My cousins noticed boxing gloves in my car from when I go to kickboxing class, and being teenage boys, they had to test the gloves out. Doesn’t YOUR family have boxing brawls on Good Friday? The Friday night brawls were well-received and continued on Saturday morning.

Calvin Cornholio has some real boxing talent. It must be all of those years beating up on his little brother.

Calvin may have succeeded in beating up his brother, but he was no match for his dad.

The next round was between Max and David. Max likes to randomly beat his dad up and catch him by surprise anyways so they’ve had practice. Max got a nice punch in.

Then it was payback time!

The boxing matches were held in our garage and I wondered if the neighbours heard punching followed by “ooof!” I thought Child Protective Services would show up at any moment. Really, folks, it wasn’t a full-on boxing match. There were no injuries. I like to think I just taught them self-defense. They like to think it is cool to punch their family members and have it be “allowed” because boxing is a sport.

The boys all said they want their own boxing gloves at home, so it is only a matter of time before fighting machines are unleashed. Sorry, Aunt Cathy & Uncle David!

I’ve slacked on posting because I had family in town for a week and I was busy entertaining. Or rather, I was being entertained by giggle fits, bird nest hair and boxing matches. More on that later.

We spent 2 days at Copper Mountain for the USASA snowboarding competition because my cousin Max made it to the finals! Copper Mountain is a cute resort town and as you can tell, the ski season was mild since there wasn’t any snow.

Max competed in 3 events: half pipe (he got 2nd place!), Slope Style (30th-ish place) and Rail Jam (4th place) and there were about 50 competitors in each category, so he did very well! In the photo below you can see the course on the left was the Slope Style course, and to the right is the half pipe. It is totally normal for people to hurl themselves into an ice luge and do flips.

Here is Max during the slope style competition!

You did NOT want to get injured on the slopes because the ambulance was just a scary box truck. After dropping kids off at the hospital, it would deliver furniture and bread. Ok, not really but it was a plain box truck with no medical equipment in it at all.

The resort had a huge barn with a ski slope and foam pit for kids to practice in. This is my cousin Calvin doing a neat flipper-oo. The kids know all of the fancy names for flips and twists. I make things up like “a double McTwist-a-nugget with a backside loop-dee-loo”. I sound more professional that way.

The barn also had some bowls to skate in so Wes scooted around for an hour. These kids have no fear and did some scrazy looking stunts. I’ll call the stunts “Nifty 7′s with a swirl-eriffic mango”.

Can’t wait to see them at Copper Mountain again next year!

Sure, Bob calls me some pet names like “baby doll”, but for the most part he makes up random names that make no sense. His Aunt Dawn and Uncle Joe asked us what we called each other and I had to admit a popular name that he calls me is “poop sandwich”. It must be true love. I started keeping track of a few other names he’s called me in the past few weeks. Which name is your favourite?

Fortune Brain

Baby McGhillacutty

Two-faced Tony

Potato Farm

Honker Stone

Sleep-Butt Magoo

Seatbelt Sandwich (better than a poop sandwich)

Fanny Jenkins

Steamboat Face

Lady McPoop Butt

Jennifer Beaton (Beaton is his friend’s last name. I don’t know why he calls me this, but he only uses that last name if I’m in trouble. Like when I chipped his mug that he made at Color Me Mine. Ooops)

Since no post about Bob is complete without a weird photo of him, here he is napping. He was too lazy to put on socks and a long-sleeved shirt or to crawl under the covers so he just strategically placed pillows over his exposed skin.

I’m so lucky.

Wellesley and Summit sittin’ in a tree. L-I-C-K-I-N-G. Our neighbors have a golden retriever named Summit and she is a female clone of Wellesley. They have the same silly habits and tons of energy. They love playing together.

Look at Wellesley’s face here. He looks so evil.

Can you even tell them apart? That is Summit gnawing on Wellesley’s leg in the photo below. He tastes like chicken.

Snuggles and true love! Good thing they are both fixed because the smarts between them isn’t too good. Their combined IQ is that of a hula hoop, but they are both so sweet. I can’t imagine how their spawns would behave. I imagine their puppies would be mutated to have 2 tongues to keep up with the need to constantly lick everything.

They both like to “lazy play”. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, go to the :45 mark where they both wiggle on their backs. Silly pups! Witness their shenanigans in the video:

Wellesley and Summit Playing from Bob Spryn on Vimeo.

I met Jolene in kickboxing class and we decided to force our husbands on a double date. I suggested we all hike Mt. Sanitas. I suggested a hike and I wasn’t even drunk. In typical Jen fashion though, I needed an instant reward of frozen yogurt so I suggested we get some immediately after the hike for “lunch”.

The whole hike was 3 miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of 1255 feet. The first part of the trail was a nice, wide dirt path surrounded by fantastic views.

The photo below was taken when I thought it was still a fairly easy hike. Little did I know that in 2 minutes things would get rough, rocky, and steep. I even checked a map and said “Hey! we’re nearly halfway there so we get to go downhill soon!”. Wrong. Mountains are 80% uphill and 20% downhill for some reason. They defy laws of physics.

In the photo below you can see the easy dirt trail that we were on earlier. I longed for the good old times of yesteryear 15 minutes ago when the trail was easier. I was the one with the camera though so I would conveniently call a timeout to take pictures. It was a great excuse to take a break and catch my breath.

We completed the entire hike in about 2:15 which was better than I expected of myself. The frozen yogurt was well-deserved.