Not THAT high tech yet!

My kids were really making me laugh today. I made a deal with them that if their rooms were clean when the ice cream man showed up, they could buy something. If their rooms were not clean, no ice cream.

So this afternoon Elise and Monet were cleaning their rooms when Elise comes downstairs and asks me if I can look up what time the ice cream man is going to come by. "Where do you want me to look it up?" I ask. "Like on the internet, you know, Google it--What time is the ice cream man coming."

I guess that would make sense to them--we look up movie times, bank statements, e-mail, etc, why not the ice cream man's schedule?

Another couple of kid funnies today:

Monet--we are out for a little jog and pass by a construction site. We stop under a tree to rest, and Monet tells Elise to watch out for the poop. Then she looks at me and says all matter a factly, "I bet one of the contstruction guys had to go to the bathroom and they couldn't find a portapotty."

Miles--We stopped by Jared's office on our way home and the kids stuffed themselves with leftover candy from his recent expo. As we were leaving we noticed Miles walking a little funny. I guess he was stuffing his underwear with candy. No pockets, no problem. Learned that one from mom I guess!

Fun at the Zoo

Simone loved it! She was really excited to see all the animals. She kept pointing at all of them and giggling. Miles said his favorites were the white crocodile, snakes, elephants and giraffes. Monet loved having her cousin Charlie there. He is such a cutie! Isn't is scary how long Jared's arms are?!

My Salt Lake City Half Marathon Race Report

What can I say? It was fun! This race kinda sneaked up on me, and I am sorry to say I didn’t train that well. That being the case, I was pretty happy with my time and performance! It is the first time I’ve worn my Garmin in a race. If you’ve never heard of a Garmin, it is this neat little GPS watches that tell you your pace, distance and elapsed time. It was so great to look down and know I needed to speed up or slow down. We bought it just before Simone was born—Jared just was so excited for me to get a new gadget. He loves gadgets, and I can say I am pretty well outfitted now with my ipod, my garmin, and my blackberry pearl. Jared is going to have a hard time coming up with new gift ideas!

The start line is always one of my favorite parts of the race. This time, there was a gospel choir performing of all the weird things. It was kinda catchy, and I kept looking around at our somber group thinking we needed a pick me up! Like maybe I should break out in song and dance. But I thought I’d probably be annoying. It certainly wasn’t the peppy, screaming, cheering, laughing crowd of the Chicago Marathon. That was something to experience. But this was fun. I talked to a girl who was hoping to qualify for Boston. I hope she got her time!

The weather looked pretty cool, so I wore a long sleeve shirt that has pockets and a tank underneath. I should have known better. I got hot so I had to take it off and figure out what to do with all my stuff. So I stuffed my phone and my GU (energy gels) in my bra. It was pretty funny. Who needs pockets anyway. Being a girl is great!

My goal was to beat my best time—1:58. I set my sights on an 8:45 pace and did that or better for most of the race, knowing I’d probably slow down toward the end. I think I came in at right about the same time as my best, maybe a little slower, but probably within a minute. So I am pretty sure no PR (that’s running lingo for “personal record”) for me. I felt great up until about mile 10. It is amazing how fast those miles fly by! I just took it one mile at a time. But by mile 10, we didn’t have the nice downhill incline anymore and it got hard quick. This is where better training really would have paid off and I would have cranked it up and ran my heart out the last three miles. Instead, my legs felt like lead and I had a hard time keeping my pace. Thankfully I had a nice wind at my back for a few stretches! Running into the finish I can generally manage a sprint. Mustering up the oomph to even crank it up a bit that last 100 yards was tough!

Jared was at the finish and that was so fun! They even called my name as I ran in—they must have seen the pained expression and realized I needed a little boost. It was great to have Jared there. I was kinda hoping the music and excitement at the end of the race would convert him to running. He has only been to a couple of small races, and I think he could learn to love running—or at the very least racing. But unfortunately he wasn’t swayed. Basketball is a hard one to beat. But I have some other ideas of people I am going to fellowship into the running fold. Hee Hee Hee.

Well, that was my sixth or seventh half. I think I need to stop being such a lazy trainer! I told Jared that my next half I am averaging 8:00/mile. So, in August, I better have some good news to report! I have my Wasatch Back Relay with my friends to look forward to in a couple of months. And a triathlon with my sister in July. It is going to be a fun race season.

Magic toy producing ears

Jared loves to do magic tricks with the kids. One of the things that easily impresses the older kids and fools Miles is pretending to pull things out of their ears. He'll look inside, tell them he sees something, then whip a toy out of his sleeve or his palm.

So yesterday, Miles comes running up to me, "Mommy, I lost my train!" I am a bit distracted when I answer, "Where do you think it is Miles?" and he replies with, "I think it's in my ear, can you check it?"

Poor kid! I just hope he doesn't stick anything in there trying to reach all those great toys.

Brothers

I was talking to my sister the other day, and expressing how I just didn’t know what Miles was going to do next year when Monet is in school all day. She pointed out that Miles will have Simone, and Simone will be old enough to play with. I don't know why that never occurred to me before, but thinking about that makes me very happy! This two years apart deal really kicked my butt since we had such a busy year last year, and Miles was a potent mix of curious and persistent. But things have really calmed down, and now I am so happy to have these two closer in age, and see some of the benefits.

Miles races to tell me when Simone wakes up from her naps. Then he is always guessing what she might need or want. Many times, he tries to feed her himself. This is the delicious spaghetti with cinnamon he fixed for her. She looks like she is enjoying it (although, she does eat dog food on a regular basis, so heaven knows she isn’t that picky.)

He’ll grab her so hard and give her a too hard hug, and say in a funny voice, “I love you Samoney Baloney!”

My family is the same gender and order of my family of origin: girl, girl, boy, girl. Simone and I fall in the same place. My older brother Michael was just the same in age as Miles is to Simone.

I thought Michael hung the moon when I was little. Sure we fought a ton, but he could build the best forts you’ve ever seen. Once he even built a little bridge across the canal in our backyard and dug out a cave out of the bank. It was amazing! He built tree houses, and just always had fun, creative things he was doing. We built an amusement park in our basement one time. We saved up $8 to buy the rope for our dunking machine. We started a club under the stairs, and even tried our hand at building a go kart. I wanted to do whatever he did. If he managed a triple flip on the trampoline, well I wasn’t going to be shown up. We’d go trick or treating together. One year we were both punks for Halloween. We looked so much alike—people always asked if we were twins. We got so much candy; I think we filled up the whole pillowcase. He always seemed to edge me out on everything, but when I beat him in a couple of arm wrestles, I definitely basked in the victory.

I remember in Junior High, Michael read Crime and Punishment. So I did too. Hello, boring! But I had to prove I was just as smart as he was. He was pretty hard to beat though in that department. The kid never went to class and still managed to get good grades on his AP Chemistry tests.

He influenced my confidence so much during those Junior High years. I felt so awkward for a lot of reasons. He would always tell me if someone said something good about me. I held onto those little compliments, and still remember them today.

I was thinking today about why we had Simone when we did. I was sitting in my statistics class and a girl had brought in her newborn (this was BYU after all!) and I was thinking how glad I was that it wasn’t me. I wasn’t baby hungry. But then something just hit me that we were going to have a baby soon. It was like lightening. I didn’t think TOO much of it though, because soon could mean being pregnant in a few months, right? Well, a few weeks later, I was holding a positive pregnancy test.

After Simone was born and things were so busy, I held onto that feeling. I knew that somehow this was the way it was supposed to be. It was a hard year. I just remember sitting in the hospital room when she had RSV and feeling guilty for being glad to be away from the chaos at home. I felt feelings of inadequacy as I’ve never had those first few months postpartum. I lost my patience more times than I’d like to admit. Tears were just an everyday thing. Miles did not transition well, and I worried daily that he was scarred for life because of the lack of attention and his babyhood cut short. But knowing she was supposed to be here, and it wasn’t just some random choice made a difference. There was purpose in the chaos!

I am excited that Simone and Miles have a closer sibling. I am glad Simone is spunky enough to hold her own with Miles. She has this little “don’t mess with me” attitude that is hilarious in such a small package. And Miles backs off and treats her kindly most of the time. He is often saving her from what he thinks is danger. He’ll drag her across the yard by one arm if she strays too far. He helps her onto the trampoline, and gives her food and drinks in the car. I am excited to watch their friendship develop, and hope that they appreciate each other, and don't hurt each other too much.

If you haven't tried Google Reader yet, you need it!

A friend of mine informed me that my blog didn't have RSS feed. I had no idea what that was. And I am pretty Internet savvy. I asked Jared what it was, he didn't know either. We keep seeing this RSS orange box on everything from eBay to KSL. What is this? Well, it is something that keeps track of new information that has been loaded onto a website. That is the simple version of course, and all I really care to know about it.

My friend mentioned that she keeps up with people's blogs through bloglines. Jared got Google reader set up on his. It is great and super easy! You put all your links in a "subscription" area on the left of a page that looks almost like an e-mail inbox. When someone posts something new on their blog, it goes to an inbox like thing. So you can read all the new posts from your inbox. I have an iGoogle custom homepage with the weather, quotes from C.S. Lewis, some Healthy food recipes from www.whfoods.com, and scriptures on it. I really like iGoogle too. With Google reader, I just added a tab at the top of the page, and in two seconds I can see everyone who has posted anything new.

I love it! I don't have to click down my link list anymore, and I can keep better tabs on everyone. Very fun!

Growing Up Adair

I passed a yard today with a rectangular trampoline and it brought back all these memories of playing around the world with my siblings and neighbor kids for hours. I always laugh when I think about our childhood. We are proud of our crazy parents, and all the "different" things we did. We always felt loved, and had all the best things in life: a trampoline, swings hanging from the ceiling, a huge playhouse--life was good.

I don't know what my kids will remember from our family. I am sure Jared and I have some quirks we don't even notice--and our kids will probably tease us about them when we are old. These are the things that being an "Adair girl" signify to me:

• Making your own Dr. appointments after the age of 8


• Watching The Thing for Family Home Evening (then all of us cramming in Angela's bed)


• Curing all ailments with vitamin C and the heating pad


• Walking everywhere--including 3 miles home from school daily


• Having a Paper Route


• Buying your own clothes starting at 11


• Stealing each other's hard earned clothing (then duking it out :) )


• Eating copious amounts of cheese


• Sharing underwear (we were little)


• Random guests at holiday dinners--they always turned out to be great friends


• A lot of reading--and consequently winning all the school reading contests!


• French braiding each others wisps


• Coppertone


• Houseful of kids


• Sleepovers


• "the little girls"


• Playing around the world or "three man bounce" on the trampoline


• "I trust you"


• Camping at the RV park for spring break


• Having 3 moms--mom, grandma and Marge


• Riding your bike everywhere--if you were lucky enough to have a bike that worked--thanks Marge and Carrie


• Crazy long road trips


• Splitting a plate at restaurants


• Ponderosa


• Cruising in the White Whale and the Green Pea and other embarassing but sassy old cars


• Long answering machine messages--I'll never forget those brave enough to actually call out our names as instructed


• Lots of smiles, hugs and "I Love Yous"


• 20 lb birthday cakes


• Aussie Sprunch Spray


• Having a mom who thought the indoor water fight sounded like so much fun, she was sorry she missed it


• Nightgames


• Whole Wheat Bread


• Snowbird and starving


• Bart Simpson spray painted on the back of our garage--and then left there


• Toilet paper bombs stuck to the brick and hardened for years


• Cabbage Patch parts and Barbies


• Laundry baskets full of library books--most past due I am sure


• Burned oatmeal


• "Who took the comb!"

The best thing about being an Adair is the sibling bonds. I love my brothers and sisters! (Mom and Dad too of course!) I am so proud of my siblings. I want everyone to know them and see how nice and funny they are. We all attribute that friendship we have to our parents ability to love us all as individuals--they definitely did something right.

The Difference a Year Makes

Miles is at this funny age. I just love to hear him talk and the things he comes up with. He just makes me laugh all the time. Last week, I had a bad day and I was pretty emotional. Jared left me alone in our room to watch a movie and fold laundry while he kept the kids away from me for the evening. But then I hear little footsteps ascending the stairs, and Miles storms into my room. He reaches up for me and says "I'm going to make you feel better, I wanna give you a kiss." So he pats my cheeks and gives me a hug and a kiss. He is so sweet that way. He is a very affectionate kid. He loves to climb into our bed in the middle of the night and cuddle with us. He is always hugging Simone--fortunately Simone is pretty good at getting away. He'll say, "I love you Samoney Baloney!" and give her a hard squeeze. He is getting pretty patient with her as well. If she hits him, he just tells her, "No hitting Simone."

He is actually starting to feel remorse for destroying things--it has been a really nice development! He has been very careful with his new DVD's and even asks me to load them in for him so he won't scratch them. A year ago, he had just discovered the joys of television and figured out how to load in the DVD's. He wouldn't leave them alone. I think we went through a couple of DVD players. I put the DVD's on a shelf WAY up high near the ceiling in the laundry room. But Miles got to them of course. When he wanted something, he had a one track mind and seemed to just tune everything else out.

A few weeks I overheard him in his room. It was a funny little conversation. "Oh no! I broke me! I'm bleeding!" He pinched a finger in something. It was pretty cute though.

So he is growing up, and it is so fun. When I found out Simone was a girl, I was so excited to have another girl, but sad too for Miles to not get a brother. But after thinking about it a bit, I realized that I probably couldn't handle another boy anyway. Miles with all of his sweetness, was incredibly curious and persistent. Nothing I did seemed to influence him. He didn't really care about consequences, or he just didn't grasp them. It wasn't mischeif that drove him. He just knew what he wanted. That 15 months to 30 months was tough! But wow, the last few months have been a breeze!

I've noticed that lately Jared doesn't comment when I talk about how happy I am never to be pregnant again. He just stays quiet. I think he is biding his time until I forget about the nausea, the weight gain, the screaming baby in the car and all of those sleepless nights. I do love babies, but I also love the idea of having the freedom that comes with older school-age kids. I love four, and I think that is a good sized family. I look forward to being included in all our family activities, instead of staying home with the baby while everyone is off playing, sledding, at the movies, etc. And I can't wait to have a quiet house once in awhile. It is so rare that I get time alone.

So at this point, I just feel relief that four feels good to me. And someday maybe we'll both change our minds and we'll have a little caboose. But for now, I am enjoying the ones we've got.

My Mexican Adventures

Nothing really compares to the adventures I had on my family vacations. Both my parents were teachers, which allowed us about 3 months in the summer to cram in every scenic route or state monument we could find. Our trips were always cheap, because of not having any money living on teachers salaries, and having six kids. So, I managed to visit 38 states without ever having been on an airplane. Not only that, but we DROVE to Cancun, the Florida Keys, and Vermont. If you’re not familiar with Mexico, Cancun is approximately 3000 miles away. Actually, we drove our minivan to the border, then took buses and trains around the country for over a month.

We went to Mexico twice, once when I was 8, and again when I was 16. The first time we drove to Nogales then took unairconditioned trains mostly. We traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Guadalajara, and Creel. Each of us six kids carried our backpacks with all our clothes and a little towel in it. We spent a lot of our time on the trains reading and exploring what we could. I think I read every Judy Blume book ever written that summer. Here I am curled up on my backpack as a pillow reading Blubber while waiting for the train.

Highlights from that trip were:

Little Rebekah and her famous diahrrea on the bus experience
Drinking lots of Coke products (for the lack of water, this was truly a novelty!)
Playing in the ocean in Puerto Vallarta
Riding the lazy mango eating horses on Yelapa
Visiting Guadalajara during a big soccer game (It seemed every little shop in the city had a tv in it all tuned to the game)
Beautiful cobblestone streets in Puerto Vallarta
The fancy restaurant that didn’t have any walls
Jellyfish clinging to mom, Bekah and Rachel in Mazatlan’s warm ocean
The trainride to Creel where I was so hungry V8 tasted like the best food I’d ever eaten
The Tarajamara Indians that still live in caves griding their corn, and making jewelry
Looking down on Copper Canyon, which is four times bigger than the Grand Canyon

Four years later, we went on a trip around the perimeter of the Southern and Eastern U.S. in a motor home. Four years after that, when I was in High School, we headed to Mexico again for a month long tour of Eastern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula. We again drove to the border at Nuevo Laredo, then down through Tampico, Villahermosa, Merida, Cancun, then ended our trip in Mexico City. One hotel in Villahermosa was a little shady, which made it all the more adventurous. I was almost 16, so Bekah, Rachel and I all had our own room. My parents armed us with combs that had removable heads with plastic daggers hidden inside, just in case. They looked like this:

(Perfect terrorist weapon, ours was pink and so innocent looking)

In the middle of the night, Bekah, Rachel and I awoke to the sound of crashing glass. It was a little frameless mirror that had been propped up against the wall and was leaning on the faucet. Someone had been in our room! We discovered that our bathroom window was open, and there was a little space in the middle of the building that made it so the people in the room below us could climb into the window if open. That was pretty scary! We met the guys that were beneath us the next day. Turns out they were transvestites and entertainers of some type? Oh well, at least we left that day and didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

During this trip, we saw all the major ruins in the Yucatan, and hundreds of little mounds of unexcavated old ruins. Chichen Itza, Palenque, etc. It was really neat to learn all about the Mayan and Aztecs.

We spent two weeks of our trip in Cancun eating all kinds of exotic fruit. We’d buy fruit from the market for breakfast, then starve until about 4 pm. Then we’d eat beans, rice, tortillas, guacamole, and pico de gallo. Nothing tastes as good as fresh tortillas made by the little old ladies. I also loved mangos with lime and chile and roasted corn on the cob.

I spent my 16th birthday on a bandit train. Yes, this little old rickety SLOW train that took 36 hours to take us from Merida to Mexico City. We jumped on the train because the next one didn’t come through for another day, and my dad wanted to get going. It was a snap decision, and as we read the guide book on the train after we had already left, it instructed not to take this particular train because there were frequently bandits. Well, too late. We were on it and in the middle of the jungle. We slept sitting upright. And we were lucky to just have a seat. I had boys sitting on my armrests and sitting all around me. People were PACKED in, and as Americans, we were a novelty. I heard that the bathroom had sludge sloshing around on the floor, so I held it for 36 hours. But I also got to read my all time favorite novel: To Kill a Mockingbird on that train, and I finished it on the steps of Teotihuacán. So, it was pretty cool in hindsight. And you can’t beat the $4 it cost per person to travel through the jungles. We saw all kinds of neat little villages, beautiful lakes, and interesting homes.

My favorite part of the trip was Mexico City. It was incredible to look out at the city and see these hills covered with dwellings just really tightly packed in. Chapultepec Park was so fun with the artists, good food, zoo, and boatrides. My dad wanted to spend lots of time at the Museum of Anthropology, so my little sisters and I spent the afternoon at the park then took the bus back to Zocalo—we felt so cool speaking Spanish and managing to find our way around. We ate lots of Chinese food in Mexico city. It was pretty funny to see Chinese people there. You just don’t expect it. But we were dying for some different flavors and this was really good Chinese food. We officially celebrated my 16th birthday at the floating gardens of Xochimilco. We bought this most delicious strawberry cake from the pastry shop. Here is the Aztec ruins of Teohtihuacan. I believe the pyramid of the sun here is four times as large at the base as the Egyptian pyramids. It is difficult to grasp the enormity of it in a picture:

At the end of these marathon trips, each of us was dying for some personal space. It was hard to be with your family for that long, but it was also really binding to have all those shared experiences. We all laugh about all the adventures we had. Sometimes we wonder what our parents were thinking! (comb daggers! Bandit trains!) Having four kids myself, I cannot imagine hauling them around on trips like that. But it was adventurous, that is for sure.

Just a funny picture I came across today

I was organizing my pictures today and came across this one I snapped with my phone last year. I am guessing Simone was crying and Miles was trying to suffocate, I mean "comfort" her.