MoseleyWorld

A couple of pictures of the girls, fresh out of the camera. Have a great weekend.

samantha - 17 months

saxon - 3 years old

One afternoon, a few of us trekked over to the Utah Olympic Park in Park City, which served as the 2002 Olympic venue for ski jumping, nordic combined, bobsled, skeleton and luge events. Actually, medals are given in the bobsleigh event to people who ride a bobsled. How’s that for some fairly useless trivia learned on this family vacation? Store it away. Use it wisely at the appropriate time, but do so without sounding like a know-it-all Cliff Clavin .

So, the bobsleigh track (or would it be a bobsled track?!) is still there and used by the US Olympic team as their training ground. Year round, mere mortals can take a ride on the track. In the winter, you can ride one of the actual bobsleds used in the 2002 Olympics. Other times of the year, you can ride a summerized bobsled with tires instead of steel runners.

The Comet bobsled ride at the Utah Olympic park is billed as the "most intense minute of your life. " The sign-your-life-away form included warnings designed to discourage anyone who has ever had back/neck, kidney or heart problems, undergone recent surgeries, have high blood pressure or is pregnant. In big bold print it said the ride is "not for the faint of heart ." After reading this, I quietly asked how many fatalities they had had in 2009. The burly mountain man laughed and said they had only crashed one bobsled, about ten years ago, and that everyone walked away, albeit very bruised.

mimi was glad to hang out with Saxon and form the cheering section.

saxon picking a helmet. sorry kid. you gotta be 14 to ride.

"dad, this is really heavy on my head"

they won’t let you drive, since you have to be pro to navigate the 15 turns at speeds close to 70 mph. that’s mike (above) looking back excitedly. The faster you’re pushed at the start, the faster you zip down the track. Big & strong people make great pushers and brakemen. I was glad someone as strong as Heisman winner and NFL running back Herschel Walker (who finished 7th in the 1992 two man event) wasn’t pushing out sled.

From left to right: von, me (with the wild eyes), teresa (eyes fixed on the helmet in front of her) and the driver guy. The minute I plopped down into the long metal hot dog, panic descended upon my heart and mind for the second time in two days. As a lifelong claustrophobe, the simultaneous reactions of increased stomach acids, the tightening of my chest, nd increased hyperawareness of everything going on around me were unpleasantly familiar.

But I had no time to dwell upon these thoughts because off we went. Realizing we did not have seat belts because we didn’t need them. With 5G’s (that’s 5 times the normal pull of gravity) in the turns I would be pinned to the bottom of the sled if I didn’t follow the instructions. Push against the inside of the sled with my arms as hard as I could and hold your head and neck up with a stiff rigidity to avoid being a life-sized bobble head doll.

Away we went. Faster and faster with each vertical drop. At the turns, it felt like my body had become metallized and the world was a giant magnet folding me in half. The first 30 seconds were exhiliarating. Truly the most intense 30 seconds of my life seemed like a split second.

Unfortunately, the turns started coming so fast that my delicate inner ear thought we were on a dinghy in ten foot seas and sounded the motion sickness alarm. At this point, I could only think of crying for mama. The last 30 seconds [thank goodness the entire ride was less than a minute] seemed like an eternity.

I don’t look very green, so maybe we took this one before the ride!

here’s Saxon sitting on a luge. does her size give you an idea of the scale of tiny saucer people ride down the mountain at close to 100 mph?

teresa tries it on for size.

mimi (above) and teresa (below) in one of the 2002 US olympic team sleds

mimi and saxon wondering why daddy is face down on the pavement after his bobsled ride.

Life has been busy at MoseleyWorld. So, doing my best to catch up here with the second part post of our summer trip to Park City/Deer Valley, Utah.

the view from the house’s front porch. that’s deer valley ski resort, where the 2002 Olympic freestyle mogules, aerial and alpine slalom events were held. Bald Mt (9400 ft) is the highest peak. Deer Valley has been named the #1 ski resort in North America by readers of Ski Magazine for three years in a row. But we didn’t see much snow.

we ordered fresh-caught rainbow trout, grilled them and served them with their heads still on, which I found out later wasn’t a big hit with some.  Oh well. Sorry. Stay away from the Far East, where I hear some fish are plopped on your plate alive and flipping.

little patrick, son of ashley and mike, is the newest cousin.

catered dinner. private chef. yum.

One day we went to Park City Mountain to participate in their summer activities.  Here’s christy and mac on the alpine slide waiting out a rain delay.

Saxon and her cousin Mac

saxon was incredibly patient during the long delay (45 minutes? an hour? hour and a half? oy vey!). I utilized cloud gazing, biofeedback and meditation to remain calm. Once it stopped raining, the ride operators plopped a blanked down in front of a sled and dried the track so we could proceed. High tech. When we finally got the green light, it was a lot of fun. But not nearly as fun as the alpine coaster, which looks just like a roller coaster but with single cars. Saxon and I zipped down the 4000 ft track at speeds up to 30 mph.

christy attempted a grandparent/grandkids portrait. our little samantha wasn’t ready for her closeup.
After a day of full activities, everyone was still out [doing more activities] and Carey yelled downstairs mentioning she was going somewhere. I was downstairs and couldn’t quite hear, but I thought she asked if I could watch Saxon. about ten minutes later, i came upstairs looking for Saxon. No Saxon. Then I went up another set of stairs to the family/kids room. No Saxon. Back downstairs to check the media room and all the other rooms on the level, including the garage. So, I go all the way back up to the third level. No Saxon.

So, just before panic descended, I called Carey’s phone, thinking she must have said, “I’m taking Saxon.” The second thought to enter my head was wondering how I would explain losing Saxon. After what seemed to be a long wait, the phone rang at almost the exact same time that Carey’s phone, which was sitting right in front of me, rang as well. Doh.

The panic I mentioned was now causing my heart to race as I scrambled from room to room bleating, “Saxon. Saxon? Saxon!” I knew this was not the case of her winning a serious game of hide + seek since Saxon is still the age where she replies to a “Where’s Saxon?” by blurting out “in the bathroom” or “in the closet.”

After covering almost every inch of this almost 7000 sf house, I noticed the door to the front balcony slightly ajar. The next thing I spotted was this sweet little girl, pictured below, who had decided to take advantage of a beautiful day in the mountains and take a nap outside. Whew.

Mac playing a game mimi invented called “find the pine cones.” we used to play that when I was growing up, but it was called “rake the yard.”

pyrotechnics. father-daughter style.

With summer comes daylight saving time. And with the additional hour of sunlight in the evening comes one more excuse for our oldest daughter to not go to bed.

Excuse #27: But the sun is still up.

Samantha and Saxon. 6.8.2009

The list of excuses gets longer and longer. Saxon, who isn’t yet three, is an incredibly good negotiator. With her skills, she may be able to bring peace to the Mideast before she reaches junior high. Here are just a few of the other reasons why it’s not quite time to go to bed.

I’m hungry. I’m really, really hungry. Carey is nearly defenseless on this one. Although she denies it, I’m guessing she was oft forced to go to bed without dinner and is repressing these childhood memories in order to cope on a day-to-day basis.

I want a snack. See above.

I want to watch TV. Well, who doesn’t? But the big people want to watch Weeds and True Blood.

I want to sleep in the big bed.

I need some water.

I want you to cover me up. She does know how to do this, it’s just another excuse to lure me into her room and give her one more opportunity to negotiate her way out of her own personal prison.

I have to go pee pee in the potty. I’m having a hard time with this one since we’re working on transitioning to big girl pants during the day. Just tell her: “oh, it’s dark, pee your pants?” Instead, I’ve resorted to reminding her that she can do it all by herself. After the 9th time she got out of bed in a 30 minute stretch the other night, I said, “Gotta pee pee? Just Go. Go. Go. Go to the bathroom. Goodnight. I love you. Don’t get out of bed again.”

I’m not tired. Or if she’s really tired, she just says, “But I’m too tired to go to bed.”

I brought you this book Daddy. Oh, sure. Instead of watching vampires, I’ll read Horton Hatches an Egg to myself, even though I just read it, aloud to Saxon, two times in a row just thirty minutes earlier.

But my very favorite excuse du jour is:
Look what happened to my nightgown - which is said while walking into the room with one of the shoulder straps undone (one arm in, one arm out).  Saxon says this with a look that ranges from one of curiousness to one of puzzlement, as if to convey, “the strangest thing magically happened to my dress. So strange that I had to come down and show you..oh, hey, by the way, I’m hungry, I wanna watch TV…”

Thank goodness, her baby sister, Samantha, turns into a pumpkin at 1900 hours and practically demands her evening milk, a quick reading of Pat the Bunny and a kiss goodnight.

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Saxon’s pre-school had an end-of-the-year “musical” performance recently. Fortunately, Carey was able to block the date on her calendar. Unfortunately, the kickoff time for the musical extravaganza was right in the middle of an already-scheduled week-long seminar I was attending - in Arlington, which is nowhere close to the neighborhood school.

I had wondered whether it would be a big deal to Saxon whether I was present, but decided I would go. Any questions about the importance, to Saxon, of my being there were answered the second she walked through the door scanning the audience for her parents.

Seeing Saxon’s warm smile while she told her friends, the teacher and anyone who within earshot, “That’s my Daddy,” made me so glad I came. My good friend Gary G, of once told me that being a parent is the greatest thing in the world, but admitted it was difficult to describe.  Well, for me, Saxon’s saying, “That’s my Daddy” would be one of those je ne sais quoi parenting moments and one of those times the love for my daughters wraps itself around me like a warm blanket.

to her friend Quincy, Saxon is saying, “that’s my daddy”