Daddy's Treasure Hunt

Zach sent Simon on a treasure hunt one day because he was out of school and I was worried about not having anything fun planned. What a guy! The video documents almost all of the hunt, so if you aren't free for 11 minutes, don't watch it! Plus my phone ran out of memory right at the very end so you don't get to see what the ultimate prize was. It was a lego set that Simon has been wanting and that I spent the next 2 hours building for him.

Emmy as a redhead

When I was about 13, I had my neighbor dye my hair red unbeknownst to my mom. I was in the middle of my Anne of Green Gables obsession and it was a henna dye so not very permanent. It was fun and probably the most spontaneous thing I did during my childhood. Emmy apparently has the same longings for red hair. She did this with an app on my phone.

Baby Paul comes for a visit

My sister-in-law Melissa was in a bind the other day and needed me to watch her little one. Okay, bend my arm :) It was a few wonderful hours and he was a delight to take care of. Most interesting and surprising to me, I didn't feel any baby hunger at all. I loved my time with him, but was also glad that my days of being tied to the house for nap times, diaper changes and daycare are over.

I have a rare moment with a laptop today. Normally to blog, I have to venture downstairs to my computer which is soooo slow these days. I just avoid it at all costs, which is pretty easy to do with an iPhone and an iPad. But these devices aren't very easy to blog with, so a laptop is apparently what I need to break my non-blogging days. This laptop is only a loaner from Zach's work (when he has to fire someone, it results in an extra computer floating around) and it doesn't have any of my pictures on it so this may be a picture-less post. Just a few of our goings on lately... Since my Moab half marathon experience, I started training for my second half at Thanksgiving Point. I wasn't very far into training when I started having knee issues again, only with the right knee. I knew from past experience that it was just IT band issues again and that it would go away eventually, unfortunately not in time to run Thanksgiving Point. Just today I ran 3.6 miles without pain, but that was pushing it. I am signed up for the Race for the Cure this Saturday, but I will be doing it with Emmy who can't even run a mile yet so I don't need to worry about running it all. I am still playing tennis. I am signed up to play twice a week this summer. One day will be up at Coach Mike's by the zoo where I have played all winter. We have a pro scheduled to teach us and it isn't cheap, but it is my little luxury. I will also be playing another day close to home with my friend Andrea who teaches tennis for Murray Parks and Rec. We are still the craziest bunch of ladies who can't stop talking long enough to play a game, but we have fun. I would like to start playing in a league soon so that I can play other people and try to get a little more serious about the game. Connor is about to graduate (YAY) and embark on the next stage of life. We aren't quite sure what that stage is yet. We are taking things slow and not rushing into college because I'm not sure if he is ready for it. He has been working at Lone Star for a few months now and still likes it, although he would like more hours, and less Sundays. He may take a class or two at Utah Valley University just to see how he does without breaking the bank. I would love to be able to give him a live-away-from-home college experience but I can't justify that expense when he struggled just to get through high school. We had him evaluated recently by a neuropsychologist who tested him for hours to see if there was anything more serious going on to account for his less than stellar high school experience. His IQ test was very average and all she could tell us is that he is very normal and nothing is seriously wrong with him. Good news, just doesn't give me anything to go on to help him from here on out. Emmy is enjoying taking ballroom from QuickStep Dance. She has her first performance coming up. It has been way low key and a nice break from an otherwise intense performing season that she would have had with Clayton. She is still singing with Clayton in an a Cappella group (vs. the singing/dancing performing group she used to do) and had her first performance last night with two other AMAZING a cappella groups. I love that she is learning to sing complex harmonies and is being introduced to music that challenges her, not just singing stuff on the radio. She is boy CRAZZZZZZZZY and is breaking hearts on a daily basis. She likes lots of boys and is very open with her feelings with them which leads them to believe they are the only one for her, but when they find out she feels that way about several others, that usually makes them cry. Seriously - she has boys cry on the phone to her often. They are 12 and 13 years old so they aren't too good at hiding their emotions yet. It's sad that she has to hurt their feelings, but I am glad she isn't focusing on just one. I had to put an end to her boy/girl socializing that was happening way too frequently. She is now only allowed to go to girls only activities. Simon is still high effort high energy. He is not slowing down at all which I thought he would by this age! He is constantly needing friends and stimulation. Five days a week preschool apparently wasn't enough. He needs play dates every afternoon as well and if he doesn't have one, he just doesn't know what to do with himself. He is not excited to start kindergarten. In fact, he told me one day that kindergarten had been cancelled in the fall. Huh... strange! He has a very short list of foods he will eat (fried rice from Panda Express, pizza, and chicken nuggets). He doesn't like breakfast which worries me. I hate sending him off to school with no food in him but he seems to do okay. He is very well spoken compared to other kids his age. My other kids were, too, and I'm not sure what to attribute it to but am grateful for it. And Zach...well, he is consumed with work these days. Trying to keep up with a changing economy, hiring people when it's busy, then having to let them go a few months later when things slow down. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for anything. I'm so grateful (and feel a little guilty to be honest) that my days are filled with mostly fun and relaxation when he deals with stress and headaches. Coming home to his family and driving his cars are his happy places. I'm happy he has those to get him through the not-so-fun stuff.

Family Hike to the "Living Room"

We went on a hike this weekend to "The Living Room" trail which is above the Huntsman Cancer Institute. It gets its name from the couches and chairs people have made out of the big sandstone slabs at the top of the trail. We saw a domesticated wolf with its owner and Zach and Simon saw a very large snake cross the trail in front of them. I know they are up there but I try not to think about it when I'm hiking places like that. Emmy really struggled on the hike. She said it hurt to breathe. I can't tell if she's just way out of shape or if she really has breathing problems. Her trip to the hospital with pneumonia is always at the front of my mind, but I also think she just isn't very active. Ballroom is not a great form of exercise and she does nothing else active. So she, Zach and Simon turned back before we reached the top. Turned out we were super close when they turned back so they could have made it but it was hard to see how much further we had to go. It was a relatively easy hike, I thought, and the reward at the end was worth it. I would totally go back.

It's all in how you look at it

Zach was out of town a week ago at his sister Heather's wedding in Las Vegas. I didn't go with him because I had signed up to run the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon. And even though I ran into knee problems as it got closer and knew I wouldn't be able to run the half, I still planned to attempt a 5K. Zach had booked a room with his family and it was too late for me to decide to go with him plus it would save us money if I stayed home with the kids. While he was there, there was a big spring rainstorm. We have window wells that don't drain very well (at all) and we have to watch them diligently whenever it rains. It was the middle of the night and Zach woke me up with a text to tell me that he had won $100 at the roulette table. Since I was awake and could hear the rain coming down pretty hard, I decided to go downstairs to check on the one window well that floods without fail. After I check it and found that our pump was doing its job, I found Connor still awake (on a school night!) so I got mad and him, told him to get to bed and went upstairs. As I neared the top, I heard him yell "Mom, it's flooding!" I was confused because I had just checked it and knew it wasn't. But as it turns out, it was a different window well that we have never had problems with before. Sure enough, the water had risen a few feet up to the window level and had started to stream in and down the wall. I ran outside in the dark and pouring rain, in my PJ's and bare feet and pulled the sump pump out of the one window well that it was already keeping dry. I took it to the other side of the house where I found that the cord wasn't long enough to reach an exterior outlet. Connor came to help me by this time and we found another outlet in the garage that we could use. After I got the pumping under way, I ran back inside to address the soaked carpet and furniture. Here's where I made a big mistake. I hurried downstairs in my bare feet, my WET bare feet, on our slick WOOD stairs, and wouldn't you know it? They slipped right out from under me landing me hard on my back, butt, elbow and wrist - BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM to the bottom. Connor was upstairs and didn't see it, but he heard it and frantically yelled "Mom? Mom!" The wind was knocked out of me and I couldn't answer him right away so he thought the worst. It took just a minute for me to realize that although I hurt and knew I would hurt a lot in the days to come, nothing was broken and I could get up and walk.

At times like that, I realize I don't have near enough towels in our house. I soaked up as much as I could with every absorbable item in our house and hobbled back to bed. Yes, I was sooooooo sore in the morning. I didn't take Simon to school because it hurt too much to get out of bed. My neck must have spasmed during the fall because I couldn't turn it to the right. BUT - I realized that a) if I hadn't signed up for the race, we all would have been in Las Vegas and the whole basement could have flooded rather than just soaked the carpet in part of one room, b) if Zach hadn't texted me in the middle of the night, I wouldn't have gone to check on the window well, and c) if Connor hadn't been naughty and stayed up way too late, he wouldn't have seen the other window well flooding that we never check on. I'm not sure how the fall fits into these happy coincidences but I survived so I won't focus on that.