Sustained by Laughter

I love to laugh. In fact, I think it's safe to say that, in some ways, laughter has saved me. I know a lot of people that become bitter and jaded and cynical when faced with ugliness, and while I've had my moments of feeling that way, I've always been able to search deeply for the humor in a situation and ultimately come out laughing.

During my blogoversary (how do you spell that, anyway?) week, I've been doing a lot of rereading (how fortuitous that it's coincided with school vacation week).

And I found that my blog contains quite a few really hysterically funny life adventures. Since I have a lot more followers now than I did when these were originally written, I figured I'd do some recapping. Definitely check out the original posts if you get a chance (there are links) ... remember, laughter is the world's best medicine :-)

My sister and I had a ridiculously funny Facebook exchange. It involved horse urine and lettuce from a different country. You can find it here.

If laughter is your panacea, teaching is the career for you. Only in education can tampons come up in a conversation about spare tires and the yearly occurrence of 4/20 bring hysterical laughter.

Then there was the night that Belle and I spent hanging with a giant chicken.

And then there was the whole Andy adventure, which was of course a laughter-fueled train wreck. If you haven't read about Andy before on here, he was my best friend for a long time--we reconnected for awhile when I decided that, for my own healing, I had to tell him about the rape. Anyway, we had some great adventures during our reconnected whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it that were incredibly funny, including:
* Going to a Monster Truck show (I'm not what you would call a Monster Truck kind of girl)
* Why I ended up leaving my final divorce court date laughing like a loon.
* I walk into a men's room for a stupid purpose and see a man ... in action.
* The skiing adventure (with video ... my personal favorites are when we got Addie and her friend on the real chairlift when they were snowboarding for the first time or the last one, where you really get a feel for what tools Andy and I are together)

Andy isn't my only funny friend, though. Take BJ, for example, who received a mail order prayer rug and nearly had a nervous breakdown over it.

Hope I was able to brighten up your day a bit :-) ... which did you find to be the most humorous?

Oh, and don't forget about my wonderful, amazing giveaway. Enter now!

Home from Skiing (And You'd Better Believe There are Videos!)

We just got back from skiing. I have to wake up at 5:30 to go back to work. Yeah, I think we'll let the videos speak for themselves (pretty much : )). Oh, and I sound like a LOSER on video ... I never realized that before.

Before we left ... we have Andy being disgusting (actually, the video was shot just after he was being disgusting)



And we have a bunch of kids VERY excited at the prospect of going skiing : )



And then the skiing begins ... Here are the little kids in their lesson.



And then, of course, there was our attempt to get the big girls getting off the bunny slope and onto some real trails with their snowboards. Epic fail, as Addie would say (but that's a story for another day).



And there are a hundred other cute kid videos (and even one of me videotaping while skiing, which is kind of cool), but I sound beyond ridiculous and I fall, so let's end with Andy being disgusting, just for consistency. (Disclaimer: all six kids were in a lesson when we imbibed the beverage depicted in this video).



So there's no philosophical insight on this one ... unless you count a great day of fun a philosophy of a sort. Yeah, I pretty much do :)

Tired Children

This picture, I assume, speaks a thousand words. Maybe a million. And we haven't even skiied yet : ) Yup, Andy and his son Thomas crashed hard ...

There are six children with us--my daughters Addie (15)and Belle (6), Andy's kids Dawn (6) and Thomas (3), plus Addie's best friend Mikayla (15) and Andy's neice Jessica (8). It's a pretty full house, to say the least.

The ride up was a nightmare. My car is horrible in snow, and it was going all over the road, eventually hitting a guard rail. At that point, I refused to go any faster than ten miles per hour. Andy being the gentleman that he is (or else he just really wanted to get away from the younger kids, who were all in his car) offered to drive my car and let me drive his (far more suited to snow driving) vehicle. We moved pretty quickly after that, although I was kind of annoyed that Andy could drive my car with barely a skid--I guess when you know cars thoroughly, you can even get around the crazy winter driving issues.

Anyway, we got to the condo and had to bring the luggage up ... and some kids raring to get into the pool. We finally made it out to the pool, which was so cool. You get into the pool from inside a building, then you swim out and it's an outdoor pool. We literally swam in the midst of a snowstorm ... and it wasn't even cold : )

After returning to the condo, we all got into our pajamas and had dinner, pizza for everyone but Addie, Mikayla, and Jessica, who opted for Ramen Noodles. The little girls played hide and seek after dinner while the big girls burped (don't ask), Thomas played a computer game on my laptop (we're stealing someone's wireless ... I feel kind of guilty), and Andy just sort of relaxed (he'd gotten up at five to go to work, so he was entitled). I did the dishes and then got the girls to settle in, go to the bathroom, brush their teeth. We'd brought the game Apples to Apples (my highest recommendation, if you've never played it) and I asked Andy when I went upstairs to read a story to Belle, Dawn, and Jessica if he'd be up for a game. He said he would, but when I got back downstairs, he and Thomas had crashed on the pull out couch.

On the one hand, what a fantastic day : ) When children are tired enough to sleep soundly (and everyone is but me, so it's all good : )), you've clearly done something right. However, today was just preparation for tomorrow, when the skiing and snowboarding will transpire here at good old Sunday River.

How far can you push tired children before they reach their breaking point?