Day Five: Don't Tell Grandma How Close You Got to the Edge

How's that for a title? The Subtitle is "Daddy Doc Appreciates Death." By the time I finish, you might hate me for the subtitle, but hopefully not!

Today was.... awesome. It was just an awesome day. Even when CS threw the biggest fit we've seen in a LONG time,  it was a great day!

First off - thanks everyone for the comments. I really appreciate them and enjoy reading them. Karin: Oh yeah, I loved coming to your house because you always have had Diet Pepsi to offer me! HA HA. Cathy: It's Grandpa Rocket Scientist who should've gotten slide rules. Repeat after me: DaddyDoc is NOT an Engineer. PerkyMommy does NOT marry engineers. (No offense!) Thanks for the note about Sunday's readings. How cool is that? I'm on-topic even when I'm not trying. That Bishop better get my letter. They're wasting my talents at that church! ;) (See! I feel better already! HA HA!)

GrandmaChurchLady: Before you read any further you need to know: All five of us are alive and completely without any injuries (except where I didn't put sunscreen on my upper arms.) Today's a little bit better. There were little fences along the edge. Well, Uhm, Most of it. If it helps, for the really scary part, Daddy Doc was almost impossible to deal with and I almost yelled at him. But I didn't. We mocked him after dinner instead. Ok, read on...

We set the alarm for earlier than usual today so we could stop at the local internet cafe on the way to the Park, without taking away too much time away from seeing sights. Here's the thing, usually our kids are awake long before us. Usually. Today? When we WANTED to be up early? Not so much. They were all asleep. The alarm kept going off, they kept sleeping. (And snoring. Seriously. CS snores like you wouldn't believe. We tried to take some video last night but he stopped just as we got the camera out...)

We eventually got up. Breakfast was SO crowded, but we got through it and got to the Internet Cafe. I bought the obligatory postcards but for some reason the girl didn't give me my receipt. All the tables were taken so I asked a gentleman with a MacBook if he would mind sharing with another Mac laptop. When I asked him about a password (it would've been on my receipt,) he said "Well, I'm still using my receipt from yesterday. Here, use my password, it works!"

After I got yesterday's blog posted, I went out to the car where DD and the boys had been hanging. Daddy Doc had found our misplaced National Forest Annual Pass and the boys had worked on their Junior Ranger Activity books.

Our first stop this morning was the Park Headquarters in Parking Lot A. We would really learn to utilize those shuttles to our advantage today!!

Yesterday at the Ranger Talk, several people had mentioned seeing elk in the park. These elk are very tame and often walk right along the side of the road - or in the road. They block traffic partly because they're in the road and partly because people have to stop and take pictures of them. DUH. As we pulled into the park, I mentioned to Daddy Doc that I would really love to see some elk in the road. Wouldn't that be awesome?

There's a "back road" that we discovered yesterday. It seems to be a short cut because the 'tourists' all bottleneck at the first vista turnout and driving past that area is very slow. We knew exactly where we were going today, so we took the back road.

Guess what we drove right into????

Not TWO minutes after I had mentioned them to Daddy Doc, there was a cluster of elk on the roadside! What a TREAT!

The park map said that the Rim Trail walk to a certain point was only .75 miles so we decided to follow it and try to finish the boys' Junior Ranger activities. First there was a .4 mile walk to the Rim. It was just a lovely walk. The boys stopped along the way to answer questions but they were really done by the time we reached the Rim. At our first "stop" Ranger Judi from yesterday afternoon's activity was there so we asked if we could get a picture with her. CS got cranky along the route but we tried to stop to rest and drink water to cheer him up. 

At this point, I must give a shout-out to cyberRoo: So, did you crawl into SBS's head or something? As we walked to the Rim, he was pulling out the whine. "Why do we have to go to the Rim AGAIN? We saw it YESTERDAY!" Yeah. Fortunately, the Junior Ranger book distracted him and then he just let himself enjoy the hike with MG. 

MG's new nickname is our little Pack Mule. He has been really good about happily carrying some of our collected junk in his backpack. We told him we'd reward him with a sugar cube, like all good Pack Mules. Then I remembered last night and said "Or else Prime Rib tonight!" All day he told me he was a Pack Mule who worked for Prime Rib."

(This is a shot I just LOVE. CS had to do a page about what he saw, smelled, heard, etc at the rim of the canyon. Here he and DD worked on it together. There's a big ledge under their feet, btw...)

Here's a shocker: I enjoy taking pictures for other families. What did people do before Digital Cameras? I LOVE digital. Who CARES if you take five pictures? It's just 1's and 0's! So I'll offer to take pictures and then say "Hold on, let me move and get one from another angle!" (When you have an amazing 270° view, sometimes you just have to move and take a second shot!) And not only that but people look at your pictures right away and say "Oh, thank you! That's a great shot!" 

So a few times we had the chance to have other people take our pictures. That was the first time we said "Don't tell Grandma how close you got to the Edge..." Normally DaddyDoc is rather fearful of heights but he did a pretty good job. We had the boys sit down for the pictures and I think that helped with the edge issue, too because we didn't have to worry about anyone stepping backwards.

(Are you still breathing, Grandma Church Lady??)

(BTW, that's an optical illusion there. MG is NOT right at the edge. There's a ledge of rocks below us.)

Eventually we reached our goal, but, I had miscalculated it. I thought we would be closer to the Market Place where we'd planned to grab a light lunch. Well, we weren't there but we WERE at a Village Route Shuttle Stop. Within five minutes, we were in the back row of the bus (the boys' favorite row,) and Parking Lot A (which is .3 miles from MarketPlace) was the very next stop!

Before the walk to the Market Place, we stopped in the Park Headquarters to process the boys' Junior Ranger booklets. Ranger Bryan handed out their certificates and badges and swore them in. 

Oh, back up - as we walked into the Park HQ, we spotted a young man wearing a red felt vest covered in patches. This is what the Cub Scout Brag Vest looks like so we asked him if that was a Cub Scout Brag Vest! It wasn't but his father was wearing a Cub Scout Class B uniform!!! (Class B's are t-shirts that individual Packs have printed for their members and families for less formal events and so parents and siblings can have identifying shirts on family outings.) His shirt said "Paradise, CA" so I asked him how the fires had affected them. The Cub Scout had a PILE of Junior Ranger badges on his hat so we asked him about some of them. He was coming into the Park HQ to pick up his booklet to start his program. Well, when they saw that our boys were going to be sworn in, I kid you not, they hung out to watch them get sworn in and applauded when it was over. How sweet is that???

Until this point, we'd been dragging CS all around. But here we stopped and got out the stroller. I have absolutely no complaints about his occasional cranky mood. He's only 4, he has little legs. This kid really kept UP. But he wanted to be carried and we're over 6000 feet here. Carrying him wasn't working. This place is far from HCA friendly, which makes a stroller  bit of a challenge, too, but you know, that's why we have the world's most awesome lightweight Maclaren quasi-umbrella stroller. 

After lunch at the cafeteria there, we hopped onto the Eastbound shuttle to get back to the Visitor's Center and bookstore. There they sold special Junior Ranger patches. CS and SBS's age range earned the "Raven" badges, MG earned the "Coyote" badge, so we got their appropriate patches. Potty stop, Back on the westbound bus to the Marketplace. 

Oh, I forgot this part: The marketplace stores have better selections than the official gift shop. They're run by a private company so that might have something to do with it, but we still didn't find any t-shirts that begged to be bought. We looked for some laminated placemats because my parents always collected laminated placemats. We occasionally would have use for them when we eat on the patio, but it looks like those must've been a hot souvenir in the 70s and 80s, but not so much a 21st century souvenir.

The FUNNIEST souvenir we found was a CD-ROM of 100 images. That's right, buy images to print at home for scrapbooks, use as screen savers, send to friends in e-mail, use for school projects, or insert into your Creative Memories Storybook Digital Photo Albums. Frankly, it's a genius tool if you ask me. I could SO see some of my clients buying these to use in their photo albums. I honestly considered it but ultimately my "Notorious Cheapness" overruled my interest in the product.

The little boys each selected little elk plush today. At the General Store, they saw larger elk plush so we took a picture of all of them holding an Elk plush to e-mail to DaddyDoc's sister and BIL. (DD's BIL bow hunts and gets at least one elk tag a year.) They also had deer and mountain goat plush. We briefly considered photographing the boys with every single animal that their uncle bow-hunts, but we stopped at elk. (He hunts bears sometimes, too. Native American's love bear meat. He sells it to them. End of derail.)

After all of this shopping, it was time to move our car from Parking Lot A to Parking Lot C.

Lot C is in front of the train station and the "Village" which is where the lodges right on the rim are located and the trailhead made famous in the Brady Bunch when the Brady Family all rode mules down to the floor of the Grand Canyon.

There was a steam engine at the train depot! It was steaming and getting ready to pull out of the station and everything!!

The big boys and I took OFF to try to get some pictures of the steam engine. For whatever reason, this was the moment that CS chose for his "MELTDOWN OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS." 

Now, here's what kind of parents we are:

Kid was melting down, we had to cross railroad tracks, with a stroller, then climb 2 stories of stairs. I grabbed his arm and got him across the train tracks while Daddy Doc carried the (now folded up) stroller. At the base of the stairs, I just let go expecting him to follow. What does CS stand for, again? Oh, that's right! CAPTAIN STUBBORN.

His brothers were at the tops of the stairs. We were in the middle, and he was still at the bottom. I heard someone else say "Are they just going to leave him there?" Yes, I'm just going to leave my 4-year-old at the bottom of the stairs. I'm an idiot. Of course that's what I'm going to do.

(BTW, I do not feel the least bit defensive. Whoever said that was a blooming idiot.)

Eventually, I took the stroller and DD carried CS up the stairs. Sideways. At the top we strapped him into the stroller and he continued to SCREAM. I took pictures of the boys and the train and I took a picture of CS screaming with DD laughing. I mean, what are we SUPPOSED to do? There was nothing we could do to make the child happy. He was screaming about not liking his water bottle or some such nonsense. Then it changed to he didn't like the steam coming out of the train. DD stayed outside the Lodge while the big boys and I went inside to check out the History room. (It was mostly Harvey Girl stuff. It was a little interesting but nothing that took too much time.)

After awhile, CS was calming down a bit. I figured: Hey, better he do this NOW than during our dinner at El Tovar, right?? Get it out of him NOW. We figured he might be having a sugar crash given the timing but given his MOOD, we needed a way to get him to take IN some food. He wouldn't touch the snacks DD had in his backpack, so I got a bottle of Sprite from a vending machine and let all three boys take drinks. By the time I had the Sprite, he had calmed down a bit. After a few sips, he was much easier to deal with.

Some people might wonder if we're bribing him - or if we're teaching him that if he tantrums, he'll get a treat. I don't believe that for a heartbeat. We never said "Oh, if you quiet down, Mommy will buy you a treat!" The tantrum also probably had to do with being tired. If we'd been at home, we probably would've put him in his room for a nap. I'm probably reacting defensively. I can't stand people that bribe kids with food so I'm sensitive to the issue. 

At this point we were ready for some more exploring. There was a building with a narrow walkway down into the canyon. We had some great photo opportunities there. There was one of those telescope things that you pay 25 cents to use. Each boy got a quarter from his box to use it. 

A little further up the road, we came upon the "Bright Angel Trail" not realizing that it was the trailhead for hiking down into the canyon!

We started down it a bit and Daddy Doc was having a moment that was either his fear of heights or his channeling his Inner Grandma Church Lady. (You know how they say that you "Marry your Mother?" My mother has this habit of saying that DD is JUST like her in So many ways. We won't discuss the ways in which DD may have married his mother. There aren't enough 1's and 0's for that blog...)

DD was getting REALLY SNIPPY at the kids. He was carrying the stroller (it folds up into this awesome thing with a handle that makes it very easy to carry over one's shoulder.) And he was WIGGING out about CS. We were going to just stop the walk and go back to the top but.... The boys saw a "tunnel" or a "bridge" or a "hole" through a walk on the trail and they really wanted to see it up close. I just could not see a reason NOT to walk to it. It wasn't that far. So my inner Control Freak took over (I only summons her when it's REALLY important. I promise.) And I said: OK. CS COME HERE. DADDY DOC, GO TO THE BACK. MG AND SBS, DO NOT PASS ME. We're going to walk single file down to the tunnel and we'll come back. Daddy Doc, you take the stroller, I've got CS." and Down We Went.

(Here's what it looks like from above-)

First of all: I cannot even imagine riding a stupid animal down that trail Holy HANNAH that is a narrow trail. And yeah, it's really swell coming upon Donkey Dung in the middle of a narrow trail. 

Second of all: Yeah, there's no wall or edge to the trail. (Don't tell Grandma how close you got to the edge...) but with Daddy Doc there, there was NO getting NEAR the edge. I held CS's hand all the way down to the spot. We stopped. I took pictures of the boys and DD under the hole/tunnel/bridge. A young couple was there and I took two pictures of them. Then MG took a picture of me and SBS so there would be evidence that I had been there, too.  (The pictures didn't even come out that good, unfortunately... But we did it!)

DaddyDoc was upset on the way back because CS was starting to crank about walking. He wanted to be held and didn't want to hold hands.

Inner Control Freak came out AGAIN. I sent DD to the front with the stroller. The big boys were in the middle. And I was in the back with CS. He wouldn't hold my hand but I stood between CS and the edge of the trail. I grabbed his hat when he started to get too far ahead of me or to steer him back to the side again. We got to the top and Daddy Doc's attitude returned to human.

Now. I love my husband. I don't want to make it sound like I controlled this too much - I mean, yes, I said we should do it but I also offered to take the boys alone without him. He chose to go down with us. I understand why he was upset - he was worried about CS getting too close to the edge. I guess I don't get why he didn't trust me to take care of CS.

Back at the top we wandered around and hung out until it was time for our dinner reservation.

At about 4:45 we potty stopped in the El Tovar Lobby and then proceeded to check in with the hostess. A young lady showed us to our table, with a stop at the dessert table to peek at tonight's offerings.

The table was eh. It was right by the kitchen, in the middle of the restaurant, with no real view to speak of. But it was OK. The busser took away the boys fancy plates and their extra silverware and stemware. They had crayons and kid menus to color. The waiter came quickly. DD and I planned on wine so we didn't order anything besides water to drink. I asked the waiter to please bring us three Shirley Temples with Cherries. (Sugar Cubes for our Pack Mules! SBS had taken a turn because he told me he wanted a sugar cube, HA HA.)

Now, remember how my Main Pack Mule MG had fallen in love with Prime Rib last night? Well, there was no prime rib at El Tovar! 

Remember how he didn't trust me at Black Barts in Flagstaff?

I looked him in the eye and said: MG, if I was trying to manipulate you for my own good, I would convince you to get the $4 pasta with butter sauce. But I'm not trying to do this for MY own good! I want you to expand the food you like. I'm willing to convince you to get the more expensive food because it's in YOUR best interest. DO YOU BELIEVE ME???

And that's how I convinced MG that if he likes Prime Rib and he likes Shrimp Cocktail and Shrimp Scampi, he would probably like Beef Tenderloin with Wild Shrimp.

Yeah, I had to manipulate a child to order Beef Tenderloin.

There aren't enough eyedrops for the rolling eyes I had. 

The very nice thing was that they offered a 'half portion' for kids. I ordered Veal Scallopini Saltimbocca with a wine sauce, spinach and maytag(?) polenta. (Isn't maytag a kind of bleu cheese that starts with an M? Andrwe? cyberRoo?) DD ordered Adult portion tenderloin. DD and I ordered the french onion soup. SBS got a cheeseburger, CS the quesadilla. And again being that manipulative mother I am, I asked MG if he'd like to start with a caesar salad and he said yes.

PerkyMommy's Overly Sentimental Emotional Moment of the Day: As I sat there in the restaurant, with all of my boys behaving so beautifully, I just started to tear up. I was a little nervous. CS, as he proved earlier today, can suddenly just DECIDE to be DIFFICULT. SBS can POUT because he hates SHOWTUNES. And MG can decided to start picking his nose at the most inopportune of times.

But they suited up and showed up. Quite Literally. This am, CS had put on a Cars t-shirt. I asked DD to switch him to a polo since we'd be dining at El Tovar tonight. CS was refusing to, so DD went to take his shower and finish fighting the battle later. Do you know that little boy went into the corner of the hotel room and went ahead and changed into the nicer shirt all by himself???

I told them all how happy I was and how tickled I was that they were such wonderful gentleman that we could have such a wonderful dinner.

The caesar salad arrived with two anchovy filets on top. I saw them and grabbed them with my fork before MG could realize what they were, and I put them on the plate next to my soup. MG asked me what they were and I told him. I said "They won't make your salad taste funny, they'll just make it a little salty." Then I added: "I need to tell you that usually there's some anchovy paste in caesar salad dressing. I don't want you to be freaked out about that. You already know that you LIKE caesar salad. So I don't want you to not want to eat it." And he just SMILED. He was on-board with the caesar (although he didn't ask to taste the anchovy filets.)

Dinner came. Little boys had to potty in the middle of it. Nothing like a 4-year-old in El Tovar announcing "I have to pee pee!" Oh, and we ordered a 2005 J. Lohr Cab. It was very nice with our dinner. For dessert, SBS had asked for the Chocolate Taco with Espresso Mousse

OH OH OH HOW DID I FORGET THIS???

Most of you who are reading should already know that DD and I are officially "Wine Snobs". We have moved beyond being "People who appreciate Wine" to embracing the reality that we are snobs about wine. Our kids are growing up in a wine snob household. Anytime we have a glass of wine, they ask to smell it. (They also ask about the color and how it relates to the age of the wine and the grape.) So they wanted to smell our wine tonight.

SBS said to us "Hmmm, it smells like cherries, blueberries, violets and vanilla."

Now. Did we stop and say "Violets? Where did he come up with VIOLETS?" No. Did we wonder how a 7-y/o knew SO much about wine? No. We went back to smelling our glasses and saying "Vanilla? Really? Do you smell Vanilla?" "Yeah I do" "I guess I do, too. I smell the cherries..."

I know, we're a little dim. 

After a bit, SBS said to us "Well, I read it on the bottle..." And all of us at the table CRACKED UP.

Daddy Doc was laughing that laugh where you're trying not to laugh out loud and you're trying not to choke or hyper-ventilate at the same time. I'm looking at him saying "How did we not wonder where he came up with VIOLETS???"

Yeah, the kid read a wine bottle that was almost 2 feet away from his face, and commented on it and his parents FELL FOR IT. He said "Well I saw the word cherries and I wondered 'hmm, I wonder if that's the words that it smells like' so I continued with them..."

Yes, that's my child.

(MG wiped his plate CLEAN, btw...)

Daddy Doc and MG ordered the apple streusal pie ala mode to share for dessert. In the end it was a lovely meal. We went back out to the rim to see the darkened canyon as the sun was setting, then we walked back to the car.

On the way back, I asked Daddy Doc how he was going to POSSIBLY hike down to Phantom Camp with Boy Scouts if he couldn't even get down to the tunnel without freaking out. He denied freaking out. I replied by mimicking him "CAPTAIN STUBBORN! HOLD MY HAND! HOLD MY HAND!" He started laughing and then trying to adjust the story. MG told him to stop trying to change the subject. I explained that Daddy wasn't changing the subject, he was trying to distort the facts.

That's when DD said "I don't have a fear of heights, I'm just trying to teach my sons to APPRECIATE death."

Yeah, that didn't help. 

He later explained that smart people don't fear heights, they appreciate death. I asked if that made me not smart or if that just meant that I deal with appreciating death BETTER than he does. He said "No, just DIFFERENTLY."

Now, you have to appreciate that this was all done in good fun. And we stopped when DD was clearly DONE with it. But when MG wrote in his travel journal tonight, he wrote that he learned that his dad "appreciates death" and that made Daddy Doc crack up.

We came back to our hotel and everyone took a shower. It was a long day. I started to cry again and I told all four of my boys that I love them all very much and that tonight's meal was an absolute joy and treat for me. I can't believe how lucky I am to have these amazing gentlemen. Daddy Doc and I agreed that sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but we've done "not bad" for the life we've put together for ourselves. 

It just doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Even those of you reading. I appreciate all your comments and the ego boosts and we're very lucky to have all of you in our lives - some of you we know better than others but I obviously like all of you enough to share this link with you, HA HA. But if all of you decided that the freaks of the world are right and Daddy Doc and I suck as parents and people, it would all be ok because we know we don't! 

AHHHH, LOOK! PERKY MOMMY had ANOTHER overly sentimental emotional moment! Ahhhhhh. She's so damn predictable that way.

CS had second choice tonight but he chose to sleep in the sleeping bag on the floor! He had a shot at the bed and he took the floor! There's a place in each of their journals to write the one thing today that they liked the least or didn't like. SBS wrote in that space tonight: Nothing. So even though we made him go to the Rim, he still had a good day.

And Sunkist Fruit Gems are still naturally fat free. They're crazy good.

A couple of notes I've forgotten from other days: The boys have come up with a new robot that Pixar missed: ROLL-E - Resort Offered Luggage Loader - Earth (Those rolling carts hotels/motels use/offer.)

There's more but my notebook is in the car.

Here's how the boys found their animals when we got back to the room: