kiwords

Last night I pulled out ye olde ACTIVE LIFE: EXTREME CHALLENGE (please say it in all caps. It's just BETTER that way), and proceeded to try to kill myself with double dutch. But WHY? you say? Didn't you just last week say that you didn't LIKE double dutch?

WHY YES, thank you for listening!

But see, SOMEONE called me out. SOMEONE challenged me to a double-dutch off of sorts. And I was all OH YEAH and BRING IT and then I remembered that SOMEONE is a bad-ass who does capoeira, which I always want to call capybera, which is not what it is. To clarify, capoeira is a scary cool martial arts/dance combo, whereas a capyberais a rodent of unusual size.

So when I remembered that she is a tiny powerhouse of bad-assedness, then I got scared and told Clay that he needed to go buy me a gun because a mean girl was trying to hurt me. He said buying a gun would ENSURE that I would get hurt, and so I threw things. I just made that part up. Sorry.

But I DID hit the double-dutch as hard as I could and may I just say? Owie. This may be why *I* am not a tiny little powerhouse of anything, because in very short order I was lying on the couch, fighting for air, whining (with what little breath I could muster) that my legs hurt.

However, I did get THREE HUNDRED AND TEN in free-play double-dutch, Carmen. DID YOU TOP IT?

DID YOU?

And as I played, again the family gathered around me, with the yelling and the support. I stiff-armed them away from MY GAME as long as I could, and then I remembered that I'm actually a loving mother and not the snotty girl on the playground from middle school, and everyone got to take turns. Including Clay.

It was completely awesome. My mom stopped by in the middle of our tournament, and she said that you could hear us all from the street, and it sounded like a party. There was a lot of yelling and jumping up and down. May I modestly point out here that Clay was UNABLE to top my double-dutch score? Or would that be snarky and ungracious?

Absolute best trash-talk of the evening? When Max established THE SCORE TO BEAT on kite surfing, he turned to me and said, "It's easy to tell I'm your son, know why?"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE AWESOME?" I replied, and we high-fived while everyone else rolled their eyes.

WE ARE AWESOME.

So there you go, our experience with ACTIVE LIFE: EXTREME CHALLENGE (all caps. SAY IT). It's not the sort of thing that would replace an exercise program. Some of the activities barely raise the heart rate, while others kind of made my heart explode. However, I do think it would be an excellent addition to an active lifestyle. We are enjoying it so much that the plan is to have a family Active Life night every Sunday. Fun and fitness and family member screaming at each other. What could be better?