Dad's View

Over the years we've had a number of people say "I wish I could just peek into your house and see what goes on during your day." The proverbial fly on the wall to our typical chaos.

There have also been plenty of times that Aaron and I look at each other in the middle of dinner, amazed at the randomness of conversation, or the ridiculousness of something happening at the table, and wondered why we weren't filming it. Because some of it has definitely been worth preserving.

For years Aaron has suggested we set up a camera so that we can sit back and laugh at it later. If you're a parent you know there are plenty of things that aren't so hilarious when they are happening, but with a little bit of time and a perspective shift become pretty funny.

Thus we give you, Dad's view. You always hear from me, so now here are a few minutes of a peek into an evening in our family from Aaron's view. A little taste of the random weirdness that happens here.



A few thoughts; Yes, the musical chairs bit was real. If you ever have kids fighting over who is sitting where at dinner, I highly suggest it to diffuse things a little. And yes, the table is a little cozy right now, we're working on a fix that doesn't include buying new furniture. We finally figured out what we want to do, now it's just a matter of getting it done! The kids are super excited about the prospect of not sitting at corners.  Also, I swear I do actually wear makeup, real clothes, and do my hair. At least occasionally.

The big Wednesday news

Last October I ran the St George Marathon for the second time. (and never blogged about it. whoops.)
It was the perfect day to run a marathon.
Unlike the first time I ran St George when it was pretty darn warm, last year it was freezing at the start. Literally. It was right about 30 degrees.  Sitting in sweats and wrapped up in a foil blanket next to a fire and snuggled up next to Aaron, I was still cold!

Though all that time sitting there waiting for the start was pretty uncomfortable, it made for nice cool weather for the next few hours, and an amazing race.
A race that landed me a new marathon PR by over 20 minutes, and a Boston Qualifying time of 3:38:47. I just squeaked under the cutoff of 3:40 for my age group. But considering that a couple of years ago I truly never thought I would ever run that fast, it was pretty dang thrilling! Qualifying for Boston was really never on my radar until a matter of weeks before St George last year, and even then it wasn't something I was willing to really seriously consider.
Like not seriously considering it until near the end of the race when I realized that it could actually happen if I could just hold on to what I had going.

Last week I was able to apply for the Boston Marathon with all of the rest of the people who qualified by less than five minutes. I've been waiting for a week and a half to hear if I made it in, knowing nothing more than the fact that more people applied than there were available spots, and that last year if you didn't qualify by more than 1 minute and 38 seconds faster than your age group's qualifying cutoff, you didn't make it in.

Knowing that it would be announced today, and knowing that my friend Heidi qualified by over a minute more than I did, I was periodically checking the entrants list at the BAA website to see if *her* name was there. Because if she didn't make it after qualifying with 2+ minutes to spare, I definitely hadn't made it.
And then this afternoon, I found her name.
And braved searching for my own.

And I found it.

I'm in!

This lovely little email dropped into my inbox a short time later.

I'm going to Boston!!!
By 11 seconds, I'm going to Boston.
Wow.
They had about 2000 more people apply this year than they had spaces available, so those who qualified by over 1 minute and 2 seconds made the cutoff for available spaces.  I qualified by 1 minute and 13 seconds.  ELEVEN seconds cleared me.  Count out 11 seconds.  Over the course of a 3 1/2+ hour run, 11 seconds is a blip. 11 seconds is just a few steps of walking at an aid station. A bathroom stop would have been well over 11 seconds.  Stretching my calf for just a tiny bit longer around mile 18 would have stolen 11 seconds.  Letting my mental monkeys get the best of me in the last mile instead of pushing till the end would have killed those 11 seconds.

I'm excited.
I'm excited to do some base building over the next couple of months.  I'm excited to pick through training plans again and choose one to use for this next 26.2 experience.  I'm excited to sneak away for a few days with Aaron for this little adventure! I'm excited to (hopefully) meet up with a few online running friends who are also going to be there. I'm excited to experience first hand this epic race that I've watched from home for the past couple of years and cross that famous finish line!

And then six months went by....

People sometimes ask me if in the chaos of daily living I ever reach a breaking point.  Sure.  I definitely have triggers.  Wednesday alone often does it for me. 

Apparently my blogging breaking point was being pregnant with my tenth child and having a husband that traveled 100% of the time for work.  Going through a transition of learning to do everything by myself between Sunday afternoon around 3:00 until Thursday night around 11:00 was slightly challenging!  Solo parenting is no joke.  With the pregnancy exhaustion on top of that, I was in survival mode much more frequently than I would have liked. When Friday and Saturday rolled around every minute was consumed with trying to spend time with Aaron and chipping away at the big to-do list of things that I couldn't do without him. 

This left little to no time for dumping my thoughts and experiences here.  

Thank goodness for Instagram!  At least I have a photo journal and little pieces of thoughts and stories that I could jot down in a minutes or so. 

I miss blogging.  I keep thinking "I'll get to that this week!", and have even left a browser window open on the computer with this blog up and waiting for me to jump back in, all to no avail.  Life just keeps happening. 

Then this weekend a couple of my kids started talking about something I had completely forgotten.  A day when they got in the powdered sugar and strung it all over the house and then tried to tell me they hadn't been in the powdered sugar.  We all had a good laugh while I dug through the deep recesses of my brain trying to remember the incident.  I had completely forgotten about it.  Then as they kept talking I remembered that I had blogged it way back when.  

That's when I realized that I REALLY need to be blogging. Because this mommy brain just isn't what it used to be, and there are a number of things I am sure will be lost in the oblivion if they aren't jotted down here. That makes me sad.  I have written down random things in notebooks and on a list in my phone, but usually that is a quick little snippet to remind me of what I need to write down, and, well...yeah.  Let's just say that there are about ten snippets that were written down as blog titles and saved as drafts with the intention that I would come here and tell the whole story, and looking at them now I have no clue what I was talking about. And the notebooks? I may or may not ever see them again.  At least the little things I have on my phone might stick around long enough for me to do something with them! 

Now life has settled into another new routine, Aaron's job has changed to significantly less travel (yahoo!!), and I have found my motivation, it's time to dust off the old Zoo here and pick back up. Lots of missing pieces to fill in (um, the baby is almost three months old?!?), and lots of adventures coming up I have no doubt.  So many fun and exciting pieces of life to share, and many mundane and senseless things as well I am sure.  Because that's how we roll. 

Welcome back to the crazy!