do you ever have those times where you realize....

that time is just slipping away faster than you can blink?

i had a sudden surge of anxiety rush through my body last night as i realized, an ENTIRE month of 2011 has gone down in history. seriously. where did january go!?

eeeeks. nothing makes you want to make every second of every minute of every hour of every day count more than a realization like that, eh!?


so, hey. today, i just want to say how much i appreciate the thoughts and prayers of every single one of you that read and take time to comment and/or email me to let me know so.

i'm feeling those thoughts & prayers . :)

5 out of the last 8 days, i was so encouraged, practically walking on air because my pain level was down to a 2 or 3. i haven't had that kind of pain relief in.......i can't even remember how long. the last three days have been the rough ones.

but the last five? i felt so good that i agreed to do something entirely stupid, but so incredibly necessary for my psyche.


i took ashlyn & her best friend, and tagged along with a large church group (yay for group discounted rates & family who paid ashlyn's way as a birthday gift!) and went snow tubing at Avalanche Tubing Park at Mad River Mountain....just an hour north of us.

and i'll tell you what. i'm SO ready to go back and do it again! it was exhilarating! and it felt so good to feel like a 'normal' human being for a change and not a crippled pile of rubbish.

you won't find any entertainment more worth the $20 investment, for 3 hours of tubing. and believe you me, 3 hours was loooong enough. we were exhausted when we were done.

before going, we watched this video we found on their website and it looks so lackadaisical and mundane, but oh my gosh, the first ride down i thought for sure ashlyn would never go down again because it was waaaaay faster than you'd ever think.

The Avalanche Tubing Park from Mad River Mountain on Vimeo.

the next morning i got up bright and early and got myself and spidergirl ready for a little mommy date. we ended up checking out the Hoot Family Film Series at the Gateway Film Center on South OSU campus.




it's a FREE monthly family series with storytellers, art, balloon artists, and the like that entertain for an hour prior to a series of short animated films that are shown in groupings of three with live entertainment from the Shazzbots in between films.

way better than Saturday morning cartoons at home. :) and free. ya'll know how i love free.

before the film viewing, spidergirl played with Do A Dot Art daubers (yeppers....the same one ashlyn wants in the craft cabinet from yesterday's post).

please excuse the picture quality. i can't quite figure out why, but all my photos from that day have this dreamy, fog-like quality to them and i haven't a clue why. weird.

the balloon artist was so stinkin' adorable with the most pleasant personality! i didn't hear her say 'no i can't make that' a single time and she must have made 200 balloon sculptures. spidergirl asked for an octopus, LOL! and that's exactly what she got!


and there was the most adorable caricature artist there too. she just got accepted to graduation school at OSU to study animation and was there just for the practice, doing the drawings for free. spidergirl was her last subject for the day and talked her ear off.


i *adore* her picture and was totally bummed when we walked out of the building to head to our car and a drop of water fell from an overhang and landed right on the picture leaving a big black splotch. :(

then it was time to watch the films and listen to the Shazzbots.

one of the films we got to see, we also found on youtube: Moon Girl (from the makers of the movie Coraline)

spidergirl loved every bit of it.........well, almost every bit. she didn't care too much for the Shazzbots, but only because her ears are very sensitive from all the scarring from infections & having tubes in them twice.

i promised next time to bring ear plugs. poor thing.

it was such an awesome weekend! one where i was reminded that my girls are growing up, yet they are still so very little.

gotta make the most of these days that are slipping through the cracks way too quickly. *sigh*