The Most Extreme Ultimate Ultimateness Pt. 2

(Part 1, or "how I hobbled through the mountains last year," is here.  Part 1 is not intended for people who may be considering doing the Ultimate Hike.)

Despite a best effort from one of our coaches to pack days ahead of time, then check, double check, triple check, and quadruple check our bags, I still decided to leave packing for the Ultimate Hike until one hour before I needed to leave.  Because I like leaving much to chance.

And also because I forgot to wash my stinky wool socks until the morning of.  But I quadruple checked that I had my knee braces.  BECAUSE OF PART 1.

CAKE! TACOS!

A post for those who prefer books with pictures to books with more words because there are no pictures.

Eve woke up one day and turned five.  She was sent to school with an 80s cookie cake because of her love for Huey Lewis and because neon icing like totally tastes the best.

This amount of time it takes to load the pictures in this post is meant to encourage you to drink with me.

What do you get when you take a boy to the library and let him pick out a book to take home?

You get this:

And when I say, "I did things in that forest I never thought I'd do in a forest," I do not mean I was pooping in that forest.

In between the tooth fairy not coming to visit Natalie (but she left a note in the underwear drawer that she'd be back the next night because we have the TOOTH FAIRY OF THE YEAR in this house) and Nat waxing poetic about her dreams of growing up ("When I'm 18, I want to bring peace to the Middle East  cure cancer  learn the art of hard boiling eggs without turning the yolks gray sit in the bathtub and drink Diet Pepsi"), we've been all kinds of busy around here.  Like hiking.  And doing sweaty hike laundry.  And then forgetting about the laundry and throwing a damp washcloth in the dryer every few days while you run the touch-up cycle in the event you may one day remove the hike laundry from the dryer and actually fold it, but who do you think you're shining on- you know you're just going to leave that sports bra and moisture-wicking shirt in there until your next hike and let your sweat drown all your wrinkles away.

Worst. Day. Ever.

It’s been a while.  This is the all-you-can-eat buffet of blog posts, with lots of strange things that you would never expect to be side-by-side under the sneeze guard.  As with all things on the buffet, most anecdotes will not be held at the proper temperature and most definitely will have been violated by sticky kid fingers.  Eat at your own risk.

Why pink ribbons don't make me angry.

SEPTEMBER IS CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS MONTH!!!!

I wrote it like that to get your attention.  In case you aren't friends on Facebook with people posting someecards that you think are going to be really funny and they turn out to be about childhood cancer and why you suck as a person if you don't know about it and it's totally a bummer.  I want to let you know that I didn't know anything about childhood cancer the day before my daughter was diagnosed.  Statistically, some kid you know is going to get it.  If you want to hear my alias Christina Griffiths talk about her daughter Eva/Ava, click here.  I'm pumped that for once I don't sound like I'm prepubescent.  My name could be John and my kid could be Larry and it wouldn't change the message so let's not dwell on the fact that I was born with a name that would always be misspelled (Christy Saunders was often Christie/Kristie/Kristy/Kristi/Christi/Cristy Sanders before I started challenging people to find Christ and add a Y) and then got married and assumed a new name that no one would spell correctly (Christy Griffith is now Christie/Kristie/Kristy/Kristi/Christi/Cristy Griffin/Griffiths/Griffyndor) and then named my kid a name that no one believes is really her name (Is that short for Eva?  Evelyn?  Did you say Ava?  No, it's like Adam and...Eva?).

Disorderlies

This is pretty much how my Tuesdays start.  A splash of sass and Eve's good to go.