I run?

Last week was getting used to keeping up with this house again...and not really keeping up so well, but loving the feeling that we were trying our best.

Wednesday was my last chance to preserve my self-respect. I was trying to have the house looking decent by Thursday afternoon, because Xiao Chen was coming back to watch the little ones. That was all about my pride, of course.

Wednesday morning some of the Relief Society sisters came over at nine-thirty to sing together. I was still trying to make the guest bathroom presentable, still trying satisfy Grant's DVD watching whims, and still wondering if I had time to provide refreshments (surely not at that point) all while attempting to be attentive to the group leader. I had to apologize for my odd behavior. "In five minutes I'm going to walk out of the house with Cindy the dog," I said.

"Is it our company?" Paula asked.

It was pet show and tell day at Caitlin's preschool. Here's a picture.

Thursday morning I cleaned like a beast, panted my way over to Katherine's house for playgroup, cried tears of joy when Katherine served real guacamole, made the kids leave a bit early and reluctantly, greeted Xiao Chen, then headed of to ISB. I don't like having time restraints on Thursday, but I am always grateful to have the chance to spend time at school. It was Kyle's music class marimba presentation. I even got a chance to play.

Thursday night the family all pitched in on the clean-up. I was walking the recycling out to the bins and looked in our big front window to see Rob teaching Mary and Olivia how to vacuum. More tears of joy.

Talk about tears. How many times have I seen the Terry Fox documentary? It still makes me emotional. I've been grateful that ISB makes it a priority to teach the kids about important causes. Last year I agreed to run the Terry Fox run with Mary, almost eight months pregnant. That wasn't a great idea. She still remembers the humiliation that we came in very last.

Here are Olivia and her best friend Sora, and another with Bethany in the stands among her classmates.

This year the run was scheduled for the last week of September, but they had to reschedule. The pollution level was too high. The second date was Friday, October 16th. I guess they decided to make it more efficient by having all the lower elementary grades run together at the same time for twenty minutes. I like it. Much less humiliating to the slow among us.

Here I am trying to pretend like I'm only slow because I'm holding a toddler. That didn't last long. Grant wiggled down and shot off like a natural.

I brought Grant because he loves to run. He ran two and a half laps with a big smile on his face. Is it just my laziness or is a half a mile plus a lot for a two year old? When the running time was up he asked "I run?"

Friday night we had a fairly successful homemade pizza making. We still need more experimentation.