Thanksgiving, Part 1--or How We Almost Didn't Make It

This year for Thanksgiving, we had the privilege of flying home to Maryland to spend the holiday with Austin's family.  Here is the story of how we got there:

* The week before we were scheduled to leave, Austin's grandmother, who had been ill for some time, finally passed away.  Some travel schedules had to be moved around, including changing Austin's ticket to a flight out of Denver instead of from Salt Lake with me and the kids.  But the funeral was beautiful, and much of the family got to be together for it.  It was definitely one of those bittersweet kinds of funerals.  Of course Grandma Wilcox will be missed, but we're so glad she finally gets to be with her husband, who passed away 8 years ago, again.

* The day I was scheduled to leave was also the day of a twice-semesterly free clothing exchange put on by the MBA and Law programs at BYU.  These have been such a blessing to us, providing us with the bulk of our kids' clothes over the last year and a half, that I thought it was worth stopping by for 5 minutes to grab a few things on the way to the airport.  Not having Austin with me would make this slightly more difficult, but I thought it was still doable if I just left the kids in the car while I ran in. 

The morning went well, although the first snowfall of the year had finally made its appearance.  I had everything packed the night before, woke up early to get myself ready before the kids got up, packed the car with all our luggage, and had everything ready to go.  Then I thought, "I should turn on the car now so it will be nice and warm for the kids--especially since they're going to wait out here for me." 

So I turned on the car, cranked up the heater and pushed the defroster button.  Then I dusted the snow off and scraped the ice off.  But when I went to open the driver's side door to put the ice scraper away...I discovered that somehow I had locked the doors.  With the keys in the ignition.  And the car turned on.  And 15 minutes before I had planned on leaving.  AAAARGH!!!

I panicked.  I searched in vain for Austin's keys in hopes he had left them behind.  I tried in vain to call his phone (it was 7:15 in the morning) in Denver.  I searched in vain for our hidden spare key.  And then I decided in desperation to call my insurance company to see if I could get a locksmith.  Turns out I could, and it was covered under my plan, so all I had to do was wait--and hope they arrived in time for me to catch my flight.

In the meantime, I awoke the kids, fed them breakfast, and tried to keep the choking feeling from rising out of my stomach into my throat.  (Is there anything worse than being late for a flight?)  I told Carson that we were waiting for a man to come unlock our car.  He said to me, "When is Logan going to get here and unlock our car?"  I said, "No, we're going to Uncle Logan's house in Maryland.  A different man is coming to unlock our car."  But I am not kidding you when I say that when the locksmith finally called to say he was on his way, he name was in fact Logan.  Weird!  I look at it as Heavenly Father's way of letting me know--thru my son's mouth--that He was aware of me and that we would make it.

So!  Logan the Locksmith arrived and, let's just say I'm astonished at how easy it is to break into my Subaru.  Moments later, and inside a toasty warm car, (which had been running for the better part of an hour) we set off.  Encouraged by the speediness of the unlocking, I decided that maybe there still was enough time to drop by the clothing swap and grab a few needed items. 

At 8:30am, I set off for the Salt Lake City Airport from BYU Campus in Provo.  Door to door, if you're being dropped off, there's no traffic, and you adhere (somewhat) closely to the speed limit, this is a 45 minute (minimum) drive.  My flight was at 10:00.  This left me just 90 minutes (from takeoff) to get to the airport, park in the long-term parking lot, get my kids, suitcases, and carseats onto the shuttle, check in, and make it thru the airport to my plane.  As I headed for the freeway, I asked Carson to say a quick prayer that we would make it to our airplane safely and on time.  And then, I forced myself to stop looking at the clock, stop letting the panic rise in my throat, and tried to assure myself that I was in the Lord's hands.

I parked at 9:15 on the nose.  Strapped all my luggage together and around me, and had poor little Carson following behind pushing Cora in the stroller.  Managed to catch a shuttle and get to the check-in counter by just after 9:30.  We were told that we could make the flight, but it was too late for our bags.  (The attendant told me that although my bags were required to fly with me, and although it ws too late to load them onto my plane, he would figure something out.)  So, feeling grateful I had packed all the kids' clothes and one spare change for me in my carry-on, I sped thru the terminal--kids, carry-on, and car-seats still in tow--to my gate.  A guard helped us cut thru the lines at security, and we FINALLY made our flight.  Whew!  And...we weren't the last ones to board.

To conclude, we made it, but our bags didn't.  Fortunately, they arrived later that night, and Austin was able to pick them up when he landed the next day.  And that's the story of how we almost didn't make it to Thanksgiving, but how a little boy's prayer, and a lot of faith made it happen.

It's also the story about how I am starting to learn that no matter how carefully you plan, and how much control you think you have over things, you really don't.  And just one tiny little change or mistake can completely overhaul your plans and expectations.  It was like a perfectly orchestrated lesson to teach me that I'm not as in control as I like to think I am.  But even though everything seemed to fall apart, it still worked out in the end.  So I'm trying to learn to let go a little. 

Another 5K

The first week of November this year, we ran another 5K.  (Of course when I say "ran", I mean "walked fast" for me...but Austin ran.)  I think I would like to make that a yearly tradition.  We'll see if I can get up the gumption to pull it off on my own, and not just rely on the MBA program to organize it.

This year, I had the benefit of no longer being pregnant.  However, this meant I now was pushing a double jogger stroller with two children in it.  But that's okay.  I still beat my time from last year by just over 2 minutes!  (Still not telling what that actually translates to.)  Austin was actually slower by a bit.  I guess business school makes you lazy.  (Ha ha, just kidding, Aust.  I know you're still amazing.  :)

After the grown-up's 5K, the kids participated in a little race.  It had originally been advertised as a 1-Miler, so we had gone to the BYU indoor track to practice and see if Carson could do it.  He could.  He raced Austin several laps around the short track and had energy to spare!  But the day of the race, it turned out to be more like a 50-yd dash.  And it was a good thing too, because the cold weather had left Carson in not the best of running moods. 

But he was a little champion!  And he loved his racing number and the star sticker they gave him for running.  Above is a picture of him with a couple friends from the MBA program after the race.

Falling, Yes I Am Falling

One of our To-Dos on our Fall Tree was to hike in the "Great Valley."  This is a little valley we discovered behind our house last spring.  Carson likes to go adventure back there, and sometimes Austin likes to go mountain biking there.  It's small and a bunch of houses from the neighborhoods up the hill back up to it.  But it feels remote enough, and the views are still cool.

Cora's first trip in the baby backpack.  She likes it!  (But Austin volunteered to do the carrying this time...I guess that means it's my turn if we ever get around to hiking Timpanogus...)

Seriously, this is right behind my house in the middle of Provo.  So cool!

Halloween 2011

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I had the best Halloween ever this year.  At least the best Halloween in my accessible memory.  We've always done well in the costume department.  (See here and here.)  But this year I sewed costumes!  And we're not talking the 2  straight-line seams I sewed for my cavewoman costume, or a hot-glued engineer hat.  We're talking real seamstressing here.

Carson, in no uncertain terms, wanted to be Cosmo the Cougar--the BYU mascot.  (At 3 1/2, isn't he a bit young to already be choosing his own costume?  Wasn't I supposed to get at least one more year of control?)  He already had the football shirt, so I figured I could throw together a little cougar hood and paint his face, right?  Oh yeah.  I did that and more!  Look at that thing!  It's superb!  And, quite frankly, except for the fact that I left his real face visible, that's pretty much exactly like the real Cosmo costume.

Austin then decided that he wanted to be a character from the TV show Arrested Development, which we had just finished rewatching on Netflix.  Buster came to mind as the most charicature-ish, so he procured an Army hat, wore an old Army jacket he had in the closet, and fashioned a hook out of a plastic baby-food bottle and hanger.  To accompany him, he asked if Cora could be the "Loose Seal" who was responsible for biting off Buster Bluth's hand in the first place.  A seal costume, eh?

I originally thought I would just find some brown jammies or a onesie and sew a tail on it or something.  How wrong I was.  Instead, I bought a couple yards of fleece and some felt and put together this baby.  If you don't look too closely, you can hardly even tell my daughter is in there!  That seal costume is to die for! 

Then there's me.  Do I follow a theme?  If I joined Carson, I'd have to be something like a cheerleader or a referee.  Um, "no thank you," and "boooooring!"  If I joined Austin and Cora, I'd have to be a Bluth.  Lindsay?  Too slutty.  Lucille Bluth?  Too old.  Lucille 2?  Too...um...Liza Minelli-y.  So it looked like I'd have to strike out on my own.  And with some brief internet make-up research and my old funky disco-ball dress, I came up with this.

I'm not even sure what it is.  Anime?  Who knows.  But I think I'm set on costumes for years to come.  Think of the possibilities for faces I could do with this technique!  And it only cost me about 30 minutes and nearly one whole eye-liner pencil.

We didn't actually get around to carving pumpkins until a week or two after Halloween, but I posted this picture here because it's cool, and because it wouldn't really fit in anywhere else.  :)

Once we were be-costumed, we went to a neighborhood soup and bread party (to fill our bellies with something nutritious before the onslaught of goodies) and admired the costumes of our neighbors.  (Let's be honest.  We were just showing off ours.  Ha ha!)

Then, thanks to a poster we had seen at the deli where we got our sandwiches for my birthday excursion, we headed off to join the Provo hipster crowd for a Glow-in-the-Dark Bike Ride.  Oh man!  So much fun!  The weather was SO warm it was almost balmy.  The crowd was young, and I enjoyed doing something just a little bit crazy.  We wove glow sticks all thru our bike tires and I stuck some in my hair, and we rode off into the night.  Someone had a portable stereo with huge speakers strapped to his bike so we had funky hipster Halloween music as our soundtrack.  I can't think of a more fun thing to have done that night.

Austin took a bit of video on his iPhone, but I don't have any of that on my computer just now.  I found this blog post where another rider posted some pictures.  If you look closely in the 2nd to last picture, you can just see our yellow and red bike trailer.  The ride started on Center Street in Provo, went all the way up the the BYU Football stadium, around Campus Drive, and then headed down into South Provo.  At that point, we broke off so we could let Carson do some Trick or Treating in the little neighborhoods down there. 

We knew he didn't need much candy, so we just visited a few houses, including my friend Amanda's.  Then we hit the road again (still on bikes) and headed up to the Wells Fargo building on Center Street near where we had parked our car.  When Austin and I were still dating, and I was still a rookie at bicycling (I could do it, I just didn't recognise it as a legitimate form of transportation) we rode our bikes downtown to this building and then rode up the parking structure in the back.  I think it's only 4 or 5 stories, but it seemed like a big deal at the time.  Anyway, for old times sake, I asked if we could ride up again before we headed home.  So we did.  And it was as fun as ever.

I told you.  The best Halloween ever.  We went home, washed all the paint/make-up off our faces, and slept like babies.  Hope we can top it next year.

Birthday 2011

 

Last year for my birthday, Austin was on a business school trip, so I celebrated my 30th at home...alone...no, wait, Carson was there. I spent my 30th birthday at home, making cupcakes with a 2 year old. Fitting, I suppose. What did I expect? I'm a mom! I dont get to have wild, gallivanting parties anymore.  But this year I hoped for something a little less like what I do every other day of the week.

When I was a single undergrad at BYU,  I had some crazy dates.  Two I remember most vividly involved driving [seemingly] randomly thru the mountains behind Provo.  (The drive was vivid.  The dates were not.  I'm not entirely sure I remember who all I was with each time...)  I just knew that I had gone up Hobble Creek Canyon near Springville and popped out at Squaw Peak just north of Provo.  I didn't know how or what road to take, or whether said road was passable by a mere Subaru, but I knew that's what I wanted to do for my birthday. 

It took some digging (on the Internet), but I found the road and convinced Austin that we could do it.  He was skeptical.  He said he thought he'd driven that way before and had to ford streams and climb big rocks.  I wasn't easily dismayed.  I figured if we had to turn around, we'd turn around.  But we could at least try. 

There were a few dodgy spots (see picture of Austin hoisting large rocks above), but overall, the road was quite passable.  (We actually came across a woman driving a mini-van full of apparently terrified passengers coming from the other direction.  So apparently we didn't even need the Subaru to make the drive.) 

(Oh, the passengers were rightfully terrified. The woman was driving the van was WAAY closer to the edge of the road than was necessary to clear our car.  I think she had about 2 feet on our side, but her tires were literally hanging over the edge of the cliff on the other side.  I thought for sure they were going over and felt the conflicting urges to A) drive fast and get them as far behind us as possible so I didn't have to see it, and B) reach my arm out the window and grab onto something to hold them on the road.  We finally made it past each other safely, and in the post-adrenaline letdown, it all seemed terribly funny--I have this image of a squat, pig-faced woman, clinging to a steering wheel, grinning at us, car practically teetering over the edge, passengers gritting their teeth and leaning toward the road--but then I found myself nervous and praying that they would make it home safely and we wouldn't return home to hear news reports of a fatal crash on the Squaw Peak Road.  So far, so good.)

Anyway, we picked up some yummy sandwiches from a local deli (should've eaten them first--they weren't great cold--but still reasonably tasty), dropped the kids off with my friend Amanda, and wandered off into the wild mountainous yonder.  I gave her a rough estimate of how long we'd be gone, and just hoped we'd be close to that time.  She's a good sport.

The scenery was astonishing.  As mentioned in a previous post, the leaves in the Wasatch were remarkable this year.  And the sunset over the valley was really pretty too.  And isn't that man there handsome?  :)

We made it to what we thought was Rock Canyon by nightfall, but what turned out to actually probably be Slate Canyon.  We had to drive the rest in the dark, but that just meant that we arrived at the Squaw Peak overlook after dark.  This is a well-known as a make-out spot in the valley--one which I never availed myself of during my single days.  I won't say whether or not we made out that night, but just consider what a shame it would have been to waste such a perfect opportunity!

After picking up the kids and putting them to bed, we had Part 2 of my birthday celebration:  I had purchased the DVD of the Les Miserables 25th Annivesrsary concert and wanted to watch it with Austin--to pretend we were actually getting to go see it in a theatre.  Our computer screen in our living room isn't perhaps as nice as an actual theatre, but we made do. 

And it was as beautiful as it should have been.  Far and away, the musical is the best retelling of Victor Hugo's masterpiece.  No movie has ever come anywhere near the beauty, intensity, pain, spirituality, and depth of that book.  But the music and lyrics of this play are so phenomenal.  I get swallowed up every time I listen to or watch it all the way thru. 

And that is the story of how I turned 31.

A Visit from the Cousins

Our Fall Family Fun also included a brief visit from my sister-in-law Sarah and two of her kids. Carson got to show Samara his trampoline "tricks", and Cora got to know her future BFF, Quincy.



Thanks for the visit, Sarah!  It's good that these kids get to know each other--and that we stay close!

Forget the Pumpkins! They have a CORN PIT!

When I was a little girl, I remember spending time running my hands thru buckets of dry rice or beans and thinking, "It would be SO COOL to have a giant vat of these to play around in!"

It took probably 25 years to have that dream fulfilled, but here it is:

We found a pumpkin patch to visit this year that had a CORN PIT.  Have you ever SEEN so much corn in all your life?  It's amazing!  Cora certainly seemed to think so.  Don't let the look on her face fool you.  Aside from eating the corn, I pretty much let her have free rein to do whatever she wanted in here. 

Oh, except for that time we made her sit still to bury her.

Carson also got buried.  Heck, I wanted to be buried!

But I maintained my dignity and buried Carson again instead.

They also had a little menagerie of random animals.  Including, but not limited to, a couple miniature donkeys, a fat pig, a llama (alpaca?), and a kangaroo.  Because, why not?

And there was also a giant hay stack.  What more could we have asked for on a warm Fall afternoon?

Blue skies with golden hay and corn.  The only other consistently awesome natural backdrop that I know of is blue sky and redrock.  So gorgeous!

Oh yeah, they had some pumpkins too.  We got some cute ones.  :)

Leaves Are Falling All Around

Actually, due to an early sudden plunge in temperature, the leaves down in the valley didn't change and fall very gracefully this year.  The mountains and canyons, however, more than fully made up for that.  Thanks to a phenomenally wet Spring, the maples and scrub oak in the Wasatch Mountain Range were specTACular.  I actually had a chance to go mountain biking once this Fall, and I got so sidetracked picking the super vivid red, orange, and yellow leaves on the trail, that I didn't even make it halfway up to where I intended to be.  I rode down the lower trail with my CamelBak and shirt stuffed full of some of the most gorgeous autumn leaves I have ever seen.  I then displayed them at home on our stereo in a bowl with a few scattered around for variety.  It looked quite nice.  And--ooh! what a dork, it didn't even occur to me to take a picture of it until just now, and I only finally threw them away a couple days ago!  Shucks!

Anyway, back to things I DID take pictures of.  :)

Inspired by a clever friend of mine, I helped Carson make this Fall Activity tree with hands for leaves.  (There are some of those pretty leaves I gathered!)  The activities included things like: Go to BYU Dinosaur Museum, Make Apple Pie, Walk in the Great Valley, Go For a Family Bike Ride, Make a Jack-o-Lantern.  You know, Fall-y stuff.  I drew little pictures on each "leaf" so Carson could tell what each one was about, and whenever we completed an activity, he got to take a "leaf" off the tree and stick it under on the "ground."  It helped keep me motivated to get out and about as the weather grew colder, and gave me a list of things to choose from so I wasn't starting from mental scratch every day.  I think by the time we left for Thanksgiving, we had dome everything except "Go Camping with Dad."  And to be fair, it was already a little too cold for that...

The Death of the Summer

That sounds bleaker than I intended.  But summer did wrap up well this year.  And with that, so did soccer season.  Man did that kid love soccer--as you can see from the picture above.  :)  He still begs me to let him play again whenever he sees these pictures.

And with the end of summer, we also ushered in vast quantities of family time.  I, taking advantage of my mostly schedule-free existance (no job and kids too young for school); and Austin, taking advantage of his more flexible student schedule.  At the end of September, I flew out to meet my family for a week at a beach house in San Diego.  Austin joined us for the weekend and then drove back home on Sunday.  (I'll make a separate post for that, because I took a ton of pictures.)

The following weekend, Austin's parents and older brother Logan came into town.  We all headed up to a cabin at Sundance Ski Resort where we were also joined by Spencer and Taylor and his girlfriend Erica.  Carson got to sleep in a loft (he got to climb up a ladder and everything!  Not super practical for midnight visits to the bathroom, but he didn't seem to mind); Cora and I got to have baths in a luxurious jetted tub; and Austin got to relax with his family.  And when we got back to Provo, it was hard to realise that we were supposed to go back to a normal schedule again--at least until Thanksgiving...

The Taming of the Bike

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Summer has been the Taming of the Bike.  Carson received this awesome little bike from Aunt Inis this summer on our way home from Seattle. 

We had heard that the latest trend in bike training is the "balance bike".  (And you know how we are about keeping up on trends...)  It seemed like a great idea, but we figured that instead of buying a separate pedal-less bike, we could just transform this one.  So we took it to a local bike shop and asked them to remove the training wheels and pedals.  Then we brought it home and lowered the seat so his feet could reach the ground.

For the next few days, Austin would take Carson down to the church parking lot and coast back and forth with him for about a half an hour.  By the end of the week, Carson was a champ--coasting, turning, stopping, wiggling his handlebars as he rode.  It was really amazing.

After about a month of riding the balance bike, Austin really felt like it was time to graduate to the real thing.  So off we went, back to Mad Dog Cycles, to get the pedals reinstalled.  When we got home, Austin got back to work with Carson.  And before I knew it, they called me outside to see this:

The kid is only 3 1/2!  And he LOVES to ride his bike.  I think it was that very same day that we took a 3-mile family bike ride up Provo Canyon.  He rode the whole way without any complaints.  And he still wants to ride it most days, although the few times I've let him, he comes right back in because it's too darn cold.

SOCCER MONSTER!!!

Carson is playing soccer this year.  He's in a 3-4 year olds league, run by the MBA Spouse Association.  It is awesome.  Carson is having the time of his life.  He has new cleats (thanks, Destiny!) that he LOVES and wants to wear everywhere.  And on Wednesdays, when he plays, I can actually convince him to take an afternoon nap so he will have lots of energy for his game.

 

They start off with warm up exercises and a lap around the field.  Oh man.  A running herd of 3 year olds is one of the cutest things I can think of.  Some of them are so serious about it!  Some don't quite get it.  And some, like Carson, are just so happy to be there that they jump and prance around, just following everybody else.

Carson's coach, Lisanne, is so good with her team.  There are probably 8-9 kids on the team, and she works hard to teach them what to do and to keep them engaged in the game.  There are 6 teams of kids, and all the coaches are volunteers.  It's no small undertaking, but it has been going great.

Carson's usually pretty good at paying attention.  But he does have the habit of running to wherever the action is.  If the play has stopped on his field, I'll often find him in the next field over chasing their ball, or just taking a ball from the sidelines and kicking it into the goal on his own.

I'm glad we had the chance to try this out this year without paying for a city league.  Now at least we know that signing him up for sports in the future will be well worth it.  He is an athlete!

He's by no means the star of his team.  (There are two other boys who are a little bigger and faster--and tend to be able to pay more attention to where they're kicking the ball.)  But he has his fair share of kicks and "passes".  I love watching him play so much!

(Look closely and you'll notice that whenever Carson has the ball, his tongue sticks out.  He likes to wiggle it from side to side when he's concentrating.)

Cora likes the games too.  She's getting used to the feel of grass and mostly likes to try to climb up her stroller.  But I think she likes the sunshine and the chance to be outside as much as the rest of us.