Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo

I went to the zoo yesterday. I'm not a big zoo fan. The Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake was sort of fun when I was a kid, but I don't remember ever begging to go. I remember the concrete habitats the animals were caged up in and sticking my head in the lion drinking fountain while my dad took a picture.

When Abram and Aubrey were little we lived in Omaha, we had a zoo pass and went there almost every week. It was a great zoo. We also were spoiled having the Kansas City zoo a few hours away. That was the first zoo I had ever seen where great effort had gone into keeping the animals habitats as much like their natural ones as possible. I could have sworn I was somehow transported to the African Savanna where the lions, giraffes, and zebras were roaming freely. And then dinner at KC Masterpiece.

When we moved to Portland we took the kids to the zoo like good parents, and we were shocked. Nothing had changed at the Oregon zoo in at least 50 years. Same old cages and concrete habitats that you see in "Sammy The Seal" and "Curious George" books. We didn't ever go back. Not necessarily from an animal-humane point of view, but just from a what-a-rip-off-boring-zoo point of view.

I had noticed in the news over the past several years that the zoo had been making improvements. And every year when we get our property tax statement and I see how much money I'm paying for the stupid zoo bond I didn't vote for, I think I really should go see what I've purchased.

Yesterday was a no-school day for the kids. Mark, Abram and Jacob left on a snowcaving trip, and I decided it was a good day to take the five buddies to the zoo. They loved it. I was surprised at how much more modern it was. It is a great place to take a walk, if nothing else. And because it costs the same for our family to go once or to buy an annual membership, I bought the membership, and we will be back. Lucky for Zachary.

Our kids are full of ethusiasm and energy. They ran and laughed and said so many funny things that my tummy hurt from laughing. I was laughing so hard at Joel banging the glass on the sea lions exhibit like Darla on Finding Nemo, "Fishy, wake up. Why won't you wake up? FISHY!"

Afterward, we went to lunch at Panda Express (aka Kung Fu Panda), where we were all surprised when I opened my fortune cookie to see that I had no fortune. I was glad it was mine and not Zachary's. He gets pretty excited about extracting the paper from the fortune cookie. We topped it off with Krispy Kreme donuts. It was a very fun day. Much more fun than snowcaving would have been, in my opinion.

I think the funniest part of the day was when we had been at the zoo about 20 minutes, and I realized that I was almost the only mother who was NOT wearing Dansko clogs. Not saying they are bad--just sayin' that I think I may be the only mother-of-young-children in the Portland area who does not own Dansko clogs. It was really funny. I told Aubrey, and she didn't believe me. But then around every corner we would encounter another mom wearning Danskos and we would both start laughing. Especially when it was a group of 2 or 3 moms who had come to the zoo together, and they all had the same shoes on. It was really funny. I have heard they are quite comfortable, but after seeing them all over yesterday, I'm beginning to believe there is something to that. The problem with Danskos for me is that the heel is so high that not only to I tend to trip myself, but also Mark is only 1/4 inch taller than I , and I tend to choose footwear that does not make me look like an Amazon next to him.

A lesson about lunch

If kids want a cold lunch for school, they have to tell me. Otherwise, they get hot lunch. On Thursday, I packed lunches for Joel and Savanna, but Noah did not tell me he wanted a lunch, so I did not pack one for him. We got in the car and I dropped the kids off at school like any other day.

When I picked up Noah in the afternoon, he said, "You ditched me!" I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me this sad story:

When Noah was in the garage that morning putting on his shoes and getting his backpack (everyone in our family has a shelf in the garage for all their shoes and backpack), he noticed his lunchbox sitting on the floor by the shoe shelf. So he picked it up because he thought I had packed him a lunch. At their school, they have to order a hot lunch first thing in the morning because the lunches are delivered from the district kitchen. When he opened his lunchbox at lunchtime, he found that it was empty, and he had not ordered a lunch because he thought he had one. He thought I had played a mean trick on him. It turns out that the day before, he had just dropped his lunchbox on the floor when he came in the house, and I hadn't noticed it to make him put it away in the house.

The lunch lady did give Noah something to eat, and Noah is a very resilient, "whatever" kind of kid, so he survived.

Everyone will be much more careful to put away their lunchboxes from now on!

The Book Thief

I admit I am a book snob. Somewhere along the line I fell in love with Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen et al. I love the classics. I love them as works of art, and pieces of true literature. I've had the philosophy that the only good author is a dead author--with the exception of Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my top pieces of perfection in literature--a beautiful story, and yet so much symbolism, immagery and deep meaning if you want to look for it. I like novels that have some literary value--not just a fun or exciting story.

I read all the Harry Potter books. I did enjoy the last 6 of them, and I loved the storyline of all 7 of them. But JK Rowling's writing left much to be desired--I couldn't even finish the first book. She did get better with each book, in my opinion. I understand these books were not written to be great works of literature, but to be fun and exciting stories which got millions of children to read who otherwise would not have. Props.

I heard raves about Twilight. I bought the first book and excitedly started to read it. Within 3 pages, I knew I was in for torture. Again, loved the story, hated the writing. Is that a strong enough word? Like HP, I understand that these books were not written to be works of art, but just a means of telling a story.

Meanwhile, I was ingesting Charles Dickens like I was starving. Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations.... This guy could tell a story, write satire, foreshadow like nobody's business, symbolize, and use literary devices better than anyone else. Truly meaty novels.

I was sure I would never find another book by a living author (other than TKAM) that was not only so beautiful it makes you cry, but also so deep and symbolic and full of metaphor that you can't believe it. Enter The Book Thief.

I bought this one on recommendation from my sis. She reads much more than I do, and she said this was her favorite book of the last year. So I gave it a chance. I could not put it down. It was so beautiful, inspiring, heartbreaking, and so amazing. I admit that I got teary in the last part of the book.

Next up is I Am The Messenger by the same author. I'm hoping it makes me as happy as The Book Thief.

Catching up

I took a little leave of absence from blogging. I'm not sure why--perhaps nothing seemed bloggable. Also, I've been to busy to upload pics from the camera, and what fun is a blog post without a picture? I still haven't done the pictures, but here I am anyway.

Christmas break was great. I love it when the kids are home. There is something magic about having teenagers and little kids in the same house--especially when they adore each other. I'm not saying that they all get along all the time, especially some certain combinations; however, the little kids adore the big kids, and the little kids love to play with the big siblings.

We bought an air hockey table and also table tennis for Christmas this year. We decided that since the pool table was ultra-delayed last Christmas, we would plan to have the 2 new games delivered a week before Christmas. That way, if they were late, they would be on time, and if the weather got crazy like it did last year, we had a little buffer. Everything went perfectly, though and the games arrived on December 19th. I guess it spoiled the Christmas surprise, but it sure was fun to see the kids faces when they came home from school and heard an air hockey table in the basement. Truly, I love the sound of air hockey. I had not played table tennis since proba I've still got a few moves leftover from my glory days. I can use a little more practice, and luckily with 9 people in our house, I can usually talk somebody into playing with me.

Christmas day was so fun--and relaxing. There weren't a ton of presents to wrap (the 2 basement games were the big family presents). The 2 oldest boys got shotguns. Which leads me to my next story.

You know how usually I have horrible luck with buying things. Generally they come broken, missing parts, or are otherwise defective. This year, we did 99% of our shopping without going to a store, and got free shipping on nearly everything. Every single thing I ordered online arrived complete, on time, and in perfect condition. It was a Christmas miracle. The only issue we had was with these dang guns we bought from BiMart. It ended up costing me not one trip to the store--but 3.

Mark took the guys to buy the guns on Black Friday. The store, in particular the gun counter, was very busy. As luck would have it, someone who didn't really work in the guns was helping Mark and the boys. They decided which shotgun model they were buying, and were told they had one on the floor, and one more somewhere up in the stock room. An hour later they were home. Two days later as Mark was giving me receipts to file, he noticed he had been overcharged by $70 for one of the guns (which were supposed to be identical). Although the store has a NO REFUNDS OR ECHANGES ON GUNS--NO EXCEPTIONS policy, I spent 2 hours of my time waiting for the manager to figure out what had happened, and he discovered that someone had grabbed the wrong box for one of the guns, and he found the right box, and gave me back $70. I thought we were finished.

On Christmas afternoon as the boys were assembling their shotguns, we discovered that Jacob's gun was indeed a black 12-gage Beneli gun like Abram's, but it was a short barrel, and a completely different kind of gun. Mark braved the NO REFUNDS policy at the store, and the manger totally remembered that I had been there and had been so nice and patient. He exchanged the gun without any hassle.

The moral of the story is: shop online.

I got a new mixer for Christmas. I decided to take my chances with KitchenAid again, because truly I make waaaaaaaaaaay more cookies than bread. I think I'll get a Bosch for Mother's Day. Grandma Bradley was one smart lady, and she had both machines. I always say I want to be just like her. In this way, I will be. I'm just waiting for the extended warranty card to come in the mail. To quote Homer Simpson, "Extended Warranty....How can I go wrong?"

More Christmas to come...as soon as I get to the camera.

A gift idea for the ladies

Some women get upset when they receive practical gifts. I am not one of those people.

I just finished a project here at the house today that made me think, "Wow, I should share this idea for those people who are looking for the perfect gift for that special lady in their lives."

When we finished the basement, we bought the Kohler Cimmaron toilet. It is pretty much uncloggable. I could go into details, but let's just say that in a bathroom shared by 2 teenage boys, the toilet has survived one year without any "issues."

But that is not the best feature of the toilet. The best feature is the seat that came with it. It is "quiet-close" which means it doesn't come slamming down. But better than that is it's easy removal feature.

Why would you want to remove a toilet seat? Have you ever fine-cleaned the toilet seat where it is bolted to the toilet? YUCK. Despite all efforts of toothbrush and toothpick, it never looked completely clean to me. That is, until this lovely toilet seat came into my life. You simply flip up the bolt covers and slide the whole entire seat off the toilet. I usually stick it in the shower (after wiping it off, of course) and hose it down while I simply wipe away any "remnants" of anything that might have been left at the seat/toilet junction. And then SNAP--you just click the seat back on.

Today when I was at Home Depot I walked by the toilet seat aisle. Normally, I don't stop; however, today something made me look. It had never crossed my mind that I could buy this magical seat for our other toilets, but today I knew that is exactly what I must do. For a minute, I thought, "I should just think about it. I can probably buy them online for less money." After all, I needed 3 of them. My handy Droid phone shopper application made quick work of that, and I decided that although I could save $6 overall by ordering online, I would just be spontaneous and buy them today.

The install was a snap--literally. At least, once I got the old ones off--I'll leave out the details.

So if you are wondering what would be an amazing, practical, useful, magical gift that any mom would appreciate--look no further. Just go to Home Depot. Seriously.

Another one bites the dust

I don't know what is up with KitchenAid mixers. Or maybe what is up with me. Anyway, I killed another mixer this week. This one is 1 1/2 years old.

When Mark and I got married, we took back every piece of china and silver to ZCMI and purchased a KitchenAid mixer. This was 17 years ago, and there was pretty much just one model to choose from, and one color--white. I loved that thing. I used it nearly every day for 10 years. By that time, we had 5 kids, and KitchenAid had come out with a 6-quart bowl--very handy for double batches of cookie dough. So I decided the time had come to upgrade, and I handed my old mixer off to a friend.

That 2nd mixer lasted just over a year before some gears stripped out. I took it to a repair shop, and $100 later, had a functional mixer again. About 6 months went by, and something else died in the mixer. I tried to find the part online to fix it, but it wasn't available.

The 3rd mixer lasted for a few years--until it took its last breath during a batch of sugar cookie dough almost 2 years ago. That's when I got the 4th mixer. Perhaps I would have been better off to accept the damaged box Amazon first sent me rather than insisting on a new one. I'll never know. All I know is that I should have taken the $30 extended warranty offer I got in the mail a few months before the warranty ran out.

It appears that a compression fitting on this last mixer has gone bad. The part where you attach the paddle/whisk/hook just completely fell off the mixer--not just the tiny shaft, but the big, round metal part that fits up inside the mixer. That's where the compression fitting is. The part that is acutally attached to the main mixer body has stripped out and can no longer hold onto the piece from the shaft assembly.

Merry Christmas.

To top things off, as I was rolling out the gingerbread cookie dough from the mixer's last stand, my rolling pin started to make a strange crunchy noise. This was the rolling pin I had purchased 19 1/2 years ago when I went away to BYU. I heard the noise and thought, "Man, that sounds like the ball bearings are giving out." Next thing I knew, a bunch of little metal balls came pouring out one end of the rolling pin. I finished my cookies and dumped my rolling pin in the trash.

I took a trip with Zacky to Williams-Sonoma today to get a new rolling pin and to LOOK at their mixers. I have never had a rolling pin without handles, but I bought one today, and I think it is going to make me very happy.

Now I just need to figure out a new mixer. Do I go for the 5th KitchenAid and splurge $30 for the extended warranty? KitchenAids are so pretty, and they don't jump around on the counter like a Bosch. Also, I make WAAAAAAAAAAY more cookie dough than bread, and I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the Bosch cookie dough. But it has been a loooooong time since I have used a Bosch, and 800 watts is nothing to shake a stick at.

Of course, what I would really like to buy is this:The Hobart Commercial countertop model. Only $2035.11. How many KitchenAid mixers could I go through before this was paid for?

Vegas Vacation

We are back from Las Vegas. We never would have chosen it for a vacation destination, but because the timing of their marathon, and the purported "flat and fast" course, it worked out to be our choice. I hadn't been to Las Vegas in about 17 years. My, how things can change. Many beautiful hotels, but so much yucky stuff as well. The yucky stuff was overwhelming to me, and I just wanted to hide.

We stayed at Mandalay Bay, and we pretty much didn't leave the hotel. It was a beautiful place, with about 400 restaurants inside. The attached convention center was the host of the marathon expo, and the start and finish lines were in the parking lot. We drove the course the first day, and then parked the car and didn't use it again until we drove to the airport. Honestly, there was nothing I wanted to do or see in Vegas. If only it had been warm enough for Mandalay to have their beach open.

Some of you think Las Vegas is flat. Overall, it is. Especially if you live somewhere like I do, you could say that Las Vegas is "flatter than..." The marathon organizers had promoted their "flat and fast course." The did not publish the topography of the course until one week before the race. I know why. The course was NOT flat. The first 10 miles of the half and the full were the same course--the strip. We started at Mandalay Bay and ran about 6 1/2 miles north--downhill, at which point we turned around heading south on the strip--uphill. Who makes a 1/2 marathon that has the last 1/2 of the course continuously uphill? The full marathoners took off at Treasure Island and headed west toward the mountains. They were uphill until mile 20. Not rolling hills where your legs get a little reprieve--solidly uphill. Anyway, let's just say that my second half of the race was slower than the first half.

Some people might think of Las Vegas as a warm winter destination. It's not. We came prepared for weather because---wait for it-----we checked the weather forecast! What a concept. 27,600 runners were there, and I think about 10 of them had checked the forecast before packing their bags. Doesn't everyone look at the weather for a place they are going on vacation? The race promoters had advertised an average high temperature of 58 degrees for December 6th. However, because of my higher reasoning skills, I did the math. The race started at 6:15 in the morning, at which time I knew it was not going to be the daily high temperature. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, I learned that the average morning low was 39 degrees. Right there I knew I would not be wearing my shortie shorts and a tank top. But then we went a step further and checked the actual weather, and discovered that a cold front was heading to Vegas--projected morning lows of 32-34 for the days we would be there. So into the suitcase went the tights, gloves, sleeves, hats, jackets. We were perfectly dressed for the weather. But we sure heard a LOT of angry runners complaining about how they didn't know it was going to be so cold. All I could say was DUH!

We had chosen Mandalay Bay for our stay because the race started and ended in its parking lot. Sometimes race logisics are very tricky if you have to wake up super early to take a shuttle to the starting line, or find parking at the finish line, etc. We just stayed in our warm and cozy hotel room until 6 AM, at which time we joined all the suckers out there who had been in the cold for more than an hour. No 32-degree port-a-potty for us at the start line!

Mark had high hopes of qualifying for Boston, but he also knew that this was only his 2nd marathon since getting back into running, and it might not happen. He trained so hard and diligently, and in the end his time was 3:23:29--which is lightning fast. But he needed 3:20:59 to qualify for Boston. So close, but so far away. This was easier to take because the Boston Marathon has already closed its registration for the race in April, and so he wouldn't have been able to run it until April 2011 anyway. He has already registered for the Newport, Oregon Marathon in June, at which time I have no doubt he will shave that 2 1/2 minutes off of his time and be Boston-bound.

I had originally planned to run 1:58:00 for my race. But when I found out a month ago that I had a stress fracture in my tibia, I had to cut my running way back. I hadn't run more than 9 miles in about 6 weeks, and I had been alternating days of running 5-6 miles with swimming for the past few weeks. My Seattle time last summer was 2:22:30, and I knew I could still kill that time. I decided before the race that if I could come in around 2:05 that I would be happy. I started out holding a good 8:45-9:00 pace, but that was on the downhill first half. When we turned uphill at mile 7, I slowed down a bit to 9:30. And then, at mile 11 my IT band decided to cause a problem. I stopped to stretch for about 3 1/2 minutes, and then I started running slowly. I discovered that if I kept at about a 10:30 pace--which made me crazy to run that slowly--I could run with minimal pain. Any faster, and the IT band would force me to stop and walk, and I was determined to NOT WALK the last 2 miles. So I made it. I found a kick in the last 300 yards, and crossed the finish line where my knee promptly gave out. My time was 2:08:45. 14 minutes faster than Seattle. I am registered for the 1/2 in Seattle next summer, and I can't wait to see how fast I can get in the next 6 months.

By the way, I never want to go to Las Vegas again. Except to fly there in order to get to St. George, of course.