A Boy and His Belt

I came home from work today, thinking how hot it felt in the lower 90s today.  I walked through the door, and saw my handsome boy...

...in long pants and wearing a polo shirt, tucked in. Why was he so dressed up on a random summer day, with no where in particular to go?  Let me explain:

A month or two ago, the kiddies and I were at The Children's Place, trying to find the boy some new church shoes for his ever-expanding feet.  I saw that the belts were also on sale, and asked Dax if he wanted a belt to wear to church.  He had never really had one before, I guess, and he was pretty excited about the whole idea.  I remember thinking that he was unexpectedly excited about something as mundane as a belt, but I really didn't think too much about it, and we headed for the check-out counter.

As soon as we got out to the car, Dax dug through the shopping bag and found his belt.  He was wearing shorts that day, and they didn't have belt loops.  Dax was distraught, and as soon as we got home he changed into some jeans and proudly put on his belt.   When Preston got home, he ran to show his dad his new favorite accessory!  

The next morning, he wanted to wear (surprise!) his belt to kindergarten and tucked his T-shirt into his jeans "So that everyone can see my belt."  Ummmmm...whatever, I thought to myself.  It is new, I guess he can tuck in his t-shirt for one day. 

One day.  If I only knew....

As the days and weeks pass, Dax's love for his belt does not diminish.  He thinks it is the best thing EVER.  He wants to wear it Every. Single. Day.  Not many of his shorts have belt loops, so he wants to wear jeans AND, of course, tuck in his T-shirt. 

What just-turned-6-year-old boy wants to tuck in his shirt????  

I am by no means an expert on style, but I have run into some situations with my boy that even I know are just not right.  For example, he got a Star Wars shirt for his birthday, that has three light sabers on the front.  He, of course, adores anything related to Star Wars, and wants to wear this shirt with his beloved belt often.  TUCKED IN, obviously.  The only problem is that the light saber shirt is a little on the large side, and when he tucks it in far enough that is belt is clearly visible, you can only see the top half of the light sabers.  So, it just looks like he has three weird stripes on his shirt. 

On hot days when shorts are a necessity, my boy has also tried to wear his belt with his shorts that have no belt loops by just wrapping it around the outside of his t-shirt and pulling it tight.  I haven't taken a picture of this, unfortunately (for me, but not for him)...So picture a regular kid with cargo shorts and a t-shirt, but picture this same kid with a very tight belt on the outside of his t-shirt, making him look like, well something like this:  

Only much, manlier, of course.  

Can you believe that I am SUCH a mean mom that I made him take off his belt before we left the house?  Believe it!  I really am THAT MEAN.

The boy has even tried a similar trick with his PAJAMAS.  I kid you not.  He wants to wear the belt to bed.  Whaaaa?

I have had to increase our stock of polo shirts since I am still not comfortable with the whole tucked in t-shirt thing.  And that brings us to a whole 'nother issue since Dax wants to button his polo shirts ALL the way up to his chin.  We fight about this constantly.  

*sigh*

I never pictured myself having to beg my 6-year old to please, pleeeeease put on more casual clothes so we can go to the park.  I am sure (hoping) that it is just a phase, and soon he will be back to the standard little boy shorts-and-t-shirt wardrobe.  

Or maybe he will grow up to be an executive who gets to wear a suit (with a BELT) every single day and be happy.  Or maybe...

007 always needed a belt, right?  

Running Songs...

I don't know about you, but for me, running is about 73.5% easier if I have some good music to listen to.  I have met people who just like to have it "quiet" while they run, and hear the birds sing and what not.  Not me.  If I don't have an something with a beat playing in my ear, I struggle.  (I struggle sometimes even if I DO have music...but you know what I mean).  Running is just not feasible for me without something to distract me from the actual discomfort of running.  

I'll give you an example.  With four or five miles left in the Bear Lake Half Marathon last weekend, my ipod freaked out and somehow got off of my "running" playlist and started playing "Colors" by Amos Lee.  It is a great song, but it is slooooooow.  That song makes me want to curl up on a couch and feel sad, it does not motivate me to run faster.  I only made it through about half of that song, and I knew it was NOT going to work for me.  I had to pull over to the side of the bike trail we were running on, fish my ipod from its arm case, and set it straight.  I HAD to do it, even though a guy who I had worked really hard to pass blew right by me as I fiddled with the buttons and I had to chase him down all over again.  

I had someone ask me what my favorite running songs are.  I will run to anything that is high energy, but there are some songs that make me smile while I am running more than the rest.  Some are cheesy, and I don't recommend listening to them in any context but running...but hey, whatever gets me down the road, right? Here are a few:

"The Distance" by Cake - (S)He's going the distance!  (S)He's going for speed!

"Runnin' Down a Dream" by Tom Petty - (for obvious reasons)

"All These Things That I've Done" by the Killers - (just because I love the Killers)

"I Wanna Get Better" by the Bleachers - This one makes me run a little faster because I Wanna Get Better! (at running)

"Runaround Sue" by Dion

"What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger" - for when I feel like I might die.

"Every Day is a Winding Road" by Sheryl Crow - (I get a little bit closer)

"The Long Run" by the Eagles - (Oooooh I got to tell you, it's a long run)

"There She Goes" by The La's 

"I'm a Believer" - the Monkees

"Try" by Pink - (Just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die.  You gotta get up and try, try try.)

"What I Like About You" by the Romantics - (Hey! Hey! Hey! HEY!)

"Time is Running Out" by Muse

"Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me" by Keith Urban - A lot of Keith Urban songs work for me while running for some reason.

"Roar" by Katy Perry - (of course!)

Go ahead and judge me now, I don't mind.  I know I am a dork.  Do you have any songs on your running/workout playlist that really help?  If so, let me know, I am always looking for something new to add.

Dax Graduated From Kindergarten!

Dax had a kindergarten graduation ceremony during the last week of school.  I took some pictures, but it is kind of dark in the commons at the elementary school, and the only one that turned out is this one:

This is Dax and his AMAZING teacher.  I am so glad this picture turned out, because it pretty much sums up Dax's kindergarten experience for me.

His teacher made kindergarten a wonderful, fun, brightly-colored-dancing-letters-and-singing-numbers kind of experience for Dax.

It is all the sweeter because seriously, it could have been a lot different. As you may remember, Dax had a...let's say....a rocky start in kindergarten.  But guys, I thank my lucky stars that this wasn't his teachers' first rodeo, not by a long shot.  She didn't panic, she was VERY patient, and after a few weeks, Dax pretty much had the whole kindergarten thing figured out.  Don't get me wrong, Dax is still Dax, which means I am sure that she had to remind him to be quiet and/or hold still about a zillion times a day.  But he learned SOOO much.  Dax is turning into a great reader, and he got straight 3's (best you can get) the last couple of quarters, and got 100% on his end-of-year testing.  I couldn't be more proud of my boy, or more thankful for his teacher!  Yay for kindergarten!

(I am so sad it is over!)

Memorial Day Weekend 2014

We had our very last soccer games of the season on Memorial Day weekend.  We couldn't miss the last games, so we delayed our Memorial Day cabin trip until Saturday after soccer.  Here is Cora and some of her cute soccer friends after their last game.  Couldn't you just eat those juicy little oranges?  Cora had so much fun on her first soccer team.  I loved to watch her giggle and kick her way down the field.

Here is Dax and the few soccer buddies that were still in town for the last game.  Dax's has been on the same team for a couple of years now.  Unfortunately for us, the coach's son is a soccer prodigy and is moving up to the "Academy" level next year, as is another kid or two from the team. It will be sad that this fun group of guys won't be together anymore, and Dax will really miss his coach!   Dax is still excited to play soccer next year.  I know he will have a good time no matter what.

Arden has decided that after four years of soccer, she wants to take next season off.  It was kind of a sad day as we watched her play her last game.  She loves to be the goalie!

Unfortunately, we forgot to do a team picture after her game, they were too busy having a pizza party.  Her coach was AMAZING and Arden really learned a lot and had fun every year. She says she is just ready to try something new, and I can respect that, but I will miss watching her blond ponytail fly as she chases down the ball:

Maybe she will play again someday.

After soccer, we headed up to the cabin.  Soccer had kept us pretty busy on weekends, so it had been quite a few weeks since we had been up there.  Everything turned GREEN!!!

It still looked like mid-spring at Bear Lake, with lots of wildflowers everywhere.  Lilacs were still blooming in Garden City.  The weather was beautiful and sunny and warm.

We didn't have our waverunners ready for action, but we decided to head to the beach one day just to see how cold the water was.  It was COLD.  That didn't stop these guys from splashing around for a while:

There was a company renting paddle boards for $10/hour.  I have always wanted it try it, so we forked over the cash.  They even threw in a free kid-size rental, which Daxton jumped right on:

 Here is Dax paddling up close and Preston paddling far away.

 Arden was pretty good too!  She has great balance and could get going pretty fast.  She was better at steering than her little brother.

 Cora didn't want to try, but got on a board with me for a while and let me paddle her around.  Then she got off and I got to try it solo:

It was fun, and more importantly, I didn't fall off.  Arden did fall once in water that was about up to her armpits.  The water was so cold she dropped the paddle and sprinted for shore as fast as she could.  I tried not to laugh too hard.

Before we knew it the weekend was over and we had to head home to finish up the LAST week of school!  More on that later...

Ogden Half Marathon

I just remembered that I forgot to blog about the Ogden Half!  It was back on May 17th.  My dad and my two sisters and I signed up last fall.  My middle sister Amanda is preggo (YAY!), so she bowed out.  So, it was my dad, my little sister Val and I who found ourselves wondering what we were thinking as we woke up in the early, EARRRRLY morning darkness and tied on our running shoes.

My super-nice mom drove us to the starting area, which saved us an hour of precious sleep, and a LOT of cold waiting by the starting line.  It was turning into a beautiful morning as we drove over Trappers Loop.  We got to the starting area and had just enough time to do....um....what it is that everyone wants to do right before a half marathon.  We ended up pretty far back in the pack as we crossed the starting line, but that was okay with me.  There were a LOT of people in the race, so I was hoping that starting near the back would mean that it wouldn't be so crowded.  My dad, my sister and I all run at different paces, so we wished each other luck as we crossed the start line and I ran off....hoping to accomplish what I swore I would never attempt.  I was trying to beat my PR (personal record) time.

If you remember, last year I ran my fastest time at the Dino Half .  I told Preston right after that race that if I ever started talking about trying to do a half in less than my 1:56:49, that he was supposed to say, "Mile 12."  I would then remember that long crappy mile and regain my sanity.  However, as everyone knows, time dims pain, so even though Preston did his assigned job, I still was tempted to give it a try.  I went through my training program in the weeks leading up to the race aiming to run 8:45 miles, which would leave me at the finish about two minutes faster than my previous PR.  Good luck to me!

The Ogden half is one beautiful race when the weather cooperates, and this year the weather was perfection.  Here is a picture my mom took of all the runners near the start.

It was so pretty!  The roads were still a little crowded, especially for the first few miles.  The beginning of the race also has a few uphill sections, which are NOT my favorite.  Okay, so I hate them.  I hate running up hills even more than I love running down hills.  There is one big hill in particular which I was dreading, but it actually turned out okay.  It was only a couple of miles into the race so I wasn't too tired yet, AND I had "Roar" playing on my ipod as I ran that hill, so I had the eye of the tiger and I was dancing through the fire! Thanks Katy Perry, for pushing me up that hill.

After the hills were over, we ran around Pineview, which was beautiful and sparkly in the early morning sun.  The miles were going by pretty smoothly, and I was still on my pace.  I was feeling pretty good.  Then came my favorite section of the race.  The DOWNHILL section.  Hooray!  We got to run all the way down Ogden Canyon, which is beautiful and also a nice, gradual downhill slope.  I love me some gravity when it is working in my favor!

Before I knew it, the canyon was ending, and I was starting to feel....tired.  I still had about 3 and a half miles left, but that isn't too much right?  Wro-ong!  Those last three miles seemed to last longer than the whole first 10 miles put together.  I was still on my pace, but those last miles were a struggle, and I got a little slower with each one.  The last one was the worst!  I could see the finish line with over a mile to go, but the more I ran towards that finish, the farther away it seemed to get.  I finally stopped watching it and just looked down at my shoes to make sure they were still going forward.

(SIDENOTE:  I also started seeing a runner or two who had already finished with the race, jogging BACK UP the course looking for their slower friends, shiny medals already around their necks.  I must admit, these guys really bug the crap out of me.  Not only are they fast, but they have just sooo much energy left that they can't just wait for their peeps at the finish line like everyone else?  Nope, they have to jog against traffic, mocking all of us who are still slogging through that last mile.  I might also be slightly grumpy at this point of the race.)

After what seemed like a really, REALLY long time, I finally made it across the finish line!  I checked my GPS watch as I finished, and it said some pretty happy things for me:

1:54:00 (this was my official chip time too)
13.22 mi
8:38/mi

Hooray!  I did it!  I actually felt pretty good after I could finally stop running.  I wasn't nearly as sore that day or the day after as I was after the Dino Half.  Val and my dad also survived and had great races!  Wahoo!

But I am sure that the 1:54 is going to stand FOREVER and ever as my PR.

At least pretty sure :)

Kindergarten Zoo Day

So I have kind of fallen behind on the blog, as you may have noticed.  After about a week full of end-of- school and beginning-of-summer events, I started to think, "Man, I need to do a giant catch-up post!"  However, before I knew it, the very thought of trying to fit everything into the giant catch-up post just sounded intimidatingly hard, so I couldn't get myself to even start one.

So...I am not going to try and catch up all at once.  I am going to just do a small post here and there as I can find time during all the summer craziness that is going on, and hope that someday I can at least hit all of the major highlights.  So, let's think back to when I started falling behind....somewhere in May.  Oh yes, the Kindergarten Zoo Field Trip!!

I volunteered to help with Arden's Kindergarten Zoo trip a couple of years back, and Daxton remembered this information, and informed me that since I went with Arden, I was somehow under an iron-clad obligation to go on his field trip too.  Okay, boy, let's go!

I was put in charge of four boys, and we were the Lions!  I gotta say that I was a little bit worried about trying to keep four very excited boys all together and happy at the zoo for a couple of hours.  The pressure was really on when Dax's teacher told us that no one had ever lost a kid in all her years of kindergarten zoo trips.  I did NOT want to go down in history as the first mom to lose someone.  I had visions of Lion Boys scaling the fences into the bear enclosures or trying to ride the rhinos.

I had plenty of time to think about this stuff on the bus trip over.  Actually, with two very enthusiastic kindergarten classes on the bus, it was actually kind of hard to think over all the noise.  Dax is pretty excited too:

Here is all of Dax's class at the zoo!

They did a picture with everyone doing silly faces.  I love it.

We were pretty lucky and got to see lots of animals awake.  We saw two wolves really close up, and the leopard was posing on top of his house for us:

We saw the polar bears, we saw the gorilla, we saw elephants.  The boys ate all of the school-provided snacks within half an hour of arriving at the zoo, and asked for popcorn repeatedly.  I was not aware that i was supposed to have brought popcorn money, so the poor things remained popcorn-less.  I told them they could have all the water they wanted from this little zoo-must-do:

Hand sanitizer anyone?

We checked out the new lion exhibit, since we were the Lion group.  Here they are, along with Dax, who is, I believe at the end of a fierce roar.  Kind of looks like a burp or something though...

We saw the alligator, lots of snakes, a scorpion, some turtles, you get the idea.  We came, we saw, we conquered, no one got lost or eaten or maimed.  I was pretty happy with myself as I herded my little pride of lions back onto the bus.  

After driving back to the school with the seat full of kindergarten girls next to me singing ONLY the chorus of "Let It Go" for about half an hour non-stop, I was ready to "Turn away and slam the door" on this field trip!  BAM! 

Two kindergarten zoo trips down, one to go.  Cora has already informed me that I will be accompanying her next year.  :)