Labor Day Weekend

Brig has been running a fever yesterday and last night - in fact it got pretty high last night and he was a really hot little boy. The medicine seemed to help out so we weren't worried, but this morning he seemed a little delirius, or at least he was jabbering about all kind of funny things. Angela looked at me and laughed, asking if I gave him a shot during the night to make him crazy. He heard the word shot, and as all young boys should, immediately knew we were talking about basketball. He said something about not being able to shoot the two big balls in the basket yet, because "I need to get tall like Jesus".

As I wrote in Thursday's blog post, it really felt like a Friday yesterday. If it felt like Friday yesterday, you can imagine how work's going today. So the Labor Day weekend is starting a little early, at least mentally if not physically. We don't have any big plans for the weekend, but it doesn't matter, it should be fun.

I've been frustrated with my running this week. I've been having a painful knee problem a few miles into my runs, that is quite persistent and hard to shake (for you runners, think IT band). I think it's somewhat related to tight and sore muscles throughout my right leg (pulled hamstring, etc.), but I can't figure out the right stretches to make it go away. So I decided to take the rest of the week off and hopefully a little rest will make it better by next week.

Have a great and safe weekend.

Clear the DVR!

Gone are all the old Hannah Montana episodes, the Disney Channel original marketing events ... I mean movies, the two-month old recordings that we still "might watch", and of course the hallowed full season of So You Think You Can Dance. There's not a spare megabyte, kilobyte, or even byte availalbe on the old DVR, because starting in a couple of hours, it's football season baby!

Here's a helpful link to find the TV listings for every televised game (the next few weeks are up to date, but after that you'll want to keep checking back as they add/change games): http://cfn.scout.com/2/557860.html

On the homefront, Micah made it onto Dance team at her school again this year. She was somewhat nervous, but more than anything she was really anxious for her best friend's tryout. It is her friend's first year at the school, and with somewhat limited recent dance experience, they just weren't sure. Good news is that they both made it, and now will be able to spend 87% of their time together instead of just 73%.

Brig's getting a little better on the potty-training front. Angela actually took him to some school meetings today with no diaper - very brave I thought, but no accidents. He appears to have about a 4 second window from the time he realizes he needs to go, to actually going. We're trying to work on that.

After a full summer of belly-aching about having to read, Kennan and Morgan all of a sudden realized this week that they love to read. They're plowing through books and, with surprise in their voices, saying things like, "can I read instead of watching TV?" (very rough paraphrase...) Alright, who are they, and what have they done with our daughters!

Today feels like Friday. Today is also very hot.

Aussie slang

There's a saying in Australia that I won't exactly repeat here because my mom periodically reads the blog. It's common in the Northern Territory where during the wet season the monsoon rains are unbelievably intense. The phrase to describe these horrendous downpours is, "it's p_ssing", that rhymes with "it's missing"...sorry mom. The reason I bring this up is to combine it with another common phrase - a cliche really - "when it rains, it pours." I'm sure you know what this means, but basically it seems like when one thing goes badly, everything else seems to go badly at the same time. Well, there are times when the "rain" starts, and then it just blows right past "pouring" and redlines all the way into "p_ssing". Christine, Cameron, you know what I mean?

So I guess it would be unfair and slightly self indulgent to say that things are beyond bad for us, but we do have some stressful things going on in our lives that require more resources to resolve than we sometimes have. But you know what, it's been amazing how, despite the frustration of thing after thing going wrong in some areas, we are still able to get peaceful feelings that things will be ok. We don't have any answers beyond that, but we still get these unexplainable and somewhat mystifying feelings that things will work out. I guess that's better than having feelings that it won't work out.

Brig's latest boy thing, plus other junk

Brig told Angela yesterday that he wanted to go to the bathroom on the front lawn (it's enclosed by a fairly tall hedge so not as bad as it sounds), so she pulled his pants down for him and let him do his thing. Thing is, she sort of got distracted and wasn't paying attention to him. Next thing she hears is "Mom!" and she looks over, Brig's standing there grinning, and pointing down proudly to a steaming pile of ... well, you get the picture. I guess we need to be more clear about what it means to "go to the bathroom" on the front lawn. Predictably, I thought it was pretty funny.

Very happy to have the weekend here almost. We're looking forward to making more progress on the house and remaining boxes, catching some anticipated Olympic events like the men's marathon and the men's basketball gold medal game, going to our ward luau, maybe even hosting a BBQ at our house.

As of this morning, I've run 612 miles this year. I've also enjoyed riding my bike (today I rode in to work after my 8 mile run), playing basketball, tennis, and working out at the gym periodically. Man, I think I'll have another donut!

8 more days til Game Day!

Thursday and still rolling

For Dan's benefit, I'm going to post what I ate for lunch today. It's going to sound like a lot, but I was careful with portion control, so I was able to savor just the right amount of each item. Here it is: Memphis style ribs, southern BBQ brisket sandwich, grilled red snapper, BBQ flavored french fries (oops), fried rice, and fresh fruit. Funnily they were all out of vegetables...



Had an awesome experience yesterday. Dean Karnazes, ultra-marathoner and psycho runner came and spoke to Google as part of the Authors @ Google series (search for authors @ google on YouTube for past speakers). This guy is incredible! Some of his most amazing accomplishments are:

• He ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days (one of which was St. George, where he ran by me towards the end of the race. I remember seeing him because I knew who he was and that he was going to be there)


• He has run 350 miles - without stopping - in 81 hours and 44 minutes


• He has run the Badlands Ultramarathon, 130 miles in Death Valley in the middle of the summer, 7 or 8 times (can't remember which) - he says to run on the white lines so your shoes don't melt ... good to know.


• He routinely runs regular marathons, but with a twist - he'll run 20 miles through the night to the start of the race, run a fast race, and then run home afterwards. Clearly something wrong with this guy

He was very funny and engaging, and I really like how humble and unassuming he was. He readily admits that he's a little crazy ... a "little"? Some interesting facts:

1. He starts to sweat and gets his first hint of being tired right around the 26-30 mile mark of his runs, so basically he can run a marathon without getting tired or sweating (he told a story about showing up for a 60 Minutes interview having run 30 miles to get there and they couldn't believe he'd run that far and didn't even look tired or sweaty).


2. He takes a cell phone and credit card on his "long" training runs, and he'll call up pizza places to deliver along the route somewhere. He says he orders Hawaiian style, unsliced, thin crust; and then when he gets it he just takes it out of the box, rolls it up, and eats it like a pizza burrito - very messy but delicious.


3. He worked with The North Face to create his own running shoes that don't have laces so he can adjust the tightness of his shoes while his feet expand and contract as he runs.


4. His favorite family outing is to put his wife and kids to bed, and then head out on a 75 mile run to a destination where they will meet him for breakfast after they sleep.


5. He has trained his body to rely on only four hours of very deep sleep a night. He said it was pure torture for the first month as he set his alarm to wake up after four hours and forced himself to get up, but after a while his body adapted.


6. During some of his longest runs (262 miles, 350 miles, etc.) he has actually fallen asleep and awakened out in the middle of the road, realizing he's been sleep running. Not surprising given that he runs straight through three consecutive nights.

I think I'm going to buy his book (pictured above).

First day of school

There was an audible buzz around our house this morning as the kids anticipated and prepared for their first day of school today. That buzz, however, was nothing compared to the screeching smoke alarm that went off a few times last night, waking up our whole family and scaring the tar out of Kennan and Brig (well, Kennan scared Brig by being so scared). You know how you are jolted out of sleep by a noise like that and you have no idea what it is? I was up walking around for a 1/2 hour trying to figure out where the intermittent noise came from - it was so loud it was very hard to isolate its source. I finally found it, and put it out of commission. Problem was, my adrenaline was through the roof, and with Brig now squirming in our bed, I could kiss a good night's sleep goodbye.

But back to the school day. It was fun to see the kids all dressed in their new shoes and new clothes, sporting their new or only slightly used backpacks, and up earlier than they have been all summer. It's a fun time for them.

My running is really struggling. I'm fighting off some aches and pains, and it just seems very hard for me lately to put together any good consistent efforts. It's hard to get up for running in the morning when your feet/legs hurt just to walk to the bathroom, you're running alone, and you haven't felt good running recently. I just need to put together a few more good weeks and then I can hopefully feel good about at least finishing St. George. The marathon this year is not going to be a fast one - just hoping I can stay under 4 hours!

Still digging the Olympics...

12 days...

I'm a countdown sort of guy. I like to think ahead to an event for which I'm excited, and then my mind just automatically starts generating how many days, or hours, or whatevers until the event. So as any of you who know me well can guess, it's 12 days until the college football season kicks off. That's 12 days until all the practice reports, the prognostication, the anticipation, and hype, the guessing, and the waiting all end. I'll talk more about my teams next week as we get closer.

Today and tomorrow are the last two days of "summer" for the kids. Wednesday is the first day of the new school year, and the kids are somewhat excited. I think they'll love getting back to seeing their friends, and if their new teachers do a good job, they'll have fun getting back to learning. I think what they're not looking forward to is getting up early and homework. It will be nice to get the piles of school supplies off our kitchen counter.

We continue to make slow progress toward getting the house organized and things put away. I know it's been almost 2 months since we moved, but with our trip and other things going on, we haven't been the best at making everything perfect at home yet. The last couple of weekends have been productive though, and by this time next year we should be good to go.

Dan's gone and Other...

It's been so fun to have Dan and Hailey and Preston in California with us for most of the summer. Hailey and Preston have been gone now for a few weeks, but Dan's been finishing up his internship by working long hours and completing his projects. And today it ends - he's done a good job and we're all hopeful that a full-time job offer will follow within the next couple of months. It's been great for me to have a tennis and golf partner - I'm going to miss Dan.

Bad news on the running front. My long-time running partner and friend, Jason, who has been battling plantar fasciatis for months now, has finally succumbed and will not be able to run the marathon. Of course that's bad news for him; it's also bad news for me as it's exponentially harder to train alone, especially in this critical time of long runs and intense preparation. Luckily I can still run with Angela and her group, but not quite the same.

Speaking of running, I'm very excited for another of Google's speaker series guests scheduled for next week. Ultramarathon extraordinaire, Dean Karnazas, he of the 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states, is comeing to speak. Seriously can't wait!

I rode my bike in to work today and wondered repeatedly why I haven't been doing it more often. It was very relaxing, and it made me feel good that I saved gas and got a little bit of exercise. I'll be doing that more often.

I need the Olympics to end. I stayed up until 1am this morning watching the coverage for some dumb reason, and I'm going to pay for it in about 5 minutes.

Kid updates

What have the kids been up to, you may ask? Well, let me try to tell you...

Micah: she really likes playing with her close friends, and it seems like at least once a week when we're in town she's either sleeping over there or they're sleeping over at our house. That's fine with us since her friends are fun and really kind to the other kids. Micah was just gaga over "So You Think You Can Dance" on TV, and she and the other kids followed it religiously. She's starting to think about her audition for the next PYT play in the fall, which I believe will be "Sound of Music". It was fun for her when we were in SLC to practice singing with Jenny and Rosemary. She enjoyed swimteam this summer and did particularly well in the backstroke - she has a really nice stroke and is fun to watch. She is also getting good at tennis from her lessons and playing this summer (good is of course relative...). Micah likes primary, especially since her mom is her teacher, and her best friend is in her class. She and I have been reading a book together called "Inkheart", which is fun and interesting and different from anything we've read before. She is a little bit in trouble right now because she hasn't been reading as much on her own or practicing piano as much as she should have been this summer, but I think she'll be fine. We found out Micah got the new 6th grade teacher this coming year so we don't know too much about her.

Kennan: Kennan has gotten really good at riding her bike and loves to go fast whenever we go on family bike rides. She continues to be a sweet girl (unless she's tired or someone makes her mad, then watch out!) and is almost always really fun to be around. She loves playing with Micah and her older friends and cousins - maybe even more than playing with her own friends sometimes. She did really well in swimteam and tennis this summer - I think breaststroke and freestyle were her best strokes. She was as into "So..." the dance show as much as Micah, so that was a big deal in our house. We've still got quite a few episodes on our DVR and I've been given strict instructions not to erase them (until football season starts!). She's still our pettite girl, but she's growing nicely and looking older to me than before. She's Brig's helper at night because he shares a room with Kennan and Morgan and she is very helpful in keeping him in his bed. Kennan has a good soccer team this year with 3 or 4 other friends from church or school, but unfortunately it didn't work out for me to be her coach again. We find out her school teacher tonight, but we think it might also be a new teacher to the school. Kennan's a good girl.

Morgan: This little girl is our big time peace maker. Morgan is always taking the high road, especially when it comes to vying for something with the other girls. She is seemingly always happy to the let the others have their way, and I'm so proud of her for trying to make others happy. Of course she looks out for herself at times, but she's clearly more selfless than selfish. She's getting more and more comfortable on her bike, and because she's almost as big as Kennan, it's almost time to get Morgan a new bike so she can ride better. Her swimteam experience was great as she got moved up into the next level pretty early on this summer and did really well - particularly in freestyle. We're actually considering having her swim year round this year because she likes it. If I remember right, Morgan also got a new teacher to the school - we're wondering if there's a pattern there. Maybe the school figures our girls can handle new things alright? I started reading Harry Potter to Kennan and Morgan and they like it, although it's sometimes hard to find time.

Brig: He continues to crack me up. His latest funny thing is whenever you ask him a question where the answer requires a numerical answer, he'll say some random number that ends with a nine even though he knows the right answer. For instance, if you ask him how old he is, he knows he's 2, but he'll say something like "49". Sheesh, and we thought Micah was anxious to grow up... Ang has been attempting to potty train him, and yesterday was the day she decided to not put diapers on him during the day. He insisted on wearing all three pairs of underwear to start the day out, which was funny until his first accident soaked through all three in one shot. His second and third accidents were less costly because he was only wearing one pair of undies, but then as the fourth accident was #2, he was quickly back in diapers after that. He's been sleeping well in his own bed since we returned from our trip, and it's so nice to not have him crawl into our bed at night. I do admit to enjoying waking up with him as he comes in around 7, or if he's there when I get back from runs. He's very sweet in the mornings. He has an obsession with necks - he loves to rub his hands on Angela's neck (who can blame him?!), and mine when she's not around. I told him he shouldn't be "necking" until high school and he said "ok". Good boy. He's in that weird stage where he still needs a nap but doesn't want to sleep during the day, so we're having a hard time figuring out how to keep him happy and functioning. I think his favorite thing (judging by the peals of laughter) is running through the house with his dad and tackling each other. You have to be kind of selective when you start this though, because once you do it, he won't stop until he's a little ball of sweat with rug burns for both of us. He's such a little stud.

Olympics and stuff

I'm sure all of you have been watching the Olympics as we have. I admit to being falling asleep during the opening ceremonies even though I thought it was pretty cool. I'm definitely more into the events and competitions themselves though. Here are my top 10 favorites so far.

10. Seeing all the US athletes walk into the stadium at the opening ceremonies, and especially watching the big basketball stars acting as if they're happy to be there.
9. Synchronized platform diving - pretty amazing dives by themselves, but when they're perfectly synchronized it's darn cool.
8. Showing the kids my picture with Kerri Walsh as we were watching her and Misty May-Treanor dismantle the opposition in beach volleyball.
7. Watching Bela Karoli talk to Bob Costas about the women's gymnasts performances - you could say this guy is a little excitable.
6. Al Trautwig's thinly veiled disbelief in the "16 year old" age of the 12 year old Chinese girl gymnast - he assured us that "her parents quote-unquote verified her age". Uh huh.
5. Aaron Peirsol's look of disbelief when he won the gold and broke the world record in the 100 backstroke.
4. The Chinese men's gymnastics guys on the rings - I could probably do that, I just don't want to.
3. The Chinese men's team high fives - anybody else notice how funny they look?
2. Michael Phelps when he decides to swim really fast and make all the other swimmers look like they're swimming backwards. He's a freak of nature.
1. Men's 4x100 relay, hands down! The anchor leg was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen - I thought there was absolutely no way Lezak of the US could catch the Frenchman, but he did. And to make it sweeter, the Frenchman had been talking trash leading up to the Olympics - you couldn't script it any better!

Only problem with the Olympics so far except for the one event between commercials format is that they go so late. We've been routinely staying up until midnight or later just to see who wins something. All in all pretty great stuff though - we're big fans!

Remember me?

3,300 miles later, we're back from a long, great vacation. Fact is, I've been dreading this post for a little while because where do I start? I guess I'll give you a rundown of the trip, and hopefully I won't leave out anything important.

Highlights of the trip were plentiful:

• spending lots of time with both families, especially cousins for the kids
• going to the cabin with Dad, including tennis, fly fishing on the river with Dad, and fishing at the lake with the kids. The kids reeled in most of the casts, and then slowly started to lose interest until I finally just said, "ok, final cast and then we can go home". Of course I caught a fish on that cast - they thought it was pretty cool.
• going to the temple with Cameron and Christine - it was a long wait, but well worth it as it had been quite a while for us.
• Jackson Hole and Yellowstone with the entire Richards family except Dan and his clan. We rode bikes, hiked by Jenny Lake, ate really well thanks to Mom and Dad, saw a huge herd of buffalo crossing right in front of our car, went to the Jackson shoot out (Brig was terrified, so he and I walked around the fly fishing shop), presented Dairy Queen with quite possibly the largest one-time order in franchise history, hung out with bros and sis-in-laws after the kids went to bed, drove into Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful and hotpots, helped the kids pick out non-lethal souvenirs, played in Jackson lake, and the climactic experience: adults rode the Snake River rapids while Grandpa, Grandma, and pregnant Jenny watched our kids in the park for four hours ... great trip!
• dropping the kids off with Angela's sisters after Jackson and heading directly up to Park City. This for me was the personal highlight of the trip! Ang and I spent the night at the Westgate Resort in the Canyons (very cheap midweek) without kids. We walked around Main St. aimlessly, ate great steak and tri-tip at Bandits BBQ, watched a movie, and did a bunch of shopping at the outlets (mostly for me, so I was able to stand it). Need to do that more often!
• playing golf three times; twice with Dave, once with Dad and Spencer
• more family time with both families
• and coming home (highlight for Angela and me, not so much for the kids)

Lowlights:

• very hot
• need to sell our Provo house
• Ang and I running the Provo 1/2 marathon - this was probably a highlight until about 10 miles into the race, then it quickly turned into a nightmare of a lowlight
• driving home

And congratulations to Anne and Brandon for getting engaged - it's a little inconvenient for us (Nov. 8th), but as it's not about us, that's ok. We're happy for them and excited to have Brandon in the family. Angela and the kids met him for the first time at the end of the trip and I think he passed muster.

So we're home now. Our house still has boxes in many random places, but it sure feels great to come home. It's also nice to have bearably cool weather.

Of course I have pictures, but as that would require actually downloading them, it will take a while to get around to that. Look for more posts this week.