Lazyman Ironman 2014

I did it!! Last Friday (March 29) I finished the BYU's Lazyman Ironman.

Background: Every October and March, BYU Student Wellness does an event they call the Lazyman Ironman where you do everything in a month that you would do for an ironman race (112 miles cycling, 26.2 miles running, and 2.4 miles swimming).  You go to their office, pay your $15 at the beginning of the month and they give you a tracking card to fill out as you do your activities throughout the month. Then you come back at the end of the month, turn in your card and they give you a very cool t-shirt. 

I first heard about it last March and thought it sounded fun, but I wasn't sure it was possible right then. So every month since then I've kept track on my calendar how much I was exercising, and slowly but surely I've gotten closer to the goal.  I also took two rounds of swimming lessons, since I really didn't know how to swim before.  And I bought a Rec Center membership so that I could exercise consistently (they have a childcare center where I can take Noel for only $2/hour) Really it has been awesome to see the progress I've made. 

So in October I signed up and really thought I would make it, but, alas, my kids all got lice and that pretty much took me out of commission for several weeks. Blah!!!! So I could never recover.

But I kept trying and this month I did it.  I had to exercise for about an hour a day 6 days a week and sometimes, 2 times a day, but it was totally worth it.  And at the end, I finished and I got a t-shirt, which was my real guiding purpose the whole time.  I love t-shirts!! And I made John take me out to lunch at Olive Garden, one of my favorite restaurants. And now I need some new exercising goals but I'll have to think about that later, and I need to sleep for about a month.

Goals for the New Year 2014

I know it is the end of January, but I'm just now getting to writing down my goals.  I've been thinking for several weeks about what goals I want to make this year. So here's what I've come up with and my plan to accomplish each one:

1. Read 100 books this year.This is a standard goal of mine. I read 68 books last year but I'm going to try again this year.That breaks down to around 9 books a month.  I've been reading a lot lately so I've just about made my goal for January.  I also have decided to try recording my books on Goodreads as I read.  I'm not necessarily going to do a review for each book I read anymore--that just seemed to be too much for me.  I still may occasionally do a review on my book blog when I really like a book.

2. Do fun things with my kids.  Right now that looks like rotating through the kids to take them to BYU basketball games. I have 2 season tickets so I just rotate through each one going with me.  It has been pretty fun.  I'm also going to have more Saturday Sewing Days at Grandma's.  We did that on again and off again last year and the kids love it. Lastly, I'm going to try to take my kids at least once a week, all together, to the library.  We like participating in the library programs and I love that the kids love the library, even if it costs me money in lost books and stress in keeping track of the books. It's totally worth it.

3. Earn my DMBA cashback award.  This pretty much means exercising most days in a week for 30 minutes and completing their little individual challenges.  I feel like I'm already on top of this one.  I'm half-way through my first challenge.  I also used my $200 from last year to go towards a membership for John and I at the Rec Center.  I like going there and they have inexpensive childcare so I can go when the girls are at school and take Noel.  My training goal right now is to successfully complete a Lazyman's Ironman in a month. That's when you do all of the things for an Ironman within a month's time (112 miles biking, 26.2 miles running, and 2.4 miles swimming).  I've been trying to do this every month for about 9 months.  Like my 100 books, I haven't done it yet, but I'm getting closer every month.  Some day I'll get there.

4. Make something for each of my own family's birthdays (John and the kids).  I'm well on my way to making Adam's but I'll have to get thinking for everyone else.  Fortunately, we don't have our first birthday for a while yet.  I would also like to remember to do something like a card for extended family's birthdays.  I did that for my brother and sister that had birthdays earlier this month, but I've missed quite a few people in John's family already.  I'll have to do some catch-up.

5. Read the Book of Mormon this year.  Our bishop challenged our youth to do this and I figure I can do it too.  Reading the Book of Mormon is always a good thing. I try to take a few moments each morning after I take the kids to school to read.  It works out ok, I just need to be more diligent about it.

6. Have Family Home Evening consistently.  We have a hard time sometimes.  But we have a new plan and I'm hoping it will work. We've teamed up an older kid with a younger kid and are going to work through the Nursery Manual for lessons.  We'll see how it goes.

7. Have Family Scripture Study more consistently. We're going back to reading scriptures over dinner.  That has been our most successful approach and I'm going to try to be better about it.

8. Finish 5 quilts this year.  I have a quilt over half-way quilted and another that is all ready to start quilting so I feel like I have a pretty good start.

9. Write in my journal at least 5 days a week. I'm still trying to write in the morning, but I may need to tweak my approach because lately it hasn't been all that successful.

10. Cook at least two meals a week for my family. That probably sounds funny to some people but I kind of jumped off the cooking bandwagon.  John started cooking and he is a lot pickier than me (because of health concerns) so I got a little frustrated.  But I'm feeling better about things lately and I find chopping very relaxing so I'm ready to try again.  I also have come to really like crock pot things that I can do during the day and just serve at dinner because our afternoons tend to be really hectic.  We'll see how it goes.

11. Transcribe at least one more year of my journal. I've done the first five years of our marriage, and have a pretty good start on the next couple of years, but I really want to buckle down and get the next 10 done.  I write in my journal quite a bit so it is not an easy task but I love the book I made of the first 5 years and would love to get a sequel ready.  Plus it is always fun to review my journals and remember all the good things that have happen to us over the years.  This will require some more diligence sometime during the day to being productive.  I'll have to figure that out.

12. Write on my blog at least once a month. Life is kind of crazy but I think I can make time at least once a month on Sundays to do some kind of update of what has been going on in my life.  It is good for me to write and think and I like it. And I already have January's done.  Look at me!

13.  Lastly, this year, I want to strive to be more open to promptings from the Spirit about how I can help those in my family, and people around me in general.  As part of that, I'm going to put cards in my car so that when I feel like someone could use a nice, encouraging note, I have one at hand.  I'm also going to think of more ways that I can make it easier to think of others and make room in my life for the promptings I may receive.

2012 Favorites: Sack Packs

Last year I learned how to make sack packs and I loved it.  I ended up making all the kids packs for our big trip last summer.  I even tried out doing some appliques and printing some pictures.  I basically told the kids they could have whatever they wanted on their pack.  The hardest part was finding the nylon material for them.  I found a pattern on the internet and used an Adidas pack that I had to supplement that.  Unfortunately I lost the link to the pattern, but I just used google to find it.  Here are pictures of the ones I made throughout the year, for the trip and for various people's birthdays.

Adam's Nap Time

This is what Adam did the other day at nap time:

He colored his entire hand blue.  When I asked why he did it.  He said, "I just wanted to see what it would look like blue."  Now he knows.  It seriously reminded me of that all blue girl on the X-men movie.  I tried to be serious, because I really don't want him doing this on a regular basis, but it really made me laugh.  Emma once colored her whole leg and foot brown.  It's eery how similar they are sometimes.  Unfortunately he got some on his face and then hit himself in the eye with his laptop toy.  Kate put a little bandaid on below his eye and he totally looked like a prize fighter.  I forgot to take a picture but it was hilarious.  I love that boy.

2012 Favorite Things: Taking Piano Lessons

Last year I did something I've wanted to do for a long time: I started taking piano lessons.  I took piano off and on for about 3 or 4 years when I was a kid.  I stopped taking lessons when I went into 7th grade because I was in the band and I thought it was too much to do both.  But I kept playing.  I've always loved playing the piano.  It is a total relaxer for me.  I used to play when I was stressed in high school or waiting for a date.  But I'm just ok and I really don't like playing in front of other people.  I had a traumatic recital experience when I was little.  I was in the middle of my memorized piece and my mind just went blank.  I hadn't brought the music so I just stopped and went back to my seat in the audience.  I was very embarassed.

Anyway, the girls have been taking for a couple of years now from a lady in our ward.  She is super nice and they love it.  I also visit teach her and when she told me she was going to start teaching adults I was very tempted.  When I went home and told John, he encouraged me to take them so I did.  And I have LOVED it.  It is the best thing I've done in years.  I love practicing.  I love playing.  I love the techniques I'm learning.  I'm learning to play a few hymns and I learned a beautiful piece for Christmas.  I also learned one of the themes from the Gwynneth Paltrow "Emma".  Sometimes I play for an hour a day.  Sometimes when I want to yell at my kids, I just go play the piano instead.

Here's some pictures of our piano.  It's about 100 years old and a little out of tune.  But it has great sound, is beautiful (though well-used), and has a lot of character.  My friend sold it to us really cheap probably 10 years ago.  It is finally getting used.  Best purchase ever!!  I can honestly say that taking piano lessons has changed my life for the better and I'm grateful that I have such an awesome teacher. I think my kids are grateful I'm taking piano too.  Piano music is so much better than yelling.

Some favorite things from 2012: Hand quilting

Since I was awful at keeping a blog last year I thought I'd do a few entries that highlight some of my favorite things I did. 

One of my favorite things that I did last year was learn how to hand quilt and I love it.  I've wanted to try it for a while now because my mother-in-law does a lot of handquilting and it is beautiful.  It also interested me because I love to do handwork.  Some people do and some people don't and that's ok, but I do. 

So, one of my other goals for 2012 was to make gifts for people's birthdays and when John's mom's birthday came up I decided to make her a quilt.  When I finished it, I decided to try hand quilting it because it turned out too cool to tie, and I hate machine quilting. And I had a lot of fun doing it.  It was hard at first, but once I got the hang of it, and a few good callouses, I loved it.  So here's what the quilt looked like when I was finished.

Unfortunately you can't really see the quilting, but I just did basic outline quilting.  I based the pattern on an actual Scrabble board, and the names are all the names of the grandkids (when I made the quilt).  I also embroidered the letter tiles using a satin stitch.  It was really fun to make and was one of those things where it actually turned out as cool as you envision it in your head.

That gave me a taste for quilting and then I was off.  I finished a t-shirt quilt that I've had pieced for John for about a year, but now I could finally finish it because I could handquilt it (It was too big to machine quilt). I did mostly outline quilting in this one too, but tried a few more adventurous shapes.  It was really fun.  These are lots of John's t-shirts from high school, his first year at BYU, and his mission.  It was fun to put together and now he can actually use it. I gave it to him officially for Christmas.

And lastly, I quilted a quilt for my sister-in-law that my mom pieced together.  Since it was just squares, I used quilting tape to quilt half square triangeles within the squares.  It was really simple but it turned out great.  The quilting masking tape is another thing I learned about from my mother-in-law. 

I also learned how to do binding which turned out really well.  Here is how it looked on the last quilt:

Learning how to do these things was one of my favorite parts of last year.  They're definitely things I will continue to do and experiement  with.  Yay for hand quilting!!

Family Poems for Poetry Month

In honor of my book club's poetry month I wrote some poems for my family.  I've actually been thinking about doing this for a while.  I wrote these all on our big white board and the kids really liked it. (And, in honor of Emily Dickinson, my favorite poet, I just titled them with numbers.)

1

Life is lovely

But I wouldn't last long

If I didn't have my John.

2

Life is grand.

Life is great.

What would I do without my Kate?

3

Life is stupendous,

But would be scary,

If I didn't have my Mary.

4

Life is a dandy,

But what a dilemma,

If I didn't have my Emma.

5

Life is terrific,

But to tell the truth,

I wouldn't like it without my Ruth.

6

Life is super,

But would be silly,

If I didn't have my Lily.

7

Life is marvelous,

But I'll tell you, madam,

I'd be sad without my Adam.

8

Life is crazy,

But I couldn't cope,

Without the thought of seeing Hope.

9

Life is beautiful,

But I believe

It's not so belle without Noel.

Adam's Christmas Wish List

I asked the kids to make a list of 5 things that they wanted for Christmas.  Here's Adam's list as written down by me (but he pretty much said exactly this):

1. Super Squad socks that always come back (he's tired of losing his socks).
2. Walking crayons that only walk to Adam (he's tired of losing his crayons and he doesn't want his sisters to take them).
3. Unrippable comic book: Supersquad, Star Wars, or Doctor Who (he has a lot of hand-me-down comic books that are falling apart and missing pages).
4. Bag to put everything in that never stops growing (he really likes the Doctor Who notion of things that are bigger on the inside).
5. Dollar that never gets lost.

That boy makes me laugh.  But looking at this with fresh eyes, I guess he must lose things a lot or his stuff gets destroyed.  What a rough life that boys leads. Alas, what can you do when you have so many sisters?!!

What? Things I've realized I don't know about English society

Background:

John has been trying to get me to watch Doctor Who for over a year.  Last year for Halloween, he dressed up like the Tom Baker Doctor.  I had a conversation with my brother in France about this time last year about Doctor Who and I knew next to nothing about it, except that John really liked it and had gotten Emma hooked.  Mostly they were watching the olds 60's and 70's episodes.  I caught a few minutes here and there but found the cheap sound effects and silly aliens a little too much for me.

Last Christmas John and I made a deal that he would watch Babylon 5 with me if I would watch the new Doctor Whos with him.  So I half-heartedly starting watching them with him.  We started on Netflix with the first of the new Doctor Who episodes (Christopher Eccleston as the doctor). The first episode starts out with mannequins that come to life and chase this girl, then the doctor comes out of nowhere and saves her.  It is silly, scary and a little ridiculous all at the same time.  But I kept watching and eventually I came to like Doctor Who almost as much as John.  There's something about being terrified and laughing yourself silly all at the same time.

So it turns out that I have been watching quite a lot of Doctor Who recently.  It is the perfect show to exercise to because it is fast paced, has lots of chasing music, and is just the right length for an exercise session.

In all of this Doctor Who watching, quite a bit of other British TV and Jane Austen exposure, I've never felt very ignorant of their culture.  They speak English.  They have more class issues.  They call a flashlight a torch.  Big deal.

But over the past few weeks, I've realized how little I really know.  Going along with my Doctor Who interest (John would probably call it an obsession, I can be a little obsessive, I admit it), I found a cheap book on my Kindle entitled "Dalek, I Loved You".  It's a memoir about a guy growing up in England loving Doctor Who.  Mostly it's about this guy's life with Doctor Who thrown in.  About 2 pages into this book, I realized I had little to no idea about most of what he was talking about, things that he was throwing out there like they were common knowledge. I found the book fascinating, mostly because it showed me just how much I don't know. 

So here's some of the things I have no clue about:

• His parents saved up all their money to send him to, wait for it, "public" school.  Obviously doesn't mean the same as here.  I still have no idea exactly what it means.
• British children's television.  I had never heard of one show that he named.  No idea.
• Famous British actors.  I thought I knew.  I know Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart, Colin Firth.  Besides the actors associated with Doctor Who, I'd never heard of any of the people he talked about, people he'd dreamed all his life about meeting.
• British geography.  Seriously, I 'm going to have to find a map of England and figure it out, because I basically ignored all place names.  The only ones I'd heard of were things like London, Wales, and Scotland. I'm not afraid to admit my ignorance.
•  Modern British history.  He talked about some wars and massacres I had never heard of. Big, life-changing events and I hadn't the faintest idea.
• British music scene.  The only person he really liked that I knew was David Bowie and almost all the songs he named of his I'd never heard of. 
• What a big deal Doctor Who is.  I seriously had no idea it was so popular. Kind of like Star Trek in the US, with conventions and everything.

There's probably more.  I just kept reading and reading and realizing how uninformed I am about a place from which I spend a fair amount of time watching their TV shows and reading their literature.  It was eye-opening.  But I kind of like it.  It gives me something to learn more about. Realizing your ignorance is always the first step.

Ist Day Without John and We Went to the Zoo

Yesterday we went to the zoo.  Since none of my kids could ever remember going to the zoo I guess it was about time.  Melissa used to work there and she's going back to Utah on Wednesday, so we wanted to go with her.  We got the group discount because we had 2 adults and 11 kids (Missy and Steve met us there).  We also had to pay for parking and list on the form whether we had a bus or a car.  I chose car.  The lady said, "You all came in ONE car?"  "It's a big 15 passenger van."  "Oh."  The highlight of my visit.

It was a little hot but we mostly had a good time.  Noel really liked all the animals and insisted that I make room for her so she could see all the animals.  That was fun to watch. The kids were all really good and stayed with their partners.  If we went again I would bring more water, more hats, and another stroller.  Popsicles at the end seemed to make everyone happy.