Spring Break

The flight was fun because the Blacks were also on board. 

We played at the park lots. It's a mighty hike up "heart attack hill" to get there. 

The view of Zion and that one blue mountain is also killer. 

Me and Avery realized the ants are dropping individual pieces of dirt off outside their hole, then turning around to go fetch another grain. Small and simple things. 

We spent a day in Cedar City. 

We died, dead on the sidewalk, of nostalgia. 

Everything was so much the same and so much different! 

And there were our children there - proof that we had grown up and left this place and lived our great lives. 

All the memories. All the doorways in and out of buildings. In and out. up and down the stairs. How many times did we stripe the campus walking back and forth. 

It's like we took a time machine. We were the oldest people there. 

Of all the beloved places, I think the Braithwaite is my top. 

Remember climbing these stairs and being breathless at the top?

By chance I saw my cousin Shellee outside doing a class. Ha! Great timing.

When we got back in the car with our SUU merch, I read my texts...

Aaron had got into an accident at the dairy. 

My stomach dropped right down to the ground.

Happy to report he is doing great. Miracles.

That's his hat on the top of the old barn. 

On the way home we High to Kolob. 

The boys went home with G and G. 

It was fun to have some alone time with Avery. She talked about how excited she is to go to SUU. 

The last night there, we circled up around the fire and had a lovely roast. 

The next day we dropped the kids of at the Kelvingtons...

Then me and Jim went and had a weekend sans kids. 

This year we stayed at the Red Rock.

It was so hot and so fun doing whatever in the whole world you want to do.

We hiked along a desert wash - my favorite. It was hard and hot and so fun to clamber around the rocks, up and up and up.

Then a nap and laying by the pool and good food. 

I loved it all so much. 

 

I is for I

The year is 2020, so here are 20 things about me. 

Or adjacent to me. Or a memory I keep that I don't want to forget. 

1. I found another owl pellet in the forest.

It looked extra creepy, so I brought it home nestled in some bark shaving so that I didn't have to touch it.

I walked up to the house, and there was Jessica out on the street - the perfect audience to help me explore the bones. 

Look at those creepy claws! Jessica insists it's a mole. She recognizes those shovels anywhere. 

2. I've mentioned her before, but I found a new podcast slash hero lady, Mandy Green. 

I love her voice and her story and her insights. She knows Hebrew and Greek and Latin and all the useless languages, and she translates scriptures and ancient texts and I love her female perspective of these old things. Currently she is talking about mother Mary and her back story. It's fascinating. 

Her podcast is "Reflecting Light". 

3. My other hero lady is her majesty, Sydney Cummings. 

She is a fitness game changer.

She never wastes my time, I know I'm going to get a great workout. Sometimes I curse at her in the middle of the workout because it's so hard and I am dying. But then I write to her in the comments things like: "thank you sydney. sorry for what I called you during the burnout round". 

4. While we were painting the downstairs, The Trigger Locks kept showing up on the play list and my brain exploded with nostalgia. Me and Jim listened to that album a lot when we were dating. They are from Southern Utah, so we watched them in a tiny venue in St. George one time. 

I would listen to them over and over because they reminded me of Jim and I had such a huge crush on him. I wrote many papers with that on in the background. I would say The Trigger Locks are a soundtrack to my senior year at SUU.

5. Ugg. My cousin Candice has terminal cancer, so I've been thinking of her a lot. She and I were good friends in our elementary years. Right around fifth grade we grew apart and she moved, and I lost all contact with her. She purposely disconnected with all things Fallon. I talked to her one time at a family reunion years ago before I had kids.

I know this is not about me, but I have anxiety thinking about it. One night I woke up in the wee hours of the night in a total panic attack. My heart was pounding hard and I was so afraid. Just then Andrew came and got into bed with me and I cuddled him close and tight. It helped calm me and ground me, and I was able to fall asleep. 

6. During our Halloween street party, me and Gma Larsen were talking about the smoke from the fire pit stinking up Gpa's suit with smoke stink. It was the suit he was also going to wear to church on Sunday, so that was a problem.

 I said "we have a kit for our washer machine that works like (dry cleaning)." Except I couldn't think of the term "dry cleaning". I sat there snapping my fingers trying to remember that mundane term until finally Laura guessed what I was trying to say: 

Dry cleaning? 

Dry cleaning!

So THEN later in the evening, I was talking to Lindsay about something, I can't even remember what, and she said something about (dry cleaning) except she couldn't thing of the term "dry cleaning". 

I detected what she was trying to say and I yelled "dry cleaning!" 

haha. I was so excited to tell her about how I couldn't remember that term either!

I live for stuff like that...stupid little coincidences that are meaningless, but somehow I feel like they are so meaningful. 

Why would that dumb term slip both of our memories in the same night? It's absurd. 

7. This is a dumb memory:

But one time in college I said "man alive!"

and my friend said "what did you say? what does that mean?"

and I was like, "you know - man alive - it's a saying."

and he didn't know what I was talking about.

Then a week later, he came and told me that he was watching a Simpson's episode, and a character went into a cave and exclaimed, "Man alive! There are men alive in here!"

ha ha. Good stuff. 

8. A few nights ago, the missionaries came over to teach our family a lesson. The Blacks were also at our house, so they joined in the discussion. 

The Elders gave us all a post-it with one of our family member's names on it, and we had to write three things we love about that person. 

Andrew got Jim, and here is what he wrote:

1. he farts loud

2. nice abs

3. he could buy a mansion

First of all...shaking my head, Andrew.

But second, we went around and said a few nice things about each other, and there was laughter and chaos and it was thick with the rich and lovely. 

The Blacks have always been our top social cohort, but this past year we have become "one household" practically, and I'm so thankful to be in the same boat as them in these muddy waters. 

9. I love all the cool features on the trails at Galbraith. I've already talked about this, but it's one of my favorite things here in my old age, 

to stumble upon these interesting things hidden up in the forest. 

Plus I'm usually with great company. 

10. I am currently reading "The Golden Spruce". It's nonfiction about the logging that went on around the PNW and up into BC back in the early days of logging. It's now telling about a man who went and chopped down a giant, rare, sacred Golden Spruce in protest of the decimation of the old growth forests. 

It's crazy how much our society changes in such a short time. 

I'm also about to start Lord of the Rings again because Lisa just started it and she has NO idea what it's about. Today she was reviewing the first chapter; about her curiosity about this strange ring. She has no front loaded information about its powers.

11.  Today we had a giant craft day for "choose your own school adventure" Friday. 

There were kids and crafts strewn about the house, and three dogs having a ball in the back yard. 

Us moms sat on the living room floor and hen pecked while making yarn crafts.  Then the girls joined us moms on the floor and the boys went outside to play tackle football. 

12. Remember on Thanksgiving morning when Lisa and I were running at Point Whitehorn and I found that gnome rock? Well a bit further down the trail we found another painted rock that said, 

DON'T WRONG THE FAE

Neither of us knew what "the fae" was, and not wanting to accidentally "wrong the fae", we googled it.

The fae is fairy folk.

So I immediately second guessed my decision about putting the gnome rock in my pocket. Is that "wronging the fae?" I didn't know. We had a moral dilemma on our hands that we wrestled with for a handful of time. 

I turned the rock over  in my hand and it said, quite cheerfully:

"keep or leave somewhere new!"

so I kept it. 

The fae were not wronged that day, by us. 

13. Ok here is another silly but fabulous coincidence. It involves me, Jessica, Roxanne, and her son Das.

One day us three moms met to go on a hike. We were standing at my front door.

Roxanne handed Jessica a sealed envelope and said, "this was in the book you lent Das."

Jessica laughed and said "ooh I hope there's money in it."

As she opened it, I recognize the card, and a 20 dollar bill fell out. I recognized the handwriting as well. 

It was a card from me! 

I had given her the book "PNW Foraging" for her birthday 2 YEARS AGO. 

She loves to forage for food and so does Das. 

In that two years, she hadn't seen the card I left in the book, and two years later - here she is opening it in my doorway. I shook my head at all the serendipity. 

(The 20$ was butter money for a cake she had made me.)

14. Oh boy...6 more to go. I'm running out of things to talk about. 

How about my friends. I love them.

If at any other time of my life I had just ONE of these friends, I would be so lucky.

But I have 4 of the greatest friends, all so different: 

Lisa is my girlfriend. She supplies the words I can't think of. She springboards all the pretentious ideas and metaphors and stores them up and brings them out when they are ready to be woven into other ideas. 

Lindsay is the wise owl. She is the adult in the room. She shows me how to parent correctly. 

She says the jokes under her breath, and then because I hear the joke and find it hilarious, I say the joke loudly and get credit for being funny. 

Jessica is off the wall, never know what you will get. She is funny and ridiculous. She is the zoo keeper and the forager. She wears the swamp socks and walks through the mud puddle to catch the frog. All the children want to be around her.

Roxanne will go to the end of the trail, to the top of the cliff, to the twentieth mile. She will bring the advice of a mom with teenagers along with her. She is the most similar to me, but a really cool, red headed version. 

I wonder what I bring to the table. I am the vanilla, oatmeal, reliably sturdy white canvas to their art. 

15. My family. I love them. 

I really do. 

One day we were walking around Padden, and Avery said "my mom hates her kids". 

It killed me. It literally made me cry. She later apologized and told me she didn't know what she was thinking. 

But at the time I was offended: yes - the mother who does all the things and takes them to all the places and cleans and cooks and teaches and clenches up all her muscles in hope that the kids are at peace and have joy... "hates her kids".

But also: she didn't say it for no reason. I am pretty demonstrative when I need a break from my kids. I let them know, clearly, that I need a break. I say out loud that I need to be alone. 

It's easily translated into "my mom hates her kids."

So how do you balance letting the children see that you are a human - more than a vacuum cleaner/dishwasher, but also help them understand that that doesn't mean I "hate my kids". 

Love can be shown in the forcing them outside to get their knees scraped up, and love can be shown in forcing them to do the list of chores. 

Love can be shown in me leaving for a few hours so that we can have a break from each other for a while and be excited to be together again.  Especially when there is no school to provide the much needed distance between us.

I love my kids. They are my precious treasures.  

16. Tonight Andrew fed Koda dinner and said to her, "It's my special recipe!" 

I laughed and asked, "the kibble is your special recipe?"

and he said "yeah she doesn't know where it comes from."

17. Me and Evan and Koda just got back from a night walk around the neighborhood. He counted all the houses that have Christmas lights (65). He's so fun to go on walks with because he gets a kick out of the absurd things that happen along the way - like when we passed a lady walking her dog and Koda got excited and barked a bit, she yelled "stop it!" at Koda. Me and Evan giggled. 

18. Avery has been working tirelessly at making magic happen this season. Yesterday she made a coupon book for Evan as a Christmas present, but she couldn't wait until Christmas for him to open it, so he opened it an hour after she wrapped it. He has already used up three of the coupons (empty dishwasher, clean up poop, put on socks - he has a weird thing about bare feet). 

I looked out the window and saw her out there cleaning up dog poop and I felt so lucky to have her as my oldest child. She works so hard at making everyone happy. 

19. So close. 

I love Sufjan Stevens's Christmas album. My current favorite song is Sister Winter.

20. Jim is in Vegas taking his check ride right this very second. He's been in the sim for hours and should emerge in the next half hour with the best feeling in the world of being DONE with a giant test hanging over his head. 

I miss him. He's been gone since Wednesday. 

I watch an episode of The Queen's Gambit every night after the kids are in bed as a reward for a job done "just ok".