No ID, no airplane

We got back from Hawaii last week.  The whole trip was awesome, except for that whole our-car-window-getting-smashed-and-our-wallets-getting-stolen thing.  The pictures are on the computer upstairs and we're not technologically hip enough for our ancient laptop and our ancient desktop to talk to each other.  I'll post some eventually... just enough to make you a little jealous.

Until then, here are some highlights:

Most beautiful moment- Hiking down to the beach at dawn and watching the sun rise.

Most illegal moment- Breaking into a state park to go hike a waterfall.  (It seems like no one in Hawaii goes to work before 10.  Seriously people, that's 1 o'clock Arizona time.  I've been up since 2.)

Most relaxing moment- Chilling out on the soft fluffy sand and playing frisbee with Tyler for hours.

Most obnoxious moment- Trying to talk the lady at Quick Cash into giving us our money that Tyler's parents wired to us when we didn't have an ID.

Most touching moment- We attended church at some random ward in Honolulu.  We didn't know the family that was moving away, but that didn't stop me from crying like a baby when they invited the moving family to the front and sang "Aloha 'Oe."  Then people from the ward came up and gave them leis and kisses and said their goodbyes.  Tyler thought I was a little bit crazy because we didn't know these people, but it was so sweet, I felt like I knew them.

Tastiest moment- Tie between Thai Thai restaurant in Volcano that had the best pad thai and a pineapple stir fry thing that were THE MOST DELICIOUS THINGS I've eaten in forever.  We ate it so fast that the waitress was actually surprised.  AND Cheeseburger in Paradise in Waikiki.  We both had the California Burger which was the closest approximation of the Hana Burger from Sylvesters in Los Osos (the #1 best hamburger in the universe) that we could find.  It was pretty delicious, not as good as the Hana... but I think that would be impossible.

Saddest moment- Having to call the kids and tell them that they wouldn't let us on our flight because we didn't have IDs and that we would be home the next day instead of that night.

Most awe-inspiring moment- watching the fire knife dancers at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  Everything there was pretty cool, we should have spent more time there... but know... we were trying to change out our rental car and talk to the insurance company and what not.

Most ridiculous moment- Having ALL of the stuff in our carry-on being wiped down with the explosive-detecting wipes and the TSA agent seriously considering strip searching us.  US. Me and Tyler Ball.  But I guess you can't ever be too careful.

A huge thank you to my mom for watching our kids for the week, and to Tyler's parents for wiring us money when we were stranded, sunburned and half naked (because they also stole our clothes).

Remember, people are trying to be friendly

I work 12-hour shifts (with a 40 minute commute and 30 minutes for lunch) so I don't get home until about 8:30 or so.  Tyler is such an awesome dad and totally holds down the fort in my absence... sometimes better than I could by myself.  He cooks, he cleans, he takes the kids out to do something fun afterward.  Super dad.

However, he told me that he's tired of all the comments he gets from strangers.  Who knew that random strangers make comments to him too?!  I've been tired of the comments since I was pregnant with Nora, but they just keep on coming:

(when pregnant) "Whoa, you look like you're going to pop!"  "Thanks, I'm 30 weeks."

"What isle did you pick those up on?"

"Oh MAN! You have your hands full!  I love my kids, but I don't miss that stage."

Lillian asks me all the time why people talk to me in the grocery store.  I don't know honey.  I don't know.  Plus don't forget all the abuelas who want to touch my kids' hair and generally freak them out.

I guess being a man out alone with 3 kids, you get your own stranger comments, but they generally revolve on how I must be "having a night off," and imply that Tyler is the bumbling dad, clueless about how to raise children.  This irritates me on many levels, not the least of which is that I am not, in fact, having a night off.

The stereotypes bother me, and also when people commented on how big my pregnant belly was.  (Seriously, why do you think this will go over well?)  So if you see a woman or man with a whole lotta kids in their cart and you have to say something, just say that they're beautiful, and move on.

Kartchner Caverns

My in-laws were here for a week and so we did a whole hecka-lotta things, most of which I failed to get pictures of because I was chasing after one kid or another. One thing that we did and that I did take at least some pictures of is head down to Kartchner Caverns.

The caves are "alive" so you are not allowed to touch anything.  Or take pictures.  Or touch the curbs on the side of the walkway, or let your clothes touch the curbs.  Or talk or complain that you hate the caves while the fussy tour guide is talking (Ethan, I'm looking at you).

Photo appropriated from Arizona State Parks

This is what the formations look like.  It's very pretty, and also impressive how much work two U of A grad students did to keep this thing a secret while trying to get it turned into a state park before it fell victim to vandals and thieves.  The tour was fun for the kids, but a little over their heads what with the guide going on and on about how carbon dioxide dissolved the limestone to form the cave, and the barometric pressure of the cave, and the minerals contained in the various colors of the rock, etc.  I would give a green light to those 5 and over.  What I really wanted to do (Ethan as well) was to climb off the path and wander around, but I think what with the no touching policy, I would have been arrested.

Budding cavers inside the visitor's center

Ethan mostly just wanted to play with the lockers and cried when I dragged him away

After this, I took the two littler kids home for naps while Mark and Darlene took Lillian down to Tombstone.  I was skeptical that they would last very long as it was already pushing 100 at 11:30, but they didn't come back until 6 or so.  I presume they saw gunfights, wandered around Boot Hill, and saw the courthouse.  I know there was sarsaparilla involved (which who knew was spelled like that?) but I didn't see any pictures, so these reports cannot be independently verified.

Thanks for coming Darlene and Mark, and thanks for doing all the dishes while you were here.  Seriously, that was amazing.

Unsinkable Molly ... uh... spider

A few days ago, I put the kids in the bath.  They all three fit, sort of.  There's the usual elbowing and Lillian always wants to lay down forcing the other two to curl up in the corners, but it's fine mostly.  Tyler came up and said he'd wash them, so I went out to fold laundry.  I could hear the usual arguing over toys and space, then they started screaming... like... scared for your life screaming.  I ran back in expecting blood, but instead saw Tyler trying scoop this guy out of the tub.

"MOM," Nora screamed.  "It crawled out of this toy and then it crawled on my leg!"

After we took the picture, Tyler turned on the faucet and washed it down the drain.  Five minutes later, it crawled back out.  Ewww.

Just in case this was some sort of mutant undrownable spider, Tyler squished it with a shoe.

Trip to Utah

In March, we spent a week in Utah visiting my sister.  First stop, a trip to the fire station to see Uncle Brian at work.

My brother-in-law is pretty much the manliest man I know.  If you got up the courage to, say, go sky diving and you told him about it, he would probably tell you about when he used to parachute into the forest fires carrying a chainsaw.  And it would be true.  Now repeat that with every situation in your life you ever thought was exciting or a little bit dangerous.

But Brian tells you about it in a way that makes you believe you can be that awesome too, instead of thinking how lame it is that you didn't think to bring a chainsaw.

Driving the fire truck

We all tried on the coat.  My sister mentioned that she thought the coat was a little bit... well, it had a little bit of an odor.  Just so you know, firemen don't wash their coats.  Ever.  Well, I can't speak for all firemen, but the ones at this particular station in South Salt Lake do not.

Lillian and Jack

We got really lucky weather-wise.  The day after we arrived, there was a huge storm.  My sister lives on top of a mountain, so we got a lot of snow.  The next few days were really nice and so we had one snow day, one nice day to play in the snow, then all the snow melted and we could go outside with just jeans and short sleeves.

Tyler and Jack built a snow tunnel in one of the drifts.  I don't know if they made it all the way through before it collapsed, but it kept them busy for a long time.

We hung out at Thanksgiving Point for a bit.

Then comes the core reason we went up there, we went snowboarding at Brighton.

And, we only took one picture.  That's me in the purple jacket right in the middle.  I spent a long time trying to figure out how to maximize our snowboard experience.  I thought it would be fun if we went with Allison and Brian, and Allison and I could fall down a lot together, and Tyler and Brian could ski down the back side of the mountain, like in Aspen Extreme.  But, Allison couldn't find anyone to watch that whole gaggle of kids all day long.  So then we thought about going on separate days, but Tyler in another "aw,-that's-why-I-married-you," moment said he would rather spend time with me falling down and crying because I'm scared and tired and hurting than skiing black diamonds with Brian.

I liked snowboarding for approximately 2 hours.  Our teacher was named Sugar and he was great.  Under his tutelage, I could turn heel-side to toe-side and back without falling over.  I could make it down the bunny hill and stop at the bottom without falling down.  He felt confident that we could make it down an easy run without him, and cut us loose.  False.  I could not make it down without the afore-mentioned crying, falling down, hurting myself, almost running into trees, etc.  I attempted the run twice thinking that now that I knew where I was going, it might be easier.  False.  I called my sister Amy from the car while Tyler did a few more runs and told her that I was just plain done.

We hung out with our friend Rachel who used to live right around the corner, but then moved away, ruining my life.  Not really, but I miss her.

Allison has two dogs and a backyard that backs up into this hill.  We spent some quality time throwing the tennis ball for them.

On the way home, we stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam.  We did not take a dam tour, just some dam pictures.

We did other fun things like visit Tyler brother and his wife.  Why am I bad at documenting our family vacations?  I didn't get any pictures of me and Allison, or of my other nephews.  Or of the childrens' museum.  Oh, we went to Gilgal too... wait, I think I took pictures there.

There it is.  Because no trip to Utah is complete without seeing Joseph Smith's head on a sphinx.

May 10: First attempt at 9 miles.  1:54:11.  Only made it home because Tyler was going to be late for work.  Tired.  So tired.  Walked long stretches after I hit the 7.5-mile mark. Relied on water fountains dotting the route.

May 26: Second attempt.  2:04:09.  Brought my own water but run was slightly worse.  Wall came at 7 miles.  By the time I got home, I was limping slightly and had taken off my shoes, thinking it would make my feet hurt less.

June 7: Third attempt. 2:08:43.  So much better.  I didn't watch my calories yesterday and ate pasta for dinner last night.  I brought water, shot blocks and grapes.  Only walked up one hill, a little bit half-way through as I was fishing the shot blocks out of my backpack, and once when Tyler called to ask where I had hidden the HSA card that I told him I would give him before I left but didn't.  I had to take a bathroom break around 7 miles, but the park is right on my route.  My feet didn't hurt, my legs were fine.  I reminded myself to pick up my feet to increase my speed, but it seems it didn't work.

Why am I getting slower?

Mo-om

I was on the phone with my mom when I heard the two syllable call, "MO-OM!"

"Ethan's painting hisself with the markers!"

Sure enough.  Don't worry, he managed to plaster himself to the wall as he was running away from me and all his fresh ink transferred.  So, now I have a little purple-orangey smudge on my wall that I haven't quite gotten around to cleaning off properly.

50 Cents a Cap

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina is one of my kids' favorite books.  Somehow, we don't own it, so we've gotten it from the library a bunch of times and I've read it out loud so often, I have the whole thing memorized.

So, you can imagine the delight of my children when my friend Candie sent us 20 (roughly) little boy-sized hats with matching outfits.  I'm not sure what kind of storage system she has at her house that allows her to have all those hats and the outfits readily accessible, but we're going to take a lesson from the peddler and store them like this:

He'll just have to keep himself very straight, so as not to upset his caps.

Water fun when it's only 90

My sister-in-law and her family came to visit us when Nora was a baby.  It was April and it was fairly warm, like in the upper 80s and 90s.  We took them to the pool.  Now, I never go to the pool in the "off season" mostly because during the summer months, we spend so much time, so, so much time at the pool, I get really sick of it and have to take a 7-month break.  However, what we discovered on that sunny day in April was that for Southern Arizona, it was too cold to swim.

It wasn't that we were being wimps either.  Well, maybe we were.  But I really think the low humidity makes the water evaporate off your skin faster, sucking heat off your body and if it's not 105 degrees, it gets really cold.

 All of that story has nothing to do with these pictures, taken by Tyler while I was working a few days back.

Just some little blondies playing in the backyard, trying to stay cool.  Story of my life.

I hate my computer, but I like to run

Almost 2 years old

It wasn't until after I uploaded this picture that I realized that I'm signed in as Tyler.  I don't want to have to sign out and sign back in as me and then re-upload the picture because my computer is SO slow.  No joke, it took me a solid hour to turn on the computer, download the pictures from the camera, delete a bizarro program that must have downloaded itself the last time I updated some software, and then upload this picture.  We have an iPad, which I use for reading blogs and futzing on facebook, but it's not so great for blogging.  Our desktop is the one Tyler bought for school when he got home from his mission... like 8 years ago.  I'm fairly sure that it is no older than the computers we use at the hospital, yet somehow those are so much faster.  Maybe I need to run one of those "make my computer faster" programs that I see advertised on TV.  Or ask someone who knows more about computers than me to do it.

I need to be better at blogging because, oddly enough, my life isn't documenting itself.

Here is a list of blog posts I want to write:

1. The spider in the tub
2. Ethan playing with markers
3. The awesome summertime workbooks I made for the kids and how they make me feel like a supermom
4. Nora using the camera
5. Mountain biking
6. Trip to Utah
7. The 20 hats my friend sent us
8. Nora dresses herself, and it shows.

This post will be about running, from now on.

I swam a lot in my formative years.  I wasn't fast.  I kind of hated it.  But, I kind of loved it at the same time. Once I had Lillian, I switched to running, because you can't tow a baby behind you in the pool.  I ran with varying degrees of consistency between pregnancies until January of this year.  In December, I was watching TV and saw one thousand commercials for weight loss programs.  A common comment from the users of these products was that they are in better shape now than they were when they were in their 20's.  I'm getting ready to be done with my 20's, and I don't feel like I've been in very good shape during this decade between birthing 3 babies and eating a lot of cookies and brownies to cope with birthing 3 babies.  If everything is downhill from here, I wanted to start up a little higher on the fitness grading scale.  On a whim, I chose to train for a half-marathon.

I got a book called Marathon and Half-Marathon: A Beginners Guide from the library and started following the training schedule.

Around the end of March, I read:

and number 1- word vomited all over any one who would listen about it because I thought it was SO interesting, and number 2- changed my running gait which was slow and painful and hard on my muscles, but in a hurt-so-good kind of way.

I also started being frustrated that I wasn't getting any smaller.  It's fine that the scale wasn't budging because maybe I was building muscle, but I had been running 3 times a week for 3 solid months, and my clothes fit exactly the same.  And I gained a pound which was maddening because, as my sister said, "Look, I know lots more fun ways to gain weight that require a lot less work."  So, I started cutting calories.

About 4 weeks ago, I was scheduled to run 9 miles.  I had run 8 miles before and thought it would be the same deal, just one more mile.  No go.  Literally.  I ran about 7.5 and then my feet quit.  It was the weirdest thing to me: I wasn't exhausted, I was mentally fine, my lungs were working, my heart wasn't tired, my body didn't hurt.  My feet just had no more go in them.  I forced myself home because Tyler was going to be late for work.

I decided to repeat the last 2 weeks of my training schedule- maybe I had gone up in miles too fast, and what with changing running style half-way through...

Same deal- my legs quit at about 7.5 miles or about 1.5 hours of running.  I couldn't consult my training book because I had to take it back to the library a long time ago, so I asked people I know who run.  (Keep in mind that I used to swim for 2 hours ALL THE TIME with no problems.)

Here's a sample conversation:

Runner: OK, what do you eat before you run?  Me: Oatmeal, or a Cliff bar.  Runner: What do you eat during your run? Me: ummmm... air?

Things I didn't know about running long distances that I've learned in the past week or so:

1. You cannot eat only 1200 calories the day before a long run and expect to finish.
2. You should eat something every hour during running.
3. You should bring water with you when you run and not just drink from the water fountains dotting your route.

I haven't attempted another long run since I've gained all this new knowledge, but I'll let you know if it works.

No Fiction, Just Tomes

There's a woman I know who is moving to E\ngland for a year.  She is pretty much the nicest person in the world and so it comes as no surprise that everyone is very sad to see her go, and they organized a big farewell dinner in her honor.  I couldn't go because I had to work, but I'm sure a lot of people went because everyone loves this lady. 

Note: this is not a post to whine about how I have no friends... it's funny at the end.

Tyler and I got to go on a date last night.  We went to a fancy hipster restaurant for fancy ice cream and then went to see The Hunger Games.  (Side note: When am I going to stop being surprised that people bring their 5-to-6-year old kids to violent movies at NINE FIFTY PM?)  I brought up the fact that if we moved away, the list would be pretty short of people who would come to our going away party.  Which is fine, I think having that many friends takes a lot of time and energy, two things that are currently in short supply at our house, and I really like the friends we have.  We talked about what it would be like to be popular and puzzled about what popular people do with their friends.  (I really have no idea, what do you do with the kids?)

As we were driving from the ice cream place to the movie theaters, we passed an antique shop called "Ye Old Toms."  Tyler started laughing and said that he read "Ye Old Tomes"... like books.  We joked about what a bookshop that only sold tomes would look like and the poor hapless customer who wanders in looking for a novel.  "Sorry, no fiction buddy, only volumes."  We laughed and giggled for a good 5 minutes about that one.

Then we laughed some more about how nerdy we were and how this is probably the exact reason why we never were and never will be popular. 

Broken Promise

I want to write all about how my heart is breaking for one of the patients on my unit.  I want to tell you all about what is wrong with her and how long she has been there, how they assign her to me every time I work and what her prospects are.  Because I take care of her so often, people ask me almost daily my opinion on when she is going to die.  The "if" questions stopped a long time ago.  I want to tell you all about how I thought she was going to die in surgery (I cried on and off the whole day she went in (I was at home, thank goodness)), but she made it.  I want to talk about how I kind of wanted her to die in surgery; to just go to sleep and never wake up.

I don't blog my hospital stories because I'm nervous about patient privacy, but this woman has worked her way inside of me and I want to write this down so I remember her when I read this in 5, 10, 15 years.  I'm not sure why I have grown so attached to her because she sleeps most of the day and isn't much for talking because she's in constant pain.  I just feel so sad for her.  I want her to get better so badly, but then I want her to not get better and go on hospice so she can have as much narcotics as she wants.

I promised her on Tuesday that I'd come back and paint her nails on Wednesday, and she smiled at the idea.  She smiled and I haven't seen her smile in weeks.  But then I was sick on Wednesday and didn't go to work.  I'm not scheduled to go back until next Tuesday, and I have a lot of anxiety that she won't be there to hear why I didn't come back with my pink nail polish like I promised.

I feel like breaking that promise was one of the worst things I've ever done.

Things I wish for

I wish I wasn't sick: on Thursday night/Friday morning, one of the techs came down sick, they went to employee health and turns out it was H1N1 flu. I worked Friday and Saturday. About 3 or 4 in the afternoon in Saturday, I started coughing. Yesterday, I didn't feel too poorly, but stayed home from church just in case. I feels worse today- aches, cough, hurty head. I wish Tyler was here: Tyler going to Kentucky for 4 days is bad enough, but to have to go when I'm sick is worse. I wish my mom was here: Ever since I had kids, my mom has never been closer than 4 hours away. I can manage fine between my friends and visiting teachers, but there a some jobs that you really only feel comfortable asking your mom or sister to do (i.e. can you come over and do my dishes while I zone out on the couch? Or, Tyler has to go out of town at the last minute, can you take my kids for 14 hours tomorrow because I'm having a hard time switching my work schedule?). I wish Ethan would learn how to entertain himself for more than 30 seconds. Then maybe I could get more things done, or maybe just more zoning out. I wish I could simultaneously stay home more and work the same amount. I wish I didnt live in dread of the coming summer, or, I wished we lived somewhere that didn't have 6 months of triple-digit heat.

A few months in a few pictures

 Why so long with so little blogging?  1. My laptop died.  Turns out, having to go upstairs and turn on the ancient desktop that takes SO LONG to load anything is a real deterrent.  2. I'm tired and lazy.  What with the holidays and then Tyler losing his job and me working overtime (P.S. Tyler lost his job.  Don't be sorry though, because... well, that's a different post.) plus having 3 kids under 6, at the end of the day, I just want to sit on the couch and not move.

However, it's not like we haven't done anything.  Here's 3 months' worth of life in 8 pictures.

 Lillian is in kindergarten and is doing really well.  Except for last week when I got a note home saying she stabbed her neighbor with her scissors.  Mrs. Gracia said that she talked to both parties several times and couldn't decide if it was an accident or not.  After talking with Lillian, I'm not sure either.  "Mom, I had my scissors open in my hand and she moved her arm into them!"

This is Lillian and her teacher after the Thanksgiving play.

 Then for Thanksgiving, Tyler did something crazy: he drove with the girls to San Francisco.  From Tucson.  By himself.  He's nuts, right?  I could only get Wednesday and Thursday off, so I flew up with Ethan on Wednesday and back on Thursday.  It was all worth it so I could eat my weight in my mother-in-law's crescent rolls.  So delicious.

It snows in Tucson, did you know that?  The mountains right by our house are home to the most southerly ski resort in the norther hemisphere.  We drove up there and went sledding, which lasted all of 20 minutes.  Since we don't own snow clothes, we had to improvise with the kids.  I gave Lillian some leggings to wear under her jeans, but I guess I didn't specify that she had to wear both, because she just put her jeans on.  She was probably thinking that I was crazy.  I mean, who wears two pairs of pants?  She jumped out of the car into 3 feet of snow and started screaming.  And didn't stop.

 Nora turned 3.  I might be biased because I am her mother, also she is the size of a 4 year-old, but I think she's really advanced for her age.  Plus the pediatrician told me so.  I mean, she can count by 10's to 100.

Look at those cheeks.  She is so stinking cute, I just want to put her in my mouth and eat her.

 In January, we had our 7th anniversary and we went horseback riding out in Vail.  It was supposed to be a sunset ride, but we chose to go on the one day of the year when it was overcast.  No matter, it was a good time except that my horse hated Tyler's horse so whenever he tried to ride next to me, she would bite at him (the horse).

We rode past the largest sahuaro I've ever seen.  The picture doesn't do it justice because there's no reference point, but I'm telling you, this sucker was like 30 feet tall.

Tyler built me a compost box.  I have been composting fairly successfully in a plastic tub, but the Arizona elements were starting to get to it and large chunks were breaking off at fairly regular intervals.

And finally, finally, we got a picture of a kid asleep with food in his mouth!  Huzzah!

Ward campout

In August, we geared up for our second ever family ward campout.  If you don't remember, our first attempt at the ward campout was an unmitigated disaster which made it on to my top-10-worst-night's-sleep list.

This time, we pulled out the big guns- we borrowed our neighbor's 8-man tent and brought the port-a-crib.  I think it paid off.  My kids slept all night.  The ward children?  Not so much.

Have I told you about how our ward has over 100 kids in it?  At any given second, at least one of those kids was crying.  All. Night. Long.

I would hear someone crying, wake up thinking it was Ethan, remember that he was sleeping 2 inches from my head and that he would be much louder if indeed he was crying, and then try to fall back asleep.

Repeat 500 times.

Also my kids woke up at 5, hence the only pictures I have are of the sunrise.  We were the only ones awake and out of our tent.

It does give me hope that if we went with just our family, or maybe one other family, we could manage a pretty decent night.  Maybe.

Mt. Lemmon is usually about 10-15 degrees cooler than Tucson proper, which is really nice on normal mid-year days when it's 100 degrees in the city.  However, we went when there was a heat wave and it was 112 in the city, thus 100 on the mountain.  We had planned to hang around and do some hiking, but hiking with our kids is bad enough, there was no way we were going to attempt it with the triple digit heat.