Baxters Blogging: Good Plans Don't Always Work

Saturday. We wait for it. We dream of it. We want it to come all week. This Saturday we had big plans. We went out in the morning and bought paint for our front door. We discussed a date we were planning on for the evening as well as a hike to Stewart Falls in the afternoon with the kiddos. It was looking to be a great day.

Of course, cleaning always comes first. Uggg. I hate that. No fun until the house is done. But, we did it. We cleaned house from top to bottom. Then we prepped the kids for a fun hike. Now, I know all of you have kids that just LOVE to hike. Our kids need a little encouragement. Bribery might be the better word. So, we stopped at the store to buy a nice treat for all of them to have on the hike. :) Yea! We were off. The drive up the canyon was beautiful. Not tons of changing leaves, but there was enough. Ben took the above picture during the hike.

Anyway, being the good mom I am, of course I asked all the kids if they needed to make a pit stop in the bathroom of the grocery store before we left. The younger child wisely did. The older children said they were good. :) So what was the first thing that happened 5 minutes into our hike. Both older kids needed to go. Not exactly ideal places to go on this hike. There were a lot of aspens that don't hide much and low lying ferns. We did our best and found spots. I had to find some large soft leaves for wiping for one of the kids. :) But we made it. Off we went.

Now, here's the thing. We didn't do much research before we left. We have been on the hike before and new we were headed to a waterfall. No problem. We hiked for about 45 minutes before we got to where we could see the area the fall should be. Ummm...Guess we should have thought that one through. The fall was dried up. Rachel cried. She had been so pleasant on the hike and just wanted to see those falls so bad. Ben was just happy to turn back and not have to hike even further away from the car. Emily was mad she ran out of Candy. So, we hit strike one for the day. Well, it happens right. We hiked back to the car playing games like "what would I have in my dream house" and 20 questions.

Well, when we got back to the car we had a message from our hoped babysitter saying she was not available. Sigh. Strike two. By then it was already 5:30 and too late to look for another sitter. So, alternate plans needed to be designed.

The BYU vs. UTah game was going to be on at 8pm. Nate really wanted to see it but we don't have cable. Since my parents are out of town for a little we came up with a great plan to head over to their house and borrow their cable. The game was going to go late so we told the kids we would just sleep over at grandma's. They were so excited. We got our jammies and loaded up all our blankies. We were ready. We got to the house and the kids ran off to play. Nate and I tried to get set up for the game...but try as we might we could not get the satellite signal. I am not positive if we were just tech illiterate or if maybe my parents satellite wasn't working. Whatever it was, our plans were once again demolished. We turned on the radio and listened to the game until half time when we told the kids we weren't going to sleep over afterall. No reason to spend the night if we couldn't watch the game. They were bumbed. Strike 3.

We headed home, got the kids tucked in and turned on the radio again to listen to the rest of the game. We all know where strike four came in. I had to listen to Nate rant and rave late into the night after that awful game.

So, some days don't go the way we planned. :) Oh well. There will be other days .