Back to Reality

Nothing makes me relish being a mother, more than extended time in the car with the Hoodlums. We got home from Powell about 6:30 Sunday night and they went right to bed. By bed, I mean they were physically in their beds. The boys, hollered back and forth to each other for hours, despite us taking away all of their privileges and worldly possessions. Who knows what time they actually went to sleep, but we gave up and turned the t.v. on full blast about 9 to drown out their nonsense.

I didn't sleep worth a crap, due to my sunburn and only fell asleep about 3 hours before I had to get up to go to work. This made me oh-so-pleasant at work and definitely put me in the running for 'Sweetest Nurse of the Year' with the new Ortho resident, after ripping him a new one. Eventually, I ended up back at home with little recollection of how I made it there, and only scowled at Dave when he wondered if I would like him to set the alarm, for my work-out. I haven't worked out for a couple of weeks due to Powell and being lazy, but I figure if Shauna corners me about my whereabouts, I will just tell her I reached my goal weight, and try to blame my bulkiness on pre-menstrual bloating.

I had a total work hangover this morning, but lately,the kids have been really good about letting me sleep in for an extra hour in the morning. (They are total anti-work-out enablers. My bulk is completely their fault.) Unfortunately, my Gram is not as easy. I got her wake-up call this morning about 7:30 and she announced that it was double coupons at Smith's............Oh goody.

As I stumbled around the kitchen getting breakfast, Dawson announced, "Just as I suspected, the plants are dead. I told you they were going to die. You have to water them, Mom. You are not a very good Budget Buddy." On a whim a couple of weeks ago, I purchased $100 bucks worth of herbs, pots, and Miracle Grow, to make a little garden. They did not survive our trip, and being the morning person that I am, I told Dawson, "You know what buddy? I know CPR, and I could save a REAL person IF, I wanted to, so those little plants can suck eggs. I am glad they are dead."

By 9:30 we were on our way to Heber. We picked up Gram, and her suitcase of coupons, and had just about as wonderful a time, as you can have, double couponing with three kids. The Hoodlums were relatively good in the store, and helped me take care of all of Gram's groceries, so we drove through Subway and hit the park for a couple of hours. The Boys went nuts climbing the trees and scaling the slides, and I pushed Em til my arm went numb.

When I was certain that they didn't have the energy for one more slide, I rounded them up to go back to Smith's. Before we left the house, I rummaged around the junk counter and found some coupons of my own. I herded the kids back through Smith's, mostly picking up novelty ice cream bars and Kleenex, and then walked past a display of herb plants where I paused for just a minute before Dawson said, "C'mon Mom, let someone have those, that won't kill it." If only I could have his little voice of reason with me all the time.

We broke into a box of Drumsticks for the ride home, since they would most likely melt anyway, and talked about our exciting day. The Boys were especially pumped when I told them about the laundry folding party we were having when we got home. I was especially pumped about showing my super thrifty Baby Daddy, my double coupon receipt, and knowing he would be totally hot for me when he saw my savings.

The summer vacations are over and we are officially back to reality. It is really not too bad.

Lake Powell:Take 2

The drive to Lake Powell is nearly as excruciating as my sunburned butt creases, when I forget to lather up the 'screen. It is amazing where the sun, does shine, when you aren't expecting it too. Before the chitlins came along, it was always me asking how much further, but now they have assumed the questions, and so we can be annoyed at them together, instead of at each other.

With hundreds of trips along the same route, we spend part of the time pointing out interesting Broadbent Family landmarks, like "Remember when Dylie spewed all over his car seat, right around this corner?" or "Remember when we threatened to leave the Boyz at that abandoned 'Buffalo Jerky' Hut?"

Some of the landmarks, we haven't shared with the kids yet, like the tiny little Tire Store about 60 miles outside of Price. When Dave and I were just dating, I made him stop there for a potty break, and when I burst into the station, clutching my crotch, and bouncing up and down, the old S.O.B told me I couldn't use his bathroom. I only argued for a moment before I spotted the big propane tank out in the sage brush. I bounced out and popped a squat behind the tank, but only for a minute, because out came the ornery S.O.B, waving a big stick and screaming, "Ain't nobody gonna piss in my yard!" I took off for the truck, where Dave and his friend, Brandon, sat shell shocked. I barely made it since I hadn't taken the time to pull up my shorts, and I was laughing so hard. It all turned out alright though, Dave married me in the end, despite my character flaws. He still shakes his head when we pass the little store, even though it has been out of business for a long time.

We didn't get into Bullfrog until 9:45 and had to launch the boat in the dark. It was a little scary, but we managed. While we were getting unloaded, Dawson hollered for me to take a look at a spider he had found. It was sitting on the back seats of the houseboat, and it was the most massive spider I have ever seen. It was probably the same size as a tarantula, but not as thick. I took my flip flop off to smash it and couldn't bring myself to actually hit it. I tried about 5 times, but each time I chickened out, thinking I didn't want spider brain matter anywhere on me. Dave finally came around and I got the courage to smack it. The spider imploded and I scooped it up and flipped it out into the lake. Nasty.

The next morning we went out and scouted around for a great spot. We found it, out around Hall's Bay, and decided that Dave and I could maneuver the houseboat out by ourselves. It is typically a 3 man job, but we did not want to lose the sweet beach that we found and there wasn't any wind, so we decided to go for it. Long story short, the wind came up and we had a scary, exhausting trip. We made it though and enjoyed one of the best spots in a long time.

Dave practicing his "Pole Moves" while trying to set up the umbrella. He should do some moonlighting because Shortie got game.
The Boys love to fish off the top of the houseboat for cat fish.

I don't know how they continue to have energy to dance long into the night.
And of course, the games.....

The Boys learned some valuable gambling skills, playing poker for Swedish fish with Uncle Kent.

... and Baby Ring Toss

More catfish

Dawson and Dylan both had some firsts this trip. Dawson decided he wanted to try wake boarding and did awesome. He is so fearless it is scary.

Dylan took to the knee board by himself and got so comfortable he was doing tricks, like 'Look Ma, no hands!' He did really well, until he tried to bail off the knee board and it rolled on him and trapped him under the water. Dave and I were both off the back of the boat and to him in about 30 seconds, but I was worried that he would be nervous around the water. He brushed it right off, and was tubing and swimming in no time.

Boys, Boys, Boys.

The kids most favorite thing about Powell is the slide.

It was a great trip and totally worth the 10 hours round trip car time.

Derb to the Yizzle

Since July of last year, when we missed the Derby, the Boys have reminded me on a daily basis how terrible their summer was. Never mind, that I feed and clothe them, take them to the skate park, read to them, wrestle and play with them, zoo trips, bike rides, whatever, all they remember is they missed the Derby. It didn't even help when I reminded them of all the high class, non-starving kids that will never see a Derby in their life, and we just simply missed a year.

I guess just because I am an incredible Mother, and Dave has a friend on the Search and Rescue, I remembered the SPRING deadline for ticket orders. It amazes me that people are even thinking about demolition in the Spring, but it is a big deal in our redneck of the woods.

The kids could barely contain their enthusiasm, and were visibly buzzing in their seats. The first heat had a good crash with one of the cars landing on top of another one, and it just about put them over the edge. We stayed for all three hours of hardcore Demolition Derby. The only lull in the action happened during the powder puff heat. There were only about 5 women who drove, and they didn't hit very hard. Dawson kept trying to talk me into driving next year, "Mom, you have got to do the derby! You drive really fast, and you aren't even scared to hit stuff with the car." That's about the time Dave was interested in quizzing Dawson about if I had recently hit something with the car. Thankfully, the fireworks started up, and I suggested we all be quiet, so we could hear them. We all had a bang up time.

Raspberries. Not The Good Kind.

You know when you have one of those moments where you make a fool of yourself in front of a lot of people and you just want to curl up and die? Most people could summon up a distant memory or two, but I seem to have them everyday.

I love softball. I used to be good, or at least so, in my mind. These days I am content to just get a base hit, so that I only have to run 10 yards at a time. For safety's sake this is a good thing. Last night I had a freak hit that required me to advance all the way to second base, which I did without incident. Then, because the Universe hates me, the outfielder let the ball roll by her and my dang team egged me on to third. About 10 feet from the base, my legs decided I should carry on without them. It was like slow motion, I just closed my eyes and reached. I hit the dirt hard, but managed to stretch my fingers onto the base. The Ump called me safe anyway, although I don't think anyone could tell if the ball beat me, with the enormous mushroom cloud I produced. I jumped up and laughed it off, but it hurt like a mo-fo, and I desperately wanted to limp off and lick my wounds.

After the game, I couldn't even make eye contact with Dave. He was laughing so hard. I could only think of the hefty girl from last week's game and how hard I had laughed, when she tried to slide into 3rd, and stopped about 2 feet short of the base. I asked Dave if I looked as stupid as she did, and he agreed. Well, shizz.

I sustained some physical injuries, including two golf ball size knots on my knees, and road rash from my wrist to my elbow, but nothing hurts as bad as my pride.


It's unfortunate when your children inherit genes from you, that you would really rather not pass on. In the space of an hour this morning, two-thirds of my chitlins were also covered in raspberries. At least they can laugh about it too............ that is until bath time.

Dylan managed to remain unscathed, although he started to covet our wounds when Dawson and I were talking about how cool they were.

Warning: This Post Contains Info About My Bowels.

I have found that the longer I am actively working as a nurse, my boundary lines seem to get more and more blurry. Not to say, that I haven't always been a bit inappropriate, but dealing intimately with people, and their problems, and their bodily fluids, has made it almost impossible to define what is kosh to incorporate into a regular conversation. Dave is a good buffer for me, though, so I usually try to run my day by him, and if he doesn't throw up, or faint, then I feel like we have had a good conversation.

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped on my way home from work and picked up some Bajio for dinner. When I got home, we snuggled up on the couch and tore into our salads. I took a few bites, and then smelled something horrible, so I said, "Does your salad smell like morbidly obese, somewhat elderly, vagina?" Dave choked on his salad and managed to squeak out a "no." So I sniffed my salad, then sniffed my forearms, shrugged, and kept on eating. The smell must have just been burned into my nose from the spelunking I had to do earlier in my shift, with a Foley catheter. Dave did not fare so well. I think he threw up a little, then just stared at me, and banned me from ever sniffing myself in front of him again. My bad.

Anyway, Hannah slept over last night, so this morning we decided to go back to Happy Valley with her. It was a big day for her, since she was taking her written boards for beauty school, so we took her to lunch. We ended up at Pizza Factory, where Hannah is a manager, and had a great lunch, made even better, by our waitress who was wearing a low cut top. I didn't notice it right away, but after she left our drinks, my sweet little Dawson leaned over to me and said with a nervous grin, "When that girl gave me my drink, I could see her boobs." Hannah and I started laughing, and I told him to look away, when she brought his lunch, and he agreed. It was way harder for Hannah and I to do the same, and we gawked at her enormous jugs about 10 times over the course of lunch.

Previously, before even going into Pizza Factory, I outlawed the boys from getting any raspberry lemonade, and when they put up a fuss, I had to remind Dawson about the last time he got it, and we had to stop every 5 miles on the way home so he could poop. He remembered and said, "Yeah, that's when Heavenly Father stopped my diarrhea when we were at that Deer Creek porta potty." Um, yes.

We split with Hannah right after lunch and I promised the kids they could play at a park for awhile before we hit Costco. As we sat at the light, waiting for it to turn green though, I felt my tummy start rumbling a little. By the time the light turned, I had broken out into a full blown sweat. I could feel my heart beating fast in my neck, and I knew if I didn't get somewhere fast, I was going to S.M.P.(shit my pants.) It is a damn miracle that we didn't get into a car accident in the short 3 blocks to Costco, because every 2 minutes when my stomach would cramp, I would have to take my foot off the gas, and arc my back so as not to have any pressure on my guts. It seemed like an eternity to get to Costco, and then of course, the parking lot is 10 miles long. By that time, my pants were unbuttoned, I had tears streaming down my face, and I was alternately swearing, and praying out loud to God to help me make it to the bathroom. Dawson had fervently joined in the prayer effort, and the backseat was a cacophony of Dawson's prayers, Emma's bawling, and Dylan laughing his little ass off at my misfortune.

Everything became somewhat of a blur from there. I know I gave the finger to a poor young family when they started motioning for me to move my car out of the way of their minivan, but at the time I was having one of my cramps and had assumed the arc position. I attempted to get out of the car a couple of times, and then finally just made a run for it. I can hardly imagine how I looked with my tear-streaked face, Emma in one arm, and my other hand trying to squeeze both my butt cheeks together while I did the straight-leg stumble through Costco. Eventually I made it, and I can proudly say I did not S.M.P. I called Dave from my bathroom stall, since I had not one shred of dignity left, and apologized for unsympathetically laughing at him last week when he had a similar experience. He forgave me, and I pulled myself together, splashed a little water on my face, hugged the Hoodlums, and we carried on with our bulk shopping.

That's probably more than anyone wanted to know, but at least I didn't upload a picture.

West Fork Trip

Dave has had a standing date with the West Fork of the Duschesne river, on the second Saturday in July, every year ,for his whole life. I used to go with him before the Hoodlums came along, and I have great memories of those times. This time was a little different however, and I have compiled a small list of the differences in camping trips, B.C. (before chitlins) and W.T.H.W.W.T. (What the hell were we thinking.)

B.C.-The air mattress was always bouncin', ye-ah!
W.T.H.W.W.T.-3 wild kids and two adults on the same air mattress and the friggin' thing never stopped moving, which is not the same.


B.C.-Taking a bath in DEET, so the flies and mosquitoes would steer clear.
W.T.H.W.W.T.- Walking the fine line of 'apply sparingly to children' warning labels, and thoughts of West Nile virulent kids.

B.C.-Retreating to camp anytime, to put my feet up and read some mindless magazine.
W.T.H.W.W.T.- Having to strip the cover off my Cosmo, now that Dawson can read, as to avoid any premature conversations, and so my Father-in-law is spared the thought of my becoming the 'Orgasm Whisperer' as promised on the cover of the August issue.


B.C.-Fishing a good half-mile of river with Daveskins, and the only thing breaking the comfortable silence, was the sound of trout after trout being caught.

W.T.H.W.W.T.- Packing a kid on our backs and trying to catch at least one fish, while the Boyz, pelted our flies with rocks, and laughed and screamed and sang.



Along with this short list of before and afters', is an even longer list of the ridiculous, and fun things the Hoodlums brought to our family camping trip. I have never had as much fun positioning and repositioning dead snakes for pictures, hoping to make it look like no one in our family is petrified of the creepy crawlers. We counted 84 pot guts, which the kids chased non-stop, and speculated on the amount of time it would have taken for Allen Sweat to carve his name into every last quakie we passed. Really, every last one.



Dawson and Dyl, insisted on picking the perfect bouquet of wildflowers for me, and conducted a search all over the mountain until they found just the right red ones. We had time to throw the football around, as well as the occasional axe contest. (hope that doesn't come back to bite us.)

There was a wonderful afternoon of target shooting, where Dylie showed us that he had inherited his mother's style of shooting. Basically, a horrifying 2 minutes worth of getting off as many rounds as you can, without really aiming at anything, and shooting from the hip, cause' it looks cooler. And of course, the Boyz had a great time roasting the marshmallows for our s'mores. With the amount of charred mallow we ate, it's pretty much a given that our life spans were shortened, but it was worth it, for our fun, family camping trip.

The best part of camping, hands down, is the absoulute exhaustion!

Fourth Of July

What a crazy July we are going to have this year. We kicked off the 4th by going to the parade in Oakley. The boys were a little bummed about not riding on the float, but then when we reminded them about being able to get all the candy that's thrown out, they were happy. When the parade started one of the cowgirl's horses started prancing around and then just reared up and fell over dead. It stopped the parade for a bit, but then in true farm town fashion, they just found the nearest tractor and pushed the horse into a ravine until the parade was over.

I had promised Mckaye and Brooklyn that we would go and watch the patriotic program, so after the parade, we maneuvered down to the Cattlemans Hall for the show. Most of the program was good. I get pretty emotional thinking about my gramps in the war. I don't remember many of the details that he told, of being in the war, because he didn't talk very openly about it, but I will never forget the strong emotions it brought out in him, when he did talk about it.

We hit the little kids parade in the afternoon and watched all the visitors get indignant when their babies were bucked off sheep or stampeded by the calf with money taped to it. I swear, they think because they are in the country on vacation it is safe. It is called mutton busting, not petting zoo. What Ev.

The rodeo was great. We sat in the front row and Emma was happy, because she could run around, and we had plenty of licorice for her to eat, sometimes 5 pieces to each hand. Dylan dressed like a real cowboy, complete with hat and chaps and belt buckle. He was so funny. The second he was dressed, his drawl became far more exagerated and he had quite the swagger. I think he enjoyed the rodeo the most. He was laughing so hard at all the jokes the clown was saying. Dawson liked the rodeo, especially because he sat between Mckaye and Brooklyn. "Girl Trapped" as he likes to call it.

We stuck around for the fireworks and then scooted home to bed. Everyone slept well.