A Week (or two) of Wilkeyness

Sheesh. It's been a while since I've blogged. Life, you know.

But I do have some photos and commentary to share, all of which have an element of Wilkeyness. So on to the photos! First, fishing:

Forrest took the boys and Darrin and the Wilkey boys fishing on a cold UEA weekend Friday. They bundled up and started reeling 'em in.
Ethan looks too cool for fish, doesn't he? (He was already too cool for school. UEA weekend and everything. Ba dum bah!)

Max won the prize for ginormous-trout-catching. Isn't she a biggie? The guys had a great time seeing that one reeled in.


That's a biiiig fishie! Forrest came home and smoked a couple up, too, and they were tasty.

So that was two weekends ago. Last weekend Forrest and I left the kids at home with Mindy & Pete (THANK YOU!) and took off with a whole gaggle of Wilkeys to visit Moab. Interestingly, I'm a lifelong Utahn who's never been to Moab, never traversed the slickrock trail, never seen Delicate Arch, so we thought we'd round out our year of National Parking (Zions, Bryce, Yellowstone, etc.) by visiting Arches. I was hoping when we woke up at 5 a.m. on Friday to meet the rest of the family for the "unimog" (explanation below) that it would be worth it . . . and it was!

Handsome husband, handsome view.


An actual dinosaur track. I guess they're all over the place up there. See Mom? They ARE real! :-0
This is the unimog, the vehicle which (that?) spurred us to wake up at 5:15 on Friday morning and speed to Moab so we could meet the rest of the Wilkeys for a 9:30 ride. It's basically a big ol' jeepish kinda truck thing (don't you love my technical vocabulary here?) that's all tricked out so it can traverse the Moab terrain and almost tip over, but not quite. The unimog you see here is a bigger version--we were behind on a smaller one.

The couple-shot.


Taking to the hills. They call it "slickrock," which is a terrible misnomer because the sandstone in Moab is just about the stickiest rock I've ever walked on. It's almost like hiking on sandpaper. Made it easier to get over some (SOME) of my paralyzing fear of heights and scramble around a little.


Up, up, up!!


Scanning the vistas.


A bunch-o-Wilkeys, looking happy.


And uuuuuup, uup, up. (This hill was at a 45% angle. Luckily our drivers were good. Or so they told us.)


Later that day we hiked up to Delicate Arch. (That's Forrest and me in the right corner.) This iconic symbol of my state is iconic for good reason--it's breathtaking. Pictures don't do it justice.
This is an example of the type of thing that triggers my height-phobia. Although I went up there with everybody else I had to keep my eyes straight ahead, and I'm afraid that if I brought my kids on this hike I'd have a full-on panic attack.


Pretty picture, no?

At 83 years old, Muriel managed the strenuous 3 mile round-trip hike all the way to Delicate Arch. Here's hoping I can be like Muriel when I'm 83 (although she had 14 kids, so there's a chance she's tougher than me).


This was another hold-my-breath, look-straight-ahead-and-scurry moment. A bunch of us went off the beaten path so we could get a different view of the arch and I decided to be a good sport and go along.
Here we are, post-scurrying.


And here's the worth-scurrying-for view.


(And here too, sans blurry, windblown people.)


Sunset, on the way down from Delicate Arch.

The next morning we explored some other nooks and crannies in Arches National Park.

A rock formation that looked suspiciously like Garth in profile.


The Windows. We also scurried up inside this arch--but I don't have any pictures of it (until Quinn emails them to me, at least. Hint, hint?). This was the scariest scurry for me. I was okay once I sat down but couldn't look behind me, and there were people who had some little kids up in there, running around like mountain goats, and it was all I could do not to yell at them: "Don't you realize your children are going to plummet to their deaths?!?!?!?" Which would have ruined everybody's fun, I realize. (Not the plummeting. My yelling. Although, come to think of it, my yelling would have ruined things a lot less than the plummeting could have . . .)


Another handsome husband, handsome view.


This is a baby rattlesnake that slithered by in the parking lot of Landscape Arch. It ended up under somebody's car, then on top of this woman's backpack. Initially, the woman thought Forrest was trying to steal her backpack, but when she realized he was moving a rattlesnake off of her backpack with a stick her mood turned from indignation to terror to gratitude for Forrest's baby snake wrangling.


And this is Landscape Arch. We hiked in to see it but were running out of time (it was almost 2:00, nobody had eaten, we had to get back on the road to get home before nighttime), so we just snapped a few pics from a not-so-primo spot and high-tailed it home.

We had a wonderful trip. So fun. Nature! You know? And the Wilkeys are a great bunch to hang out with and we're so glad they include us; even without the DNA test to prove our family ties they saved us a spot on the Unimog. Thanks Wilkeys for a great weekend!

(Oh, and to extend the Wilkey Weekend, we hosted Extended Wilkey FHE at our house on Sunday night. Needless to say, our house was full to the brim w/ Wilkeys, but, alas, no pictures. But many chocolate chip cookies eaten and good to see a bunch of kids and grandkids who didn't go to Moab.)

And I'll end with a slight departure: a video that contains to Wilkeyness whatsoever. But it does contain a cute boy and some washable magic markerness:

Cousins

One of the things I like best about living in Utah is cousin access. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my kids enjoy their family, and I know they really love their cousins. Even Ethan was excited when he heard that Bella, Ayva, and Lilly would be joining us from Thursday to Sunday last week . . . and when a 13 year old boy is glad to see three female cousins age 6, 4, and 16 months, you know your family ties are pretty tight. Double-knotted, I'd say.

Mindy and Pete's girls were with us while their parents took a little trip to the land of trolley cars and Ghirardelli chocolate. (The last time I visited good ol' San Fransisco was when I was 23 years old, pregnant with Ethan, and Forrest and I and another newish high school teacher chaperoned the journalism kids from West Jordan High for a conference . . . and we missed our plane home. And it was spring break weekend. Oh, heavenly day, we had no idea what we were doing. A little shudder runs up my spine whenever I think of it. Sprinting through the airport, gaggles of trusting teenagers trailing behind me, gasping for breath, watching as the plane pulled away from the concourse, thinking, "Holy crap! I'm IN CHARGE of this mess." Ah, adulthood.)

Anyway, I digress. While the girls were here things were pretty busy--they were good girls, to be sure, but nine people in the house is nine people in the house--and I'd planned to take some pictures. Alas, I only took one. It'll have to do:



It was fun to have the cousins here and to inject a little girliness into our otherwise male-dominated environment. And I'm glad Mindy and Pete were able to take off and have some time alone. Oh, time alone. I love time alone.

But to amp up the level of cousinliness, Amy and Dave came to town and brought their two offspring along (since one of them is three and the other is one, they have this habit of tagging along with their parents.) We had a fun Sunday dinner with them and Tony & Cindy and then today while the big kids were in school we went to the zoo. Love the zoo! Especially on a beautiful day like today. So--pictures:

Touching the "water ball." A must at Hogle Zoo. (I like how this photo captures his reflection. Double cuteness.)
It was a day for babies at the zoo: baby giraffes, baby tiger cubs, baby meerkats. But the baby to beat all babies was the newborn elephant. Oh, what a cute, cute animal. She galloped around the enclosure, played with the big red balls, and I thought this was a pretty cool shot of the baby nursing while the mom got a little lunch for herself. Wyatt loved it.
Awwww. Right?

And this is little Miss Macy. Dear Macy: You are so cute. I love your hair. My hair was your color when I was your age. None of my children inherited it, but I'm glad to see somebody did. I'm sorry we kept ignoring you in your stroller while everyone else looked at stuff at the zoo, but next year you'll like it a lot more. Promise. Love, Aunt Angie.

Cousins: A profile.

Riding the tigers. I love how Jack's hat was always just a little skeewompus. Jack is three. Jack can read. He's a supergenius and Wyatt loves hanging with him.

The obligatory Famous Lion Drinking Fountain Photo

And the obligatory Do You Measure Up Stretch Your Arms Like a Gorilla Photo. Although they changed it! It used to be one gorilla--a male, probably, those zookeeping sexists--but more enlightened zookeepers now have a male, female, juvenile and infant gorilla. Much more equitable. But Grandpa is, and will always and forever be, the Silverback Male.

It was a fun day, and it's been a fun cousin week. Here's to cousins! And Grandmas and Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles and Brothers and Sisters and the whole lot of you. Love ya.

More Triathloning, Roundworm, The New Yorker, and Foundations of a Happy Marriage

Forrest ran his last triathlon of the season--and his first ever Olympic length triathlon--on Saturday. It took place up at Daybreak, a mere stone's throw from chez Hallstrom. It was billed as the one-and-only open water swim Tri in the Salt Lake Valley, which was true, until

(bum, bum, baaaaahhhhh)

ROUNDWORM!

I was going to post a picture of a roundworm, then googled it, then decided that nobody needs to see a picture of a roundworm. Especially an unexpected picture of a roundworm. You're welcome.

Anyway, a few days before the triathlon three cases of roundworm had been confirmed in South Jordan, and we soon learned that these poor souls caught the lovely infestation at Daybreak beach. It's very rare in the US . . . but apparently it made its way to suburbia. Just in time for the triathlon. Ick. Racck. Urgghpllth.

So, needless to say, the first ever open water swim in Salt Lake County did NOT take place. They did attempt to salvage it by having the participants take three laps in their little ol' club pool, but Forrest tells me it wasn't quite the same, as one would expect.

After the "swim" ended Forrest called me (he left his cell phone in his shoe in order to cut down on his transition time), and I hopped on my bike, stuck a New Yorker magazine in my camera bag, and rode up to the event so I could cheer for my dear husband. Left Wyatt at home with Elise and Jonas (Ethan was at an overnight Scout camp involving bikes and a tarantula--long story) and huffed and puffed up the hill just in time to see Forrest whiz on in after a 23 mile bike ride and head out for his six mile run with a smile on his face.

A part of me wishes that I could be one of those super-cool, hard-core triathlon chicky-babes and do one of these things WITH my husband, but the fact that I had to huff my way up one small hill made it pretty apparent that such thing is never going to happen. That and the idea of an open water swim--with or without the risk of parasitic infection--would scare me right out of my neoprene wet suit. But luckily Forrest's love of me isn't contingent on my cardio endurance. He fell in love with a girl who brings a New Yorker magazine to a triathlon, not one who ever intended in competing in one. I'm not much of an athlete--no, never was--but I'm a heck of a conversationalist. Give me a topic! Any topic! (Okay, except sports--sometimes I wonder if I really AM Dennis Sweat's daughter). For example, just a few minutes ago--right as I was in the middle of this paragraph, in fact--Forrest called from LA and we had a great little exchange about Gadhafi's recent address to the UN as well as possible interpretations of the dream Forrest had last night where he was holding a poisonous frog and couldn't let go of it.

That, my friends, is the foundation of a loving marriage. That and having the same opinions about movies and making each other food.

But moving on, the other big news of the week is Wyatt's in his big boy bed! We have a lovely old bed that once belonged to Forrest's Uncle Rich. It has carvings of a sailboat on the footboard and the headboard, and both Ethan and Jonas slept in it when they transitioned out of the crib. But, for both of them, I didn't have the time or wherewithal to refinish the thing, and it was in dire need. Lot of scratches and a really worn finish, and a gigantic letter "R" on the headboard from a sticker Uncle Rich put there, I don't know, 45 years ago? But Forrest and I finally got our act together and refinished it. It doesn't look perfect, but it looks much, much better, and Wyatt's been thrilled to go to bed in it the last two nights. He hasn't even tried getting out (fingers crossed).

Now the kids are getting home from school. Scheduled for tonight: Ethan's parent teacher conferences, Jonas's soccer practice, Ethan's flag football practice, Elise's Africa Map homework, Young Men's, and finishing the reorganization of the cupboards above the desk in the kitchen. (Yes, I'm reorganizing this house one space at a time. And it's not because I saw an episode of "Hoarders" on AMC and got scared straight. Promise.)

A Chill in the Air

It's 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday and I'm sitting on the couch with an open window behind me and thinking, "Dang. I'm a little cold."

And tired. Wyatt!

But back to the cold thing (because whenever I think about the tired thing I realize that in a few weeks we'll be setting our clocks back and then we'll REALLY be in trouble with the early waking). Anyway: cold. All of a sudden it feels like fall. It's had to believe that just one week ago, we were doing this:


Elise and Ethan both did great on the wakeboard

Forrest, of course. Good picture, no?

This one's Uncle Tony, showing off his mad wakeboarding skills. I like the hand placement. It's like he's saying, "What?!?! I'm just hangin'."

The booooooyyyz. (And Aunt Cindy's left eye.)

And Jonas. Jonas decided to have a "dry day" at the lake, which was fine. It was a touch chilly--the dang wind!--and Mom had a dry day too.

So that was Labor Day (thanks Tony & Cindy and Mom & Dad for making it so fun) . . . and now it's fall. We're in the thick of homework and early rising, soccer and Children's Choir, and Ethan's starting up with flag football here soon. Did I mention that I pulled Elise and Jonas out of piano? Long story--she was an excellent teacher, but the pace was a little too intense for my particular kids--and I keep planning to teach them myself.

And planning. And planning. Why is it so hard to teach your own kids a musical instrument? Or at least hard for me?

We're talking to Wyatt about potty training. Right now we're still in the talking stage, and he's very circumspect about the whole thing. Meaning he sits on the potty for 5 seconds and then says, "No potty down there, Mom. No potty!"

I've been going to the gym again more regularly--during the summer I was riding my bike or jogging outside--and my dumb ankle is STILL giving me trouble. Step in a hole at Sundance and give yourself months of ankle soreness! I keep thinking it's better, then I go and try running and I'm right back where I was--not in huge pain or anything, but sore and stiff. Man, I'm getting old.

I fell off the Weight Watchers wagon and have not yet clambered back on board. Eeh. Made chicken enchiladas for dinner last night--a recipe that contains sour cream, cream of chicken soup, and two kinds of cheese--and man, they were good. But I also bought some candy corns from Harmons after resisting the last two times I saw them, and between me and the kids, they were all gone by 8:00 p.m. Candy corns are my sickening autumn candy equivalent of Brach's Chicks and Rabbits in the spring. So, while I'm not on WW anymore, I must remind myself: DO NOT buy the candy corns! You will regret it!

And speaking of devouring, Ethan and I just whipped through the second installment of the Hunger Games series: Catching Fire. Between that book and The Likeness, which I mentioned last post, I've had some really fun reading lately. Now I'm overcome with that vague, let-down feeling when you've powered through a good novel and don't have anything equally compelling left to read. And I feel guilty admitting this, but I bought Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude two months ago because I KNOW that any writer worth her salt ought to read that book, and it's been sitting in my office the whole time, mocking me with it's pretty green cover. I keep waiting for a sufficient burst of intellectual energy. Or something. One Hundred Years of Solitude, I promise, I will read you. Someday. Soon!

And now it's 7:12. Ethan will be heading out the door in ten minutes, so I'd better haul myself off this drafty couch and commence our out-the-door routine. Fall! It's here.

Peaches, Class Size, and Irish Swearing

I didn't have one occasion to take a picture of anything this week. Nope.

Well, I suppose I could have taken a picture of my newly-organized food storage room. (Seriously. It's AWESOME.) But I didn't. I'm really whipping that basement into shape, though, I tell you what. And now when the zombies attack, we won't have to wade through gigantic Halloween spider decorations and rubbermaid bins full of baby clothes and a broken-down swing in order to find the kidney beans.

We have LOTS of kidney beans. Kidney beans are very important to Forrest. Both dark and light red. Come over--we can have chili anytime.

You know what else we have a lot of? PEACHES. From our very own trees. I know! We grew peaches! And guess what? They're delicious. It feels slightly miraculous that we can grow delicious peaches all by ourselves from a little tiny dwarf peach trees in our back yard in suburban South Jordan. Delicious peaches seem like they have to come from an orchard in Idaho, or at least from my Aunt Karla's property in Mapleton. But we grew our very own and today I even made a tasty little cobbler, which I'm taking over to Grandma and Grandpa Sweat's for dinner as soon as I finish writing this. Turns out Grandma Sweat made peach icebox dessert (my cobbler was a whim)--so tonight we're having Cold Peaches and Warm Peaches. Mmmmm.

Hey! I just remembered! I have a picture of one of our peach trees. See? I haven't left you picture-less.


I'm so proud of our scrawny little tree.

What else? I started teaching again for the semester. I've been really nervous because I had nine students a week ago, but during the last week before school started I lost SIX of them (not taking it personally) and only had three on the roll on the first day of class. The SL Center "prefers" that you have five but have "occasionally" let a class carry with as few as three. Luckily, on the first day two more students showed up, so I'm good to go with five. All women. They seem like a good group, but I'm going to miss my Winter 09 class--a creative writing class works best with 10 or so, I think. It will be interesting to try and make it work with this small of a group. But at least I'm getting paid! And less grading. That's always good. Silver linings and all that.

Oh, and I also got the completed manuscript of my anthology of Mormon short stories off to the publisher. Hooray!! Now it's just proofreading the galleys, getting author approvals, finalizing the cover, all that good stuff.

I also read a really good book this week. The Likeness by Tana French. I'd seen her previous book around (called Into the Woods) but hadn't read it, and picked this one up on a whim at Target. Man, that chickie can WRITE! Technically, the book belongs in the mystery/thriller genre, but French's prose is just gorgeous. Gorgeous! I love myself a good literary mystery. They're few and far between. Warning, though: The main characters are Irish cops, so there's some language. What does it mean about me, though, that if I imagine the swear words spoken with a lilting Irish accent they don't offend me as much?

The kids are doing great in school--happy, swinging along. They seem to like their teachers and their classmates and have not (yet) caught the swine flu. So all is well.

And after that stream-of-consciousness rundown, we are off to Grandmas for a Peach Party!

p.s. I can't wait to hear what Barack Obama tells all the school children on Tuesday. Perhaps he will ask them to create a child army. Or do their homework. Either way, it's SINISTER!!!!

Good Things Come in Fours

Good Thing #1: First Day of School
Last week, Jonas started 3rd grade, Elise started 6th grade, and the day before yesterday, Ethan started EIGHTH GRADE. (I swear, when I was in the eighth grade I was almost a woman. Almost.)

Here are their official first day of school photos. The only difference is Ethan didn't let me take his in the front yard. Somehow he didn't want the ninth graders waiting for the bus to see his mom posing him in front of a tulip tree. Go figure.



Good lookin' kids, I agree. They're all doing swimmingly and seem to be adjusting to their new classes--Jonas even came home today after a week and a half of school and told me he's Student of the Month for his class! I always told him first impressions were important. The theme for the month is "caring," so I'm glad to have a caring kid.

Good Thing #2: Jordanelle Triathlon
Forrest and my brother Tony and our brother-in-law Peter competed in the Jordanelle Triathlon. Last year, Jordanelle was Forrest's first Tri ever, so it was fun to come back again and see how he's improved (even though last year's foray was pretty impressive, especially for a first-timer).

Before the race, looking studly. Even in a swim cap, Tone.

Everybody's in the water! That's Forrest, waving hello.

The kids, trying to take advantage of some shade while they wait for Dad to run past.

Dad, running past. High fives all around!

The T-Man, zipping by on his new bike. Sweet bike, T.

Forrest about to cross the finish line.

Peter, doing the same.

And Tony, bringing it home.

Forrest got in early enough that he was able to get a free massage. (The line's so long that only the truly zippy get a chance for an anonymous female massage school student to give them a rubdown.) Forrest had a really good race, though, and cut over five minutes off of last year's already fast time. Good job, hon!

Are the men in my family handsome or what?

Good Thing #3: Organizing the Basement
Kay, so I don't "do" triathlons. But I did organize the basement, which was a Herculean task in its own way. What I really should have done is taken a "before" picture after I dumped pretty much every single available toy, car, doll, puzzle piece, lego, etc. in the middle of the basement and decided to embark on an organization project of truly epic proportions. But I didn't take a before picture, so you'll have to trust me that the junk piles were monumental.

I needed to do more than clean up, though. I did a "we're done having kids and need to figure out what to save, throw away, give away, sell" type job, and that, my friends, takes a considerable amount of energy, both mental and physical. Of course, we're keeping a lot of the little girl stuff (doll houses, Barbies, dress up clothes) for cousins to play with when they come over, but my 11-year-old isn't much interested in dress up clothes anymore, so I figured it was time to get them put up and out of the way. Dress-up clothes and tons of other stuff, too. Here are my after pictures. (Yes, I took pictures. I was proud of myself, okay? :-)

Wyatt, actually playing with the train table. I made Forrest secure the track to the table with screws. After eight years of waiting for my kids to be "creative" and put together their own tracks, but instead dealing with a train table in constant disarray but never played with, I'd had it. Now, voila! A toy a kid can have fun with! It's a miracle. I actually glued down the tracks about a year ago, but a friend of Wyatt's came over and methodically yanked each and every piece of track from the table in the fifteen minutes I left them downstairs unattended. That was a disappointing afternoon for Mom. Now watch him try to yank THESE puppies off the table!

Disclaimer: Our basement is not cute. No, our basement is utilitarian. It's for kids to play in. I figure I'm not going to expend a whole lot of time and money decorating a space that the kids are going to bang around in. But now it's a lot less cluttered and more organized, which will help THEM keep it cleaner too. Makes me happy inside. Don't know how long the little animals will stay in the "little animal bin," or the big legos in the "big lego bin" . . . but it made me feel good to get it that way, at least for a little while.

We also got the computer/tv area--movies, games, books, etc.--in ship shape. Every movie in the correct case, present and accounted for. Well, except for this one Wii game that we're pretty sure a friend of Ethan's "borrowed" but now isn't owning up to. Grrr. Anyway, maybe now I won't avoid going in the basement for days on end unless somebody is screaming.

Good Thing #4: Ethan's Birthday! The Big 1-3
It's true: Forrest and I are the parents of a teenager. I know! He's such a good kid, though, I don't feel the trepidation I probably should. To celebrate, he went to Lagoon with some friends (last week), and then today I brought him lunch at school--10 piece chicken nugget combo from McDonald's, his request, and he tells me his friends were jealous of the fries--and tonight we took him to his favorite restaurant, Famous Dave's. Grandma and Grandpa Sweat joined us to make the night a real party.

Ethan was going to order a half rack of ribs, but his Dad told him to go head and order the full rack. Yes, he weighs 85 pounds, but he can put away some ribs.

A happy 13-year old, enjoying his red meat.

Voila, the full rack. (Yes, we brought a number of ribs home. His eyes were a little bigger than his stomach.)

Good times at the Famous Daves.

Thirteen years ago, one of the greatest people I've ever known came into the world. I was lucky enough to get to have him be my kid. Love you, Ethan. Happy Birthday!