Bryce and I have been busy, busy, busy. This is the time of year where it is a challenge to even wash our under layers fast enough to be able to go out mudding again. Actually, our next "date" is in another 24 hours or so, Tuesday October 8th. I had a 3 day weekend. Today (Sunday) was THE most productive day I have had in a while. I got so many things accomplished including: doing 8 loads of laundry (5 normal household loads likes clothes and sheets, and 3 WAM loads) all of which were folded and put away into drawers and closets, put away about 4 loads of previously washed laundry that have been folded and sitting in laundry baskets for too long, cleaned all of our bedrooms with extra care (there are 3), dusted the ceiling fans, organized Bryce's closet, sorted and put away 2 tubs of toys that were shoved into boxes probably about 4 weeks ago, built a laundry sorter thing (this is a feat because I normally can't even assemble most children's toys), FINISHED round 2 of Jillian Michael's Body Revolution (a 90 day program of strength training and cardio that is very heavy on plyometrics- and took me about 105 days to complete this go around), put up the indoor halloween decorations, fed my kids a dinner with a smiley face and hair made from the food, watched Bob's Burger's with my family, boxed up a coat to mail to a fan, and made about 500 pictures clickable for our next website update!

Yesterday (Saturday) I volunteered for a function to raise awareness of violence against women. It was in the mall so after my daughters and I went shopping. I have been spending too much money on clothes lately so I only got a few clearance items even though I am on a mission for corduroy pants and skirts. I got a nice pair of black (and light white) stone washed jeggings for $5, 2 pairs of thick knee highs $12, cute panties $1.50, and a few things for my kids of course. Went home and after searching the web for a while trying to find a sale price on the Under Armour pieces I want, decided to go to The Sports Authority and just buy them. Bryce got a set a couple of Christmas's ago, but I have taken ownership of them. He doesn't mind as it makes my experience that much nicer. So I was able to get the long sleeved mock turtleneck and leggings for a cool $100. They are cut for a woman and the difference in how they fit as compared to Bryce's are amazing.

The first day of my 3 day weekend (Friday) was pretty crazy! I think I've written a bit about it already, but I keep thinking about it. We both had the day off from work with no kids until about 5-6 p.m. We went to a location that we have not been to in several years, one that we had to drive to. Bryce was so smitten with my outfit, it's just adorable to experience that. I wore a red coat, jeans, and sneakers with a turtleneck underneath. I am certain I wrote about this in detail in a recent blog- so if you are a detailed oriented person and haven't read it yet- please do! I walked into a river, dunked my head under, swam for a quick minute, then rushed off to a mud puddle and rolled around in it. It was so much fun and yielded about 800 pictures and nice GoPro video footage. We accomplished everything we set out to do. Then we drove back home, ate a deli lunch on our back deck, got dressed again and headed back into the woods behind our house. I wore a long, long denim jacket. It's Max Studio, a very nice designer, and I found this ankle length gem on the clearance racks at Marshall's during the summer. I love it and have been wearing it for the past 2 weeks to work. Oh my goodness I can't really remember which pants I was wearing but I had an adorable T-shirt that says 'In Love' in a fluorescent pink heart and red over the knee boots that were trashed in the fall of 2012. I could not wear these boots in public at all, but they looked good when you are about to be covered in mud anyways. I put on some make-up and took out a couple of the small braids that were in my hair from earlier that morning. For some reason, I was really pounding beers like crazy. I remember all of the time in the woods (as evidenced by the video footage) but I can't really recall hiking back home or showering off.

(side note: My drinking. Um, been getting a bit out of hand lately. I need to work on finding the balance of getting relaxed enough to really have a good time but then be able to STOP the party and come back to reality in a timely and graceful manner). (A work in progress.)

So, in part because I was getting so tipsy, it was a very crazy time. Apparently I cried in the pit. Let me preface you with a bit of background on what this thing is like. It is massive. Probably about 40 feet long and 12 feet wide (though I am not great at estimating measurements). In parts when you stand in it it comes up to your armpits, the most shallow parts are up to your knees. It sucks you in. What I mean by this is that when you are standing off to the edge of it, it somehow manages to get you back in there. It is easy to get stuck, genuinely stuck. It's really quite overwhelming, even though I have been to it several times. So yeah, I cried. About half way through the session I think it sucked my leg in and I wound up laying in it unexpectedly and I was a bit delirious. Looking back on the video it seems like tears from laughing so hard but Bryce said that it was more like crying, then laughing then crying then laughing again. My absolute favorite parts was after I had taken off the long denim jacket that was saturated in mud and got sucked back into the pit, Bryce threw the jacket over my head. It was very heavy and blacked out almost all of the sun and was almost pitch black inside the tunnel it created. I scream a lot, having a blast, and Bryce sneaks up on my with the other camera and manages to film inside the tunnel for a few seconds which only prompted me to scream louder because it was so absurd. My other favorite moment was when we were both standing on the side of the pit for a minute, after I had been it it for a long while, and Bryce swoops me off my feet the way a man carries his bride into their honeymoon suite, and chucks me into the mud. Pure fun! All love The mud was very different because it had been so dry and not rained for a couple of weeks. Bryce actually had to add 5 buckets of stream water to it to make it pliable enough to roll around in. There are about 400 pictures and nice video footage.

Which leads to to the present. I am going to get messy on Tuesday and don't even have the outfit picked out yet. I have an idea of what I want to wear in my head but haven't tried it on yet. Sometimes things just don't work together as you have planned. I think it will look lovely but you never know. In any case, I have a ton of clothes and will surely wind up in something lovely. This next session is 'mine'. I get to choose everything that I wear and what goes on. It may be raining the whole time which kind of effects my outfit. I am really a bit confused! What I have been planning on is wearing my cammo military skinny jeans, an olive chunky knit scarf, olive military style hat, knee high combat boots and probably a well-loved "no stranger to mud" black leather jacket that falls at my waist. I want to do what we did last Friday again. But this time, if I am wet from rain first, I will go in the mud and then into the river. My favorite band Korn is releasing their new album that day, so we are going to buy it that morning along with some drinks and a take-out lunch. I hope to be able to have my favorite drink, a Coffeetini, at a local restaurant and maybe share an appetizer with Bryce. Then he will drive me to that beautiful location. THEN, since I can not get enough, I hope to change into a black full body PVC suit with my 'trashbag' shiny coat and head into our woods to the mudpit that overwhelms me. I think I will ask to have my head dunked, since I seem to enjoy that so much

And finally, I wanted to share that I have recently been setting up the old video camera and filming myself getting all layered up. I thought that Bryce would enjoy having it on tape (he does). We are calling it the "Dressing Room" and I hope to include it as a separate file for the downloads.

So, our triple update is uploading to BradnSammi.com and should be live by the time we all wake up tomorrow morning. It is the bucket/short denim jacket session from mid September 2013, a shaving foam businees skirt suit session from Summer 2012, and a trendy puffy black coat in the mud from the Fall of 2012. Bryce did a fantastic job writing it up and if you look at it and enjoy our antics please email us at bradandsammi@gmail.com to let us know you like it. Maintaining the website takes a bit of work and we don't make any money off of it. So fan mail means a lot to us and keeps us motivated!

Good night