Drew has been training for a marathon for the last couple months. He has been very dedicated in his training, even doing his long runs early Monday morning before work because of my weekend work schedule. His last long run before the marathon didn't go terribly well (I think he was a little bit sick and sleep deprived and didn't go nearly as far as he was planning) so it was with not insignificant nerves that he woke up early, early Saturday morning to catch the shuttle up the back of the mountain in the sunrise. He had to get a babysitter to come over to our house at like 4 in the morning because I was still at the hospital.
One more view of that sunrise with the racers milling about.
And one more, of my favorite racer.
Here he is starting out full of energy and promise (he's on the double yellow line on the left).
Some of the aid stations had themes.
The jokes!
Doesn't running a marathon look so fun? Running downhill through the mountains in the fresh morning air... Life is great.
Here's Drew catching a drink.
Another cute aid station sign.
Erica Bass and her daughter Genevieve, Emily Lane (the best babysitter in the world), and The McKenzie all helped out at another aid station.
It's still looking funnish...
...but once he hit the city it was significantly less so.
I had come home from work, Courtney had come over and insisted on taking my children to her son's soccer game with her so I could sleep, but I made a sign instead. I was intending to go pick up the kids on my way out, but I was getting race updates by text and suddenly realized if I didn't book it to the finish line I was going to totally miss him. I got there with 5 minutes to spare before he came hobbling around the corner.
I want to say he finished in either 4:13 or 4:17. I can't quite remember. Whatever his time was, he was very pleased the race was finished. This says "Ow."
Drew was expecting me to be at home asleep, so it took him a minute to recognize me and take in the sign. When he did, it was a little bit too much for his exhaustion to handle, and he almost broke into tears.
The sign is based off two strips from a comic we like.
A lady took our picture, and another lady took a picture of the lady taking our picture.
Kissed gingerly, Drew went to get his after-race donut while Hillary and Miles (the people behind us in the picture above) and I waited for Drew's running buddy Spencer.
This was one of his 3 marathons this summer. He drank some stuff over halfway through the race that made him feel sick, so he vomited the last couple miles and came shuffling over the finish line looking like death (he recovered). Also in this picture is Vince Haslam, Drew's church-twin that I have to be careful not to hold hands with by mistake.
One more with my funny sign.
And the last hurdle...
Here are some hard-earned salt deposits.
The Monday after the race the kids didn't have school for some reason, and it was The McKenzie's birthday (sometimes Bo calls her "the McKenzie" as a quirk of her ESL, but that's what they call the leader of Clan McKenzie in the Outlander book I read and it fits her so well that it has kind of stuck), so she and Courtney and our combined children all went out to the Kissing Turtles to celebrate.
Baby Brock came too and made use of the leisure sheet.
It was a perfect day for the Turtles.
The sky was full of Toy Story clouds.
We get days like this a lot here in Albuquerque.
The kids call this rock Grandpa Graffiti.
I was getting ready to take a picture of the birthday girl when we noticed Gabe peeing in the background. The McKenzie has 4 boys, and they pretty much pee wherever they are whenever they need to go, because they can.
Rafe had a great time climbing around.
And performing gravity defying feats.
The Richardson boys liked the idea of jumping, but never quite enough to overcome their senses of self-preservation.
Vivien climbed to the very tallest turtle head this time, to show Courtney how to do it.
We love our Courtney. But sadness of life, her husband's neurosurgery residency program was dropped from UNM because they lost their accreditation after 3 senior faculty members moved away this year, so they will be moving to UC Irvine in California in mid-December. We are soaking them up while we can.
After Kissing Turtles we stopped at Sonic for birthday sodas. Vivien had to go to the bathroom, so I sent her and Rafe as buddies into Lowe's all by themselves. It was a significant Mom Risk, and my internal alarms sent me searching for them, with controlled breath and a tight grip on the reins of my panic, about a minute before they emerged from the front doors. Please note Rafe's raised-arm traffic signal that he picked up at Youchien and still does faithfully.
We went to Puesta del Sol's fall carnival. We bought 6 bowls of Frito Pie from the Bilingual Program and ate them with Iliana's brother and her dad, Andrés (who says people frequently mishear his name and then call him Amadeus). We gave Rafe and Vivien their tickets and they scampered off together to go through the Haunted Library as many times as their tickets would allow.
Drew and I went around with Merrick and Annie until I had to go to work.
Poor Drew has had to spend many weekend nights alone over the last year. Well, alone with kids. His birthday was particularly lack-luster this year. We decorated the kitchen for him...
...and left him a basket of love notes.
But he had to buy his own cake...
...and light his own birthday candles and take his own birthday pictures.
I probably would have bought him a gift, but I had just budgeted the day before and was feeling stressed about the truck payments. I made myself a coloring page to keep track of our progress. We own this much of our fancy vehicle:
So instead I gave him words of affirmation and folded them up infuriatingly tight so he was forced to savor each one. He assures me his birthday was not a disappointment.
Also that weekend was General Conference. Vivien's Activity Days leaders helped them make a conference journal for note taking. I found reading through her notes afterwards to be reely hart worming, and I would like to be stroinger in the fathe like President Eyring.
The Monday after Drew's birthday we had visitors! Ronnie was working on the Snowflake temple again, so Sarah jogged across to stay with us for a few days. I had so much on my mind the week she came (planning a ward party, prepping for Jessie's wedding, figuring out the Primary Program) and was quite physically tired (recouping from the weekend of night shifts, early morning swim workouts) that I wasn't nearly as much fun as I had intended to be, especially in the evenings. But she is an understanding, contented girl and worked on her Personal Progress when I was busy in Sabrina-land. And we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of fun all together during the day while she was here. The first day we picked up Vivien and Rafe after school and went straight to A Park Above.
Merrick managed to bust open his lip within minutes of arriving. We FaceTimed Papi for a professional opinion. Since it wasn't all the way through the lip, the risk of infection was lower, so he advised us on the best ways to preserve the aesthetics of his angel face.
We tried super-gluing it shut when we got home, but we did it very poorly, so he'll probably have a scar. Here it is the next day.
Everyone had a good time running amok, despite the blood.
We did some dubious double-buckling so we could all fit in one car for our adventuring.
Tuesday morning Sarah got beautiful and we worked on a video audition for Hale's Christmas Carol. I hope I get to see her in it some year--no one has more sparkly eyes than Sarah!
After that, Sarah held down the fort while I went to the church to figure out how to set up tables for the upcoming ward party. Then when it was time to pick up the kids we all went to the zoo to see the new penguin exhibit.
I was watching Allen and Ocean that day as well, so in total we had 8 children with us. It was a lot of little bodies to keep track of.
Lions!
Allllll the kiddos.
That night there was a Bilingual Program meeting at Puesta. It was really good to hear from Vivien and Rafe's teachers how well they're doing in Spanish and what things we need to work on (mostly vocabulary); it made me rethink trying to get them into the family school that's closer to us next year--why interrupt a good thing? I again left Sarah with all the kids during the meeting, and she even had to make dinner while I was gone (she made a scrumptious yellow curry). And after all that ill-usage, she is so nice she still sent Drew and I on a date. We took Ocean home and then went to the Downton Abbey movie together. It was most appreciated time!
On Wednesday it was Vivi and Rafe's fall break, so we woke up early, drove by the old house and the old church and the old school, then went to the Kissing Turtles. It is quickly becoming my most blogged about place!
I'd blog about it less if it weren't so awesome. Here are the cuties in The Kiss.
Elena explored fearlessly.
She gets it from her mom.
Just look at her go!
These are cute cousins.
That one needs a little close-up.
And more cute cousins on Grandpa Graffiti.
One of Annie, just for fun.
Making the treacherously slippy way down.
We ate lunch at Souper Salad for old time's sake. A lady came up to us outside afterwards and congratulated the children on sitting so nicely and eating so well. She confessed that she had been nervous when we walked in about how we would all do, but she was impressed in the end. Whenever this happens I hear Mom in my mind drawling out, "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones." Later Sarah said their good behavior stemmed from the fact that we'd "pooped them out at the Kissing Turtles," which was wonderfully funny.
We drove past the temple on our way home (we were just going to do a little loop around the entry roundabout, but we were met by a gently insistent attendant who turned us about posthaste as the temple is under reconstruction). We came home and the kids spent the rest of the day playing. I think Drew brought home Dion's pizza, then we called it an early night in preparation for an early morning.
Drew took the day off so he could come with us to the Balloon Fiesta (Merrick calls it the "Bloonesta!") and not worry about rushing back to work. I don't know why I can never remember what time we get up and leave. I think we tried to leave at 4? All I know is that this picture was taken at 4:46. It was cold, but not miserable.
We walked from the parking lot through the stands of wares. One of them had a bubble machine in front.
We ate Tom Thumb doughnuts and breakfast burritos on the grass while we waited for the Dawn Patrol to light up.
Annie got cold with the waiting.
It was much too windy for the Dawn Patrol to take off. You'd keep trying to convince yourself it wasn't that windy, then you'd look at the balloons almost falling over, or the flags lining the field completely unfurled, and grudgingly admit that there was definitely a breeze.
The Dawn Patrol kept their burners going every now and then while we waited for the rest of the balloons to arrive.
Here's cute Sarah in the glow. Oh, whoops, selfie-mode.
THIS is the picture I was trying to take.
Annie with a tired Daddy enjoying the flame.
I do enjoy watching the slow color change of a sunrise in the sky.
In no time the balloons were out and filling up for a static display. It's always so exciting when they finally lift off into the air!
Here's a video of the early stages of Lilly Bee.
Here's a terrified Merrick trying to get free of all Joey Bee's rapidly expanding appendages.
And the kids running through the Bee trio, all finally upright.
Special shapes day is a lot of fun. The crew has little collecting cards for each of the balloons to give out if you can make it all the way up to the baskets through the crowd. Merrick has told every person we've met for the last month, "WE SAW YODA! BLOONESTA!"
Here's Annie's special balloon!
And there she is in the background all blown up.
Allycorn was a favorite of the Cook girls.
Merrick loved Beagle Maximus.
There was a strong Looney Toons lineup.
Mr. Fish was looking dapper in the morning sun.
Te Amo is my very favorite.
And La Ristra is always fun to see.
You can kind of see Spider Pig on the right of this one (Peter Porker pffffpfpfpffff).
There's just nothing like being right up next to the balloons. They're so huge and colorful and loud.
And it's always fun to bring people who haven't been before!
Myra's cheese face is the best!
It's always kind of nice to go home from the Fiesta too. Vivien's reading over my shoulder and strongly disagrees. We shall agree to disagree.
Sarah came home and took a power nap on my couch, then felt refreshed enough on waking to load up and make the drive home (there was some pressure to get home faster because Ronnie was heading back to UT with the temple workers that day but had not taken a house key with him!). Traveling with children is always an adventure, and Sarah does it admirably.
Some updates by person:
MERRICK
I took Merrick with me to Joann's the other day and they had some Halloween decorations out that made spooky noises. They were very disturbing for Merrick. "I scaaaaared."
Here he is defiling my music sanctuary.
The sleeping situation continues to be awful. He falls asleep in the car when we go pick up the kids. If I wake him up when we get home, he's terribly cranky. If I don't wake him up, when he wakes up he's terribly cranky and keeps the other children awake and won't go to sleep until all the lights in the house are out, and sometimes not even then. We find him sleeping random places in the hall. Whenever he's really upset about something during the day or feeling especially tired, he whines, "I sleeeeeep."
He came hopping up to me while I was practicing the other day and paused in a crouched position to shout: "I JUMPed! I'm JUMPing! I'm gonna JUMP!" Good conjugating!
With his little friends Allen and Gabe
He enjoys smashing things with rocks. He went through an entire thing of sidewalk chalk the other day.
The results were actually quite beautiful.
He likes to sleep wearing just pants sometimes. These are his favorite "Star Wars" pants. They are actually The Avengers. It was confusing for awhile.
When he pulls his pants up over his belly button...
...he reminds me of this:
He is talking A LOT. They are cute little words.
The other day I got home from work and was going to make breakfast. I said, "Let's have French toast!" then Merrick spent the next five minutes going "Skwunch toast? Skwunch toast?"
This year I've been watching Allen once a week. I pick him up at 11:50, we come home and have lunch, then we are out of the house from 1:30-2:30 picking up big kids, and he goes home at 4:20. The other day I had to switch days with the lady who watches him on his early-out day, when he gets out at 10. I had forgotten how much mischief he and Merrick get in to when they have many hours to kill. They emptied out my linen closet into the hall and it took FOREVER to clean up. Lucky for me Bo had stopped by to visit and kindly helped me put it to rights.
ANNIE
When we get home from picking up the big kids, Annie always pretends to be asleep. She can't keep a straight face for long, but I always pretend that she actually is asleep and say stuff like, "Oh sweet Annie is asleep. Dear sweet sleepy Annie" until she opens her eyes and pretends to be surprised that we're home.
Here's an actual sweet sleepy Annie.
It was a sore trial for Annie that our across-the-street neighbor Shaylee started Kindergarten this year and has not been as available to play. I thought having preschool twice a week might help curb her loneliness, and while Annie has loved preschool, it has seemed only to increase her appetite for play dates. Her friend Quinn from school carpools with another child, and Annie finds it monstrous unfair that she herself never gets to go home with Quinn. There have been many tearful pickups. I did arrange a lunch meet-up with Quinn's Mom at the park one day that gave us a temporary reprieve from Annie's badgering for a social life.
I have tried to address Annie's 4 year old propensity for victimization and ire by emphasizing the role given to her by her loving Savior as a Sunbeam. The initial conversation effected some improvement, but I'm afraid my use of "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" when she starts simmering only serves to further enrage. I can understand her irritation at the weaponization of Primary songs; I still want to roll my eyes whenever I hear "When my mother calls me quickly I obey..."
Here is Annie showing me her preschool skills. Megan Davis is an awesome preschool teacher; she has a long list of pet peeves she encountered while teaching elementary school that she is determined to stamp out from the very beginning in her young class.
Annie will never eat the edges of a quesadilla, even if I put cheese all the way to the end.
I have had to limit her to 5 pieces of paper a day, because she can go through (I wanted to say a ream, but apparently a ream is 500 pieces of paper and 25 sheets is a 'quire') quires of paper in one coloring session. She likes to do color studies.
And draw ghosts.
Some funnies:
Drew was telling me the plan for listening to Audiobooks in the car on the way to school in the mornings and said, "...then we'll go back to Hatchet afterwards." Annie said, "We're hatching it?"
She came up to me the other day wearing her swim suit bottoms and told me proudly that she had gone potty in her swim suit. She remembered from Lake Powell that you can pee in the water while wearing your swimming suit, so she had sat on the toilet and peed through the swim suit bottoms, then gone on her soggy way, quite pleased with herself.
RAFE
Rafe's soccer season is over. I didn't go to any games this season, but the reports I heard painted a picture of a boy who hustles and is a top scorer, but thinks winning is highly overrated. It's been funny to listen to Drew try to convince Rafe that winning actually is the point of sports, because Rafe is 100% sure it's to have fun.
I tried to take them to the park one day after school to practice soccer. It didn't go well.
He loves these long stripedy socks. And has a difficult time matching outfits. And still hates pants. And as soon as he is home from school he changes into one of his Daddy's old t-shirts as quickly as possible.
He takes frequent advantage of the free dinners at school, but exasperatingly likes to eat them by the front door. He is still learning to clean up after himself.
He is surprisingly good at taking Spanish dictations and likes to write me notes to stick on the fridge when there are things he really doesn't want me to forget. Like when I said I would give everyone haircuts:
Or when I said we would have zucchini bread for breakfast:
He has been a little hoarse lately, so when he reads quietly to himself while doing homework it comes out in the strangest way.
Also, here's a sample of how hard it is to sit next to him while he's studying:
He made this funny Panda with zebra legs at church.
And he is nearly as tall as Vivien. People forget he is only 6, and many newish acquaintances think he's actually our oldest child.
He still loves to make everything a weapon.
And here's another one of his drawings, just for fun.
Some random quotes:
An angry mistake: "This marker is USEFUL!!!"
I came back from swim one morning and didn't change out of my suit for awhile. Rafe came down for breakfast and saw me walking around wearing nothing but a sweatshirt and my purse and said, "Where are you going without your pants??"
VIVIEN
Vivien caught a little stomach bug one day. She had woken up with just a headache, so I sent her to school, but by the time they were at the drop off she was throwing up, so Drew took her to work and I met him there. I need to remember that when Vivien complains of a headache, she is actually sick.
I tried to have a conversation with the kids one day about their 3 jobs as part of the family and how they can do those jobs.
Vivien spent the entire conversation making her own list of priorities. She likes to do her own thing.
She and Annie like to play in the old dog house. I don't like it, because they take blankets out there and leave them.
Vivs picked a marigold the other day and showed me how it makes a perfect pumpkin upside down.
Here's a message from her teacher. Watching her pick apart the inconsistencies of English felt kind of like how you can pick on your siblings all you want but no one else is allowed to.
Here is Vivien drawing the doggies.
And here she is reading.
Vivien, unprompted and uncoached, said, "¿Puedo tener mas leche por favor?" at dinner the other day. I was so proud. She told Aunty Sarah, "We drive to Rio Rancho just to learn Spanish. It's worth the drive!"
Vivien has started whistling incessantly. Even while reading.
ME
Me has been having quite a stressful time lately. So I have been doing what I always do when I am stressed and don't have time to waste: escape to a very long series of books I have already read before. I have graduated from Harry Potter to Poldark. (One of my coworkers asked me if I put silver highlights in my hair. I was flattered.)
Here I am trying to figure out how big to make the family tapestries for my ward party.
Here are the weeds that have grown up in the yard through my neglect.
I have three bug stories. We were driving somewhere the other day and while we were stopped at a stoplight a big dragonfly landed on our car's antenna. When we started driving the wind whipped its body around so it was just barely hanging on by all its legs while the rest of it streamed out behind like a flag. As soon as we stopped at the next light it leg go and flew off.
Story 2: We have a huge spider that lives in our bathroom window. I don't mind it being there because I hate when mosquitoes get in our room at night and I assume it helps with that problem. But, the other day it was in the shower when I got in. It was in the far corner and I was keeping my eye on it, but I had to close my eyes to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. When I opened my eyes, the spider was gone, so I looked around frantically to find where it had gone and found it...ON MY LEG!!! There was some screaming and naked flailing involved.
Story 3: Here is a giant cat-faced spider I saw suspended in his web between two trees in our yard that I made Drew come out and look at.
I want you to see it because the kids wanted to ride bikes a day or two later, and as I was walking from the back yard into the front with head down to see my way in the dark I felt a pressure on my head and the appalling crackle of a ripping spider's web. I knew I had put my head right into the middle of the web, and knew from the size of the web and the location exactly what spider it was, and knew instantly that the spider was in my hair. I swallowed a shriek with all the self control I could muster and quickly shook the offending arachnid out of my mop and onto the front porch where it has taken up residence in our entryway.
Now that I look at the picture more closely, I'm not sure they are the same spider. But I don't want to research it much more because my skin is crawling.
The sky was super cool that night. There were dark clouds all over the sky except for a little break in the west, and at first it seemed like moonlight because the moon was definitely out, but it was actually still the setting sun.
This was another cool sunset right before a Relief Society activity. I think it looks like embers.
I am the choir accompanist in our ward. It is one of my favorite callings ever.
Many weeks I am post night-shift and can hardly play because my brain is so slow, but those rare Sundays when I haven't worked I have a grand time joking and enjoying all the fun choir friends.
Here's a misty morning at work during the BLOONESTA. My very favorite part of my job is tucking my patients in with a warm blanket, all the way up to their chins. It is the only nursing intervention that is always 100% effective in producing a relieved sigh of contentment.
Here is a workout from the Masters Team I've started going to MWF mornings at 5:30. I think this is the one that the coach's math didn't add up for the total distances and my waterlogged brain could. not. even.
Mom and Dad got their official call to be Mission Presidents, which has been a lot to process. They will of course be incredible and I am very proud of them, but there is also the jealousy of having to share your parents, and the sadness that they will be less accessible (how inaccessible remains to be seen, pending their actual assignment). I loved to hear about their interview with Elder Renlund where he told them they may or may not receive a call within the next 3 months, but regardless they should feel sincerely complimented and know that they are loved and appreciated and that their parents should be proud of them, then he proceeded to ask them very personal questions about every aspect of their life. He asked them about each of their children; Elder Renlund said my name and has heard details about my life! They waited a month after their interview before they met with President Oaks who poked his head around his office door, said, "Dr. Brunsdale! Come on in!" sat them on his beautiful couch and scooted a chair right up to their knees and held their hands and smiled at them with his twinkly eyes and extended the call. They have been masters of misdirection over the last month while they've known what's happening and no one else has.
I tried talking to Coco about it the Monday after and she got me pretty good.
Here is a little lizard that somehow got in the house and was crawling across our rug. I love the bright blue tails on these guys. When the weather is warmer and I sit here by the back door to blog I see them scurrying across our porch out of the corner of my eye.
Here is my happy running face.
Here are all the things that hide under the couch. Kids make housekeeping a challenge.
Also, I'm just going to put this here. I thought it was really funny before I took a video of it, so I had to take a video of it.
DREW
Here is Drew putting in paving stones for the shed where the tools will now live instead of lying strewn about the yard in the elements.
Here are Drew and the kids waiting for me to come home from work. Look, F is for Forbes!
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