And yet, I'm still just not on top of things. I went to watch Christopher run a small triathlon last week. This one was hilarious. On the organizational scale of 1 to 10, this was a pure 1 or 2, and everybody liked it that way. It was basically free (you paid your portion of the pool rental), and was mostly just people who got together and staked out a course, with a person to say "go!" at the beginning. We had a lot of neighbors running, and that was really fun. So I woke the kids up and set them up on a deserted country road, ready for Daddy to bike past. I knew that the lighting would be horrible as he came to me on his way out on the loop (sun directly behind his head), so I had my camera ready to take a picture as he biked on his way out again.
And then I stood there and waved and cheered him on, realizing as he passed me that, oh yeah, I'm holding a camera.
On the plus side, for once I didn't miss him on the bike portion. It would have been hard to miss someone in 80 total racers. But all I have to show for it is his backside.
The finish line consisted of a lady in pajama pants sitting at a folding card table with a cell phone on timer mode and a list to cross off as everyone came in. Oh, and a big orange drink dispenser with Gatorade. Priceless. I wanted a picture of the elaborate "Finish Line", and since Tyler was sticking with Daddy, we included him in the shot.
I should have known better. He had no intention of looking up from his baggie of cereal. Oh well, we had a great morning, even if the pictures aren't something for the picture frame.
The football game that night didn't help, of course. If there was a forfeit button in NCAA Football, BYU pushed it in the third quarter. And Utah just kept going and going . . .
But I don't want to talk about that. The next day was a great day. I have kept in touch with exactly one friend from high school. She is awesome. I went to her wedding last year, and ever since then she has been trying to come out here not only to see me, but to meet her husband's grandparents who were too sick to go to the wedding and live in Ogden (2 hours north of me). She called to tell me they picked this particular weekend. And then they ended up canceling the tickets, since her husband couldn't get off work like they thought he could.
Until Grandpa passed away, and the funeral was the same weekend they originally planned on. So the trip was back on, even if it was shortened. They flew in Friday night and met up with family, and saw Grandma in hospice care. The funeral was the next morning. And Grandma passed away two hours beforehand! So suddenly, it was a double funeral. An aunt joked that she always hated viewings, and would have been very pleased that she squeaked out without one. But the whole family was gathered, and there was certainly no sense in burying the husband and wife separately. I thought that was awesome. Well, as awesome as funerals go, that is.
My friend is Indian, and had only been to Utah once before. So I also enjoyed hearing about her Utah experience. They had funeral potatoes at the luncheon, of course (she's vegetarian, and swore she tasted chicken so her husband just happily ate her helping when he noticed she didn't eat it). Her husband thought it was hilarious when she poked at her green jell-o with whipped cream topping. "I just can't figure this dessert out!" And when we asked if they had fry sauce, a light bulb went off. "That's what that stuff at dinner was! I thought it would be chipotle sauce or something, but it tasted more like Thousand Island dressing . . ."
Of course, I spent the morning running back and forth to get everything in the car for the picnic. With their tight schedule, we met them at a park near the airport, which not only had a great pavilion for our lunch, but a great trail for our kids to ride the bikes we brought, and even a "people's market" with live music in the same park. It was an awesome afternoon. But I forgot two things: serving utensils for the main dish, and my camera. So I'll just have to wait until my friend emails me her pictures, and she is not only mommy to a six month old, but also in her last three years of residency for her specialty. I'll get them someday, I'm sure.
This week I figured I would get out of my funk by doing things with the kids. Some people make crafts and games and things all the time, and I was just thinking I needed to do something like that for my kids when Kaitlyn came to find me upstairs. "Mommy! We need to do make pops!!!"
"What are make pops?"
"Well, first you make a circle, and then you put them in the oven, and then you put a stick in them, and then they are animals!" She told me the show she was watching, and since that show has a craft they do every night we scoured their website. No such thing as "make pops". I eventually had to give up.
Until yesterday, when she came running to tell me that the make pops were on TV again. So I ran to go figure out this mystery. And behold - a "make pop".
Not a craft on the Nina and Star show, as she told me, but a commercial. Ahh, it all made sense now. Of course, I am far too cheap to buy the pan and make animals out of fondant on them. So when I saw how absolutely set she was on this idea, I dug some popsicle sticks up, put some cake batter in our mini-muffin tins, and showed her how to put stick it in there. I was going to make frosting, but she didn't want to wait, and I thought "hey, I'm not going to complain if you want to skip the sugar." It might not be up to my usual standard of craftiness, but the kids thought they were awesome. Actually, Tyler ate them in one bite, and ate so many that he puked on the way to the BYU football game this week, but that's another story. (Thankfully, that BYU football story had a much better ending.)
Oh, and notice the Tinkerbell costume. She couldn't fit into it anymore, and was just about in tears over it. So I told her I would fix it. I was trying to figure out a fancy way to alter it when I noticed a big stain on the back and thought "well, this is just dress up clothes." So I just added some extra in a side seam and called it good. It turns out that I should have thought through what that would do to the fit.
Let's review while Kaitlyn chews on her make pop, shall we? Not only are her arms covered in pen, but this is the only shot where her chest isn't fully showing. The left side hangs so far down that it is entirely indecent. Not that she cares. But I think I need to re-do that outfit to show a little less nipple when I get a chance.
So I thought I would conquer another thing on my to-do list to improve my day. The coat rack was overrun with jackets and backpacks and my purse, so I needed to make another one with hooks spread farther apart. I had Christopher cut the board for me, and then took it from there.
Not so bad from that angle, eh? Try this one.
You can see where the router went a little wonky on top there. What you still can't see from here is the multiple dents where I was trying to screw it into the wall and the screwdriver tipped off a divot in the wood instead. And my husband doesn't like that it isn't even with the other one (I wanted them staggered, since they would bump each other if they were level).
The more I look at these pictures, I'm thinking a funk like this is all in my head. Maybe on another day this post would have been more "look what wonderful things I did lately!"
In fact, I really did enjoy a talk by President Uchdorf at our church meeting tonight, which was broadcast from Salt Lake. He talked about how we need to remember not only that we all have weaknesses that will only go away gradually (as do all the people we think are perfect), but that we need to find the joy in every stage of our life and not wait for some vague time when things will be better. He compared that to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when all the kids were chucking the yummy chocolate bar sadly to the side when they discovered it didn't hold a Golden Ticket. Perhaps that is the key to moving out of this funk: realizing that it is all in my head.
