Mommy Marathon

For all you moms out there, I've come up with a flattering way to look at our days. You know all those people who spend months training and preparing for a marathon? They've got nothing on you! Today, after doing the carpool, taking my 3 year old to preschool, picking my 3 year old up from preschool, grocery shopping, baking bread, and picking up a must have recipe from a friend, I had lunch with a few friends. One of my friends at this lunch was commenting on marathons. She said something to the effect of, "How do these people find the time to run 11 miles in a day? All to spend what 4 or 5 hours running 26+ miles." It got me thinking about how a mom's life compares to a marathon. I left that lunch with my 3 year old and my friend's three kids to search for a PostNet that doesn't appear to exist. So, I ran home to find another PostNet that does exist. Then I had to get 4 kids out of the car, do a search on the internet and get them back into the car and off we ran to the "existing" PostNet, dropped off my package and headed home for the kids to play. While they played I did laundry, made work related phone calls and started the clean up process from the bread making. Not far into this my older 2 children returned home from school. So now there are 6 children in the house playing loudly and I'm still "trying" to get things done. At one point I realized my shoulders were up around my ears and I was panting like I'd been running. After our little friends left it was homework time, then piano lessons, and cub scouts. As I pulled into my garage at 5:45 I realized that I had asked my husband to make dinner tonight and thought to myself, I have 45 whole minutes to relax. As soon as I started to feel a little relaxed I heard the sound of the dryer buzzing. I couldn't help myself, it was too comical. I started to laugh like an insane person you see in movies. I'm not sure exactly what my children were thinking but they were looking at me with raised eyebrows and looks of concern. So, after pulling the clean clothes from the washer and stashing them behind our oversized chair (it's less stressful having unfolded clothes if I can't see them), my husband arrived home and I decided that he needed a little help coming up with a healthy dinner solution since I knew full well his idea of dinner would consist of Ramen Noodles and Country Time lemonade. After stuffing down my portion I was off and running again to pick up my oldest from cub scouts and attend the monthly cub committee meeting. Upon returning home my son had a practice spelling test that he insisted must be done tonight and oh I almost forgot it's bath night. So, I bathed the kids and got them to bed around 8:30. We were only 30 minutes late so I patted myself on the back for a job well done. But the day's not done. That bread mess was only moved from the counters to the sink, so I'm off to do dishes and finally fold that last load of laundry.

Marathoners who are really good take 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Others come in anywhere in between that and 7 or 8 hours. Let's see I got up at 6:45 and as I was sitting down to blog it was 9:30. I was running and let me say again RUNNING for over 14 1/2 hours. For moms this is no record, it might not even deserve honorable mention. Ladies this is our life. We "run marathons" on a regular basis. There's no starting point or finish line. There's no winner or looser and there's certainly no cash prize. We all do the best we can, but we should be proud of our accomplishments and never feel ashamed that an 11 mile run is not in the cards for us today, tomorrow or OK never. I'm tired and run down, but I'm also very proud to be a "mommy marathoner"!

Power to the People

OK, call me a geek, but I often daydream about having a self-efficient, smart home someday. Here's one of the many topics I spend my nights thinking about when I can't sleep. I have always wanted to know where I consume the most electricity in my home. Without going into details, I know I'm a power hog, but I've always thought it would be nice to know how much it costs to keep my hot tub heated at 100 degrees as opposed to 98 degrees. Having the power company control my thermostat remotely just doesn't work for me since it is occupied most of the day. Plus, AC is just one component to my overall consumption. Needless to say, Google's announcement today of their new power meter initiative gets me excited! Read more here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.html
http://www.google.org/powermeter/

What a Week!

Hello Family and Friends! I seem to be a weekend blogger, which is about the only time my schedule permits. We had a great week. Of course it was full of a lot of the same but with a few little changes. As many of you know, I've been working toward becoming a teacher at American Heritage Academy. As of Friday, I've been officially hired to teach their Pre-kinder class. One of the fantastic things about this is all of my kids will be attending school at 1 school, including Karter who will be in my class! In March open enrollment will begin, so if you know anyone with a child turning 4 this year please let them know that American Heritage is going to have a fun pre-kinder class. Tuition for the Pre-Kinder class is currently set at $150 per month. They've been receiving a lot of calls about the new class so when open enrollment does begin it may fill up quickly. I'm so excited for this opportunity and to have Karter in my class! American Heritage has proved to be the right move for us. If you'd like to check out the school go to... http://www.americanheritagelv.org

Cottonwood Spring

Karter and I decided to go on a hike Friday while everyone else was in school. We went to Cottonwood Spring in Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA). (36°12'9.94"N, 114°38'36.93"W). Have I mentioned I love my new Garmin GPS watch? Comparing to Google Earth imagery, I can see some of the positions were off by as much as 80 feet, which is unusually high.

The Cottonwood Spring hike is an easy, 1.24 mile journey each way. Along the journey, we saw some pretty plants, petrified ripples, some cool rocks, mini narrows, a recently expired trantula, an old watering basin, and the spring. There are some aquatic fossils there too, supposedly, but we could not find them. There are a couple large cottonwood trees at the spring that looked very dormant. There was water just below the surface an seen by a small hole maintained by animals for watering. Follow along by viewing the photo album below.
Again, all the photos are geotagged so you can see the approximate locations of the photos.

Cottonwood Spring

The Perfect Weekend

I've known for many years that I lucked out in marriage. Kalvan and I met in January, were engaged in March and married in August. To be perfectly honest it looks, from most any perspective, like a huge gamble. I mean how could anyone meet, fall in love and truly know the person they're marrying in only 7 months. I have two words for you, divine intervention. Well, the gamble, if you're one who sees it that way, was absolutely worth it and the best decision I've ever made. My husband is the light in my day, the encouragement I need and the person I lean on when my heart breaks. We've been through some pretty tough times and I can honestly say I love him more today than any day past. For over 12 years he has been my best friend and the only person I want to spend forever with. Yes, I'm done with my big sap fest, but I have to tell you why I feel it necessary to express my sappiness. I just had to perfect weekend!

On Friday, I didn't have to work for the first time since I started my job. As many of you know, Kalvan doesn't work Fridays. Right off the bat Kal relieved me of my taxi job and took the kids to school for me. Shortly after he returned, I went to a nearby park to meet up with a dear friend to take a walk. I was gone for over 2 hours. It was wonderful! I returned to find the massage table ready and waiting for Kal to give me a massage, then we soaked in the hot tub with our little fish Karter, had some lunch, took a short rest, picked the kids up from school, got take out for dinner, and then played games with the kids for the rest of the evening. I can hardly imagine a better day without leaving the state and spending far more that we should on a weekend vacation. It meant a lot to me that Kal would sacrifice his day off to pamper me. If you think that's great, it keeps going. Saturday we tried a new healthy muffin recipe (which was yummy), took a long bike ride with the kids, I took another nap (while Kal helped someone move), attended a baptism, KAL MADE DINNER, and then more fun and games with the kids. Today was another wonderful day. I have to admit, Sunday is by far my favorite day of the week. I love going to church. I love the people in my ward. I love my calling in primary and I love keeping it simple for one day each week. Not to mention I love that weekly reminder of how dearly our Father in Heaven loves each one of us. I love seeing that love reflected in the eyes of each primary child. I love being part of something so huge, so perfect, only a perfect being could have come up with it. And yes, we had another PERFECT Sunday. I can't begin to express how recharged I feel after such a wonderful and fun weekend with my family. And I owe it to the man I hardly knew when I married him. He can make most anything fun and his sacrifices and good deeds are done without any expectation of a pay back. He has helped me to realize, over a long period of time (I'm slow), that life is too short to live it constantly stressed out and making ourselves miserable with the day to day "stuff". Sometimes we need to take a step back, refuse the stress and just play.

Now can you see how wise I was to marry Kal? hee, hee OK so it's more like, do you see how loving and kind Father in Heaven was to give me Kal? Have a fantastic week and be sure to include a little fun.

Redstone Safari

Kaleb's friend, Ethan, invited Kaleb and I to go hiking with he and his dad for his birthday activity. We went to the Redstone Dunes in Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA). (36°14'32.29"N, 114°30'57.01"W). I put my new Garmin GPS watch to good use.

The Redstone Dunes are petrified sand dunes that have eroded differentially to create some spectacular caves, holes, pockets, youngster labyrinths, and other neat formations. Along the journey, I saw many rock formations that resembled animals and other creatures. Follow along our safari and see if you can pick out the animals we saw by viewing the photo album below. Feel free to leave comments on the photos of what you think we saw on our safari!

Redstone Safari

Note that there is a map that goes with the photos showing the approximate locations of these formations. If you decide to go on safari yourself, let me know and I'll send you the exact path of our travels (1.4 miles) since you'll have to be mildly adventurous and get off the beaten path and explore a little to see the rare and exotic species we located. Better yet, if you're serious about a mini-safari, let us know and we'll plan a customized adventure the whole family (both of our families) will enjoy...compliments of your adventure guide, Kaleb, who can guarantee that these critters will not be roaming too far from where we found them!

Bread Baking Adventure

Today I decided to return to an old tradition. For several years I baked all the bread our family ate. So there were no trips to the store for their sad excuse for bread. I love homemade bread, but haven't felt that I have the time to make it myself, until today. So Karter and I set out to make bread which was an interesting task with Karter in tow. All was going well till Karter managed to fling vital wheat gluten all over the counter with a majority of it ending up in the fruit bowl. Then there was the honey incident. To a 3 year old it seems logical that more honey will only make it taste better so he added a little extra and decided to shake the measuring cup rapidly to get the honey to come out which left little sticky lines all over my counter tops. All in all, it was a huge success. We have 4 lovely loaves of bread and had our own little lunch treat of fresh whole wheat bread with butter and honey.

The recipe we used is pretty easy and I got it from my sister-in-law who is a bread making goddess. She's an amazing baker! Thanks so much Becki for the recipe! So I'll share with you. If you're adventurous enough to try out the recipe just remember to unplug the wheat grinder when you go to open in up, especially if you have a little button happy child in the kitchen with you. It's amazing how little it takes to make a full blown flour cloud. Happy baking!

Whole Wheat Bread

7 cups warm water
3 TBS. lecithin (liquid)
2 TBS. yeast
1/3 cup honey
2 TBS. dough enhancer
2 TBS. salt
1/4 cup vital wheat gluten flour
16 - 18 cups flour

Measure all the ingredients except the flour into mixing bowl. Put in 7 cups flour and mix on medium speed until all is mixed. Add remaining flour until the mixture cleans the side of the bowl and dough doesn't stick to your fingers. Set mixer to knead. Most mixers take 5-8 minutes to develop the gluten. Put into five eight inch greased loaf pans. Let rise until double in size. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.