Last night, as I crawled into bed, I thought I would do one last clean sweep of my Facebook notifications, when I came across an invite to my soul-sister's performance at Vino Bella in Issaquah for Salmon Days, a weekend festival celebrating the spawning salmon swimming upstream.  I have always loved this festival that takes place in downtown Issaquah.  It has an old town feel with art vendors adorning the streets, aromatic fair food smells filling the air, and massive amounts of over-sized strollers and squealing children running rampant in the "Field of Fun."

The sun was out and brought a lovely heat wave...74 and sunny with a slight breeze; just the way I like it.  Church ran late, our big family ham lunch was a little behind schedule with many dishes piling up, and a quiet desire to leave the mess, skip the lunch, and take my camera and the kids to see the adorably talented Jessie Siren play a lunchtime set with her new husband, Matt Siren beatboxing beside her and run around and squeal with the other thousand kids.

"Just leaving Federal Way to go to Salmon Days. Are you there much longer?" I texted her.
"oh sweet friend we are all done! Headed to teach yoga," was her response.
"Boo. I was hoping you would linger."
"I so wish I couuuuld. It's so nice out! Have fun!"
"So nice. Sorry to be missing you.  Tried to get there sooner but had a family lunch."
"It was a bar! Would have loved to see your beautiful face, but the kiddos wouldn't have been allowed."
"Ha. We would've watched from the window. ;) "
"Ohhh I wouldn't have been able to stand the cuteness!"
"*heart heart heart kiss kiss kiss*"

So I missed my girl's performance, but realized I forgot my camera anyway in the total chaos of trying to load up two kids for a big adventure that incorporated dinner time...which means that I would need to pack and lug a big ugly cooler/mom-lunchbox filled with easy snack-type dinner items like shredded chicken, sliced cucumbers, sliced apples, champagne grapes (the most ridiculously time-consuming fruit to prep, but the perfect size for a 14 month old), apple sauce, slices of gluten free raisin bread, and a mini-ziploc of boring gluten-free corn flakes for the wee one, ending with a stop at Menchi's frozen yogurt on the way home after the festival. Oh, and I can't forget the sippy cup and water bottle, which hardly mattered anyway because little Emma dumped the whole sippy cup of water in her lap after dumping a handful of corn flakes in her lap...all shortly after I had put on a fresh diaper and a cute little outfit to go romping around the Eastside in.

So...

Desired arrival time: 1:30pm
Actual attempted arrival time: 3pm
Actual arrival in Issaquah: 4pm
Actual arrival at parking spot: 4:15pm
Actual arrival to the festival: 4:35pm
Distance walked from car to festival: .7 miles...in heeled boots...pushing a stroller with a soggy 14 month old, a dead-weight sleepy 4.5 year old, a full purse, Ergo, picnic blanket, and a few snacks shoved into a big diaper bag disguised as a cute hippy flower bag (because I'm like that)...all with two half flat tires...seriously?!  I swear, sometimes I think God has a sick sense of humor, but it makes me laugh, so I suppose he's speaking my language.

Requested departure time by my husband: 5:15pm to be home by 6pm so we can go to the golf range as a family.
Actual departure time: well, considering that we got the festival at 4:35pm, randomly ran into my sister and two nephews as we were walking in, got caught up at the cutest vendor that had journals made out of old books found in the attic (had to buy something, so I let Micah pick out a little spiral notepad with two playing cards used as the cover), and couldn't walk passed the Kettle Corn without buying a bag...a 5:15 departure was not looking very good.  We rushed through the art vendors and got to the illusive "Field of Fun." 

"Let's do a lap before we commit to a location." I told Micah (guess the teeny-bopper movie quote).

This is our normal style, but too difficult on such a time crunch!  We found whatever we could with the shortest lines and ended up spinning 2 wheels for free goodies, made a wooden fish toy, jacked some chapstick off of a dental table, grabbed a balloon, and signed up for a raffle to win free Seahawks tickets.  That was enough of the vendors...off to the play area!  Micah wanted to jump in the blow-up arena and kick the soccer ball around.  After a few timid attempts to make a goal, my little 4 year old, in his "fast pants and fast shoes" and new neon Seahawks colored sweatsuit, took a soccer ball to the face like a frickin' cartoon.  It all happened in slow-motion for me as I saw the 11 year old boy wind up his foot for the dominating kick.  Micah, about 5 feet in front of him, stared at the little Beckham, hands to his side, like a deer in headlights.  I saw it happen before it happened, so as a mother, my heart sank twice as the ball left the ground and B-lined straight for my little man's face.  I'd say nose, but the ball was the size of his head and it covered  the whole surface of his countenance.  His head flew back and like a bobble-head, snapped back into the place.  Instant tears.  He couldn't see anything, I was sure, so I yelled his name and said, "follow my voice, baby!"  He slowly walked, defeated, with his hands still at his side and his little red face contorted into an incredibly unattractive toothy frown.  "keep following my voice, Micah.  Step through the gateway here.  Come here, babe.  Ohhh...look at yooouuuu...does it hurt or did it just scare you?" No answer; just a moaning cry and still the same twisted frozen face.  In my effort to change the subject, not baby him, and need to turn it into something positive I yell, "WELL, HEY!! YOU BLOCKED THE BALL!! GOOD JOB, MICAH!  HE DIDN'T SCORE!" A dad nearby laughed an "oh my goodness, what a stretch" kind of laugh, but whatever.  It worked.  Micah gave me a high five, wiped the snot and tears across his face with his sleeve and ran to the jumpy houses.

In this moment, the jumpy house lines were ridiculous, it was 5:15, and although we were flying through things, we still had about 30 realistic minutes in the jumpy house lines, a 25 minute walk back to the car, 10-15 minute load up and snack/dinner before the 40 minute drive home.  If you do the math, you will see that we won't get home until about 7:05pm.  I texted Trevor and tried to see if he would meet us at the golf course so we could fulfill our promise to Micah to hit the golf range tonight before the sun goes down.  If it wasn't realistically going to happen, we would take our time here and not rush out, but if he was willing to meet us at the range, we would do our best to beat the sun.  I never heard from my busy husband, so we rushed as best we could.  I multi-tasked, per usual, and changed Emma's diaper on the grass, put her in fresh clothes and let her get some wiggles out while she ate some fruit strips the Cliff Bar girls sampled out to us, all while Micah stood in line for the jumpy houses.

I finally gave Micah his, "last slide" warning as I put Emma into the Ergo on my back to mix it up a bit for her, and we did our best to navigate our way out of the festival.  "Mommy?  Did you forget I have to pee?" "YES! Uuuuugh...yes I did, honey.  I'm sorry.  Let's find you a Honey Bucket or something.  You can't pee outside here because there are too many people around.  You'd have no privacy and someone might find it offensive."
"Oh.  Okay," he responded.

After a few maze moves and dead-ends, we found the Honey-Buckets but couldn't quite get to it quickly with the stroller.
"Just run over there Micah and I'll watch you from here."
"But I don't want to run through the playground because the wood-chips will poke my feet."
"Where are your shoes?!"
Thankfully, I absent-mindedly picked them up and put them in the stroller cargo pouch before we left the jumpy houses.
"Here, you can't go in the bathrooms without your shoes on anyone.  Put them on."
"I can't, mom." Of course they had to be tie shoes, and they had to be tied too tightly, and they had to be tied in knots.  After a few minutes of fidgeting with these stupid shoes (just my momentary thought, as I actually love these shoes), I get them on his feet and send him on his way to the Honey Buckets.  But wait - he has to walk through the playground, so he slows down as his eyes and feet begin to wander.
"Focus Micah! If you want to go golfing you'd better run! ...  and don't touch anything but the door!"
That was an all too familiar phrase as he has been using gross 'potties' all summer long during our music festivals, carnivals, fairs and gas stations on the sides of the highway during long adventures.

So with a 21 lb squeaking baby on my back pinching a balloon between her little chubby hands,  a 45 lb boy in an almost flat-tired stroller yelling at Emma not to pop the balloon that's continuously hitting me upside the side of my head, three fully formed blisters on the tops of my toes that I can most-definitely feel with every step, I begin to run.

"Go faster mom!  Run faster!  Beat the sun mom!  I wanna go golfing with daddyyyyyy!"

Ouch ouch ouch ouch with every step
ah ah ah ah ah with every baby bob
flub flub flub flub I feel my breasts bobbing parallel to my daughter.

I stop running.  This feels TERRIBLE.  1 mile and 20 mins later, we arrive at the car.  Still no word from Trevor.
Current time: 6:20pm
Load up/feeding time: 15 mins
Requested departure time: 5:15pm
Actual departure time: 6:35pm
Estimated arrival time at Golf Range: 7:15
Estimated time of "too dark to golf:" 7:20ish

Trevor finally calls.  Yes he will meet us at the golf range and we can put for a few minutes just to be able to hold our promise to Micah.  5 minutes later, Trevor calls back.
On speaker phone: "So bad news...they're closed."
"Ooohhh noooo!  Did you hear that Micah?" I looked behind me to find his face was already distorted into the same unattractive frown.
"It's okay Micah, because now we get to go to Menchi's instead!"
Tears stop. Face returns to normal. "What? Menchi's? Yaaaaayyyyy."

Photos taken: absolutely 0