Motors and Mullets

So. This is how old I am - when I was in my last year or two of college was when the internet was getting more widespread. Some friends of mine had the internet in their house - whoa. That was amazing at the time. They showed me this website called mulletsgalore.com (sadly, it's been discontinued). OMG, it was the funniest website ever. These dudes just went around taking incognito pictures of people with mullets. And they classified the mullets by type. It was hilarious.

My fam went to the Monster Truck show down in Poky a couple of weeks ago, and boy, was there fodder for that website. Mullet Central. It was awesome.

I've never gone to a monster truck show before; I've always heard that they're really fun. The mother of a kid in Micah's speech class mentioned that she was going, and I thought, dude, THAT is what I want to do on my birthday. Something different and fun.

After much ticket-buying drama (I'm such an idiot sometimes. I misunderstood the website and ended up buying two tickets in the expensive section instead if 2 Family Fun packs in the cheap section - I had to call the box office the next day and beg them to fix my mistake), I got seats for Ben, me, and our two oldest kids, my folks, and Lex and Chris.

Dad offered to have my fam ride along with him, which was really sweet, considering these crazy gas prices. He got off on a different exit than my mom is used to, and since Poky is basically a huge maze, we were a little lost. Mom had to call Lex and get directions, and I was trying to keep Dylan and Sadie quiet so she could hear. That's a difficulty - keeping them quiet. I kept shushing them, and they were quiet for just a moment. Then Dylan whispered, "We're being quiet because Pocatello is a Quiet Place." I think he thought it is officially a place where you're not supposed to be loud? I don't know. It was weird. He once also told Lex (very sincerely) that she was sooooo lucky to live in Pocatello. She and I laugh about that.

Lex suggested having a little barbecue at her house before the show. Grilling is ALWAYS a good idea. Chris cooked up the yummiest burgers this side of the Pecos. Lex and Chris's house is teeny weeny and super duper cute. It's the perfect little love nest. I miss those days sometimes, the early days of our marriage. We also lived in a teeny little house. It was perfect for us. And it was oh, so clean. No marker on the walls, no paint poured on the carpet (these two things happened just yesterday, thanks to my little terror, Micah), no cat food dumped in the water bowl for the cat, no candy spit onto the carpet because a certain two-year-old has texture issues and thinks the carpet is the perfect garbage can...

I love Micah. But dang. He's killing me, Smalls.

Lex and Chris have this spiral staircase leading to a loft - Sadie posed on it for me:

Spiral staircases remind me of my grandparents' cabin. Good, good memories.

My gramps made these little lantern decoration thingeys for my sisters and I a couple of years back. He just stained the rest of ours a brown color, but he decorated Lex's specially:

Orange and black are the colors for the high school we all went to and that she cheered at, and then the cheerleading stuff on there are in the colors of the college that she cheered at. It's so funny and sweet, the things he remembers. Lex's lantern is proudly displayed next to her planters. Mine was broken by Baby on a Bike, a former neighbor kid of ours. He also broke my planter and a curtain rod. Special times with neighbor kids. Seriously.

Chris's grandma made him this game called "Washers." You toss these metal washers into these little holes. It's actually quite fun. And the washers are pleasingly heavy. I just wanted to carry one around with me the rest of the night. Does anyone else find heavy metal pleasing? Not the music, but the actual metal? I do NOT find heavy metal music pleasing. I think that, if I was on that movie, Inception, my totem would be a metal washer.

So here is the thingey you throw the washers at:

Dylan was a fan of the game:

After every toss, he would turn and look at Lex to see if she was watching. It was really cute:

That goofy look on his face, after every single throw.

Sadie was quite the little picture poser that night.

Weird that she and Dylan matched each other perfectly.... That was not planned. It reminds me of a song my 8th grade students were particularly fond of:

The Sadie Hawkins Dance
in my khaki pants
There's nothing better
oh oh oh
The girls ask the guys
it's always a surprise
There's nothing better
baby do you like my sweater?

Lex and Chris have a sweet hammock at the front of their house:

That is going to be so much fun this summer.

Look at these amazing bluebells that grow around their house:

Prettiness in a can. Are these also called scilla? I think so. Don't quote me on that.

Okay, on to the action.

The monster truck show was not only Mullet Central, but also Bump-It Central. Ben took a picture of the girl in front of us to demonstrate:

You can't really tell, but she was definitely wearing one. I'm trying to figure out why people would want their heads to look misshapen. Call me old-fashioned. I want my head to look like a head. Not an egg, or an alien head.

Kay. So. The show was different than what I expected. It was broken up into thirds. The first third was the cool monster trucks that get sweet air and are really really loud:

That part was fantastic. I kept waiting for them to crush the cars, but they never did. Actually, my friend in Micah's speech class told me that they do that like at midnight. We left before then.

The second third is local trucks that race through a little mud track thing. And the third third is local trucks that go over jumps. These trucks are hilarious. They are literally spray-painted with these silly names. One was called "Batvan," and they had spray-painted the whole thing black and given it a black cape on its truck bed. There were at least five or so trucks called Redneck This or Redneck That, and there were at least 10 trucks that had confederate flags waving proudly from the truck bed. That's what I can't figure out. Um, we don't live in the south. Why are you waving a confederate flag??

There is a whole lotta waiting. I didn't realize that. They have to set things up. Check to make sure safety stuff is working. Tow trucks off the field that decide to stop working. I got bored sometimes.

They kept saying, all through the show, "Such-and-such Monster Truck is going to do a BACKFLIP!!" After three hours, the truck finally did it. But it was different than I expected. I thought it would go off a big jump and flip backwards in the air. He came up to the big jump slowly, inched his way up the jump, then gunned his motor and kind of somersaulted and mooshed himself back into an upright position. I was like, "Oh. Is that it?"

There were two particularly exciting moments during the show. One monster truck caught some MAJOR air, landed, and its wheel popped right off and launched itself like a flying saucer, narrowly missing another car. That was pretty cool. And then one of the local trucks landed a jump and lost one of its axels. Yet the dude kept on driving. All the way up and out of the arena. That was sweet.

I knew Dylan would love it:

(I am sooo glad we didn't take the younger kids. They would have suffered hearing loss, seriously. It was SO LOUD. My mom was smart and brought ear plugs for all of us.)

Who really surprised me was Sadie:

She was enthralled! She usually isn't a fan of loud noises, but as long as she had her ear plugs in, she was cool. It was more fun watching her than watching the trucks. :)

I think Chris's face is funny in this picture:

I swear half of my pictures of Mom are with her eyes closed. Sorry, Ma. Maybe you blink more than the average person? Who knows?

Benny Bones:

Me:

Thanks, Pops, for paying for all of us! We had sooooo much fun.