Quality Time

The kids and I took an overnight road trip yesterday.  We drove up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, stayed the night there in a cabin at a resort right on the beach and then toured the crap out of the sites on the shore on the way home today.  The purpose of this trip was to make some awesome memories and spend some quality time together.  Yeah!  Fuck yeah!  Quality time!

Oh, sorry, got a little carried away there with my outstanding mothering skillZ! 

It was really fun.  I wanted some time to hold my kids captive and drill into their heads that they are each other's closest relative and they will grow old together so they should learn to love each other and be friends.  Now I'm pretty sure they think I have a terminal illness and I'm going to die before the end of the summer and they will both have nervous break-downs trying to be good for their poor sick mother.  Oh well!  Whatever works!

 I bet you didn't know this about my kids,  Sam is a normal sized person and Kira is TINY.  

While it was nice and sunny out we spent some time on the beach.  This is a picture of Sam and Kira sitting RIGHT next to each other on a MILE LONG BEACH, bickering.  They actually pulled their chairs up that close to each other for the sole purpose of annoying each other. Progress!

We stopped at Palisade Head, which is a 2500 foot cliff (I don't know if it's that high, but it seemed that high.  I was 2500-feet-nauseous, I can tell you that.)  Kira was annoying and enjoying the hell out of herself, and Sam DIDN'T push her off!  He was sullen and angsty though, but so what, KIRA IS STILL ALIVE! YAY!

What was she doing that was so annoying, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  She had to sit in the back because Sam had to sit in the back yesterday.  When she gets sick of riding, she ups the obnoxious level until it's unbearable and hilarious all at the same time.  Today she decided to speak in an accent which was a cross between a Southern hillbilly (but somehow, from what she was saying, she thinks it was a western accent) and the Target Lady from SNL.  LOUDLY. 

Kira:  That there horse had more hair on him than a wooly mammoth, wouldn't ya say, m'boy!
Sam: Kira, shut up.
Kira:  "Whoa there fella, Pa said yer not s'pose to say shut up to me, m'boy!"
Me:  (laughing and trying to pull it together enough to tell her to tone it down.)
Kira:  Do y'all ever get any wind storms 'round these parts?
Sam:  Mom, Please tell her to be quiet!
Kira:  'Cause out in the West we have a good wind storm 'round abouts every other week!
Sam:  Ugh, can't you drive any faster?
Kira: Ma, you take it easy on that little ole gas pedal, we're in no hurry!
(merciful silence for a few minutes...)
Kira: I sure does wish I could snap! (she can't snap her fingers.)

and on and on and on for miles and miles and miles.