Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays

Here’s a photo-tour of some things we do when our neighbors John and Justin come over.

We exceed the 100-lb weight limit on the stroller.

We eat lunch in the park every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. No crumbs for me to sweep!

We eat apples. What great Washington boys, crunching away locally-grown apples.

What is it about little boys eating apples? Camera-magnets. This little guy (Justin) is such a ham! His haystack hair, goofy poses, and grunt-and-point language are quite endearing.

Jay eats his apples like a horse when he’s hungry. He starts on one side and eats all the way through till there’s nothing left. None of that eat-around-the-core nonsense for him! Thankfully I have managed to teach him to pick out the seeds.

We play scoop ball. It’s entertaining to watch these youngsters figure out how to scoop and throw. I find the slower-reaction time of toddlers very amusing. Throw ball. Watch it in the air. Ball lands. Look down. Wow, a ball!  Bend over. Pick up ball. Repeat.

Rose and I observe from the sidelines. She’s so good.

Slide sequence—the bumper booty game:

Jay and John played bumper booties for a good 20 minutes, squealing and laughing the whole time.

Boxes. Need I say more?

They played in these boxes for an entire HOUR straight!

The only time we did not go to the park for lunch, we had a lunch movie picnic.

Toy Story 3—muy emocionante! I don’t love turning on the TV for entertainment, but it’s fun every now and then. We watched half of the movie at a time.

Good ole Netflix streaming has a plethora of shows. We recently discovered Mighty Machines. It’s a mid-90’s Canadian show that just shows footage of machines at work, with a narrator explaining what’s going on in kid-friendly language. It’s the least-annoying kids show I’ve come across yet, unless you count the theme song. The boys love it.

Meanwhile, the little Rose bud hangs out and plays happily in the background.

Stroller-time again! Big brothers hold their younger siblings. Younger siblings try to escape. We ventured to the library this week. It was definitely exciting. I love watching the faces of passersby when they notice that I have 4 kids in my stroller.

We made a magnificent fort.

It took up our whole family room!

The boys watched the other half of Toy Story 3 on the laptop in their spacious fort.

I think I wore them out.

A Good Neighbor

Ten minutes ago, my neighbor’s 8 year old son knocked on our door.

When I opened the door, I saw that cute little guy holding a plate laden with a large, steaming slab of special white lasagna. He said “Dinner is served! If you want more, come on down!” How sweet is that? I LOVE LOVE LOVE having good neighbors, and not just because of that lasagna (which is delicious—I already had my own dinner, but I tried some white lasagna anyways. Oh, yummy temptation. save some for husband? decisions, decisions). I’m glad I can help them out by babysitting, sharing our phone, listening, etc. It feels so GOOD to be able to help out and just be friends.

This is one of Jay’s favorite books. It’s about a bear who borrows ingredients for a cake one at a time from his neighbor. Right when the girl is about fed up with him coming over and borrowing her food, he shows up with a big, steaming pan of apple cake for her.

At the end of the book, it has a recipe for “Country Bear’s Good Neighbor Cake.” Today, Jay and I made it. The recipe instructs you to share the cake with a friend. So, we brought a few warm triangles of this tasty little apple cake down to our neighbors.

It’s good to be a neighbor.

Two Firsts

Saturday (Sept 24th), was a GIRL-FUN-DAY!

The girls: Ashleigh, Alisha, and Shaina (that’s a lot of shh-es). 

The fun and the firsts:

We ran the Indian Summer 5k in Richland. It really was an Indian Summer of a day—the sun was bright and warm. There were 120 runners. The course was my favorite kind for a 5k—an out-and-back. I like how you can see all the runners and cheer for them when you pass each other after the turn around. It’s fun! Plus I like knowing exactly how far the finish line is.

Here’s the first first: I won! I was the first female to cross the finish line (there were 7 men ahead of me). I was so surprised, because I rarely race to win; I normally just try to get a good time. The planets must have aligned on September 24th, because I managed to get a good time and win all at once! My time was 21:38. Here are the official results.

They gave me a very pretty, very BIG blue ribbon. That was my first big beautiful blue ribbon. I have a list of ideals that I’m slowly sorting through as life moves along (some of the things on my list have turned out not to be so ideal). Ruffly blue ribbons are one of my ideals. I’ve kind of always wanted one. Now I can say for sure: winning a blue ribbon has lived up to my ideal. It gets to stay on the list.

Anyways, this whole race was kind of a last minute decision because I just ran that half marathon one week before. Running 13.1 miles so recently made this “measly” 3.1 miler feel SO short! I felt great during the run. It was nice not to be completely wiped out after a race.

And now on to the second first: after the race, we took our sweaty feet over to a salon for pedicures. This was my first-ever pedicure. I’ve always thought I would hate having a stranger clip my toenails and massage my feet. But I liked it a lot more than I thought I would! Of course I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t gotten the only male-pedicurist in the place. When he started lotion-ing up my legs, I just closed my eyes and reminded myself how many random men were involved with doctor visits and such (Rose was delivered by a complete stranger). I managed to detach my mind from thinking about “who’s down there” in the same way I do at the doctor. It helped.

I don’t really like Glamour magazine (there’s nothing to read—it’s just jumbled pictures of women in strange clothing), but I looked around while I was sitting there, and everyone else was reading magazines. It seemed that I wouldn’t get the full salon-pedicure-al experience without immersing myself in some sort of magazine pronto. Plus, I really needed more of a distraction from Mr. Lotion-Massager. So I opened up the nearest fashion-photo-magazine and plunged on in.

Alisha and Ashleigh getting painted. I must say, going to a salon with “the girls” and getting a pedicure must have been hiding somewhere on my list of ideals, because it was a fun little estrogen rush. I felt like I was totally indulging.

My favorite part was the bubbly hot water foot spa. It felt so good on my feet after all the pounding they endured in the race.

The finished product. My feet themselves are still less than cute, but at least now they have little shiny pink specks on the ends! This is only the second time in my life that my toes have ever had nail polish on them.

At the salon, they put a little white flower with a sparkly gem in the middle on my big toes.  Sweet Ashleigh would not let Alisha and I pay for our pedicures—she treated our toes! Thanks!!

Every time I see my toes out of the corner of my eye, I’m surprised that they are mine—I’m so used to seeing nail polish on other peoples’ feet that it is kind of fun to have some on my own! I’m relishing the pinkness. I don’t want to wear socks.

Saturday was also the General Relief Society Meeting. I watched it at our ward building with 20 or so other sisters. We had banana bread and enjoyed inspiring talks and music. Elder Uchtdorf really knows how to make a girl feel good about herself. It was a super meeting.

Saturday was such a fun break from my normal routine. I have to give Jeff some props for taking such exceptional care of our children while I was off gallivanting around on my sparkly toes. It felt great to spend time with other grown-up girls and have two firsts in one day.

For the Unks

A few weeks ago, my brother Brad snuck onto his wife’s blog and dedicated a post to me about new food he’s cooked. Therefore, I have to return the favor and do a post dedicated to him. It seems that mine and Jeff’s very… recessive basketball genes have combined to form a dominant basketball gene in our children.

When I ask Jay what shirt he wants to wear in the morning, he almost always says “bahketball shirt.” Good thing he has more than one basketball shirt.

Jay even used to sleep with a basketball in his bed.

On Tuesday when we went to the park that has a basketball court, Jay abandoned the playground to stand under the hoop, throwing a ball at it over and over, even though the ball never even touched the net. He did that over and over and over. Then he came over to me, grabbed my hand, pulled me over to the basketball court, and asked for a boost so he could get closer to the hoop. I lifted him way up high, he threw the ball, but it still didn’t even touch the net. He was very pleased anyway, though. I’m glad he doesn’t demand perfection with every shot because I sure can’t show him how to do it!

Rose likes to admire the basketball first.

Second, she touches the basketball and talks to it a little.

Then she tells me that she likes it.

When Jay and Rose are ready to learn how to play basketball, we will definitely have to import an uncle or two to show them how it’s done.

Army Base Race

On a whim a few weeks ago, I signed up for the Army Base Race Half Marathon in Selah, WA. Can you believe that I actually registered for a road race? Since we had to drive an hour to get to this one, I figured I’d better actually sign up. On Saturday (Sept 17th) I ran it. It was my first half marathon, and I decided that calling 13.1 miles a half marathon makes it sound too easy. That distance needs a name that makes it sound as exhausting as it really is. Something like Hip-tightener or Bone-pounder would work.

Anyways. It was a perfect day for running: our first cloudy day in MONTHS. It was cloudy and in the 60s. My ideal running conditions. There was a small field of 100 or less, so it wasn’t too crowded. This is the starting line—I’m the pink one on the far left with my leg bent. I was picking rocks and mulch out of my shoes (Nike Frees tend to grab pebbles).

Let me back up a little. Selah (it’s right outside Yakima, WA) was very welcoming. The race officials had a bag with a big sticker that said “Welcome to Selah, Shaina White” for me with my race t-shirt and stuff in it. It was a nice touch, especially since they spelled my name right.

The start of longer races is always so anti-climactic. You stand there prancing and dancing around, waiting to go, and then when the race finally starts, people just kind of rumble along and ease into it sloooowly. That makes it far too easy to start out far too fast.

Still in first gear…

Well, here’s the story: I started out nice and easy with everyone else, and found a pleasant lady to run with. Her name was Stacy. We chatted along happily for the first 3 miles. Then I noticed how fast we were running. My plan was to run between 8:20 and 8:30 per mile. Whoopse!

Stacy and I ran nearly a minute per mile faster than I had planned on. When The Big Hill started after mile 3, I… decided not to stay with her. The Big Hill lasted for 2 miles and then there was a glorious 2 mile down hill, where I sped up too much again.

We got to run through the Army training base for part of the race. It was at the top of that Big Hill, so I enjoyed sweeping panoramic views of the rolling, brown Selah countryside. It was quite exhilarating. Maybe that’s why I ran so much faster on that part.

Dan and Leslie, my in-laws, took care of Jay and Rose during the race. They drove around the course and cheered for me. It was fun having a fan club.

My devoted husband ran the last 4 miles with me. He ran half a step ahead of me to inspire me to run faster. I think it worked. But man my hips were clenching up during the last 3 miles. I was really feeling all that flying I did earlier in the race.

I was the 7th female to finish, and my time was 1 hour, 44 minutes, and 26 seconds. That’s 5 minutes faster than I planned on running! An online running pace calculator revealed that I averaged 7:57 per mile for 13.1 miles! No wonder I’m sore.

A quick word about my training: I run 5 days each week. For the past few months I’ve done roughly 4 miles (32-35 minutes) per day on 4 weekdays, then 7-10 miles (60-85 minutes) on Saturdays. So I wasn’t exactly trained for this 13.1 miler. Hence the wildly fluctuating mile times and super-sore muscles.

Here’s the break-down, for any runner-aficionados who are interested:

mile #	time
1	8:14
2	7:31
3	7:34
4	8:13
5	8:44
6	7:42
7	7:31
8	8:16
9	8:09
10	7:50
11	8:01
12	8:22
13	7:33
13.1	1:44.26

 

 

Check out the sweet finishers’ medal—dog tags! I thought they were pretty clever.

 

 

One random detail—there were a few guys doing demonstrations of chainsaw woodcarving at the Discover Selah Festival after the race. It was loud, but cool.

 

Well, after burning 1500 calories, it was time to make up for some lost ground with some Bill’s Berry Farm fresh, warm, melt-in-your-mouth apple cider donuts!

 

We got a dozen. By the time I thought about taking a picture of them, we had 1/4 of the last one left. We polished these delectable donuts off in less than 24 hours.

And that is the best motivation for me to run a bone-rattling, hip-tightening half marathon.