Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Run a 5K with the kiddos, Check!

Last weekend a stake in our area held a 5K. It was to get food for the local food bank. Food bank, for at least three days I couldn't remember what that was called so I kept saying that we were running to get food for the food shelter. I knew that wasn't right, food bank came to me late one night. I tell you I do my best thinking at night! Anyway, so the cost was a can of food and then you could run. I was feeling so excited about it until I looked at the calendar and realized that of course it was happening the weekend B was on call. I thought about sending our food with someone else and just staying home. Not to mention, check in started at 8:15 in the morning on a Saturday and the park was 45 minutes away from our house. We all know how I love my sleep so to have to get up early on a Saturday morning is not something I'm a huge fan of. On a post call day the week before the race, B and I were running one morning. (He doesn't work the day after he's been on call.) I was talking about the 5K and that I was so bummed that he wouldn't be able to do it. He agreed and then said that he was sure that he would have cases all morning that Saturday because that's usually how it goes. He said that I should do it. We both agreed that M and K would like it so we should try it. We talked to the kiddos about it. We told them what it was and that we could run for a little bit and then walk and then run and then walk. They said they wanted to do it, so we planned on it. I was actually feeling pretty excited about it except for the fact that B couldn't be with us because even if he didn't have surgeries that morning, the park is too far away from the hospital, so he still couldn't come. Not only could he not come, but let's not forget that it's in the wee hours on a Saturday morning. When the alarm went off on race day I would be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to bag the whole idea and go back to sleep. Of course B didn't have surgeries and he was home. I looked at him still sleeping and almost climbed back in bed, but,  I was awake anyway so I decided to put on my big girl panties, workout clothes and went to wake the children. We ate breakfast at record pace, they gobbled up their food and we made it to the park by 9:15! I know you're probably thinking that check in was at 8:15 and it was, but it went until 9:30 so we still made it on time right?! Anyway, we checked in, handed over our canned food and went to wait for the race to start.
 This was taken at the starting line. There were a lot of people shoved onto a little path that goes around the perimeter of the park. The course was out and back. I thought that was nice. That way we knew when we were half way done! Our goal was to finish it in an hour.

They really liked it at first and then they said that they were tired and wanted to stop. I shouldn't say they. It was M that said she wanted to stop. I don't know if it was the runner in me or the fact that we were barely running, meaning, we were jogging a very slow jog, whatever the reason I told her that she could do it. I told her I didn't think that we needed to stop yet. I had heard someone say that there was a water station at the half mile mark. I told her to keep going and we would stop at the water station. We held hands and just kept going. K did awesome! He was ahead of us the whole time. Not far of course. He was close enough that if he had stopped we would have run over him with the stroller. He just kept running and looking around. He wanted to know what the frisbee golf cage things were and why there were so many soccer fields and why people were playing soccer and why the path was dirt instead of a paved trail. etc. etc. etc.

Water! I didn't know where the half mile mark was but as we were running I thought that there was no way we would finish in an hour if it was taking us so long to get to the water station that was at half a mile. Then in the distance I saw the table, coolers of water and the missionaries telling people to get a drink. I pointed it out to M and told her that we were almost to the water. She lengthened her stride and we made it to the tables of water at record pace! They got a drink and then we started running again. We had to cross the street, so I told them we would cross the street and then walk for a minute. Well, happy news! We had just crossed the street when a lady in our ward passed us on her way back and told us that we were almost half way done! The water station hadn't been at half a mile, it had been at a mile! Someone else told us that the turn around point was at the bottom of the hill and around the corner. M really wanted to walk. I told her that running downhill was the fun part. I told her that you go a lot faster downhill. I said we should run until the half way point and then we could walk. When we got to the turn around point I said that we should only walk for a minute or so. I told them the longer we walk, the longer it will take to get back to the finish line. M was whining that she wanted to be done. I told her we just have to go back and then we were done. We agreed that we would walk to the bottom of the hill and start running again. We made a pact that we would run until the water station again. It was up the hill and across the street. We would stop and get another drink and then we could walk. M was so excited to walk that she blazed up the hill!

Sitting in the stroller being pushed while there's a breeze must be hard work! (I know his hair is long! Don't judge him. I cut it the next day before church. :))

We had just left the water station and had agreed to walk. I didn't have a watch so I didn't know how long we had been running, but it was getting pretty hot outside and we all were feeling like we wanted to be done. Most of the path was in the trees and so there was a lot of shade, but it was up ahead. We talked about how long we wanted to walk. We all decided that walking was slower than our slow jog, we didn't want to walk for too long because it would take too long and when I mentioned that there were snacks after we finished they were magically full of energy and ready to pound out the last little bit of the race. We said that the shade up ahead was where we were going to start running again and we were going to run the rest of the time.

I promise there was a ton of shade, it just doesn't look like it! When we got to the shade M asked if it was harder to run and push the stroller. I said yes, but she wanted to try it any way. She pushed it long enough for me to get a quick picture and then she said it was heavy and hard and she didn't want to do it anymore. We were almost done and M was tired and wanted to stop. I knew that she could do it so we tried to distract her. We played a few rounds of I spy. But truth be told, on a path along the perimeter of a park there aren't a whole lot of things to spy. We spied fellow runners shirts, the tops of the frisbee golf cage things, grass and the bark on and off the trees. Pretty soon there wasn't anything else to spy. We started to play the animal game where one of us thinks of an animal and the others have to ask us questions about our animal and try to figure out what we are. We had made it through three animals when we heard and saw two boys cheering for us. They were telling us that the finish line was just around the corner! I told M and K that we were almost done! I told them that at the end of a race you run as hard as you can, so they both started pumping their little arms and legs and ran as fast as they could across the finish line! There were about 8 race officials at the finish line cheering us on. K crossed the line first then me and little B with M right on our heels.

After we got a drink and enough snacks to feed a small army, we went back to the finish line and got this picture. We had finished 73rd, 74th and 75th. There had been 148 runners. It had taken us 43 minutes to do it.I was bursting with pride for M and K and that even though it was so hard for them, especially for M, they had kept going! I didn't know that there was going to be an awards ceremony. We had planned on eating some of our snacks and then leaving, but the spirit told me to wait. I'm so glad we did because K got third place for his age group! He was embarrassed and didn't want to go get his certificate. As we walked up to get it, he wouldn't look at anyone. They told him that he could get a candy bar. He didn't even take time to look at what they had, he just grabbed one. When I asked him if he was sure he wanted that one, he wouldn't even answer, he just wanted to sit down. I do wish that they had given everyone a certificate of completion or something like that, but they didn't so M walked away with nothing but her three pounds of snacks and one really proud mama! I gushed about them to B when we got home and just kept telling them that they did awesome. They rocked the 5K and I hope that they'll do it with me again some day 

Monday, September 15, 2014

Trampolines, Dinosaurs and other dilemmas in my life

Little B takes a three hour nap everyday. On some days I can't wait to grab my book and read almost the whole time he's down. Today is not one of those days. I have a million thoughts going through my head and since I'm the only adult here, this here blog post is my sounding board. I have held the following conversations with myself, out loud even. But, I just don't cut it sometimes. Lets start our discussion with trampolines. When I was wee lass my older brother bought our family a trampoline. What a nice kid right? We had to bury it before our mom would let us play on it. I think most people use a tractor to dig out the hole for a trampoline. Doing so not only makes sense, but it's so much faster! Of course the family I came from is not like most. We dug the hole out using shovels. I was all gung ho about it for about a minute and a half. I don't know if the ground was frozen or what, but when I went to put my shovel in the ground it didn't work. Instead it fell over and that's when I lost my enthusiasm. I tried to help by running the back of the shovel along the top of the grass to pull the grass out. I don't know if I thought grass was magnetic and would stick to the back of the shovel as I pushed the shovel along the top of the grass or what, but whatever I was thinking didn't work. My dad asked me to stop doing that so I put the shovel on the ground and skipped happily into the house. I had tried to help, it didn't work so I got to watch out the window as my dad dug and dug and dug. I was so disappointed that he didn't finish it in one afternoon, or two. Let's not forget that my dad worked from 5:30 A.M until 10:30 P.M. so he was digging this hole on his day's off which were Wednesday and Thursday. It's not like he had a lot of time to dig. Which brings us full circle to the tractor theory. Why didn't he just use the tractor from the farm? It makes so much sense! Anyway, he didn't, instead he dug when he could and after what felt like forever the hole was dug, the trampoline was assembled and we were aloud to play on it! Oh man how we loved that trampoline. My fondest memory is jumping without peeing my pants. Heaven knows that if I jump on a trampoline now, peeing my pants comes with the territory. Not to mention I am terrified of being bounced too high and B can bounce someone like nobody's business. It's truly a life threatening ordeal. I digress, let's fast forward a few years. We now have three littles and they love that both of their grandma's have trampolines. Well, not anymore, but before Grandpa and Grandma K moved, they had a trampoline. B and I have talked about how dangerous they are. That if we ever got one, we would want to bury it. We didn't know how to hold the dirt back.  My dream trampoline would be buried, but we would dig a hole, using a tractor of course, along the sides and base of the hole we would pour cement, add a drain so water could drain out when it rains. That way the trampoline is buried so it's safer for little ones. But, pouring all that cement and adding a drain is basically making a pool but instead of adding water we add a trampoline and that just seems like a lot of money. Lets just skip the trampoline all together and save ourselves a whole lot of money. This last Saturday a family in our ward was moving. The new house they're moving in to sits on the lake. They don't have a backyard due to the lake so they couldn't take their trampoline. I was there helping them clean so they could leave that afternoon. She was talking about all the things they had left to do and mentioned that they couldn't take the trampoline. I had a moment of pure insanity and asked if we could have it. What?! What was I thinking? We can't bury it in our backyard. Not only are we renting, but we are not going to pay for a cement lined, drain inserted trampoline hole just to leave it behind. Even as I write about it all I can do is shake my head. I'm such an idiot! I mean that in the kind of way like when Rizzo the Rat on Muppet Christmas Carol leaves his jellybeans on the other side of the fence. He squeezes through the bars, gets them and comes back. Gonzo looks at him and says,"You can fit through the bars? You're such an idiot!" Anyway, if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, watch the movie and then you will. Anyway, I can't believe that sitting in our backyard right this second is a trampoline that neither B or I wanted and in a moment of wild woman talking I actually said that we wanted it. There's no mat over the springs and no net around it. M and K were so happy I'm pretty sure they cried a little. Little B turns into a kamikaze on it. He darts across it at lightning speed laughing his head off as B and I sprint around the entire thing trying to save him from a sure death. After about three minutes of the insanity of having a 18 month old on an un-netted, spring exposed death trap we decided we needed to invest in the pad that sits on top of the springs and a net. Well, to get those two things is almost as much money as buying a new trampoline that comes with the pad and the net. Now what the heck are we supposed to do? We can't just take the stupid thing away. There's a good chance that M and K would never speak to us again. We for sure would be the reason for years of counseling and the root of all the injustices in their lives. But, we don't want to pay for a pad and a net to put on a very used trampoline if a new one is truly only $20 more. But, we were not planning on buying a trampoline now or ever really. The whole thing is so annoying! I don't know what possessed me to tell Dottie that we wanted her old trampoline. If only we could rewind time right? Then I would tell her we don't want her trampoline just like I told her that we didn't want her gigantic fish tank or computer desk or drum set. I have nothing else to say other than I can't believe we have a trampoline. Lets change the subject. Lets talk about dinosaurs. I don't believe in them. In my mind they are like big foot and the loch ness monster. I think that the bones are fake and that it's all a big hoax. I know I know, I'm crazy. I think I stopped believing in them when I was about 14. I don't know what happened really other than I just think they're crazy. I have nothing scientific to back me up. Rumor has it that one of the prophets didn't believe in them either. I don't remember which one. I think it was Joseph Fielding Smith. But rumor also had it that the Salt Lake Temple was going to be closed for two years for major renovations, so take the prophet not believing in dinosaurs with a grain of salt. Last night we went to dinner at a friends house and another family came too. The second family's parents were in town. We were sitting on the couch after dinner and I said we should talk about dinosaurs. Everyone agreed and then I said, "I don't believe in them." The guys in the room said,"Like that they didn't ever exist or just not on this world?" I said that they never existed. One of them asked me about fossils. I told him I think they're fake. He kind of laughed and said,"kind of like it's a conspiracy theory?" I said sure. B is a rock star and supports his crazy wife in her moments of total stupidity. He piped up and said,"There's nothing said about them in the temple." Which is totally true. One of the wives said,"Well, there's nothing said about Iguanas either but those are totally real!" I started laughing and said she's right. Then the mom spoke up with her theory. She thinks that since animals were created before man was, that the dinosaurs lived and died before men were even created. That's the best theory I've heard. I like that explanation. Clearly I am not totally set on my not believing in dinosaurs if I'm swayed that easily. I'm still not totally convinced that they were real and that they roamed the earth, but I do like her idea. It makes sense because rumor is, I know another rumor, but, I've been told that each day here is like 1000 years in heaven, so if dinosaurs were made on the day with all the other animals then they would have been here long enough to live and die before we got here, but only barely. Man came right after the animals right? You would think that Adam would have seen at least one and maybe even said something like, And it came to pass that as we were walking we saw a great beast of an animal and it ate Thad who was the son of Markus.. Or something like that right? I'm not trying to preach false doctrine. Please don't panic mom, I still have a testimony, the church is true, I'm just thinking out loud. Dinosaurs. I can't wait to get to heaven to find out about those. If they lived did they get back into heaven? They seem too ferocious for heaven. Hum, I wonder. my final dilemma,  tampons and shrinking tata's. I'll spare you the details but both of those things causing me grief, just sayin. Well, I guess I've tortured you long enough. I'll sign off and go stare at our annoying trampoline and ponder if dinosaurs existed or not. 

Thursday, September 11, 2014

First day of school

I hate the first day of school. Who are we kidding?! It's not just the first day that I hate, it's the first day and every day after that. I hate when our kids are at school. I don't like that it's so quite around here. Little B still takes a three hour nap every day, so I'm left with a lot of alone time. That's not great! Anyway, the first day of school came and I didn't even cry! We just won't talk about the night before! M and K were really excited. K's teacher from last year moved up a grade, so K has the same teacher and all the same kids in his class. He wasn't nervous at all and knew that he already liked his teacher. M got a new teacher but is sure she'll like her because, "she's really pretty."

I hope that they have a great school year and I can hardly wait for next summer!

It's about time!

It finally happened! K lost his first tooth. Well, I should say teeth. His two bottom teeth came out at the same time. They had been loose forever and he would wiggle and wiggle them. They were just too steadfast in immovable! One night while I was brushing his teeth I noticed that his permanent teeth were coming up behind the loose teeth. I knew that wasn't great. We went to the dentist and he had to popped them out for us. Thankfully they were so loose that he didn't need a shot. He was so excited to put his teeth under his pillow. While I was standing at the counter at the dentist's office waiting to check out, the little container that was holding his teeth came open. It couldn't have been because he was jumping up and down with excitement about the thought of a visit from the tooth fairy. The lid opened, the teeth fell out and vanished. We couldn't find them. He was a little worried that the tooth fairy wouldn't know to come if there were no teeth. M reminded him that she had dropped her tooth one day as we were walking home from the Tuckett's and she still got a treat from the tooth fairy. That calmed his nerves and his craziness returned as quickly as it had left. Instead of money, the kiddos ask our tooth fairy for a treat. K could hardly wait to ask for his very own package of Swedish fish! Our tooth fairy is cheap and won't give him a big bag. He got a little bag of his very own Swedish fish even though his teeth were MIA! He asked if he could have them for breakfast the next day. I'm mean enough that I said no, but he could have some after dinner. Thankfully, he's easy to please!

A visitor from the west


B took a week off of work the last week of summer vacation. Let me just say that summer went by way too fast. Truly, I think this was the fastest summer of my life. Anyway, we wanted to go camping to kick the week off. We went up after church on Sunday. It was so beautiful!

I promise we weren't chopping wood in the dark. Our camera just makes it look like that! Chopping the small pieces of wood into smaller pieces of wood was a huge highlight. The reason for the sunglasses you ask? To protect their eyeballs of course. My 24 year old nephew was pulling trim off the wall in a house he just bought, had his glasses on his head instead of on his face. A piece of wood came flying into his eyeball. It's truly a miracle that after only two surgeries, he can see. We learned to always wear glasses when playing with wood, when one doesn't remember to pack the safety glasses, you use sunglasses instead. Anyway, they chopped and chopped and chopped the wood.

Here's proof that it wasn't dark whilst wood chopping was going on. This about sums up how happy he was. To say that he was a cranky bum is putting it lightly. He didn't want to be held, but he didn't want to get down. He didn't want to sit in a chair, but he was really mad if you asked him if he wanted to walk. He was just super unpleasant!

He clearly had no interest in wearing the sunglasses and watching them chop wood. He was totally done, so I put his jammies on and put him in bed. The poor thing was asleep within minutes. Too bad for him, he missed the best part of camping!
The fire! I did breathe easier with him not at the fire. The pit at our site was awful! The cement slab was on a hill and the fire pit was only a few inches high. Around the slab were roots and rocks, so falling around the fire would have been a huge concern. My two year old niece fell into the fire this summer. We weren't there, so I can only imagine how horrible it was to watch. My sister grabbed her out of the fire and soaked her with water. She has awful burns on her back and her arm. That's another miracle, that her burns weren't worse. 

                       







If these pictures don't break your heart and make you cry, nothing will. I still cry when I see them and it happened over a month ago. Thankfully she's ok, but because of her accident, we didn't let little B near the fire area. M made a great guard dog and if little B got within 10 feet of it she would run over and pick him up. 






You might be thinking that the fire got a little dull if we started taking pictures of sticks, but this stick has eyeballs and legs! A stick bug! How awesome is that?! I have never seen one in real life and when M saw it, we all gathered around to watch it. I am sure the poor thing was trying to get away from us, but we couldn't stop watching it. After we had watched the stick bug for a really long time,  roasted marshmallow's, Starburst's, and had s'mores with Reese's, (because that's the only way you can eat a s'more), we pulled out the games!
This was one side of the table
And this was the other side. We stayed up until at least 11 eating candy and playing games. There was a huge bee that kept flying around us and that wasn't great. K does NOT like bees. He didn't care that it was late, he heard it, hadn't even seen it yet, screamed while he jumped up from the table and ran into the dark to get away from it. He was ok as long as it didn't get too close. By too close I mean within hearing range. Because it was so big you could hear it from really far away. There was far too much screaming, jumping up and running happening, so we had to call it a night. As we laid in the tent not sleeping, because really, does anyone in a tent sleep? Not from this household. Well, not the adults at least. Anyway, as we laid there we heard the rain start. We knew there was a chance of rain, but we had decided to risk it. It was a gamble we took, and lost. It rained most of the night. It stopped right before it got light outside. We got up and ate breakfast.. As we were cleaning it up so we could go on a hike, the rain started again. We tried waiting it out.
We used the tailgate as a shade. We waited and waited hoping that it would let up and stop. It didn't. We didn't think that little B would totally love hanging out in the tent all day while it rained outside, so we packed up and came home. Of course as we were loading the last person in the car, the clouds parted and out came the sun. That was a totally bummer, but we were not going to be sad about leaving early! We finished our camp out in our living room. The next day our visitor from the west came. Mama B came for a few days! We had fun things planned. M and K didn't want to tell her anything we were doing. They wanted to keep it a surprise. They loved knowing what was happening and not telling her. K would get so excited that as he talked, he would get progressively louder. We didn't even have to be talking about our surprise plans for his volume to increase. Talking about anything while he was keeping a secret made him louder and louder.

We took her to a place called Great Wolf Lodge. (Obviously, There is a sign above their heads!) It's just a hotel with an amazing indoor water park. It was awesome! No one knows why little B is crying. It's not his wolf ears, he loved having those on. He wasn't tired, he had slept the entire car ride. He wasn't hungry, we had eaten lunch before we took the picture. He was just sad I guess. As soon as we took the picture and put him down, he was totally fine. The water park was awesome! Besides the fact that the water was far too cold, it was a blast! There were big water slides, a baby area, a wave pool, a huge tree house and a rope monkey bar thing. 


 This is the rope monkey bar thing. They both loved it and after a couple of times holding onto the rope, K tried just running across the log things. He made it all the way across one time without falling. He did this thing over and over. There was only one water slide that he wasn't tall enough to do. Of course little B couldn't do the slides. Since the water was freezing, I took one for the team and stayed with him while they went and did the slides.

These little fountains were at the entrance of the wave pool. He loved to touch them with his hands and then hit the water so it would spray everywhere. He didn't love the baby area, so he and I spent a lot of time walking around looking at things and watching people. I do love people watching!

The room was awesome! They had a wolf den where the offspring slept. In the corner there's a TV that plays Disney Channel. These two were in heaven! There was enough room in the den for little B's pack n' play. All the kids were in the den and the adults were out in the main part of the room. Poor Mama B got stuck with the sofa bed. I felt really bad that she got the crummy bed. You could almost see the springs when you pulled the bed out. She had to fold the blanket up about ten times and lay on top of it so she didn't have a spring digging into her back. She also had to sleep with her head at the foot of the bed. She said the bed slanted down so if she slept right, she would be angled down and that's not great. She was a trooper and said it was fine once she fell asleep, but we know that she just doesn't complain about anything. Great Wolf Lodge is awesome because you can use the water park at 1:00 the day you check in and the day you leave you can use it until it closes at 8:00. We only had to stay one night and still felt like we got to use the water park enough.

We went to the local amusement park one day, died of the heat but still had fun. We went to a safari place another day where we got to feed giraffes and buffalo. I thought that we had taken more pictures with our camera, but if I remember right, our camera died and so we had to use B's phone. His phone is at work with him, so you'll have to use your imagination! We loved having grandma here and we were all sad when she had to leave. K tried to talk her into staying for another week and was really disappointed when she said she needed to go home. We love her so much and hope that she can hurry back!  

                                          
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