Backyard fun

It has been a long, long, long process of getting our back property into a useable condition. First the logging, then the lawsuit, then the replanting, then the care-taking of newly-planted trees, grading, more fill, more grading, more county troubles, lots of angry idiots across the river, lots of angry idiots at the county, more fill, more grading, more logging, and finally last summer the finished grade, irrigation system and planting of grass and shrubs. That was at the end of summer, so we didn't really get a chance to enjoy the fruits of our labor. But we have been making the most of it this year.

The picture above is of Jake mowing the lawn a few weeks ago. He decided to write his name in the lawn. And yes, we really do make our boys mow the lawn with a non-riding mower.

Monday was so warm and nice that we played outside all day. The kids played baseball for hours, and only lost 2 balls over the cliff in the river.

Other big news this week is that Aubrey got her braces off. Her teeth are so beautiful. She has had some type of braces or retainer since she was 8, so it is very fun to see her without any extra hardware.

Run, Jill! Run!

I am ready for summer. Saturday was the first day I have been able to run wearing shorts and short sleeves. It was amazing. Yesterday and today also brought the world a peek of my albino legs. Running in 50-degree weather is much better than the 20s, 30s, and even 40s. I actually preferred the super cold mornings of January-March to mornings when it is in the 40s. It was so much easier to know what I needed to wear when it was below freezing; when the temperature is in the 40s, it is almost certain that I end up too hot or too cold.

Aside from my winter running wardrobe being boxed up, here's the update on the marathoners: Mark is running a lot faster and further than I do.

Before I go on, I must tell you that Mark is very encouraging and supportive of my running. He is always telling me how great it is that I can go an put down 6 miles every morning like it's nothing, or run 10 miles on a Saturday. He really is incredible and proud of me.

Sometimes I have to kick myself when I start thinking about how wimpy I am that my longest run thus far is 10 and he can run 20. It takes all I have to keep a 10-minute-per-mile pace, and he is down in the 7's. He was made to run, and he has a lot of willpower to really push himself.

But I must remember not to compare. He has been running for years--sure, only 3-5 miles a day, but his body was used to running. I only really started in January. I've gone from 0 miles to 10-at-a-time, and I must say I am proud of that. I never thought I would be able to run even 5 miles! The other fact I keep reminding myself when I start to compare my running to Mark's is this: he was born with a natural ability to perform physical activity without looking like a freak or using all the wrong muscles. I was not. I have never been able to do anything sports-related.

To illustrate this point, I will tell you all a sad story about 11-year-old Jill. She was on a soccer team, and her dad was the coach. Jill's parents tried for years to give Jill every opportunity for physical activities that might help her lack of coordiation. Dance lessons were a complete waste of time, money, and hideous costume making. Soccer was a more useful investment, but Jill was still the worst player on the team. It seemed that Jill always ended up as goalie. She tried the other positions, but she never scored a goal, or assisted a goal. But goalie was a pretty safe place for her to not mess things up too bad. One day, when Jill's team was playing their arch-rival team (whom everyone knew cheated and they hated us as much as we hated them), Jill was once again the goalie. She did a pretty fair job that day. Until she caught a ball and drop-kicked it right over her head and into the goal, scoring the winning point for the other team. She never played soccer again.

Anyway, I'm way over that.

Mark is whittling his projected marathon finish time down to around 3:30. I'm hoping to finish my half-marathon in about 2:15. I'm really excited for my sister to come run with me. She is doing the full marathon, but at least I'll have her to run with and keep me going. Then she's on her own once I duck out of the race.

Some very good news is that at this point I am able to run without IT band pain. I believe it is partially thanks to my sweet new Saucony shoes, and partially to the strengthening exercises from physical therapy. I have also figured out that on long runs, if I stop after 3 miles to stretch out my.......gluteal muscles.....it also helps prevent IT band pain. So far so good. We'll see how 11 miles goes this Saturday.

Cookie Time

Our stake hosted the youth dance this month, which was Saturday night. My cookies were requested for the refreshments, so I set my new record for number of cookies made in one day--somewhere around 300. I ended up with about 100 left over, but that was actually convenient because then I took them to church the next morning and had my Young Women make their moms a little goodie bag for mother's day--and it looked like I actually planned it.

I have never taken pictures of a baking marathon before, but I shot a few on Saturday to post here. The dance decor theme was Luau. Chocolate Chip cookies I couldn't make fit into the the theme, but I made them anyway. I was going to make sugar cookies with a hibiscus-shaped cookie cutter, but then I had a better idea--HULA DANCERS. I got my gingerbread girl cutter out and went to town. Aubrey made the grass skirts and I made the pink flower leis. I think they are the cutest sugar cookies I have ever made.

Birthday Boys

Our birthday season got started last week. Joel starts us off April 30th with the family birthdays. Then we have one birthday a month through October, with 2 in June and August. They are all nicely spaced out, and away from the holidays.
Joel is 10, which is amazing. But what is even more amazing is that Abram is 15! I am the mother of a 15-year-old, and that makes me feel so old.
Joel wanted a Garfield cake. Random, I know. But that is what he requested. I was hoping the old Krispy Kreme donut cake would win, but it didn't, so I pulled out my cake decorating supplies and came up with a dang good Garfield, if I say so myself.
It tasted excellent, too. I usually do not like cake, but this one was pretty good.

Abram's birthday was Saturday, and Mark took the kids to see Star Trek. They loved it, but Zack said it was TOO SCARY FOR ME. I stayed home to bake a billion cookies, which I will blog about next. I do want to go see Star Trek, though. Abram then went to a dance on his birthday night, and I tagged along to chaperone and feed kids. It was a fun night.
Now we have a few weeks before Savanna's June birthday. She usually plans things out extremely well for me. Her birthday list is on my desk ready to go.

Just call me Dumbo

Not because of my ears, not because of my size. All because of my magic feather.

I have been having horrible problems with my IT bands while running. If you don't know, you have an iliotibial band that attached at the ilium of your pelvis and runs all along the outside of your leg, attaching to your tibia just below the knee. This fibrous band provides stability to the outside of your knee. But many runners have trouble with the IT band actually getting between the patella and the tibia where it gets pinched and causes unbelievable pain while running.

I started having trouble once I got up over 5 miles. I can go anywhere from 3-6 miles without trouble, but most longer runs lately have ended badly. I went to a physical therapist last week who helped me with my running technique, and also noted that if he didn't see both of my hips coming out of the same body, he would have thought they were on 2 different people. They are built differently, with very different ranges of motion. I got a sheet of stretches and strengthening exercises to help me. Supposedly, if you can strengthen certain muscles in your hip area, those muscles will help your IT band stay where it is supposed to. But the PT said that part of my trouble could also be that I might have the wrong shoes and I needed to go to a running store to be properly analyzed and fit.

If you could shop at the Nike employee store and get everything at 50% off, which type of running shoes would you buy? Me too. I knew that I had a normal arch, and also that I had a slight overpronation problem. I did my research and decided on a Nike shoe that seemed the best for me.

I went to the running store yesterday, and the guy working there watched me run for a bit, and he said that my shoes were the best ones Nike made, but that they were all wrong for me. He came out with 2 shoes that he said would be what I needed. I tried them on, and took a little run around the block. It was incredible! Turns out I WAS wearing the wrong type of shoes. I had a good Nike stability shoe, but I needed a "motion control" shoe, because I was really rolling my feet to the inside with each step. My new Saucony shoes became my magic feather. Turns out that even if you can buy Nikes for 50% off, they end up being more expensive in the long run because you have to pay for physical therapy and Saucony shoes after all.

I wore my magic feathers this morning on my run. I made it all 5 miles without even one hint of IT band pain. Do you belive in magic? Time will tell, but I sure enjoyed my run this morning for the first time in weeks.

Waxing poetic

My favorite sign that spring is here is the bright gold forsythia blossoms. They give me hope each year that warm weather is on the way. This year, the forsythia, and everything else, bloomed much later than usual. But I still got the same happy rush when I saw it each day on my morning run. But the blossoms are falling off now, leading to my other spring favorites: magnolia and dogwood blossoms. I love the cup-and-saucer shaped magnolia flowers, and also the plain-but-pretty 4-petal pacific dogwood flower. And just as I love to see the forsythia nothing but a big burst of yellow, I love just as much to see the chinese dogwoods in a big burst of nothing but pink.

Up until this spring, I have had to admire all of these things in other people's yards. But this year we have our own, and it is so fun to walk through the backyard each day and see how things are growing and changing. We had a brutal winter, so it is a relief to see that 99% of our plants survived.

All of this changing of the seasons, and the loss of the forsythia blossoms has reminded me of my favorite Robert Frost poem. So beautiful in its literal sense of the forsythia blossoms being gold and not staying, but so powerful in its symbolic sense of life changing and perfect moments lasting not long enough. It also makes me think of how much my kids have grown--my oldest will get his learner's permit in 2 weeks and my baby doesn't wear diapers any more! Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour.....

Thanks to Mrs/Ms. Dustman/Daniels/Star/Star-Hart in 9th grade who made us memorize a billion poems so that I can pull them out of my brain at random moments such as this. That whole story could go on for a very long time. She was a great teacher, she just experienced quite a lifestyle change midway through my 9th grade year, if you know what I mean.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Dishwasher saga finale

Remember 2 months ago when my incredible new dishwasher arrived damaged? And how Sears told the installers to go ahead and install it and they would send another one in a few days? And remember how a week later when I called Sears they told me that I was lying and they never would have allowed anyone to install a dented dishwasher? Well, 35 phone calls later, and 35 different answers later, my new non-dented dishwasher was installed today!

It seems that Sears is unbelievably disorganzied and there are several departments that handle similar things. Customer service tells you they don't handle it, so they transfer you to delivery--delivery transfers you to One Source--One Source transfers you to "Rapid Resolution" who in turn cannot help you and transfers you to delivery--that's right. The same place you started.

Sears has a very odd concept of customer service. After telling you that Sears can do nothing to help you because you are clearly making up a story, someone will call your cell phone out of the blue and tell you that your replacment dishwasher has been sitting at the warehouse for 2 weeks and they are wondering if you're coming to get it. More phone calls, more confusion. And then Sears delivery cannot locate your dishwasher anywhere. In fact, they cannot even find an order under your phone number at all. And they cannot see anywhere in their database that the warehouse has your dishwasher, because there isn't even an order for one.

To top it off, if someone had your phone number, say, more than a decade ago and opened up a Sears account way back then, Sears will try to deliver your replacement dishwasher to that person in a totally different city. They are able to deliver the first one to the address you ordered it from, but the replacement for some reason will go to a total stranger.

After all that trouble, finally on Monday I didn't let the guy from Sears transfer me to anyone else--been there, done that. I made him find the dishwasher (which was at the warehouse--shocking, I know), and notify the installer. I guess that when there was the confusion with our home phone number, somebody had changed the order to be under my cell number.

All that matters is it's here, and it does a beautiful job of washing dishes. I'm just really, really glad I made the first installers leave the dented one. Otherwise, I would have been without a dishwasher this whole time!