The Haps

Here is a rundown of what has been happening lately...

We put a great and spacious play set in our backyard. It is a pirate ship, club house, picnic spot, and all around big hit.

J has been working on our garden. It is beautiful in its organization, layout, and function. He is a mad genius perfectionist gardener.

The school year ended. Programs, Pioneer trek, and dance festivals. I walked into the house one morning after a run to my boys having a shirtless dance party in the front room to Taio Cruz's "Dynamite" thanks to not only Scera Park Elementary but also Cherry Hill Elementary. Now H walks around singing, "I'm only gonna break break break break break your heart," S "Pop it, lock it, polka dot it...," and O "I wanna celebrate and live my life..."

School is out. My boys are all home with me for the summer. Bliss and boredom. Fun and fighting. The usual. But all day now.

We met my parents in Moab for a weekend. Toasty fun. Chuck wagon, Arches National Park, hotel pool, Hummer ride.

I ran the Wasatch Back for the 3rd year in a row. I am addicted to this painful, sleep-deprived, exhausting kind of fun.

I will post on these events one by one. Stay tuned...

Raising Boys - The seven stages of conflict.

Sam Pulling Oliver around the front yard. (Peacetime)



(2 minutes later...)

Stage #1 - (Latent Conflict or Unstable Peace):

It exists whenever individuals, groups, organizations, or nations have differences that bother one or the other, but those differences are not great enough to cause one side to act to alter the situation.



Stage #2 (Conflict Emergence) and Stage #3 (Conflict Escalation) are mostly skipped in these situations or happen faster than the naked eye can capture. Here we see Ollie in Stage #4 (Hurting):


** As a side note - the bat of choice shown here is mostly made of foam.

Stage #5 (De-escalation):

Conflict de-escalation is associated with reduced grievances, at least for members of one side. This change occurs as relations between the adversaries change, in the course of the struggle.

Here Ollie is pondering his recent actions and trying to move to Stage #6 (Dispute Settlement) and Stage #7 (Post-Conflict/Peace-Building):

T-Shirt Envy

I found the next t-shirt of my dreams...



here at "The Onion." Fantastic, isn't it?

Wasatch Front...and Back

Our last few days in California, J took charge of the boys so I could run the So Cal Ragnar. These pictures are all courtesy of my sister-in-law, whose first Ragnar (and not the last) this was.

We started at 6:45 AM on Friday morning in Huntington Beach:


Here's Alisa finishing up her first leg,


the merman we saw along the way,


me finishing up my first leg (too bad I didn't have a camera on me during the run; you could've seen pictures of the homeless people sleeping under the bridges I ran past),


waiting to begin our second legs (a sassy bunch of women, if I do say so myself),


a beautiful sight we saw along the way (and we did thank him for running with his shirt off),


another beautiful thing we saw,


and our tats, taken at the finish line on Coronado Island.


It was beautiful, hard, hot, sleepless, exhausting, and fun fun fun! Our van was so much fun, and our team's van 2 was awesome (thanks to Valerie for filling in 3 days before the race!)! Thanks especially to my sweetie who crammed all three boys in the back of a mid-size sedan and played single dad for a day and a half so I could go exhaust myself on the race course and be completely useless for a few days following!
Can't wait for Wasatch Back!

My Best Friend's Ex-Boyfriend

Today my awesome neighbor, friend, running buddy, hair artist extraordinaire, brought over a tote of clothes she was going to send to DI (non-Utahans think: thrift store, Salvation Army.) She does this periodically when she goes through her wardrobe because she knows I am helpless when it comes to clothes, that I am pretty stingy when it comes to spending any kind of money on myself, and because she rocks. I found a few nice shirts and jeans to supplement my closet and will take the rest to DI. This neighbor has style and always looks cute and classy, so the clothes I get from her are unfailingly cute. Pluses all around. However, because I am neurotic, I feel like I need a mourning period before I put on the clothes and wear them as my own. Although I have never dated a best friend's ex-boyfriend before, I imagine this is what it feels like. For the first few times that I wear one of these articles of clothing and receive a compliment on it, I feel like I need to explain, "Yeah, I know it's super cute. It's my neighbor's. She didn't want it anymore and let me pick what I wanted before she donated the rest." Then after a I've had the clothes for a while, I don't need to explain anymore and they become mine. Is that weird? I have a few things she gave me last year that I haven't worn yet because the mourning period is not quite over yet. Yes, it sounds strange, but imagine you've just started dating your best friend's ex-boyfriend, and you may understand how I feel.

California 2011 - Part 1 (Vacation)

This last week the family drove out to California to have a little vacation and support Esther in the Ragnar relay. Here are a few pictures of the trip:

Ollie vs. The Curb

Ollie crashed on his Razor scooter, and got three stitches in his lip. The doctor blew up one of his gloves and drew a funny face to cheer him up. Ollie was so brave at the doctors office, he is one tough kid.