The Beginning of the End...

Guest post by Mom:

I am so behind on life. I work lots more than I ever have. I currently teach and train at Summit Athletic Club, teach at Red Mountain Resort on Saturdays, and just recently began scribing in the Emergency Department to hopefully help me get in to PA school (which I don't think I have come CLOSE to even mentioning...I'll get there.) It's no excuse, but Instagram and Facebook at least see what's going on each day. This blog gets neglected but recently my children have begun to read the print versions I have of the blog and they LOVE it. So I'm renewing my efforts! Even if it is sunny and hot outside and I would rather be swimming.

Okay....the beginning of the end.

Back in May, we got a text from Pete's Dad that Oma (his mother) was not doing well. In fact, they were giving estimates of maybe only a week left to live. Oma has had Alzheimer's, but in April? Maybe? Shortly after her birthday, I think, she took a fall and hit her head and it sent her on the downhill slide. I've probably mentioned it. Anyway, I took the opportunity on the third week in May to take the kids up north and see her again. Pete couldn't come with me, but we felt that we needed another chance to maybe say good bye. Just in case.

It was May in SLC which meant it was chillier than I probably thought it was going to be. I'm guessing from the pictures anyway! We of course stopped at the zoo.

And we made sure to meet the new leopard cubs. There were three!

It warmed up a bit and Sam didn't last all the way through the bird show.

We also had to go see the new baby zebra, Poppy!

This crazy crew stayed with me much longer at the zoo than the others!

Later, Chase was willing to get Om Nom his bearded dragon out for Sam and Iva to hold and touch. More like just touch.

I was feeling bizarrely ambitious later and took the kids to City Creek...and even fed them dinner there. That was a bit overwhelming.

Probably my favorite shot from Saturday is this one of Iva playing at the park.

Sunday before we headed home and to visit Oma, I snuck back up to the zoo with my kids. It was raining. We probably should have gone to church, but we had fun.

I might have forgotten to make sure Sam had shoes. 

I am just realizing that I don't have a single picture from our visit with Oma. However, it felt very much like a good bye. We went with the Preslars. Oma was in a wheelchair when we arrived and was a little uncomfortable. We decided to sing songs with her and for her. She somewhat surprised us by joining in on a song from Oklahoma. She called the singing beautiful and seemed to really look at her granddaughters. From my view, she seemed really sad. Almost trapped. I could feel that she needed to be done with her earthly journey. She was starting to look really frail. I think I made the mistake of asking to sing "Oo,oo, I want to linger a little longer" with her. Rachel and I were unable to sing most of it. There were some tears shed. As it would turn out, that was the last time I would ever hear her speak or see her awake.

May Randomness

We have a lot of these kinds of posts where we just look back at our photos and try and figure out what was happening.

Dad is the most popular during church...

Snapchat is how we last during sacrament meeting.

Sleepy time with Mom

Mom started teaching a strength class that is on Stand Up Paddleboards. She tried to do a headstand on them...

This was an awesome moment from Iva. She was SUPER upset and dejected because she "didn't stay on the dots"...see next picture.

Mothers' Day was fun because we got matching skirts!

We attempted two different attempts at photos...before and after church..

The ladies!

St.George 70.3

Dad did it again. He signed up for the half Ironman. Which meant we got to do the IronKids run the night before. Iva got to participate for the first time.

We made sure she carb loaded....

Oh and of course lets throw in our Super Hero pictures from school. Because we looked AWESOME

Aha! Gearing up for the race!

Iva got to start first since she was the shorter distance.

Finished! She did it in jelly shoes to boot!

Here I come! I had to run the mile and I was HOT!

Cara was not to far behind me.

HOOOOOOTTTTT

That's better!

Our school was holding a swim party for the teachers to say "thank you" and we rushed over to help at the end. We didn't have swimsuits, but did I mention we were hot?

The next morning....we sent Dad out for his race at a crazy early time....especially because he was one of the last waves that got to start the swim. The day was expected to have crazy winds and so they luckily bumped up start times almost a half an hour!

We made it downtown with enough time to watch the winners cross (which is always fun) and then we began our wait.

We filled our time with splash pad fun and walking to get to lunch at Iceberg!

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

We had seen Dad transition from bike to run at a pretty decent time, not his best, but not bad. But he just wasn't coming back!

We kept waiting and Mom started stressing. We started getting whiney. Finally a random number called Mom's phone and she knew it couldn't be good. Gratefully it was actual Dad calling. He was a couple miles away from the finish line and he was spent. He was calling to apologize for how long it was taking him, but the way he phrased it made it sound like he was done and Mom was just trying to convince him to keep moving. It turns out he was just calling to let us know he was alive,  he didn't mean to make it sound like he was quitting. Laughable moment now, but then, Mom made us all run up the course to meet him and drag his butt to the finish.

So that's what this photo is. Us running along in our flip flops trying to kick our Dad's butt.

He gained some momentum and beat us to the finish, but barely. (Just kidding.)

Even though it was his roughest finish and most definitely his slowest time, he was the most coherent and movable after this race. He was smiling and talking and walking.

We are still crazy proud of him. He went 70.3 miles with wind making the downhill not a downhill. GO DAD!

FROZEN FEVER

The one bane of Mom's side in the blogging world is her inability to post videos...she can't quite figure out the Youtube thing. She tried with Sam's videos and something went wrong. This next post though almost demands a link!

Back in February, Mom signed up Cara and me to take part in a drama camp. It was being run by a girl that mom knew (with the help of her mom). We had to audition for our parts and then each week we practiced and played fun improv games.

Our final show was a production of Frozen Fever (the Disney short!). I played the lead role of Elsa and Cara got to be one of the village girls. It meant a lot of singing for me, but I was REALLY excited!

It was a little hard because I had to carry a microphone around which left me a bit distracted, but overall I loved EVERY MINUTE.

We had scene changes and we sent out the village girls one at a time to tell jokes. Cara did a whole bunch of cow jokes. It started to get funny because the scene changes took so long and they would run out of material.

We were so lucky because we had so much support come for us. Even Cara's teacher, Mrs. Seegmiller was there. She brought us candy and flowers.

We hope they do another one!