A Small Summer Project

Esther installing our new bike rack.

Hammer drill - $250
5/32" mason bit - $3
Watching my wife hammer drill into the brick - priceless!

A Summer Fling...

This year has been packed with too much business travel during the prime climbing season. However, at the spur of the moment I cashed in on some frequent flyer miles and hotel points, flew up to Oregon, and climbed Mt. Hood.



This trip had to be quick so I packed all the climbing gear in a rugged duffel bag and wore some of my climbing gear to work. After work I caught a late flight into Portland and met up with my climbing buddies who had been climbing Rainier the week before.

We woke the next day early in the morning and started the climb, here are some highlights.



















It was a beautiful day, the view was amazing, and we all made it back safely. The next day I flew home and went back to work -- oh yay!

I Am a Mother

I knew I was a mother when...

I picked my infant baby's nose with my bare fingers when no tissue was available.

I ate saliva-y left-overs without a second thought.

I held close a vomit-y boy when he was sick.

I wore my son's work-of-art pin/hat/etc. proudly in public.

And today, I knew I was a mother when I heard the words, "I hate you!" yelled at me during piano practice.

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!