For My Benefit

One of the reasons for this blog is to document things that have happened in the past. As my memory fades, I forget what I've done when, so this post is for my benefit - to document which triathlons I've done and when.

2005
AF Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2006
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Hillman (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2007
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Lehi Legacy Hop Into Spring (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Echo Challenge (Olympic)
Spudman (Olympic)
Jordanelle Tri (Olympic)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2008
Vikingman (Half Iron)
Spudman (Olympic)
Utah Half (Half Iron)
American Fork Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)
Ironman Arizona

2009
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)

Registered for:
Ironman Boise 70.3
Spudman
Utah Half
Ironman St. George 2010

Tentatively planned:
Ironman Arizona

The Pine Hollow Biker Gang is back!

Lili learned to ride her bike without training wheels, no training wheels, no training wheels.

A Facebook friend gave me some tips about teaching kids to ride bikes.

• Lower the seat so that the child can easily touch the pavement.
• Remove the pedals so they won't impede the child from scootching around with their feet.
• And remove the training wheels.

For two weeks I had Lili scootch around on her bike. At first, she had no balance. But by the end of two weeks, she could pick her feet up and glide. I added the pedals back on, and seriously within three tries she figured it out.

I need to post a picture of the AMAZIN' dinner Kulani cooked me for Mother's Day: broiled lobster tail, peas, salad, and filet mignon with a shrimp topping. I love you, Sweetie! And as a gift for myself and you, I bought a tool set at the Ace Hardware grand opening, so I will no longer have to borrow your set and leave them out or hidden where you can't find them. It even came with a fashionable tote bag. Tote, tote!

School Lunch

To better prepare Lilia for first grade, I decided to take her to lunch at the school cafeteria at her elementary school. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were serving ... schloppy joes, schloppy, schloppy joes! And chicken-pattie sandwiches.

I loved school lunch growing up. The nice old lady would put a check next to our names in her ledger book for everytime we came through the line. Sometimes my mom would forget to send a check, but the lunch lady would still let me have lunch, giving me a stern face and telling me to remind my mother to pay the bill. Today they have computers for that.

And working in the lunch room was the "cool" thing to do when I was in elementary school. If you were chosen to work in the lunchroom, it meant you were allowed to leave class 15 minutes early to be a server or help with clean-up. My favorite job was helping in the dishwasher area. that way I didn't have to wear a hair net and ruin my straight-as-straw hairdo.

Lunch ladies never change. They're a mix of fiesty and sweetness, much like a grandma. They want to give you all the food you'd care to eat, but they don't want you wasting your vegetables. We had a teacher, Mrs. Batista, who would guard the garbage cans and make you turn around and sit back down if you didn't eat your vegetables. I always made sure to leave room for the veggies. She was well-versed in the teacher stare: the type of stare that could scare children into obedience on a sunny day in a crowded room.

Lilia's school had fresh, cut-up veggies like carrots and cucumbers, and they even had cherry tomatoes--a favorite of young children for their explodability. They also had whole apples and pears to eat, as well as salad and canned pears. Today we had our choice of orange juice, chocolate milk, 1 % milk, or 2 % milk. In my day, we only had the choice of white milk, until high school. Then we could choose between white or chocolate milk.

We sat at the first grader's table. We got lots of stares and whispers in front of our backs. I've forgotten how non-sly elementary students are. Were they whispering about us? Uh, well, they would look at us, and while looking at us, they'd put their hand against the other person's face and whisper behind the flesh curtain. I can guess at what they were whispering about:

"That mom should not be at our table. This table is reserved for the 'cool' first graders. She is so not cool."

Lissy felt uneasy being at the 1st grader's table, so we moved to a different table that had no one sitting at it. When the fourth graders started filing into the lunchroom, Lilia said she was getting scared as well. But then her "buddy" reader came in and waved at her. That made her feel better. She really likes her "buddy" reader; an older child assigned to the kindergartners to help them with their reading.

My heart grows nostaligic at the end of school year and at the beginning of school year. Fear, joy, excitement, sadness, happiness: all those emotions bawled into one. And now my girls will be able to experience all that school has to offer.

I asked Lilia after we left, would you like to eat school lunch or have me prepare you a lunch and eat it at school? Her answer is she would prefer the school lunch. I guess that doesn't bode well for my cooking skills. Or maybe it does?...

A Short Reflection on my Mothering

My middle child just told me her boogers were running down her nose. This is the child who still insists on telling me when she has to go potty, even though she's been potty trained for close to three years. Her boogers running down her nose means I am to get her a tissue and help her wipe her nose. So I told her to take her shirt and go like this, and then I show her what a shirt is used for in southern Idaho when working in the sugarbeet fields. That's the type of mother I am.

Half-assed.

If I had to give myself a report card for my mothering efforts, I would probably earn a C in teaching them proper hygiene; D in consistency in bedtime hours; C in healthily prepared lunches; and D in proper amount of television watching.

Areas where I'm better perhaps are playing with them at the park. I get a solid A there. I'm Captain Hook to their Peter, Wendy, and Schmee (Nono is Schmee because she's on my hip most times). And I get an A for being good at wanting to scare them, but only an age-appropriate scare. Sometimes I push the scare-line boundary, however, like the time we watched Jurassic Park III together. My dad loved to push the scare-line boundary with us when we were little. His stories always involved one of three topics: old bums (beggars was an appropriate substitute, but not homeless man), rabid dogs/coyotes, and hook-armed men.

Yesterday while Kulani was teaching Hekili how to mountainbike, we went on a hike up Provo Canyon. My big mouth had to mention what scary things are found in the mountains. Lilia got spooked thinking about the rattle snakes I told her about. She wanted to turn around and go back home.

"I was just kidding! There aren't snakes in the mountains!" I barked at her, not wanting her to ruin our hiking adventure by making us turn around and go back. We continued up the trail. I get an A for being a taskmaster.

On our way down, we passed by some shady characters wearing a lot of black and smelling of a sweet smoke. Nono, the 2-year-old, was riding on my shoulders and she says, "I'm scared. It's a witch." She's into witches these days. Anytime she sees anything scary she calls it "a witch." Luckily she didn't say it loud enough for the coven to hear. I think they would have welcomed a chubby little Nono in their witches' brew that night under the full moon.

I love being a mother to these little lumpkins. I hope I don't ruin them for life.

Drawrings

The title is not a typo. Think of Mike Myers in the bathtub singing, "Well, you know my name is Simon, and I like to make drawrings."

My girls like to make "drawrings." And now that Lilia is learning to write, she likes to make stories and recipes along with her drawrings. When Kulani and I went on our anniversary date last week, Lilia created this for us:

It's a recipe for chocolate-dipped bananas. It reads:

"Bananas and Chocolate. You put it in the microwave and eat it and wash your face." (I took out the spelling mistakes.)

Then there is a pictorial of the process with a microwave, a person with a dirty face, and then a person with a clean face. At the bottom, she wrote:

"Elissa helped me." Allysa is the babysitter.

The girls are also super easy to manipulate into helping me clean the house. It's embarrassingly simple. It requires an abundance of overexuberant praise.

First I ask them to do just one simple job for me.

I'll say, "How old are you?"

And Lilia will say, "6."

Me: "Okay, since you're 6, pick up six toys from the living room."

Then Lissy will say, "Should I pick up 5 things?"

Me: "Five is a lot. Are you sure you can do it? Let me see if you can first."

They'll each pick up there designated amout, and I'll say, "Holy cow! I did NOT think you guys could handle that, and you did it like you were 7 or 8-year-olds. I wonder if you could pick up 8 things?"

The girls: "I can! I can!"

Me: "Well, let me see first."

Girls get to it lickity split.

Me: "Oh my goodness! I am calling the newspapers to tell them I have two of the best cleaners in the world here at my house! Seriously, you guys are the best!"

And then the girls keep picking up the living room and showing me what else they are cleaning, while I make a pretend call to The Daily Herald.

But seriously, in the whole-wide world, you could NOT find two better cleaners. Now if we could only get Nohea to pull her 2-year-old naughty weight around here.

Happy Dozenth Anniversary, Kulani!

Fisherstyle Recap Reduxed

It was Spring Break last week, which wasn't much fun for the kids, because we mostly helped out with Alika's wedding and it snowed a ton, so we stayed indoors.

So on Friday and Saturday, I wanted to do something fun with the girls. On Friday, Lilia went to work with her dad. Here's a picture of her eating breakfast before heading out for her big day as Dad's secretary/helper.

Then on Friday night we went swimming at the girl's favorite swimming pool: The Lehi Legacy Center. It's better than our American Fork Rec Center in the winter because it has an indoor water slide and a toddler area, as well as a big bucket that pours out every 15 minutes or so. The girls love that. It's as great as Seven Peaks to them.

On Saturday I did some yard work, and then we went swimming again, but at the A.F. pool because we have a pass. Then we went to the Sticky Shoe dollar theater in A.F. We watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The girls loved it. Nohea actually stayed in my lap for the whole movie, but not without some help from me. I had to keep her distracted by lots of face snuggling, tickling, and coddling. That's why we always go to the Sticky Shoe, which is what the locals call it. It's pretty old and run-down, and people who generally go are families who tolerate squaking babies better than if we went to a full-priced theater or the dollar theaters frequented by college students.

Sunday Kulani played Fisher Test Kitchen. He made a new taste sensation he adapted from Bon Appetit. It was a coconut curry shrimp dish, and it was heavenly. Here's a picture:

We had Maren and Racer over. We also made garlic steak and shrimp.

The following are some more random pictures. We invited over our old neighbor's family for Easter dinner and egghunt.

And Kulani and I turned a year older last week. My angel neighbor Ellen brought me these amazing chocolate cake bites from a new bakery she found in Provo.