Catch Up and Cave Dwelling

I can't believe it's been six weeks since I put words out into the blogosphere! There's a good reason for that actually.For the entire month of April, I came home from work so exhausted that all I was really good for was dropping onto the couch into what looked remarkably like a coma every single night. Plus, there was Sydney's intense dance schedule that lead up to her big production and Alex's soccer and lacrosse to add to the mix. I was so burnt out by the end of the month that if there had been a traveling circus that happened upon my staggering, bleary-eyed shell on the way to my car one morning, I would have done my best to convince them that I am a hell of a lion tamer and left everything else in the dust. (Apparently, children aren't the only ones that consider running away.)

May's been crazy too (I'm seeing an unfortunate pattern here) but at least it's been fun. My parents were in town which meant some adventuring was in order.

Besides a fun day at the zoo....

Alex and his cousin, Kendra

Alex and my dad (and me heckling in the background)

Kendra and Alex in spaaaaaaaaace!

...A surprise Mother's Day High Tea from my wonderful brothers.....

.....Sydney's big dance performance (in which she was one of the leads) and the celebrating of her 15th birthday.....

 ...We skipped over to Washington for a day to explore the Ape Caves. In our naivety, we collectively thought we were going for a long, leisurely walk in the dark of a cave for the day, the big surprise being that it turned out to be mostly scaling over boulders in the dark for miles (which was a fun surprise for me because I used to spelunk in my younger days). I have to say, no one was more surprised than my mother whose entire worldly 'boulder scaling' resume before that consisted of tripping over rocks in her driveway. She was a real trooper though; she seemed to consider having Search and Rescue come get her and carry her out only once that I could count. I can honestly say that I never in my wildest dreams expected to spelunk with my mother. I am relatively certain that hell hath frozen over. And here is the proof.

One mountain of boulders down....345 to go