Catching up....

My time is slipping through my fingers.... one day spins into the next and I feel like I've never accomplished enough - that there just aren't enough hours in a day to do everything with a pressing need to GET DONE.

So once again I have sadly neglected my blog - not making the time to preserve my day to day for future consumption, reflections and contemplation. Not that I haven't wanted to blog... but when laundry time is relegated to 1:00 am because sleep time is the only time you've got left to sacrifice, blogging just doesn't become a priority.

Even though lots of thoughts worthy of blogging filter through your head when the house is still and quiet. If I just had the energy to go with them....

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So a catch-up on me & mine:

I did get that tire fixed on the van... and took the old girl on one last road trip. My oldest son and I travelled to an out-of-town tournament together. We stayed the night at a hotel with a pool and everyone had a blast - the kids in the pool & the parents on the deck. It was a fabulous bonding time for the group.... despite the decided A$$-whupping by those country teams - what is it about country hockey that just knocks the city kids on their butts?

Harumph.... I suppose if we had nothing else to do either.... ;)

But the weekend was great. It was a rare opportunity for my oldest and I to spend an extended period of time alone.... and not only was it nice to get a pulse on where he's at in his world, a time to connect a little deeper, it was also a welcome break from chasing all three!

(It's OK to pity my poor husband a little here.... stuck in the city with our younger son, in his own hockey tournament, as well as our toddler and his elderly mother.)

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I GOT MY NEW VAN!!!!

And I'm loving it! I'd post a picture but my blog & I have been in a long term disagreement over whether it will, or will not, on any given day, allow me to post pictures in a normal format or not - and I just don't feel like doing battle today.... so I'm not even going to try.

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The weather finally broke! We're actually going through a (probably mercilessly short) period of unseasonably warm weather now.... things are thawing and melting.... a water bottle left in my car overnight didn't even freeze yesterday!

And people are out in droves.... there's only so much "cooping" a body can take - and the unrelenting weeks of -40 to -50 with the wind chills was just overkill for everyone around here.

We were certainly ready to roll when the heavens cooperated and gave us a break on the temperatures: We spent last Sunday up at my parents' home on the canals by the lake, and we took my husband's snowmobile with GT Snow Racers to pull behind for the kids. It was so much fun for them to be able to spend a few hours playing hard in the snow.... I got some fabulous pictures of the day.

Then that day of fun culminated in our adventure on the way home.

One brand new van, carefully pulling one very expensive toy on a trailer behind.... until a locking clip on the trailer hitch release came off (how is this even possible?).... and the brand new van went over a large bump in the road.... and the trailer came right off the vehicle.... and the safety chain broke: setting the trailer free in a shower of sparks (quite the show!) to careen off the road and firmly bury it's nose in the ditch packed with snow.... with enough force to snap the rear restraint on the very expensive toy and launch it off the trailer and further into the ditch.

Where, miraculously, it landed upright, completely unharmed, on top of the bank.

Wow.

The whole thing took less than a minute. But what a minute!

When our heartbeats returned to a slightly more normal range, we jumped out of the vehicle to survey the damage to our new van.... only to find that there wasn't any. Not a dent, not a scratch.

Then we went to inspect the snowmobile - which also survived unscathed.

Wow again.

I can't believe our good fortune.... somebody was certainly looking out for us.... so many things could have gone wrong here: The trailer could have hit the back of the van.... or hung on by the safety chain and sent the van (filled with my 3 children, grandmother and MIL) into a spin-out crash. Or the entire contraption could have flipped - shattering my husbands beloved sled into a shower of debris on the highway.... or worse, taking us out with it!

But no. For some reason, my husband decided to load the single sled in the center of the trailer to go home (rather than the one side it has normally travelled on - whether our 2nd sled was on the trailer with it or not). If it had been on it's usual side, we're certain it would have flipped when it came off the van - destroying the sled, if not the trailer too. Instead, the trailer stayed upright when it came off the van and rolled off into the ditch.

We also normally have a metal restraint bar locked through the front of the skis on the sled.... but for the trip home my husband chose to pull the sled further up on the trailer and install the bar behind the struts (is that what the arms that come down from the machine and attach to the skis are called - or am I displaying my ignorance here?). Had it been installed "normally" the sled would have suffered huge damage: The skis would have been torn completely off, or the whole trailer may have upended when the nose hit the dirt under the snow.

As it was, the tie holding the rear of the sled snapped with the force of the impact and, with no metal bar inhibiting the skis, the sled slid harmlessly off the front of the trailer, resting easily on the snow.

Wow, Wow, Wow.

There was no hope of getting the trailer out and inspecting it in the dark though.

So with only 8 kilometers to go to the city, my husband drove the sled home and we followed in the van. Laughing with relief of our good fortune and enjoying the new game of "racing" and keeping sight of Dad as he zoomed through the fields and ditches alongside the highway.

When we went back, in daylight, the next morning to dig out the trailer, we found that it too had survived with no noticeable damage (outside of the shorn electrical chord - the end of which was still connected to the back of the van). Once we took the time to carve out the ice and dirt from the inside of the nose, we were able to tow it home with no trouble.

That was worth taking a few minutes to write about.

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So that's me in a nutshell. Slogging through my busiest season at work, keeping up with two boys in hockey, chasing my toddler and entertaining my elderly mother-in-law during her extended stay in our home.

I hope to be back sooner than last time!

And my mantra until then?

"Sleep is for the weak!"