Mid-August Album

Assorted photos from August:

For most of the middle of August, we had hazardous air quality, due to raging wildfires to the north and south. Our valley scooped up the smoke and held onto it for ages, till we were about to go stir crazy from hanging out inside. I ordered the kids some N-99 smoke filtering masks and they made the cutest little ninjas, embarking out into the gray gloom.

NASTY air. The sun couldn’t even get through and the sky looked positively ill.

In spite of the smoky air, Grama Leslie took Rose on their traditional clothes shopping trip, where Rose got to pick an outfit to wear on the first day of school.

One day the kids and I braved the smoke in our masks and went for a bike ride/run. Those masks were so hard to breathe in that we kept needing breaks and we struggled to cover 2 miles slowly. But my throat didn’t get that scratchy raw smoky feeling when I used the mask.

My masked children, on the canal road.

Thankfully the smoky air didn’t affect the peach trees along our driveway. Our landlord told us to help ourselves to fresh peaches, and we picked about 100 peaches in 15 minutes one day. I made some toasted granola and enjoyed the most decadent breakfast of peaches on granola while our peaches lasted.

Family prayer is always an adventure with our wild card, Amber. If sitting on Jeff’s back keeps her relatively quiet and in the same room as the rest of us during the entire prayer, we’ll do it!

I came back from a run to find Rose’s cute girl with balloons sketched in chalk by our garage.

DEEP BREATH: the air cleared up after about 7-10 days and after so much time apart, it felt good to get reacquainted with my good friend, the sky.

Since Jeff went back to work a week before the kids started school, my exercise included them for the last week of summer.

Amber insisted on wearing her helmet even though she rode in the stroller.

Jay is to the left of the water along the canal road.

Crossing the canal on Cemetery Road.

Reflections are double the beauty!

It had rained for a solid, miraculous 15 minutes the night before, and the sky was still feeling slightly moody when we went out.

Jay, the mint, and the sky: such vibrant colors.

Grapes on the right, mint on the left, Sunnyside in the distance past the grapes on the right–it was a fragrant run. It was such a treat to be able to SEE that far!

Rose finally got her courage up to invite our neighbor girl over, and they were so cute playing together. Rose has always tagged along after Jay and his friends, and she feels so pleased to have a friend of her own to play with.

I adore the unaffected innocence of little girls holding hands.

Clear skies = stunning sunsets.

I got artistic with the barbed wire fence.

Looking south at dusk: Sunnyside bathed in the afterglow.

We put Rose’s hair in foam rollers one Saturday night, and the next morning she was pleased to be curly like Amby. She said “my hair is beautiful like Amber’s! I’m wearing my glasses so people will recognize me.”

I don’t know how to curl my hair.

Rose loves striking a pose.

The White girls in white, all ready for church. (our basement is…rustic)

This is SUCH an Amber expression.

The boys love my sporadic pre-church photo shoots so much.

Ultimook Challenge

My first week as assistant cross country coach is done. I have learned a few kids' names, blown a whistle several times, and driven a massive school van for at least 10 hours. But I still feel very unsettled when I go to practice. I am a total stress case when it comes to change, especially when that change thrusts me into a social situation. That on top of the massive ongoing adjustment to the new school plus cross country schedule has left me feeling rather overwhelmed for 90% of each day. In fact, I have been so wrapped up in My Own Life that I have been less aware of what those around me are going through. Everyone is going through something, good or bad, big or small. I have simply had transition-blinders on and not paid attention.

For example, when a friend asked me how I'm doing with coaching, I babbled on about adapting to my new schedule and my inability to converse with teenagers--all legitimate concerns for me right now. Those passing hallway conversations rarely leave enough time for both parties to share. Ending a conversation where I was the only contributor leaves me feeling hollow, unfinished, and selfish. Asking "how are you," listening to the response, and then sharing news in return is the most whole, finished type of conversation.

One friend from church birthed her fifth baby two weeks ago, and she was standing there asking ME how I'M doing on Sunday. Another friend was stressed for several real-life reasons that I didn't know details about till days later, and she patiently listened to my hand-wringing monologue on how intimidating teenagers are to me. Then, later Sunday night, that same friend BROUGHT US COOKIES.

During my scripture study yesterday, I had one of those non-epiphany-epiphanies, the kind that was so obvious I should have seen it sooner. The scriptures say "behold the man" (aka put Jesus Christ in the center of your life) and I read an excellent talk about what that means. I have been trying to work out what ministering  (aka serving, supporting, listening, etc.) to others looks like for me in my current situation, especially since I am terrible at baking cookies. As I sat pondering how can I more fully "behold the man," the spirit linked the two desires together and this distinct thought came to me: ministering to others is the best way to truly behold the man.

I resolved to make a more conscious effort to be there for those around me, whether it's asking how their life is going, bringing them a food item that I do know how to make, sending a kind text, etc. In other words, do what Jesus would do! Duh, Shaina! As absorbing and new as my schedule is right now, I don't want to be too wrapped up in my own life to acknowledge and fellowship others!

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, here's the story of our weekend adventure at the first cross country meet of the season. 

The Ultimook Cross Country Challenge was such a fun meet. As a first meet it looked very overwhelming on paper: drive a 15 passenger van full of high schoolers 4.5 hours to Tillamook, Oregon (west of Portland), camp overnight with them, run a rugged 3 mile race with a massive mud pit and two river crossings in the morning, then watch them run the same course, try to match the right names to the right faces while cheering on the team, load up the vans again, and repeat that 4.5 hour drive, all with my own 3 small children in tow. Thank heavens Jeff is an old hand at this. He took it all in his stride and the entire trip went butter-smooth, minus our wild Amber-child, but we knew what she was when we brought her along, haha.

THE VAN. When Jeff and I picked the two school vans up on Friday morning, I took mine for a spin around the country roads to get a feel for it and soothe my anxiety. Thankfully it was not nearly as hard to drive as I feared. Though it was a 15 passenger sized van, it only had 2 benches inside, with the remaining space being used for cargo (camping gear!)

The coaches, ready to embark on our first meet together!

I picked Jay and Rose up early from school on Friday, August 31st so we could hit the road in time. This seating arrangement only lasted about 15 minutes. Then Amber started attacking Rose and Jay moved to the front seat by me while Rose scooted down the bench away from Amber. We only ended up having 2 high schoolers in our van, two girls who were sweet and patient with the rowdy Amber. Two no-shows and a cancellation reduced our numbers to 8 athletes, 2 coaches, and 3 elementary kids. Sadly the van did not have an old-fashioned CD player, so we couldn't listen to our Harry Potter book 5 discs on the drive. That's the main reason Amber was so unruly.

After suffering through rush hour in Portland and another 90 minutes on a curvy little road after that, we arrived at Hydrangea Ranch at last! The scenery was worth the drive.

Mischief in every bone of her body.

The kids and I took a shake-out walk while Jeff took the team on a shake-out run. We convened for dinner at the pavilion.

Lasagna dinner! Rose and Amber were there too. A word about pictures: I try not to share too many pictures of other people's kids online, because it doesn't feel like my place. If I am in the picture with them, it feels more ok. But coaching with Jeff basically feels like our family of 5 has grown to a family of 40 with all of the xc runners, and I automatically take pictures of my family! But I shall resist posting too many.

We camped in a thick grassy field full of other teams. It was the spongiest turf I've ever slept on. Kind of lumpy too, but definitely spongy. Girl power note: the 2 girls set up their 2 tents much faster than the 6 boys set up their one tent.

Amber loved playing in the cargo area of the vans.

I endured a long hour or so of wild children in the tent while Jeff was out being sociable with parents and other passersby (my choice was deliberate, but it was still rough in there).

Eventually I resorted to putting Amber in a burrito to stop her punching-kicking-flailing attacks on her siblings. It only lasted about 20 seconds. Eventually I escaped the tent and told Jeff I needed to go on a walk by myself to find my center again. He went into the tent and handled the situation while I was gone.

I visited the Kilchis River, which the cross country course crossed twice. When I returned to the tent, Rose and Amber were watching Frozen on Jeff's phone and Jay was reading quietly.

Sleeping bag reading. At dusk, Jeff took the team over to the pavilion (at least a quarter mile away) to watch a movie (McFarland USA--highly recommend). Eventually we turned off the movie and our kids went to sleep and I laid there wishing I could do something, but feeling too cozy in my sleeping bag to want to brave the cooling temperatures...until I heard a kid walking past our tent say "look at those stars!"

I jumped out of my warm sleeping bag and left the tent to admire the sky. WORTH IT. I saw the Milky Way, dusted in a long stream through the bright gorgeous stars (it didn't show up in pictures of course). I have been dreaming of stars like this for years, but we have had zero luck stargazing, in spite of our many camping trips. Photo note: When I took this picture on my little camera, it looked pure black on the screen with one tiny speck of light. I put the image through the aptly named Adobe Lightroom, cranked up the exposure 500%, and these beauties appeared. It was MUCH better in person though, as is Mother Nature's way.

While admiring the stars, I ambled over to the pavilion and watched the last third of the movie, (McFarland USA), while shivering on a bench next to Jeff. Watching a movie about runners with a crowd of runners is so much fun--it was a great group that laughed in all the right places.

SUNRISE over Hydrangea Ranch.

Early morning slow walkers, in search of the port-a-potties and clutching the baggies of cereal I packed them.

It was in the low 50s when I was getting ready to run the community open race at 8am. Brrrr. It was wonderful running weather, just hard to strip out of my warmups before the race.

Jeff put Rose on his shoulders and handed her the camera while I traversed the mud pit, and she got artistic and took a picture of Jeff's phone taking a picture of me. That's our Rose.

When I hit the mud, I bogged down immediately and nearly tipped right over with every step. That's me in the middle of it, wearing blue. Seriously though, that mud pit was intense! It was knee deep and ultra squelchy, with a foot or so of soupy thin mud on top of the suctiony stuff. I've never done anything like it, unless you count my childhood running wild in the woods of west Tennessee...

I survived the mud pit with both shoes intact! The meet rules specifically stated that if you lost a shoe in the mud pit, you could not continue until you had retrieved your shoe.

Cruising after the river crossings--my feet were so mud and waterlogged, they felt like cement bricks!

The finish. This was such a satisfying outdoor challenge of a race. I liked that the challenges were runner-friendly (although I walked through the mud and both river crossings to preserve my various limbs).

Victory! My time was 24:46, which was a solid effort on this slow boggy course. And that is blood on my knee--my feet were so clunky with mud that I stumbled and fell on the trail right before the first river crossing. The river crossings were about knee deep in the middle, so most of my mud washed off.

These girls both fell in the mud pit during their race. It was seriously the best entertainment, clustering around the mud pit and watching the various runners slip, slide, fall, swim, and belly flop through it.

Cross country meet vibes.

Tired Amby.

I don't know if anyone we know is in this picture; I just took it to illustrate the madness of the mud pit during the high school races. It was such a fun crowd to be in, with universal gasps, laughs, and exclamations as the runners struggled through the mud.

Rose and her friend Evie crawled through the legs of spectators to peek out at the mud pit action.

I couldn't get enough of that view!

Triumphant team. (Jeff did not run the race due to a slowly healing ankle issue.)

Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Jay and his friend Jordy found a tiny frog and spent most of the day playing with it.

The little girls, playing to pass the time.

For some reason the kids took turns putting the tiny frog on each others' heads.

Rose was a little uncertain.

We had lunch from the little food trailer that catered affordable concessions for the meet.

The drive home was LENGTHY (Jeff and I couldn't trade off driving when we got sleepy because we had two different vans). Our van rocked out to The Greatest Showman soundtrack, then we turned Roald Dahl's Matilda on audiobook (I still had it saved on my phone from the last time we listened to it) and listened to the entire book, finishing a few minutes after we arrived back in Sunnyside. We hit Portland traffic for the second day in a row and didn't get back to the high school until 9pm. But outside Goldendale the lingering sunset was glorious with Mt. Adams next door. We also drove right past a burning hillside--a wildfire had started in the 24 hours since we last drove up highway 97! It looked eerie, smoking and glowing in the dark like a massive sleeping dragon. 

First day

This post has three parts. If I had been less busy/more on top of/in the mood for blog-posting in August, these parts would probably be three separate posts. But I'm combining them. After all, would this even count as a Shaina-post if it was less than 1,000 words?

Part I. Left behind

My Thursday, August 23rd journal entry, written the day after Jeff went back to work for the school year. Reading through it now, I guess I was feeling rather rhythmic and even slightly poetic amidst my ache when I wrote it:

The back-to-school ordeal always leaves me in a funk. It is hard when Jeff goes back to work after a summer of having him around all day every day. I miss him! It is hard that he goes back to work a week before the kids start school. It is hard when the kids start school. I have been thinking about why all of these normal events are so hard. It's definitely not because the kids are little angels at home, or that during summer the five of us spend every minute together. We don't.

The school year transition is hard for me because I am left behind. All summer we explore and adventure together, but when school starts everyone else goes on a new adventure without me. Everyone in my family is starting something new and I am left behind at home, doing the same mundane household stuff that I have been doing for the past decade.

I have always wanted to be a mom. Even in college I didn't have lofty aspirations for a career. I was not one of those promising young women who sacrificed her career and laid it all aside to nobly bear and raise babies. I got my degree, but planned on having kids. Having children was my plan, my number one career aspiration.

Fast forward ten years. I am done bearing babies, and now my main job is to bear with those fast-growing babies.

It is a:

massive stressful breathtaking

messy painful confusing

scary beautiful exhausting

intense full defining

CHALLENGE.

It's more than a career. It's a lifetime full-time commitment. I don't necessarily aspire to MORE than the title of Mom. I don't even want an external non-mom responsibility right now--that would stress me out! I still have Amber at home full time and young kids to drive around. Plus, I am very much an introverted homebody. I like being at home.

And yet...at the beginning of each school year when the kids are starting new classes and Jeff is learning, growing, and furthering his experience as a teacher and a coach, I am still at home.

I am still at home.

Washing the same dishes

Sweeping the same floor.

Practicing the same piano songs.

Running the same routes.

Folding the same clothes.

Cooking the same food.

Wiping the same table.

Fighting the same kid battles.

Etc.

I am still at home.

It is hard feeling left behind in the whirlwind of life-progress. Yes, I do my best to study, ponder, and grow personally, but mixing that in with everyday kid chaos is [still] uphill work. I have written before about how my main job is to be here for my family, and I stand by the value of the stability I can provide. But it is still hard to be left behind.

My conclusion to this melancholy missive is inconclusive. I am not unhappy with my current stage of life. In fact, I fully realize that I am living my dream right here, right now! But even the dreamiest dream has hard parts.There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to my annual left-behind dilemma. I wrote this more to acknowledge the difficulty at hand rather than to solve it, because lots of challenges aren't meant to be solved; they are meant to be survived. Borne. Experienced. Endured.

Growth does not occur merely from the difficulty of the task, or even from the noble act of enduring a challenge. The most profound, lasting growth comes from how we choose to endure. Will I choose to endure it reluctantly or endure it well?

Hello, refiner's fire, we meet again.

*    *    *

Part II. The whirlwind

Five days later: Tuesday, August 28th, (the day before the first day of school), I received a phone call from Jeff. He NEVER calls me while he's at work, so from the minute my phone buzzed with "Husband" on the screen, I was very curious. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: Hello?

Jeff: Hello, gorgeous, how would you like to be my assistant cross country coach?

Me: Wait, what? Can Val not do it after all?

Jeff: No, his new job requires him to be at work every afternoon for the next three weeks, so he would miss too many practices and I need a second adult asap.

Me: Well, sure, I guess so...

Jeff, aside to someone in the room with him: she says she'll do it. [then to me] I'm sitting in the athletic director's office. He thinks you are amazing for saying yes so quickly.

Me: we can make this work with our kids, right?

Jeff: Yes, we already figured all of that out over the summer the first time we thought Val couldn't come back as the assistant.

Me: true, true. We did. Ok, so what do I need to do next? [...]

After that phone call, I hit the ground running (pun intended) and have hardly slowed down or caught my breath since. That same day, I filled out volunteer forms at the district office to be legally allowed to attend cross country practice immediately (the volunteer paperwork is faster than the apply/hire process). Once the previous assistant coach sends in his official letter of resignation, the district will post the job and I will apply (and hopefully get hired). Nepotism has nothing to do with it, thankfully, Jeff says I am the most qualified person for the job that he can think of, especially on such short notice.

[Note: over the summer, we weren't sure if Jeff's former assistant would be able to come back, and after much consideration, we decided that I could be the assistant cross country coach. We mapped out several plans to take care of Jay, Rose, and Amber during cross country practice and felt pretty good about how it all came together.]

A few minutes after Jeff's phone call, I called my mother-in-law, Leslie, and she agreed to renew the arrangement that we proposed over the summer. Since this is the internet, I'm not going to detail our kids' afternoons, but so far so good there. For the short two month cross country season, I will only be away from them for a short time after school each day.

I never would have sought out even this short 2 month job commitment on my own. Since I am prone to gut clenching stress, I do my best to minimize those stress factors, and working two jobs (mom-ing plus any other) has never appealed to me. But after my first almost week "on the job," I have cooked dinner every day more consistently than I have in the past year (the trick: cook it at lunchtime). I have felt more productive during the day and was more mindful and grateful during my time with my kids. I'm not saying that getting a job made me a better mom, but so far it sure has forced me to be a more proactive, organized person!

Obviously this is not the last I will write about this subject, but that's enough for now. Suddenly I have a JOB and somehow I simultaneously feel:

·        Mom-guilt-sadness about not being there to greet my kids the instant school lets out for the day.

·        Elated, interested, and invested in helping/watching the high schoolers get fitter and faster.

·        Scatterbrained and slightly stressed as I figure out how to fit in this cross country commitment while still keeping up with my main job (running the White house).

·        OVERJOYED that I get to actually SEE Jeff in the afternoons!! We first met 13.5 years ago on the SVU track team, so coaching together feels like going back to our roots. It's fun! We are a good team. Jeff said "this is going to be the best fall ever!"

*     *     *

PART III. The first day

In the midst of my personal scrambling to get ready for cross country, Jay and Rose had their first day at their new school, Chief Kamaikin Elementary (CK for short). Jay is finally attending the much-anticipated highly capable class there for 4th grade, and Rose is in second grade. It feels so good to finally have our kids in a school that actually fits their needs. We went to meet your teacher night a few nights before the big first day, and everything felt good.

The night before school started, Jeff gave each of our three kids a father's blessing. It was simple and sweet. I am thankful for the priesthood and for my good husband.

On the first day of school, we are typically early with everything from getting ready to getting out the door. But I got carried away with my cub scout spreadsheet (prepping it to pass on to my partner, who will be taking over as the main leader due to my involvement in cross country). Suddenly it was time to go! We managed to squeeze in the traditional, if hasty, first-day-of-school pictures. The irrigation sprinklers were blasting two sides of our house, so we went out back into the shade of the tree behind our house to take them instead of risking being soaked by non-potable water on the porch.

Rose said the sweetest family prayer in the car before we left for school. She said: "please help me to feel confident at school if I feel shy and Jay too. Please bless Mommy and Amber to be okay at home while we're at school." Rose may be strong willed, vivacious, and demanding, but she has a tender side that about does me in when it peeks out from behind her lofty demeanor. This is only the second time in her life that she has deigned admit to feeling apprehensive of a new situation.

We barely made it to school on time, just as the whistle was blowing. I walked Jay and Rose to their classrooms per their requests (even big 4th grade Jay still wanted me to walk with him, although he did not hold my hand. He clung to my shadow though, while I towed along the bouncy, capering wild-Amber-child. First we dropped Rose off at her classroom, then we walked to Jay's room. When he walked in, one of our neighbor boys who's in the class saw Jay and was so happy to discover that he and Jay were in the same class, it about made me weep. Jay has been craving quality friends at school to replace the foul-mouthed bullies he was seated amongst last year.

As I toted the skipping, tugging, twirling Amber out of the school, my heart was warm and full of hope for the new school year.

That afternoon, I went to my first real cross country practice. Is there anything more intimidating than 30 teenagers staring you down? I think not, unless you happen to be wearing neon short running shorts and a tank top while they stare, like I was. I just hid behind my sunglasses and let Jeff do all the talking. Thankfully, they all know and like him, and they've all seen me before, so it was relatively painless until we started running. My task was to find a group of kids, run with them, and try to get to know them. I have no established modus operandi for interacting with teenagers. I wasn't good at it when I was a teenager, and not much has changed in that area since. But maybe it will get easier?

Post-blessing group Dad-hug. For some reason, Jay hid his head under a blanket.

Jeff, walking into school on HIS first day of teaching classes. I almost asked him to turn around and smile for a first day picture, but I didn't know if he would want to so I snuck a picture instead...

The fourth grader.

The second grader. This is the dress she picked out to wear on the first day of school when Grama Leslie took her shopping. When the sequins are pointing down, it says hello, and when the sequins are swiped up, it says hola. She had her backpack on one shoulder because the other strap was itching her neck.

Jay choking, Rose cheesing, Amber licking: the usual.

Hold up your grade number with your fingers!

Walking from the car to the school on the first day. Rose left her backpack in the car and had to run back for it. Amber followed, much to my concern (she thinks sidewalks are optional and streets full of fast moving cars are much more interesting)

Amber, climbing the CK fence in search of Jay and Rose after school.

A commemorative selfie of our first day of coaching together.

Future Grizzly: Amber walk-hopped with one foot on the concrete, one on the asphalt all the way down this long stretch of fence on our way back to the car.