Can I Be Done?

Hola, my friends! Is today over yet? Not that it was a bad day, just that it was a long day. And I'm ready to sleep. hehe.

I woke up at 6:35, and pushed snooze. I'm making a habit of that. hehe. I got up at 6:45am, read my scriptures, said my prayers, and then got the kids ready. Captain America was off today, so he came out and helped the last few minutes before getting kids on the bus, then he went to go and skate for exercise.

And I hopped in the shower. And got ready for the day. We were going up to Albuquerque New Mexico to the temple, but first, we had our couples counseling. Busy day!

Here's me, all fixed up and ready to go :)

And, of course, we had an argument on the way to counseling. hehe. Doesn't it always work that way? ha! At least it was something to talk about, right? And Dr. Slade gave us a few things to help in our communication problems.

He talked about 4 main problems in communication. First was Criticism. Criticism is bad. It's counterpart, that is better, is complaining. To complain, you say the behavior, say how you feel about it, and WHY you feel that way about it. That's the proper way to complain.

The next was Defensiveness. And the better counterpart to that is admitting the truth about the complaint. Because there's always SOME truth to a complaint. Here's what you say "You're right about xxxxx. Can I explain to you why I did what I did?" I really liked this one, and could see how these first two can play off of each other.

The third was Contempt. Where you think you're better than the other person. As long as we're not in a HUGE MASSIVE argument, we don't struggle with this one. And the last one is Stonewalling. Yeah, same as the contempt. I'm thinking that if we do better on the criticism/defensiveness stage, we won't move to the contempt/stonewalling phase. Make sense?

Anyway, we finished up, and headed back home. But stopped at the commissary first to buy some snacks for our trip. Cause 4 hours each way in the car with 5 kids was gonna be a LONG time :)

And then headed home. And started packing. And getting things ready to go. And looking for hotels. And eating lunch. And calling the temple, and finding out hours, and junk like that. And finally, by 2pm, we were ready to go. We loaded up in the truck, and headed up to the school to pick up kids.

And were all in the car, and dropped off backpacks and cellos and stuff at home, then were on the interstate by 2:20pm. Yeah, we were a little off schedule. But we were on the road.

And it was really windy in my truck. My POOR hair. Check out the disaster that it is with the windows down. Did I mention that we don't have A/C in the truck?

And we stopped at Truth or Consequences (or something like that) to get gas.

Kids in the truck at the gas station

Me at the gas station

And then, since the gas station didn't have a good "snacks" selection, we drove across the street to McDonalds. And let kids go to the bathroom, and we bought plain ice cream sundaes (so just ice cream in a dish) for everyone, and Captain America and I got a big soda. Diet Dr Pepper??? YES!! I was pretty excited. hehe.

Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico

So we drove on. We got to listen to all of Sunday morning session of conference, since we'd missed most of that one last Sunday, and a few of the Priesthood sessions, and lots of the songs from conference. It was nice listening to conference talks on the way up to the temple.

So I was noticing that Captain America didn't seem to have any problem with is hair and the wind...

But I sure did...

And then we got to Soccorro, NM. And it was a little after 5pm, so we stopped at Burger King for dinner. Here's Jake, helping us get sleeping kids out of the car.

Me and the kids, waiting for our food

Silly Boys!

Captain America and I

And by this time, we realized that we weren't gonna make it by 6pm. Because Soccorro is about an hour from Albuquerque. And yeah, we left Burger King real close to 6pm. And we'd told the temple that we would be there at 6pm.

So Captain America called, and said he'd be there at 7pm. And yeah, now it was gonna be a push to make it by 7pm. But push on we did.

We pulled into the parking lot a few minutes after 7pm, and the temple ladies said they were reserving a spot for Captain America. So it all worked out. He and I snapped a few quick pictures of ourselves, and he ran inside, and I stayed out with all the kids.
And here's a TON of pictures of the kids and I at the temple grounds. We didn't go inside, but we walked around for about 20 minutes. Until they were being too naughty to keep outside anymore. Jumping and running and being loud. Yeah, not the place for that.... Sigh. Boys...


























So my original plan was to look around the temple grounds, then drive to a store and hang until Captain America was finished in the temple. But yeah, after their super naughty behavior at the temple, I didn't want to be with them in public. Or reward them for a job poorly done. So I made them sit in the car. For about an hour and 20 minutes. And yeah, it sucked. But let me tell you, when Captain America came back out, and took the kids and I for a walk around the grounds, they were VERY well behaved and respectful. I guess they did learn a lesson.

We headed back towards Soccorro, and got a hotel for the night. We were gonna do Motel 6, but they only had smoking rooms left. So we drove down the street a ways, and found an EconoLodge. And it was cheap! $40 a room! Sweet :) And they were HUGE rooms. And we got 2 rooms. Even better - hehehe :)

Here's some pics right before bedtime.

We found Jimmy laying on the bed like this. Silly kid. We fall him "Fat Panda", lovingly, from Kung Fu Panda. Have you seen that movie? It was a good one :)

Eme and Jimmy

Jake

See, 2 rooms!

And now it's after 1:14am, and I'm SO tired. We're gonna get up at 8:30am, and drive the 3 1/2 hours back home. And then we have a Work function to go to at 3pm. Another long and busy day, I'm afraid. It's been a good trip so far, though :) Even with the few little bumps along the way :)

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