Journal entry from Friday, March 30, 2018
Today I managed to run ten miles before Jeff left for track practice. The morning was cold enough for gloves, hat, long sleeves, and pants, but the breeze was gentle, the sun was climbing, and during the final two miles I removed my gloves and hat. I roamed carefree up in the orchards north of our house, and it was immensely satisfying. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was soaring on a runner's high when I got home. It was my first long run with the new brand of shoes I tried this week, and I am officially converted to Altras. They are like strapping pillows to my feet: fluffy-soft with plenty of toe room.
When I walked into our driveway, Jeff was waiting for me and he immediately left for track practice--a classic parenting torch-pass that we have performed hundreds of times over the past 8 years. After lunch, Jeff and Jay went on a quest to find and buy the latest Star Wars movie. Upon their triumphant return, I shooed the kids out onto the trampoline so Jeff and I could prep for our annual Easter egg hunt. Usually we do the hunt on Easter Sunday, but we didn't want to have to deal with eggs on top of General Conference and Easter all on the same day this year. We dug out our shoe box of plastic eggs, rummaged through the pantry for pretzels, marshmallows, chocolate chips, and raisins, then shoved the "treats" into the eggs. It was a speedy process. I had noble intentions to buy a bag of jelly beans for the Easter eggs, but I forgot and we defaulted to the pantry.
To keep the kids occupied while the eggs were being hidden, we told them to go dress up fancy (since it was not Easter Sunday, they were not in their Easter-iffic nice outfits). They ran to the playroom dress up heap and we had just enough time to conceal the 33 eggs in the yard before Amber was pounding down the front door. Jeff randomly decided to be the Easter Horse, and it was absolutely hilarious watching him bumble around the front yard trying to see through the massive rubber horse mask to hide eggs! I was laughing my head off watching him. After enjoying the funny sight for a while, I finally pitched in and helped, quickly hiding the rest of the eggs. The kids emerged from the house wearing all of their dress-up box finery, and the hunt commenced.
We either lost, broke, or threw away our old Easter baskets when we moved, so we grabbed the first three things with handles that we could see: two buckets and a funny Mega Blocks lunchbox. This was truly a ramshackle Easter egg hunt. But in spite of our pantry-filled eggs and ugly bucket-baskets, we preserved the essence of the hunt, and that is what the kids love. All they care about is the excitement of dashing around the yard finding eggs, then eating the various surprises inside. Oddly enough, they were the most happy about the pretzel-filled eggs! The white chocolate chips were a close second. Jeff and I decided two things:
1. we must doing something right if our kids are excited to find pretzels in their Easter eggs, and
2. our kids are basically awesome.
We hid 33 eggs (11 per kid). We put just a sprinkle of fillings in each egg so the kids could easily eat everything in their eggs all at once. It was another tweak we made this year that ended up being a stroke of genius. Nobody got sick from eating too much, I didn't have to police their sugar consumption, and we did not have to save each kid's treats in separate baggies and listen to them ask for it every time they got hungry. Total time elapsed between filling the first egg to the final chocolate chip being eaten was less than an hour. In and OUT. Easter fun for everyone, including the parents!
Today was a very nice normal sort of day. Nothing was exceptionally stand-out, but nothing was exceptionally hard either. The fun family moments were interspersed with their fair share of screaming children, poop, and peeved parents. But in between all of the sticky parts were GOOD PARTS. A good day still has its difficulties. A day does not have to be golden to be full of positive, happy, GOOD memories.
Tonight we had "slacker pizza" and watched The Last Jedi for family movie night. That is one lengthy movie! Wow. Jeff, Jay, and Rose had seen it in theaters, and were excitedly awaiting its release, but I had not seen it yet and was happy to wait as long as necessary. Watching Star Wars is more of a duty I do for my family rather than a personal pleasure. Amber was pinging off the walls for the last 2/3 of it, and I could barely follow the already confusing plot with all of her distracting background noise. Whew. How can I enjoy Star Trek so much but have so little patience for Star Wars?
{end journal entry}
*PICTURES, in three sections*
1. My ten mile run:
Ten miles is a long time to be out jogging along, and I often devise various methods of entertainment along the way. This time I took silly selfies pretending to run away from Borg ships which were really tall cubic stacks of apple boxes interspersed throughout the orchards). Survived!
Apple boxes look like apple boxes up close, but I still refused to be assimilated, even if resistance was truly futile with my wimpy weapon--a half canister of pepper spray.
I still don't know exactly how they get these boxes stacked so high, or how they get them down when harvest comes along.
I ran all the way up our street till the pavement ended, then kept running straight on the gravel road till it ended. After that 4.5 miles of gradual incline, I turned left, ran along the back side of the orchards (pictured here) between cow fields and the orchard, and made a nice rectangle loop on my return journey home. I love this route.
Finishing up the last side of my rectangle loop in the warming sunshine. That darker brown smudge right below the tan colored hills waaaay off in the distance is the back side of the orchards that I ran along.
When my watch showed 10.5 miles, I stopped and walked in the last quarter mile and paused to take this picture of our cute little canal cottage. This house is not perfect but at least it's cute and scenic!
2. Sibling battle: when I walked inside after my run, Jay and Rose begged me to come watch them have a battle. They wanted me to take pictures of their fight...so I brought the camera to the playroom.
Amber rode her trusty steed into battle, rifle cocked. That Christmas tree behind her is finally back in its box: I took down all of the Christmas decorations by myself way back at New Year's, with the exception of the old fake tree which was in the playroom. I assigned the kids the task of putting away the fake tree. Since it was out of the way in the playroom, I was ok with letting them choose when to put it away. They finally did just yesterday (April 4th).
So...much...action!
I exited the room when the fight got too close to my nose for the third time in a row.
3. Egg hunt:
Our egg-filling supplies, pilfered from my moderately well-stocked pantry.
I chuckle every time I see Jeff in that horse head. A reverse centaur, 85% blind. I'm pretty sure the only holes in the mask are in the nose and mouth.
My favorite egg, perched on my favorite hiding spot way up in a tree. We assigned Jay to find ONLY the Darth Vader eggs and camo patterned eggs, to give the little sisters a fighting chance. I hid Jay's eggs in tough places, and he needed some major hints by the end. It leveled the playing field effectively though.
All ready to HUNT, with a creepy Easter Horse in the background.
Rose had to stop picking up eggs when she reached 11, and that way Amber got her number in without too much policing.
Darth Jay-knight finding Darth Vader.
Lady Amber on the go.
Examining and consuming their treasure.
Om-nom-nom-nom. Raisins!
