Never Enough

When I saw the announcement in the paper last week, my heart almost stopped. I was so excited to learn that the wedding of the kids' birthmother had gone forward as planned. I immediately took the wedding gift I'd been saving for her over to the agency and dropped it off so they could get it to her. It wasn't much really. Just a set of dishes I found months ago that made me think of her. They were just her taste and personality. And since she'd told us she was engaged, I went ahead and bought them and saved them for whenever it became appropriate to give her a wedding gift.


Today we got some pictures and a copy of the invitation, with a nice note from her mother about the wedding. It made me so happy to see her looking so well and thrilled me to know that she's now married and won't ever again have to make the same sacrifice that she made for us not once, but twice.

Still my heart broke a little. I gave her dishes. DISHES! A perfectly respectable wedding gift for literally anyone else, but this is a woman who gave me my children. It's because of her that I get to be mommy to the sweetest boy and girl on the planet. And what do I give her? Dishes. Disgusting right? It's just never enough. The necklace for her birthday, the perfume at Christmas, the quilt we made for Parker's placement. I could lasso the moon and give it to her and it wouldn't be enough to express our gratitude. Every holiday and major milestone we celebrate, I try and send her a little gift of somekind. Just a small token to let her know that we love her and we think of her and we're still so grateful to her. But how on earth are these pathetic little material gifts ever supposed to compare with the gifts she's given us? She probably groans every time she opens one of our presents and thinks, "I gave you parenthood twice! And what do you get me? A handbag!?!?!?! Yeah. That's the same." But I know that there's nothing on this earth that can compare with what she's given us.

So for now I'll keep sending my paltry little gifts at the holidays. And just hope that she somehow understands we wish we could do more. Because nothing in life is ever going to match these beautiful babies that I get to wake up to every single morning and rock to sleep each night.

Mediocre

So I'm very well aware of the fact that I will never be a competitive runner. As much as I enjoy running, and all the benefits that come with it, I know I'm not fast. Still, I feel like I'm a little bit stuck. In every race that I enter I expect to beat my best time. I'm very tough on myself I know, but I like seeing progress and when I can clock myself running faster at any given distance, that's very tangible progress. And I feel like I should be getting better. Even if I'll never be "fast" per se, I can at least be "Faster" than the last time. Because the more I work out, the stronger I'll get right? And I should see that in my race results.

Which is why it's inexplicable to me that I'm having such a mediocre summer. I've not set a personal best time at any single distance yet this year. In fact, I haven't come close. They've not been my worst races either, but still I feel like I should be progressing and somehow I'm not. Or maybe it's just that I'm not progressing as fast as I'd like to.

At first I figured it was because I was heavier this year than last year. (Having both kids in the hospital and an unemployed husband this past winter, really took it's toll. I packed on 15 pounds in a relatively short amount of time.) So I went on a diet. In 8 weeks I'm down close to 18 pounds, and while I can tell in my training that running is getting easier for me, it's not showing in my race results. My training runs seem to be a little faster over all. And most races start out excellent, but by the end I seem to run out of gas. Even in the short distances.

This morning at the Kelly Canyon Half Marathon I was once again on target to beat my personal best (and by a large margin too!) If I'd only done the 10K perhaps I would have. At 6 miles I was still 4 minutes under pace and even though I was tired, I felt okay. And then it kind of fell apart on me. Everything hurt and I just felt exhausted. Honestly the last 4 miles felt more like the last 4 miles of a full marathon than a half. And thus I ended up walking for the entire final 5K's and finishing a good 10+ minutes slower than my personal best half marathon time.

My dad always drilled into me that we don't choose to settle for mediocrity. (Have you ever noticed the quote on the top of this blog?) I mean I want to know that everything I attempted in life, running related or not, is something I put my very best effort into. And yet I'm struggling because I'm feeling like I'm putting in the time and effort to train and eat right and take care of myself and yet the results are disappointing, especially for someone like me who expects so much of herself.

Proof!

I didn't destroy the picture. I just didn't want to be reminded of the fact that my son, (like the rest of the freaks in my family) seems to have no qualms about the fact that snakes are literally THE DEVIL!!!!!! (It's in the Bible people!)

All this fun and a FREE laptop too!!!!

I'd have to call this past weekend not only a great deal of fun but also a smashing success! I'll give it to you point by point.

1. Gideon got to help grandpa "drive" the big truck. - Several of you know my father-in-law is a truck driver. Every now and then he'll bring the truck home and let Gideon "help" him drive around the block. It's always great fun for both of them.

2. We left Friday afternoon & made it safely to Jake & Hillary's house in Provo. - It's always fun to visit because their dog, Toby, is seriously the best dog ever with kids and my kids LOVE him. Plus, they for some reason enjoy wrestling with Uncle Jake and he's a good enough sport to let them.

3. The Hobbler Half Marathon - The reason for the trip was so that I could run the half marathon out of Hobble Canyon. I was doing really great, actually on pace to FINALLY break 2 hours 30 minutes (which has been my elusive goal time for the half recently.) Up until mile 9 anyway, at that point my calves really started cramping up. I'm thinking it was the "gradual" downhill finally catching up with me. At any rate the last four miles were tougher than I expected and I finished in 2:41.15. Disappointing, yes, but definitely my best half so far this year. I have to admit I'm more sore after this race than I've ever been after a half marathon. But a soak in my favorite bath salts, frequent Bio-Freeze applications and a little ibuprophen and I should be ready to go this weekend at the Ririe Days Half Marathon.

(This is the only picture I have of Hillary from the weekend, a self-portrait of her holding Princess P.)

And here I come. Hobbling along (pun intended) to the finish. Oh well, as usual I may have looked rough, but at least I was dressed well.

Gideon didn't want to cross the finish line with me this time. I guess because there was too much else going on for the kids like face painting and a bouncy castle.

4. The trampoline & the swing - I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Gideon had a ball! Well, both kids did.

5. Yes, I said FREE laptop - One of the best things about having Jake as a brother-in-law is that he's a self-proclaimed computer geek. This really benefitted me over the weekend when he saw an ad for someone giving away two "broken" laptops. Unlike the rest of us who would steer clear and just buy new ones, Jake sees any kind of "broken" computer as an opportunity. Even if it's unfixable, he can still tear it down and keep the usable parts for future projects (because as Jake once explained to me years ago, the best computers aren't bought, they're built.) It turns out one of the computers only needed a new power cord & a virus removed and it worked perfectly. It's about 5-6 years old, but Jake reconfigured it and updated it and offered it to me. I've actually never had my own laptop so this is exciting for me. We have one, which Travis takes with him when he travels, and we have a 9 year old desktop at home that I use when he's on the road. The laptop I'd been using was a hand-me-down from my mom that was like 8 years old (and actually quit working on me a few weeks ago) I jumped at the chance. A working laptop & all I had to invest in was a new power cord?!?!?! SOLD!!!!!!!!

So yeah, a very successful weekend and definitely worth the trip to Utah. I'm actually considering going back down to run the Timp Half on the 30th, but I'll have to wait & see where Travis is going to be at that point.

A Fabulous 4th!

Our holiday weekend started off not quite so fun. Gideon started running a really high fever on Tuesday evening. So after a trip to the Dr. and a diagnosis of Tonsilitis, we spent the next couple of days trying to keep his fever down with tylenol & trying to get him to drink enough not to get overly dehydrated.

Fortunately by Friday his temperature wasn't spiking up quite so high and he seemed to be acting well enough to go the cabin with Nana & Grandpa. They went up Friday afternoon and Parker and I went and joined them on Saturday morning. It was a fun weekend, Gideon "helped" grandpa put the addition onto his deck, I read a lot of books & magazines and Parker crawled around and got as dirty as possible. Of course we had to stop and get a few little fireworks to let off.

Parker liked watching them and chewing on the empty boxes (until of course we took them away from her.)

Dirty babies get bathed in the sink of course! (And the other reason I took this photo is because somewhere floating around in the world is a photo of Travis at about this age in this very sink....)

Sunday afternoon the kids & I packed up and left the cabin. After a quick stop at home we went to mom & dad's to spend the night with them. Of course Gideon had to have fireworks there too. Fortunately we found what was left of Uncle Cody's stash and were pleased to discover there were still some very fun things in it, like race cars and tanks. (You know the fun stuff for a 3 year old.)

And of course lots of sparklers!

On Monday morning I got up and left super early to make it back to Idaho Falls for the Firecracker 5K Freedom Run. It wasn't my best 5K but it wasn't my worst either. All in all we'll call it a success. While I was doing that, mom & daddy took the kids to the pancake breakfast in Menan. I joined them there once I was done. For such a small town Menan really puts on an amazing 4th of July celebration. There's a 3 on 3 basketball tournament, a 5K fun run and a softball tournament & a parade. As well as an all day "festival" with booths and vendors & food and games for the kids (fishing ponds, ring tosses, etc....) and all day entertainment consisting of local singers, dancers and musicians. (Yes, my mom performed, but I didn't happen to get a photo of that.) And their fireworks show is awesome. I won't say it's better than anyone else's, but it can hold it's own against any show in the area, which is pretty good coming from a town of 707 residents.

Gideon had fun on the seesaw & the swings and generally running around the playground like a wild man.

Gideon liked getting pushed by grandpa because he went really high! After the breakfast we went back to mom & dad's house where I showered & changed and then we headed back to the park for the festival.

First we did the fishing pond and the bouncy castles. Naturally we had to do everything like 7 times throughout the day.

Parker loves to give big sloppy wet kisses now! It's super cute!

Grandpa took Parker for a little walk and they came back with a pretty green beaded bracelet (which she was chewing on.) I asked him whose it was and he said, "Hers. She told me she wanted it." Uh-huh. Sure. I think grandpa just likes spoiling his kids. He bought his 3 unborn grandchildren all something from the festival as well as a hair bow for Parker and a ninja sword for Gideon. Plus he paid for him to do the fish pond and ring toss several times.

And what's Independence Day without a hot dog?

After my mom sang, we headed out to the truck to wait for the parade to start.

We were joined by Michael and Ashlynn who spent the rest of the day with us, so that was fun. And I got a kick out of the fact that my mom looks like she belongs at a polo match and not at a 4th of July parade. Sadly I didn't get any photos of the parade because I was taking all of those with mom's camera. but it was a good parade. Almost an hour long and lots of candy. Gideon would walk out in the road and just hold his hands out and then they had to throw candy at him, so he really cleaned up. After the parade we went back to mom & dad's to rest and get out of the sun for a while. The kiddos took naps and the adults relaxed. Then we headed back down to the park to wait for the fireworks.

Parker's cute jammies!

We were joined at the fireworks by some friends of Michael & Ashlynn & this super cute girl in the red & white is Hillary Crawford. A friend of the family from when they lived in Pueblo, CO who's now going to school at BYU-I.

That's our friend Doreen talking to mom. Her sons wrestled with Cody at Madison. As it got a little darker we broke out the glow sticks.

And of course we had to have some more sparklers!

My darling little toothless boy!

Sometimes I just wonder about this woman.....

The fireworks don't start until around 10:15 because it just doesn't get dark enough here until then. This was the first year Gideon actually stayed awake for the show. It was fun to watch and listen to his reactions. Although I do think he started getting a little bored and tired after about 20 minutes.

Parker fell asleep but then woke up a few minutes before the show actually started. And she amazed me. She was completey mesmerized by the show. She sat stock still and didn't make a sound, but just watched with wide eyes the entire time! It was super cute!

All in all we'll call it a success! The only downside was that we missed Travis and really wished he could have been with us. But oh well. Maybe next year.