Hale Freezes Over 2011

I realized I spent most of January posting about what happened in December.  Now I’m going to skip to the end of January, and then hopefully get organized enough to get caught up. 

Today Dan and I ran the Hale Freezes Over 5k.  Yep, Dan managed to persuade me about 3 weeks ago to sign up.  What can I say, I had just signed up for my first triathlon, so a 5k didn’t seem to be that big of a deal.

Dan coming in.  Time: 25 min 47 sec.  6th place in his age division.  (We won’t mention 10 minutes behind 1st place)

Alicia finally finishing.  Best finish yet.  Time: 29 min 37 sec.  6th place in her age division.  (Totally rocked my goal.  I was running it in 37 min 3 weeks ago.  My goal was 33 min.)

“Training” for this actually wasn’t too bad.  I stopped running in Nov/Dec, due to the move and other holiday activities.  So first part of January Dan bought himself a treadmill, and I have taken advantage of it.  Although, the weather has been so nice recently I have been going outside to run with the boys a couple of times a week.  We are trying to find the best route for little boys on bikes (a little hard with all of the hills….can’t wait for the canal to get paved.  It will be AWESOME!!)  Blessing in disguise?  The hills around my house totally prepped me for the race.  4th North – no big deal! 

Tiff and Mark braved the cold with the boys and brought them to watch us end the race.  It was fun for them to see what we have been working towards. 

I found another Triathlon I think I might be interested in (Would you be ready mid-April Amy?) but still freaked out about going out of my comfort zone. I keep telling myself it will be a good experience.

Bonus – Between the running routine and stress from the last couple of weeks, I’m about 1 lb away from pre-pregnancy with Connor.  Wow!!  Honestly never thought I would see those numbers on the scale again!

Connor and Haden sing a christmas song

Because I need something light in my life right now, here is a belated video.

Okay, we are going the YouTube route. Here is the video of the boys performing their Christmas piece. They were recording a tape for their Uncle Ian on his mission.




Can you see why the Primary Program is so entertaining?

2010 Reading List

All right, I feel like a complete idiot.  When I started this “required” reading list I found a list of 100 books you should read for college.  I felt like I was making great progress until I started counting.  I completed my 110th book from the list this year.  Wait, shouldn’t it stop at 100?  Then I finally looked at the list.  Nope nothing about it just being 100 books.  It looks like I still have about 50 to go.  Hopefully it will go as good as this last year.

This year I completed 45 books on my “required” reading list, and then I read 58 “fun” reads.  Grand total:  103 books and 31,173 pages.  (Yep, I got a little anal about keeping track.  I was really curious)  So here’s the list of “required” books I waded through.

2010 Required Reading

Would I Buy?	Title	Author
Totally	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Kesey, Ken
Nah	The Devil in the Shape of a Woman	Karlsen, Carol
Yes	The Autobiography of Malcom X	Malcom X, Alex Haley
Yes	The Ascent of Man	Bronowski, Jacob
Nope	No Exit	Sarte, Jean Paul
Ugh	The Tin Drum	Grass, Gunter
No	There are No Children Here	Kotlowitz, Alex
Nope	Poems	Wordsworth, William
Nope	Poems of Dylan Thomas	Thomas, Dylan
Yes	All Quiet on the Western Front	Remarque, Erich Maria
Nah	Looking Backward: 2000-1887	Bellamy, Edward
Probably	Lord of the Flies	Golding, William
No	Brave New World	Huxley, Aldous
Yep	Growing Up	Baker, Russell
Ugh	The Living Planet: A Portrait of Earth	Attenborough, David
Nope	Selected Poems	Brooks, Gwendolyn
Would see again	Our Town	Wilder, Thornton
Totally	The Chosen	Potok, Chaim
Nope	Alistair Cooke’s America	Cooke, Alistair
Don’t know	The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust	Berenbaum, Michael
No way	The Origin of Species	Darwin, Charles
GAG!!!	The Cherry Orchard – play	Chekhov, Anton
Maybe	Selected Poems	Hughes, Langston
Totally	The Importance of Being Earnest	Wilde, Oscar
Nah	The Waste Land	Eliot, T.S.
Nope	A Yellow Raft in Blue Water	Dorris, Michael
Don’t know	The Catcher in the Rye	Salinger, J.D.
Maybe	Like Water for Chocolate	Esquivel, Laura
Probably not	Things Fall Apart	Achebe, Chinua
Maybe	Their Eyes Were Watching God	Hurston, Zora Neale
Yes	To Destroy You is No Loss	Criddle, Jan, & Butt Mam, Teeda
Yes	The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson	Dickinson, Emily
Nah	The Piano Lesson	Wilson, August
Yes	Thirteen Stories	Welty, Eudora
Nope	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	Joyce, James
Gag!	Born on the Fourth of July	Kovic, Ron
No	Waiting for Godot	Beckett, Samuel
Yep	The Poetry of Robert Frost	Frost, Robert
Nope	Days of Grace	Ashe, Arthur
Definitely	Friendly Shakespeare	Epstein, Norrie
Select Few	Shakespearean Plays

Totally not writing all the “Fun” reads I had this year.  But here are the ones I really liked:

2010 Fun Reading Sampling

Title	Author
The Goose Girl (series)	Hale, Shannon
Hunger Games (series)	Collins, Suzanne
Percy Jackson (series)	Riordan, Rick
The Maze Runner (series)	Dashner, James
Just Ella	Haddix, Margaret Peterson
Courting of Miss Lancaster	Eden, Sarah M.
The Looking Glass Wars (series)	Beddor, Frank
Birthmarked	O’Brien, Carah M.
Ranger’s Apprentice(series)	Flanagan, John
Number the Stars/The Giver	Lowry, Lois
Becoming Queen Victoria	Williams, Kate
The Measure of a Lady	Gist, Deeanne
The Freedom Factor	Lund, Gerald

Whew!!  Can you believe I moved in the midst of all that reading?  I’m looking forward to 2011, and hoping that I will finish my list, if not, get really, really close. 

Connor Turns 7! (thanks Jen)

Okay, last of the Birthday week. Connor was lucky enough to have his birthday on the first Sunday of the year. His new primary gave him a hardbound copy of the Book of Mormon, with his teacher’s testimonies written on the front cover. He absolutely loves it. I can’t believe how well he is reading! Connor was really nice and let Haden have his old copy. Now they will both just sit and read their B Of M’s for fun. (Now how do I keep this one going?)

We decided to invite the Harward’s over for Sunday dinner, and did both b-days all over again. Connor was excited to get a huge pile of presents.

Connor had picked out a zhu-zhu pet with Grandma Rita, and then his Aunts gave him the exact same one. He was so excited to get “twins”. Man the hours of entertainment those little rats have given my boys!

We were all cupcaked out by this point, so we had pumpkin cream pie (one of the boys favorites) and Uncle Mark made a Snicker’s Cheesecake.

Connor is a great older brother. He sincerely wants to do what’s right, and tries to be a good example. He loves to play the Wii, and Avatar. He likes to smile, and looks adorable with those missing front teeth! Connor works hard when he is asked, and loves to pull surprises on his mom. I can’t believe he will be getting baptized next year!

Family New Year's Eve

It makes me tired just to look back at the last week of the year. No wonder I’m still in recovery mode. Lots of fun though.

New Year’s Eve was with the Preece’s as usual. Dan and I volunteered to play games at our house and celebrate the boys b-days. So, to make travel a little more convenient (at least for those of us not in SF), Derek found a new little Chinese restaurant in PG to try out for our annual dinner. Yummy! They did pretty good dealing with our large crowd of families and had a pretty good menu. I was excited to find a decent place not too far away.

After dinner we headed up to the house to do birthday cake, and play games.

The kids had a blast watching a movie downstairs, and us adults got busy playing a few of the games we picked up from Christmas. I loved the board game “Wits & Wagers”. At the end we pulled out Jacqui’s “Just Dance 2” for the Wii. I think I’m in love. What a workout. I thought we were going to fall through the floor a few times.

Oh, and funny side note: Alicia put the sparkling cider outside to chill. Yep, completely froze solid by the time we pulled it out. Kat and Dan were performing emergency thaw-out to try and get it ready by midnight. We weren’t completely successful, but still had fun.

Thanks for a great New Year’s Eve! Life can only get better in 2011!

Haden Turns 5!

I thought it took forever for Connor to turn 5. Now I feel like I just turned around and here is Haden.

Haden had very definite ideas for his birthday this year, and he let everyone know what he wanted to do. Unfortunately Mom, with bad weather and holiday season, was not in the mood for another piñata, so luckily decorating his own cupcakes was enough to make things good.

When you are celebrating a birthday 3 different times, life gets a little crazy. Haden was excited about all his presents. He couldn’t wait to play with all his new toys. His favorite was going with Grandma Rita to buy his own zhu-zhu pet. (Garrick had commandeered the one Santa gave Haden)

Haden is our funny guy. He is always trying to crack a joke and make everyone laugh. He is great about giving Garrick loves whenever Garrick cries. Haden’s best friend is Connor, and loves to do anything Connor is doing. They are great pals, that get along…most of the time. We love Haden’s sunny disposition, and can’t wait to see him develop over the years.

Christmas Re-visited

Yeah, we still had magic.  The boys didn’t wake up until almost 7am, and even then didn’t want to get up until we mentioned Santa, boy that was the magic word.  What a great day!  It was so fun to have the boys actually playing with their toys as they opened them.

Garrick fluctuated between being totally enthralled, and absolutely terrified of the talking Cookie Monster.

The Harward women and our new scarves.  I actually don’t look that much shorter!

Garrick was so excited about his new car. 

After a long day of games, food, and movies we headed home.  The boys crashed immediately, and Dan and I enjoyed the view from our back porch.  The fog was so thick we couldn’t see Walmart as we were driving past.  There are times I love living up the mountain.

Wow!  Can you believe Christmas is over?  Now on to our Birthday week.

Bane of My Existence–At Least Right Now

So on top of the other crap I’ve been dealing with here is the other thing I’ve been working on.  The Sunday we discovered Garrick’s broken arm I was being set apart as the secretary for our new RS Presidency.  Yep, count it again.  4 weeks after moving into the neighborhood.  Not overwhelming AT ALL. 

It has been an amazing experience…except for one “little” thing.  Having a new RS Presidency called the week before a new year…Not fun.  We had exactly 1 meeting to figure out EVERYTHING for the entire new year.  One of those things was the birthday gift.  Note to self:  Next time, shut-up and listen. 

They were talking magnets, so since we were at my house I pulled out the various RS magnets I’ve received over the years.  So we decided on one of the jewel magnets with the RS emblem in it.  2nd Not to Self:  There is no such thing as an “easy” craft project for Alicia.  Back away slowly.

“It’s so easy.  Just modge podge the paper and then glue the magnet on the back when it is dry”  Unfortunately embossed stickers don’t modge podge very well.  A week later they are still milky.  So then Alicia had to take a butter spreader and try to work out all of the excess glue.

Thankfully, I’ve been trying to get through my Shakespearean plays, so it was nice to have something to do while watching “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “King Lear”.

Lesson learned:  They look awesome.  Next time, just print off the image on a nice color printer and glue that.  Oh, and Stampin’ Up’s 1 1/4” hole punch—Godsend!!

Pre-Christmas Re-visited

I finally made it through all my pictures. Yippee!! One thing off my list. We’ll start with the pre-Christmas festivities.

The Harward Christmas Program was the Sunday before Christmas. The last couple of years the boys have prepared a primary song to perform. Hilarious. (I'm trying to get a video posted, but blogger is not being very friendly with Android right now, So I will save it for a later post)

Connor was helping Grandma Alice decorate her Christmas Tree. The Preece Christmas FHE happened on Monday. Due to it being the “off” year we decided to have our Christmas Eve party as a FHE. The weather didn’t cooperate, but we had a lot of fun once everyone got there. A night of fondue, gingerbread houses, and a piñata. The kids were on a sugar high all night, but had a blast.

We had both cheese and chocolate fondue. I think the chocolate was the favorite!

This is what Grandma’s are for right?…to hand over a plate FULL of candy!

Christmas Eve was our tour of neighborhood Christmas lights, Wendy’s for dinner, and another piñata with the Harward’s. You would think the boys would be sick of it at this point.

Garrick took off when he decided he had done enough hitting.

Dan decided to get into the action.

Then we spent the rest of the night playing “Office Clue” and quoting our favorite lines. I so want Tiff and Mark on my team if we ever play “The Office Scene-It”.

We actually made it home at a decent time, which was nice for decorating cookies for Santa and opening our new PJ’s.

We had a little “whoops” with Connor. He came downstairs as we were playing Santa. I think I scared any doubts of Santa right out of him yelling at him to get back in bed. Hopefully there is still the magic in the morning.

I Wish I Could Say I’m Just Kidding…

This was my day:

He probably did not need the sling, but at least he was smiling. 

Last night Haden hurt his arm rough housing.  His brother was pulling him as he was be “captured” by his uncle.  Then we had major tears and crisis.  Unfortunately, with a 5 year-old there is no telling the magnitude.  Is it really hurt, or is he just liking the attention?  How bad is it really hurt when he starts screaming the moment you move to come near him?  How in the heck can I go BACK to InstaCare 2 weeks later with a different child and the same injury to the same limb?  So we did what any responsible parent would do. 

Told him to suck it up and go to bed so it can get better. 

After a LONG night of whimpering and crying we decided to call the Dr. 1st thing.  Miracle..he could get us in in a few hours.  Never has happened before!!  Luckily we also still needed to do Haden’s Kindergarten check-up, so I could hit 2 birds with 1 stone.  The Dr. looked at the arm and diagnosed “nursemaid elbow”.  Halleluiah!!  No broken bones!  He popped it back in place and took some x-rays just to make sure everything was okay.  Haden was still complaining that his arm was “broken”, amazing how things changed when we reached the McDonald’s playground.

A long day for Mom.  Haden had 2 shots, a wrenched arm and still has to pee in a cup to make sure he doesn’t have diabetes (whatever ASD-you are full of you know what), and to make sure Garrick felt included we got his booster for the flu shot.  I repeat:  Long day for Mom. 

Oh, and I should mention that in the last 2 weeks my boys have managed to TRIPLE our medical expenses from ALL of last year.  That supplemental accident insurance is finally forking over---yeah man!!!

My Little Houdini

So I am skipping past Christmas/Birthdays for now (I may be a little overwhelmed with the number of pictures I have to go through) and am going to share our OTHER little adventure.

The day after Christmas, Garrick started acting funny after church.  We noticed he wouldn’t use his left arm.  So after a few hours of fussiness we took him to InstaCare.  The Dr. said, took x-rays and said no break, probably a bad sprain.  He’ll get better in a couple of days.  We get home and there is a message saying to call the Dr. back.  Oops, the radiologist says there probably IS a break and we need to immobilize it and get a cast.  So Garrick had to go back and came home with this:

Garrick lived up the soft cast.  Gave him a great excuse to cuddle.  Move forward a couple of days and we finally found an orthopedic surgeon and Garrick came home with 3 broken bones and a cool army cast:

On Friday he finally started adjusting to using his cast arm rather than letting it hang limply to his side.  Then this morning we had this:

I guess he decided he didn’t need it anymore.  Unfortunately the arm is still tender and I have to take him back to get ANOTHER cast.  Hopefully this lasts longer than a week!