictly prohibited. Over 330 people have died from falling off this arch.
Pretty much a straight drop down from where Doe is standing. 

So hey let's take the baby out on it. 

Tank chooses self-preservation and stays on  more firma terra 

My picture idea. Yes Doe is jumping forward not straight up. Pretty much a straight drop from where Tank is sitting. 

I like this picture because I look skinny. That is all. 

Islands in the Sky 

Pretty much a straight drop from where Tank is

I mean the pictures don't do it justice I loved how the clouds wheeling overhead would color the canyon.
It really was breathtaking. In a good way ;) And truthfully during the day the heat was tolerable. We used frog toggs around our necks and drank lots of water. It was not too bad. And we were shocked at how many tourists from around the world were there.

The girls climb up into an overhang. 

Running to catch up 

I like this picture. You can see the canyonlands behind Beloved. 

Beloved takes my phone-did I mention these  pictures are all taken with my iPhone? Camera is kaput. Stands over a slot to get this picture. He says he could not see the bottom. Meanwhile Tank is jumping back and forth over it.
Which then prompts another happy memory of me shrieking at Tank to STOP JUMPING OVER THE SLOTS. Doe takes takes umbrage at my parenting and I tell her to SHUT UP.
Good times. 

Lots of hawks and ravens. 

After hiking around Islands in the Sky mesa and taking lots of pictures we decided we definitely needed to find a place to cool off after a long day of hiking. So we drive back down the highway about 20 minutes and find a small beach along the Colorado River. This. was. Heaven. There was just a breath of a current, shallow depth and cool but not cold water. Utterly refreshing and the perfect end to a blazing hot day.

Love these guys so much

This is another great shot of the family. Including Beloved, who is *we think* shaking water out of his ear behind them. We all had to laugh at his expression. 

Tank has really gotten the hang of diving this summer. 

peaceful easy feeling. A few other small families close by. 

The perfect end to the perfect day. 

got our towels and drove back to our campsite. Had a delicious dinner of breakfast burritos. Thankfully I'd impulsively bought a deck of cards at City Market earlier and we spent the night teaching the kids how to play gin rummy and 21.

21! 

An important life-skill....shuffling cards. 

Our last day of our trip to Moab was to highlight a slot canyon we had found online called Holeman Slot Canyon. This was apparently the only slot canyon we could find in Moab, and Doe had done some research to figure out how to get there. We had no map with "Holeman Canyon" on it and only the promise of a blogger's insight into how it can be found.

It ended up being a bit of a pucker, actually.
After driving for 35 miles on a dirt road onto the White Rim Loop, we started looking for Mineral Bottom Road.

Suddenly we were there. And it was not fun. And once I realized this was not fun we were down a steep incline on a single lane unpaved road with exposure to a nearly one thousand foot drop.

The road, having been washed out in a rainstorm in 2010, had been recently re-graded and was now open again for travel. Here's a picture of what the road looked like after the washout.

This road is a popular destination for mountain bikers and believe it or not there is a boat ramp about halfway down the canyon. But don't be fooled-this is an intense little drive of at least 6-8 switchbacks on a one lane unpaved red narrow dirt road. The road is carved into the steep side of the valley and many of the switchbacks feel as if they are on top of each other. Meaning the canyon felt very very steep.

Driving our Suburban down there I suddenly started experiencing a panic attack. We're talking teeth-chattering, arms shaking tears a-flowing panic attack. As we would drive the roadway in front of us was dropping off, literally stones and chunks of the road were peeling away from the edge as we were bumping along the ridged road.

This video gives a pretty fair assessment of what the experience was like. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUMUOvGi9sY

(particularly at 1:13 for a true fright). Keep in mind this video was filmed in 2013, after the regrade.

Now this is a road that had been suggested for 4WD vehicles, and obviously our Suburban is 4WD. But it is also not unlike driving an Abrams tank onto a donkey trail. By the time we got to the trailhead (about 10 minutes later) I was a blubbering mess. I was utterly terrified. I'm not ashamed to admit it. And the knowledge that there was no other way back out of the canyon except up that same trail filled me with abject fear. I literally thought of walking back up the road and not getting back in the car. Yes the road was plenty wide at spots, but again, as you are going down the canyon on the passenger side of the car, you cannot open your car door without plummeting nearly a thousand feet into the canyon. It is just that narrow. (I love how the video author writes "good road but lots of exposure"-exposure to sheer dropoffs!). The knowledge that I was going to be on the inside of the roadway, closest in to the mountain, helped some, but still...if the Burb was going to go off the roadway, I'd still be going down with the ship.

After I calmed down and we were all buttered up with sunscreen and each carrying our two bottles of water and Beloved with his PackH20 I thought we were relatively prepared for our trip into the Canyon. We had looked on the map and figured that the trail split that would take us to Holeman Slot Canyon was about an 30 minutes of walking in on the trail. The trail was flat and no elevation gain, but also no shade.

The temperature at the canyon floor was 107.

Mom made some rules. Kids stay on the trail the entire time. We do not stray off the trail for anything. We walk in for thirty minutes total and if there is not trailhead (there was no signage for the slot canyon) we turn around and go back directly the way we came in. There would be no discussion. It was 11 oclock, and we planned on turning around at 12. Fine.

12 rolls upon us. No slot canyon. The trail split- Doe insists- is where that junction is up ahead, and could we please just go a little further. Signs of snake and lots and lots of buzzards in the air. After my boo hoo at the car I didn't want to be the total buzzkill of the way so we walked in for an hour. The trail curves to the right and Doe is adamant- the slot canyon is off the trail to the left where there was a canyon and it looked like it narrowed. She scrambles off the investigate, all the while whining that I am demanding she stay within eyesight. Meanwhile, Tank is scrambling above us on the rocks overhead. She walks in for five minutes. No sign.

Let's get back on the trail. Back on the trail a Forest Service truck pulls up alongside. The two men look a little worried. They act a little worried. Mention that they saw our lone car at the trailhead and went in to find us.

Beloved mentions that we are looking for Holeman Slot Canyons. Ranger looks at him as if he is speaking dog and says "That canyon is about 35 miles away on the opposite end of this valley". He then asks if we want a ride back to our car. Since it was only an hour back on the road we said No, we're okay, and Yes, we have plenty of water.

Run Forrest Run ;) 

Here's our car at the trailhead. Note the little notice I left scrawled on the back window. Hey 127 Hours scared me. 

Road restricted. Beloved determines we could have driven in further about 15 minutes, taking at least a mile off our walk. 

Cut for sign. That is the sign for snake. 

Green River. We saw no sign of the river for the first 25 minutes or so of our walk. 

 After our pow wow with the park rangers, we determined it was probably in our best interest to just turn back and go back to the car.

But not first without a little stop in the Green River to cool off...

 While the boys swim out to a rock, us girls stay on the shore and get our feet sucked into the mud.

Tank has become quite the diver this summer. I am in awe of his fearlessness! 

It's hot. We're about 30 minutes from our car at this point. 

Tank . He was starting to slow down substantially at this point. Starting to worry me a little...

We made it back to the car. Here's the temp reading from the car.

Cool amphitheatre-esque rock formation on the way back up out of Mineral Bottom.

The drive back up was easier for me. I was on the inside of the road this time, and found a towel to cover my eyes. While the jostling and jumping of the car and the sharp turns still caused my bowels to protest, the end result was we popped out of the canyon with no permanent damage. And believe it or not, some day we might even laugh about it.

But in retelling the story to a friend she remarked that she could get me a prescription for Lorazepam on our next excursion. After Mineral Bottom we drove to a gas station, picked us some snacks for the drive back to NoCo, and made the long drive home.

We stopped in Dillon for dinner. A nice sunset and great way to end the day.

Overall there was lots of lessons learned on this trip.

One: sleeping under the stars is not an invitation to be robbed or attacked with a hatchet by a crazed hitchhiker.

Two: depending on a blog to tell you where the Holeman slot canyon is in Utah is probably not the best decision.

 Three: Go to the visitor center to learn about climbing around on Mesa Arch.

 Four: If a ranger offers you some free water as you are hiking in 107 degree heat, better take him up on that offer.

And finally Five: Try to be less fearful. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

And if the view makes your head swim and stomach drop, grab a dishtowel and drop a Lorazepam.

You won't regret it.