A Christmas Poem For Our Neighbors

Every Christmas season, as is the custom in our land, we try to give a little gift to all our neighbors.  Most people give cookies or treats of some kind, but we have tried to avoid that because you can only eat some many treats before you get sick of them and have to start throwing them away and then you feel bad you are throwing away your neighbors treats. So we have tried to do different ideas.

One year we we worked with a neighbor and made like 200 decorative white paper bags with sand and little candles and gave 4 to each neighbor, with a note about putting them out on Christmas Eve so we could make our whole neighborhood look really cool.  It was a great idea, and would have been really cool if there hadn't been a huge snow storm that dumped two feet of snow on Christmas Eve.

Another year we bought tons of Martinelli's sparkling cider (you know that stuff comes in champagne type bottles).  That actually worked out pretty well, but after seeing the final cost, we decided in the future, we don't love our neighbors that much.

This year, Connie came up a great idea.  I have had somewhat of a sour throat and cough, and so she has been making me hot lemonade with honey.   Then she thought, "why don't we give lemons and honey to the neighbors, because everyone gets colds this time of year".  Then she wrote a great poem to go with it.  We wanted to publish this poem here, so that in a few years from now, when lots of people have copied Connie's awesome poem and spread it all over the country, we can prove that, yup, it all started here.

With out further ado, here is the poem:

T’was the start of the Christmas Season  and all through the town,
Every throat  was a’scratchin, every sick face a frown.
For cold weather was bringing more than just holiday spirit,
It was bringing flu bugs, sick germs, and other nasty things with it.

Dear Santa is no help with this holiday plight.
His sleigh full of presents is not what we need on this night.
Dear Grandma is one who can come save the day,
With wisdom, not magic, tucked snug in her sleigh.
For what more could save our noses from being so runny,
But a home remedy of hot lemon with honey.

Juice a half lemon , then add a tablespoon of honey.
Mix in a mug of hot water, and here is a remedy, quite yummy.
For extra nutrition and more flavor I think,
Shave a little of the lemon zest  and add to the drink.
Now sit back and relax, drink the hot brew quite slow,
Feel all the holiday stress and sickness just go.

Have a Merry Christmas and we hope it will be,
Full of laughter and fun and 100%  sick free!

Was dat?

There is quite a bit of variety in when children say their first word and in what that word it is.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what a child's first word is because sometimes they say stuff that kind of sounds like a word, but it is hard to tell if they actually know what they are saying.  Sam's first word was "ball" and "Mama" was close behind.  I think Gracie's first word was "Dada" but it didn't necessarily mean "Daddy" it meant "adult person who can help me" without regard to gender.  Another one of her first words was "lellow" which meant .... "I want water".  I am not totally sure how that came about, but I think it come from "bottle", though I don't know how she would have learned that because she hardly ever used a bottle.
For Jonah, it is really hard to say what his first word was or even if he has really said one.  He babbles all the time and he seems to be saying something, but it is really hard to tell exactly what he is saying.  He certainly understands language pretty well.  The other day Sam and Grace came in from playing outside, and as is too often the case, left the front door wide open.  I was downstairs and yelled upstairs at them to come close the door.  They "didn't hear me", but little Jonah did and he went over and shut the door and then looked over at me like "look I did it".   While I say it hard to really say what was Jonah's first word, he does have a clear first "phrase", which is "Was dat?" or "What's that?".  Anytime he doesn't know what something is, he points and says "Was dat?" and is usually quite pleased when you tell him the answer.  It is a little hard to catch on film, because as soon as you pull the camera out, he wants to look at it, but I caught a little bit of it while reading him stories tonight (At the end of it is a good example of him almost saying words but not quite.  He says "Was dat?.. A doggy! (though it is really a mommy otter, but it does kind of look like a dog):

The beginning of keco productions

It was a sunny day in May of the year 2000 in Zion's National Park. I had just started along the trail to Angel's Landing. I was there as part of the annual camping trip my church group made to Zion's. It had already been a pretty fun trip so far. I had gone on my first canyoneering hike down a slot canyon called Pine Creek that had involved nine rappels and swim through water holes where the canyon was only a few feet wide. It had been a blast. And now a bunch of us were headed up to the top of Angel's Landing.

There were seven or eight of us, most who I knew, a few who a didn't. One who I didn't know was this chit chatty red head girl. She had never done Angel's Landing before and was like "What is it like at the top", and I was like "It's like a 1000 foot drops all around you, and to get there you have to walk on these narrow ledges and they have chain you have to hold onto" and she in her mind was like "Is he trying to be funny or scare me or what?".

Well we all kept walking up the steep switch backs and talking and trying to guess were different people we came across came from (because there are always a lot of foreign tourists at Zion's) and eventually this girl is like "My name is blah blah blah" and I am like I'm like "I'm Kevin, and I think I have been trying to get a hold of you". Now you might think that sounds like some kind of weird pick-up line and if you did, you be totally wrong, because I don't think I ever used a pick-up line in my life, except to someone I already know and who would know I was just saying it to be stupid. In addition, I had specifically decided before coming on this trip that I wasn't going to try to meet any new girls, because I was a little tired of the whole dating process and didn't want to ruin a good trip with stress and frustration. So anyway, the reason I said "I have been trying to get a hold of you", is because I actually had. I was the executive secretary for the Bishop of our church group and so was in charge of making appointments for him and he had been trying to make appointment with her. So then red head girl was like, "Yeah, I go home a lot on the weekends" and so on a so forth and we talked about where she was from and such.

After a little while we finally go to the top part of Angel's landing and she was like "Hey, there really are chains here!, I thought you were kidding!" and I was like "nope". So then we are hanging out at the top of Angel's Landing and she starts feeding some of the squirrels that are running around. And I, using my super suave womanizing skills am like "Dude, didn't you read the sign, you not supposed to feed the squirrels, people food makes them sick". She was a little embarrassed and I felt bad, but someone had to speak of for those poor neglected lazy fat squirrels.

So then, we are hiking back down and some people in our group are like, "Who want to go to the bottom of the Narrows and hike up for a ways?" and I was like "I do, that sounds cool" and red head girl was like "I want to too" and I was like in my mind "I wouldn't mind that"

So we hike up the Narrows for a few miles and get to the bottom of Orderville Canyon and decide to hike up it for a ways. There is a lot little waterfalls and ledges you have to hike up in Orderville and red head girl is keeping up with all the guys and I am starting to think "red head girl is kind of cool". Well after a few hours we all decide to turn around.

For those of you who never done Orderville Canyon or the Narrows, you are basically walking in a river running through a narrow canyon. The river at this time was about knee deep and there are lots of slippery rocks. So anyway as we all are hiking back down, one of red head girl's Teva's straps breaks. This makes it very hard for her to walk through the river. So we all consult together and someone comes up with the idea to give her one of their socks and put it all the way over the teva to help hold it on. This works pretty well, but it is still pretty hard for her to walk on the slippery rocks and she starts to fall behind. Well, noble gentleman that I am, I stayed back to help her along. Sometimes, just to make sure she didn't fall, I held her hand for a little bit, you know, just to give her some extra stability. She seemed to appreciate the help.

Eventually, we made it to the bottom. It was getting late and some of us had to work the next day, so we all piled into some cars, and somehow me and red girl ended up in the same car sitting next to each. As we were driving home the driver cranked the radio up to help him stay awake. A Ben Folds Five song came on and I was like "I like this song" and red head girl's like "I like this song too, did you know it was about blah blah diddie blah da blah?" And I was like, well chalk up another cool point for red head girl. We got home sometime late late at night and we all went our separate ways. But I said to myself, "Self we should hang out with red head girl again sometime".

And I did.

So that was day that Ke(vin) and Co(nnie) that would some day make the world renowned keco productions blog met.

Toddling Along

Little Jo' has been crawling for months. He started crawling months ahead of both Sam and Grace. In some ways I think this made him take longer to learn to walk, because he is so proficient a crawling that he could get around quite fast and thus had no motivation to walk. Or maybe he didn't want us to know that he was a zombie. I was watching him walk and thought "I have seen something like this before". Stiff legs, funny arm movements, strange sounds coming out of the mouth... that's when I realized the uncanny resemblance to a zombie(though if Jonah is a zombie, he is the cutest darn zombie that every existed). Check him out:


Also as a bonus extra feature here is re-release of Gracie's first time walking, we were at a wedding reception, and Gracie wanted to be part of the action. She had taken a few steps before, but here she finally figured out how to put all together. Unfortunately, we have no footage of when Sam first started to walk.

Sam's First Mountain Bike Race

So Sam, without any prompting from Mom and Dad, decided that this summer he wants to train and bike a marathon (26.2 miles). This last Saturday, I was doing a mt. bike race and there was a kids race and we asked Sam if he wanted to do it as some training. He totally wanted to try it and he did great (got 5th place and had lots of fun). They let parents come along and so I got some great action highlights.

I Said A Bad Word Today

Friday evening there was  lovely weather.  In fact it was it had been a lovely morning too and so I had decided to ride my bike to work. And now work was over I was on my bike headed home.
Just a half mile from my work, there was some construction going on and the workers had used barrels to narrow the road from 5 total lanes to 2 very narrow lanes.  I had ridden through this construction area before and had found it was safer to actual ride on the right side of the barrels in the construct area.  I don't know if this was technically legal, but there was plenty of room there and no active construction.  Plus when I had gone in the official lanes before, sometimes cars would try to squeeze past me or if I took the whole lane, they would drive right up on my tail.

So I road through the construction area.  As I neared the end of it, I looked back to see if any cars where coming, because usually as soon as cars got to the end of the construction area, some of them would try to move over into the lane that had been blocked off and I wanted to see if I need to get over.  There were no cars and so I look forward again.

This is the point where I said a bad word.

If you know me, you know that I hardly ever cuss.  I think in general it doesn't contribute much to conversations and is mostly unpleasant.  But there are some occasions when you find yourself in a really bad situation, when I think it is forgivable to describe that said situation with a word that accurately reflects the current state of affairs.  I think this was one such situation.

Now maybe if I had time to think about it, it would have been better to say something more descriptive, like - "Wow, I think this going to hurt like the dickens".  Or maybe I could have said something totally devoid of emotion that just relayed the facts - "This is an unsafe situation, there is a high probability that I will receive bodily harm".  Or maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all, because there wasn't anyone there to here me anyway.  But I cannot change the past, so now I will just relay in words what prompted my unseemly outburst.

So I was looking back for cars and then turned forward.  At which point I saw about three feet in front of me, that since the last time I had ridden here, someone had tied a thin nylon rope from the last barrel all the way across the lane to another barrel.

I was going about 17 mph, which if you do that math is about 25 feet per second.  So since I was three feet away from the rope, I had about 1/8 of a second to try to do something before I got clothes lined.
So if you do further calculations, you can see that really I didn't have time to do anything.  Except maybe say a bad word.

My brakes hit the rope first and I desperately slid my hands back on the handlebars so that my fingers would not get ripped off by being caught between the handle bars and the rope. The rope popped over the brake hoods, hit my arms and slammed them to my sides as it wrapped around my body.  As I was wretched backwards, I somehow managed to keep my bike more or less under me, so that as I slammed into the ground, the bike took most of the fall and the all the bodily harm I got from the actual fall was a nice scrape on my right knee.  Now the bodily harm from the rope was another story.   As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  So here is two thousands words worth of pictures:

Left Arm

Right Arm

If you are wondering if rope burn across your arms hurts, the answer is yes, it hurts like the dickens.  On the pain scale of 0-10 I would put it at about an 8-9 when it first happened, probably a 3-4 when just standing around and a 20-21 when water is poured on it.  That being said,  I feel very fortunate that in spite of the painfulness, the wounds are actually pretty superficial and will probably only leave small permanent scars.  And I feel very very fortunate and blessed that I was able to stay up long enough so that the rope didn't hit my neck or face and that I was able to move my hands out of the way so that my fingers didn't get ripped off. 

And finally, in regards to the most important question: "How is the bike?", Big Mac received a couple of scuffs on the brake hoods, a little tear on the bar tape, but other than that it seemed to be unharmed and I was able to ride it home.

Update:
I found this video on youtube that kind of gives you an idea of what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OM1zD7Ipc8

Grampa-isms

This month was my Grandpa Westwoods 90th birthday.  In celebration of this, I decided to write down some of the sayings my grandpa always says and also a few of my favorite memories of him.

Grandpa Sayings:

When asked how he is doing:

Finer than frogs hair, split three ways.

I can't complain, half the people don't care and the other half think I deserve it.



After saying "Thank You" to him for something:

You're a Welshman

When asked for advice:

Don't take any wooden nickels

Regarding food:

When we used to go on long camping trips, the rule was that if you complained about the food, you had to do the cooking.  So whenever someone asked me how the food was, I would say "It's burnt, it tasteless, and it smells bad... and it's just the way  I like it.

When someone says he/she is full after a meal:

Yeah, and we know what you're full of.


 Some Favorite Grandpa Memories

Once, before Connie and I were married, we went to Grandpa's house to make him dinner.  Connie was a little self conscious about meeting grandpa for the first time and wanted to make a good impression.  Then she accidentally burnt the chicken and kept apologizing.  Grandpa looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said "Well, at least she's cute".  From then on, Connie loved him.

Grandpa Westwood wrote an autobiography about growing up in Moab, UT called "Chompin' at the Bit".  In one part, he describes a secret oasis that he and some friends found on top of the large plateau south  of Moab.  In the book he describes how they took a new kid up to the oasis once and the kid kind of freaked out because the final approach to the oasis was a kind of sketchy incline above a hundred foot cliff.  So to help the new kid, Grandpa and his friends took off their shirt and pants and made a rope to pull him up the incline.
I had always liked this story and so I decided I would go to Moab and find this place and take some pictures of it to give as a gift to Grandpa.  The books details about the location were pretty good and Grandpa had an old picture of the site from a distance, so I used some maps and figured out where it was.  I found the best way to get to it was via the Moab Rim Trail.  This is a rough and ledgy jeep trail that ascends 1000 feet in 1 mile.  I road my mountain bike up this trail with my friend Peter.  The trail was so steep and tough that as I was trying to shift gears in one place I put so much torque on the chain that it bent my gears and I ended up having to walk the rest of the way.  By the way, this was the "easy" way to get there. The way that my grandpa would get there was a more direct route to the top of the plateau, where you climb up the steep talus and then shimmied up some of the big cracks in the cliff face.  Once I got to the top of the plateau it took me a little while exploring the sandstone dunes to figure out where to go, but then I found the first hill described in Grandpa's book.  This first hill was kind of steep but you could walk up it without using your hands.  There were drop off on either side of it that Peter was not too keen on so he waited for me at the bottom.  I made my way  up the sand stone rock about 100 meters and then followed a couple ridges until I found the place that matched the book exactly.   The book talked about a steep slope above a 100 ft cliff and that there was a crack in the middle of the slope that you could follow up to the secret oasis.

I had figured that I had done some rock climbing and any crack that some kids was scrambling up barefoot with no safety equipment barefoot in the 1930s would probably be no big deal for me.  But when I saw that crack, my heart sank,  the slope was glassy smooth sandstone going up at probably a 45-50 degree angle.  The crack was shallow and wouldn't really allow for any good handholds.  It was definitely something that looked doable with a little trial and error, the only problem was the high coast of error.  If that slope had had a nice patch of sand at the bottom and you slipped and fell, you would have a painful slide down the sandstone and probably end up with some road rash and a few bumps and bruises.  That would be a risk that I could take. But since the slope ended in a 100 foot cliff, if you slipped you would have a painful slide down the sandstone, followed by a few seconds of exhilarating free fall, followed by some painful bone crunching.  I think at the bottom of the cliff there was actually some sand, so you might actually survive the fall, and instead lie there in pain with road rash and compound fractures, bleeding to death for a couple days (because it would be hard for anyone to find you there, without knowing exactly where you were).  At this moment I thought of one of grandpa's other sayings "There are bold climbers and there are old climbers, but there are no old, bold climbers."  Then I decided to turn around.  I was disappointed I didn't get any pictures of grandpa's secret oasis, but I returned home with a new respect for the boldness of grandpa as a youth and for the guardian angels that had watched over him.

Bedtime For Mamma

Sam wrote this story for Connie for Mother's Day

The Amazing Race - Gateway Edition

Connie and I love the Amazing Race.  We don't watch much TV and watch even less 'reality' tv.  But one of the shows we do like to watch is the Amazing Race.  We like to see all the cool places around the world that the racers go and like to see the different activities the racers have to do that represent activities from the cultures they are visiting.  We also like to see how the teams interact, especially when some couples pull together when time get tough and others implode.  It is often educational and sometimes inspiring.

We currently have a goal to make it on the show in 2020 and we often talk about what skills we should develop so we would do well.  Even if we never make it on (but we will) it is a fun way to broaden our horizons and learn new things.

So anyway, quite a few fridays ago (I actually started this entry over a month ago and then never finished it), some friends invited us to participate in a couples date night "Amazing Race" at the Gateway.  We of course jumped at this chance to test our mad skills.

The Start

We met at the Gateway food court where we were given 5 clues.  The first couple to finish all the clues and make their way to the Applebee's would be the winner.  We had to film or take a picture of us completing each challenge on the clues.   So we read the first clue and then took off like lightning!

Clue One

Find the staircase where there is graffiti.
Run up them like Rocky then yell the name of your sweetie.
Challenge:
Record yourself running up the stairs while humming the Rocky Theme Song, then yell your sweetheart's name when you get to the top.

We guessed that "graffiti" referred to the names inscribed on stone near the big fountain which has some stairs next to it.  It was kind of stretch to call that writing graffiti, but we figured it was the place that made most sense.  Fortunately we were right.  Unfortunately for one other couple, they tried to find actual graffiti and ended going a block south of the far end of the Gateway on a dark and deserted street.  This caused them to lose about 25 minutes to all the other teams, effectively eliminating any chance of their winning.  So anyway, We ran full speed to the fountain, turned on the camera and ran up the stairs humming the rocky song (which if you read this post you know I am familiar with), at the top Connie screamed "Kevin!" and I screamed "Connie!".  Then as I went to stop the camera from recording, I realized that camera wasn't actually recording.   So... we ran back down the stairs and did it again with the camera recording this time:

Clue Two

Skip on down and take a look

Inside a store that has a book,

In fact you'll find much more than one.

And lounging there is so much fun.

Hold hands there and don't let go

If you're in love then let it show

Challenge:

Find a book whose author's name is the same as your own 

This proved to be the hardest challenge for us.  Figuring out that we had to go to the Barnes and Noble was easy, finding a book by a Kevin or Connie was hard.  We tried to find a computer we could look up a book on, but only employees had access to the computers.  We tried to get help from the employees, but they were busy.  We tried to just randomly walk down aisles and spotting a Kevin or Connie book, but that didn't really work either as it seems that there are not a lot of authors named Kevin or Connie.  (At this point we were a little jealous of our friend Stephen who was also there since we could come up with multiple authors named Stephen)   Finally, Connie remembered that there was a book "The Sonoma Diet" that her friend had read that was by a Dr. Connie Something.  Not knowing the last name, it took us a while to find, but finally we got it:

Clue 3

Make your way to the "fruit" store...

You will find gadgets, gizmos and so much more!

While inside you must find...

The newest device that will blow your mind.

Challenge:

Take a picture of yourself next version 4 of the devices sold in this store.

Being over anxious to get to the next challenge, I saw "fruit" store and thought of "Banana Republic", then Connie pointed out that it was probably the Apple Store, since they sell gadgets and junk.  I couldn't believe I made such a fundamentally mistake.  If you watch the Amazing Race you know that one of the most common mistakes teams make is to not read the clue completely.  Fortunately, I redeemed myself by knowing that challenge refereed to the iphone 4 and I knew right where it was:

 Clue 4

Find a store whose commercials have mannequins who speak
And tell the mannequins what they need to do this week


Challenge:
Find the correct store and record yourself talking to the mannequins.

Freaky talking mannequins?  That would have to be Old Navy.  We rushed over there, walked in the door, saw a mannequin and despite the stares of passerbys started talking to it:

 Clue 5

Some are pink and some are blue

But all of them are brand new.

Some get dressed and some go "bear".

But either way, I don't think they care.

Some are real and some are stuffed,

The kind at this store aren't so tough.

Challenge:

At this store, find someone to recite the story

of Goldilocks to.

If you have a child under 10 you have probably been invited at some point to a Build-A-Bear party and would recognized immediately what store this clue was talking about.   Having three children under 10, we figured it out instantly and we sprinted there and I recited to a patient employee the story of Goldilocks:

   

Last Clue

Okay I cannot remember what the last clue was.  Actually, I couldn't remember exactly what clue 1 or 4 where either so I just made up poems that fit the challenge.  But now I am too tired to make up a poem for the last clue.  I know it was somethings about planets and the earth, Atlas, blah, blah, blah.

Challenge:

Find a big model of the earth and take a picture of you holding it up like you are Atlas.

We actually have footage of us figuring out this clue (It is the Clark Planetarium).  After the goldilocks story, Connie forgot to turn off the camera.  I would post it, except it would probably make you throw up, since I am running with the camera and all you can see in swinging glimpses of store fronts, random people, and my pants. 

It took us a while to figure out which earth we were supposed to take a picture of because there was a big globe in the front that kept changing which planet it showed.  We didn't want to risk getting the wrong thing so we ran around for a while until we found a earth that fit the description perfectly:

Race To End

Now we just had to make it to AppleBees first.  We sprinted as fast as we could, I pulled ahead of Connie and on rounding the corner saw K of our friends KAR already there.  But A was not there!  I yelled at Connie, "Run! Run for you life!".  She dug deep down inside and pulled into the finish mere seconds before A, giving us the absolutely undisputed* victory.  

All in all it was a fun night and though it was much shorter and much less stressful then the real amazing race would be, it was fun to pretend it was the real one and I am pretty sure it was foreshadowing our future Amazing Race 2020 victory.

*Okay so there was a small dispute about the victory.  You see, our instructions said that after we had finished at Applebee's, we were supposed to get a table for the whole group.  Well, while we were waiting in line like good polite people, a certain person jumped in front of us and got the table under their name, trying to make it look like they had gotten there first.    We were not going to let this stand, so we started throwing punches and then a huge brawl erupted.  5 police cars showed up and hauled our whole group to jail.  It made the whole night very expensive because we had to pay bail and we did not get back home until 6 in the morning and so we owed the baby sitter a lot of money**

**Okay so only part of this actually happened.  I just like to see if people read all the way to the end.

 

The Bird Whisperer

We were enjoying a nice day at the beach, when we noticed a gull that appeared to be enjoy the waves more then other birds. Instead of flying out of the water when waves would come, it would flap its wings a few times, and then let the wave crash over it.  Sam and Grace kept asking if the bird would drown and we were like, "he's fine, he is just having fun".  But then after a few minutes we began to realize that the bird wasn't having fun.  Something was stuck on it that made it so he couldn't fly away.

Oh nos! We had to do something or else the gull would be battered by the waves until it drowned.
I walked out into the water and tried to approach the bird.  But the bird was scared of me and flapped farther into the water, where the waves were bigger.  So then I decided to circle around it and try to get to go back towards the shore.  Using this approach, I was able to get close enough to see that there was a black plastic bag around its neck.  I tried to pull it off, but it was wrapped around its neck pretty good.  I thought about trying to reach over and pull it off but the bird was glaring at me and squacking at me and I didn't want it to bite me. So I backed away and contemplated what to do.
 
So then Connie told me she wanted to try.  So she handed me Jonah and waded out into the water.  She
slowly approached the bird, looked into it eyes, and it said to her "please help me!"  Then Connie picked it up, gently unwrapped the bag from its neck and then threw it into the air and it flew away.  It was amazing, Connie is the bird whisperer!

A passerby caught the rescue on video with her iphone.  You can see in the video Connie, me holding Jonah, and a surfer (guy in the wet suit) who was trying to lend a hand. The lady gives some play by play commentary.

Epic Ride of Coldness

Introduction:
This weekend Sam and I went to St. George with our friends K.A.R. and their children.  K.R. is doing the St. George Ironman and he and I were going to ride the Ironman bike course which is a loop just over 50 miles (in the Ironman they ride it twice).  Originally Connie, Grace, and Jonah were going to come too, but Jonah had been sick, so we didn't want to stress him, so Connie and Grace had a girl's Saturday where they went out to eat (at 'In and Out' burger), went to a friend's birthday party, and Gracie and her friend got their hair done.  This however is the account of how what started as a nice lovely ride turned into a race against hypothermia.

8:30 am, Hotel Room
I just looked out the window.  It's still raining.  It has been raining all night.  I checked the temperature on weather.com.  It is 47.  That is not too bad.  I call KR and ask him what he thinks.  We decided we will try it out and if it is too cold we can just turn around

9:00 am, KRs Hotel Room (different hotel)
I dropped Sam off with AR and kids, and now we are getting our bikes ready.  It is still raining but just a light rain.

9:30 am, Somewhere in St. George
I guess we should of printed off a map on how to get to the bike course. With the little 1x2 inch screen on the bike GPS is kind of hard to tell how close we are.  Fortunately, despite the light rain, it is not too cold, my butt is getting wet from the back tire flicking water on it, but it is not bad.

9:46 am, Bluff St.
After a few wrong turns, we are now on the actual Ironman course.  I am starting to get hot.  I take off my big gloves and the beanie under my helmet.

9:51 am, Random Extra Loop
Part of the Ironman course goes onto a little half mile bike trail through some random neighborhood.  This addition to the course seems totally random.   We speculate as to why they added it in.  The course has to be exactly 112 total miles, but this seems a strange and dangerous way to add a half mile.  My speculation is the contractors who built these neighborhood are sponsors of the race and a condition of the sponsorship is that the race go by some houses that were built.

10:01 am, One last wrong turn
Oops, I guess we missed a turn.  Time to jump the divider in the middle of road.

10:11 am, mile 10
Finally we are getting away from the city onto open roads.  And the rain has stopped.  In general, if we have remembered the elevation profile correctly (this is foreshadowing),  the course should go gradually uphill for the next 20 miles, then should be all downhill for the last 25 miles.  I  speculate that since the rain has stopped, we might be dried out before we hit the downhill part, which would be good, because it would be cold to be wet and going fast downhill (this is some more foreshadowing).


10:30 am, mile 15
Wow, it is absolutely beautiful here.  The clouds are hanging just over the edges of Snow canyon and everything is green. I wish I had brought my helmet cam.

10:40 am, mile 18
We see a cool water fall thingy and stop and eat some stuff.  KR really needs to learn to eat while riding ;-). I take some pictures with the camera on my phone:

11:02 am, mile 23
It is starting to get hillier, but not too bad.  Some of the hills get up to 14% grade, but most are not more then a quarter mile long.

11:10 am, mile 25
KR says it about 6 miles to Veyo.  This is where the course turns and starts heading back towards St. George.  We assume (you know what they say about assume) that this is where the downhill starts.  This is good because, I can distinctly feel that the temperature has started to drop and my arms and legs are starting to stiffen up.

KR smiles because he doesn't know what lies ahead

11:35 am, mile 30
Definitely feeling cold now.  The temperature has dropped about 10 degrees and HOLY TAMOLA, that looks like a steep climb.  The road goes right up a cliff.  It turns out to be about a mile long, averaging about 8-9% grade but frequently 11 and 12% and once hits 13%.  Wow, that was a hard climb.  I am definitely cold now despite the hard labor of climbing.  I put back on my big gloves and beanie. We are almost to Veyo and then it should be a chilly but easy coast back down to St. George.

11:56 am, mile 33
Yeah, we have reached Veyo.  Time for our coast back down to St. George


12:00 pm, mile 34
Hmm, there must be some sort of optical illusion, it looks like there is a big ol' hill in front of us.  My joints are feeling stiff, but I guess I can muster up the will to climb one more hill.

12:05 pm, mile 34.5
Dang, that was not an optical illusion, that was a mile long hill.  And it has started to rain again.  BRRRR! I am starting to get soaked. At least it looks like it is downhill now.

12:10 pm, mile 35
WHAT THE #@!$%!@$%.  There is another @#$%!@$% hill.  The rain is driving down hard now. My body feels like it is encased in ice.  I wonder what will heat my body up more? A faster cadence or a slow hard cadence?  A fast cadence would mean more movement, but a slow hard cadence would engage more muscle.  Hmmm, I try both, but I am still really, really, really, stinkin' COLD!

12:23 pm, mile 37
THAT !@$%@$% HILL, WAS %#^@#$ 2 MILES LONG.  Well at least my feet don't feel cold anymore.  That is because I cannot feel them at all.  I find myself singing and making strange grunting sounds.  I think I am doing this to prevent myself from hyperventilating, but I am not really sure.  I have noticed that KR, who was dropping me on all the climbs before, is starting to slow down and I am catching up.  Or maybe I am speeding up.  I starting singing the Rocky Theme song. DUN-NA NAAAAA, DUN-NA NAAA, DU DU DUN DUN-NA-NA DUN TA DUN TA DUUUUUU.  I am kind of glad I don't have the helmet cam now.

12:31 pm, mile 39
We are now on a slight downgrade and we are going…. 13 mph.  13 #@$^@%^ mph.  We were going faster on the uphills in the first half of the ride.  A strong headwind is preventing us from getting speed.  I calculate that at our current speed we will die before reaching civilization. Hopefully there will be enough of a down slope that our bodies will slide into St. George.  Then sometime in the distant future when medical technology improves, they can defrost our bodies and revive us.  As I pull alongside KR, he very articulately describes the situation: "This is insane".

If you want to understand how cold it feels, do this little experiment.  Go fill your bathtub with cold water.  Take the temperature.  It will probably be something like 50-60 degrees.  Now add ice until the temperature is 35-40 degrees.  Now sit in that tub for an hour or so.  If you are still alive, try to do something. I believe this is a pretty good approximation of being completely soaked in the driving rain when it is just a few degrees above freezing and you are riding your bike.  I believe in doing this experiment you will understand how it seems to help to hyperventilate or sing.  I am not totally sure why this helps, but I think it is because the coldness makes you breathing muscles want to freeze up and the hyperventilation or singing keeps them moving so they don't freeze.

12:38 pm, mile 41
At last, we turn out of the wind and the downhill gets steeper.  My speed fluctuates between 20-30 mph.  I just want be done now so I go as fast I can without risking crashing on the corners.  I rotate between hyperventilating and gritting my teeth .   I don't feel cold now.  I do not feel warm, I feel kind of like I am detached from my body..

 12:51 pm mile 44
A half mile hill presents itself.  I yell at it, "YOU THINK YOU CAN SLOW ME DOWN YOU PIECE OF $%@#$%^@#$%^"  I crank on the pedals.  I am slowing, but am still maintaining a good speed for uphill.  I try to stand, but my legs start to buckle beneath me.   I scream at my legs "DID I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO CRAMP UP! NO I DIDN'T!  NOW YOU SPIN AND YOU SPIN FAST!" and they do.   I have pulled about 100 meters ahead of KR.  I am glad too, I don't want him to hear me talking to myself.  I am really glad the I don't have the helmet cam recording this. Then I start to laugh a little.  It a very strange and demented way, this is actually really fun.  So many times in life when we are frustrated or in a bad situation the best thing for us to do is to exercise restraint and be patient and calm.  But in this situation I can throw all my unbridled frustration into the pedals and can scream and yell at the rain and it is actually feels useful for dealing with the situation.   I fly up the hill.

1:08 pm mile 50
We have descended for miles and miles, I feel like I am in a dream. 
And finally we have returned to civilization.   If we fall over here, some will probably actually see us and take us to the ER or something.  I feel like I finally returning to reality.  We wind our way through traffic back towards KRs hotel.

At Last, A sanctuary from the cold

1:23 pm mile 54
We are back at the hotel.  We through the bikes in the back of my minivan.  I am hyperventilating.  KR asks me if I am going hypothermic on him.   "No….No….No… I… am…. finnnee", I say.  In KRs hotel room, AR and the kids are waiting for us.  Sam ask me a question.  I look at him "What…?  A….what… I don't know, I'm cold".  KR says "Why don't you hope in the shower first, you look colder then me",  I hesitate for a second, I briefly think about trying to be polite and saying "No, you first", then I just think "I want to be warm" and run into the bathroom.  As I take off me shoes I am taken aback, my feet are blue.  Oh no! I am going to have to have my toes cut off I think.  But in a minute or two the blue fades as the warm water heats them back up.  I stay in the shower just long enough to regain feeling.  The K.A.R. family has to check out of their hotel and KR still needs to warm up a little.  I help them throw their things in their truck.

2:15 pm Back at my hotel
Me, Sam, and the whole K.A.R. family eat lunch in our hotel room.  I am still shivering and hyperventilating a little.  KR and I decide to go jump in the hot tub.  Finally, warmth starts to creep back into my body.  I actually start to feel a little hot.  I start to think what our next bike ride should be.

Later in the afternoon we did some fun hiking in Snow Canyon

A New Way To See The World... Or At Least Our Backyard

When we were in the process of buying our house, we loved a lot of things about it. It was an awesome location, a cool loft for the kids to play in, a huge unfinished basement, a garage, and a real master bedroom among others.  But there were a few things that we didn't like, but we figured we could fix later.  One of them was a lack of a window in the kitchen.  In our old house, the kitchen and living room were in the front of the house, with bedrooms in the back area.  This meant if the kids were playing in the backyard, there was no way to see them without going into one of the bedroom.  Being able to easily see the kids in the backyard was an absolute requirement for our new house.  A we found a house that met that requirement.  Sort of.  Our dining room and kitchen are at the back of the house, and the dining room has a big bay window that looks into the backyard, and then there is a door with a window between the kitchen and dining room, but in the actual kitchen there was no window.  So it was not possible to see half of yard while in the kitchen.  This bugged Connie, but not enough to stop us from buying the house.

But, after months and months of patient waiting, Connie finally go her kitchen window!
Yeah! 

Not only that, but those of you who have been to our house before will notice that we also got rid of the pointless drop ceiling that used to be there (except for a small part where there was plumbing that couldn't be moved).  It is awesome.  Now we can easily see the whole backyard while we are cooking, on the computer, eating, or watching TV.

As an extra bonus, we also decided to replace all the windows in the house.  The old windows were 25 years old, aluminum windows with these grandma looking cross-sections in them.  You could hold your hand up to them and feel a draft coming through.  The new windows are awesome.  They don't let any cold in and they seem to let more light it in.   They were kind of expensive so we weren't sure if it was a good idea at first, but now we are very happy we did it.

From The Bunny Hill To A Downhill Rocket

One day during Christmas break we were trying to think of something to do and decided we wanted to go sledding, so we called our super cool friends Jamie and Lehi and said, "Hey you want to go sledding?".  And they said "No".

A beautiful day on the mountain

Then they said, "We are going skiing up at Alta, it is free after 3 o'clock and it is only like 10 bucks to rent skis".  Well, we have intended to take our kids skiing or snowboarding or something for the last few years but some how never got around to it, so we got all our snow gear, jumped in the van and headed to Alta.

Grace and Jonah chilling

Connie used to be pretty good at skiing, and I had been skiing 3-4 times (I have preferred snowboarding in the past) but that was like 10 years ago.  So after we go our skis all rented, Connie took Sam to the bunny hill and on the first run taught him how to snow plow.

Connie helps Sam

Now confident that she had not forgotten how to ski, we then put Jonah in his backpack and Connie took him, Jamie helped Grace and I helped Sam.  After a few runs, Sam insisted on not getting help and started going on his own.

Grace in her princess snow chair

Grace did a few runs and then got tired, and Jonah slept soundly in his backpack (with his paranoid dad checking him every few minutes just to be sure he was really asleep and not passed out from the cold or something).

Lehi and Beyah take a picture of us

Afterwords, Jamie had brought a big steaming crockpot of purple chicken noodle soup (it was purple because she put purple carrots in it) and we all chowed down on it and got warm in the lodge until they kicked us out (because it was closing time, not because all our kids were running
around yelling, at least I think).

Sam loves to ski!

A week or so after this first time, Sam and I met up with Jamie and Lehi (and Beyah) to do it again.  This time after a few runs on the bunny hill, we decided to do a real run.  Jamie (who is a much better skier than I am) helped me help Sam on and off the ski lift.  For the first few hundred meters of the run Sam and I just went along with J,L,&B.  Then we got to a place where you could either go a long slow flat way or a steeper way.  Sam decided he wanted to try the steeper way.  He was pretty good at snow plowing and turning, so I thought he would be ok.  Just as pre-caution, Lehi went down the hill a ways. Sam started down the hill and proceeded to not snow plow or turn and instead rocketed down the hill.  I started after him but not being a great skier myself went straight into a patch of powder.  Fortunately, Lehi went after Sam and helped to finally stop after several hundred meters.  (see head cam footage below).  After this intitial scare, everything went pretty smooth for the rest of the day except for one more incident when Sam verred off the main path, barely missed a giant pole and took a short cut thru the trees (Didn't get that one on the head cam unfortunately).

Awesome Headcam Footage
For Christmas, Connie got me something which I have always wanted, which is an HD headcam.  I am still getting used to it and perfecting my technique, but I did get some good footage of Sam skiing.

Here is Sam on the bunny hill.  He had a strong tendency to veer to the right so you can hear me yelling at him to put more weight on his right foot so he does not veer into the tow rope (which he did on some previous runs)



This is the start of Sam first try on a real run


Sam takes off like a rocket on a steep part of the big run. Thank goodness Lehi was down below to help bring him to a safe stop.

2010 In Review - Video and Summary, plus Gracie's Song

It is time for our annual video in review.  We love making these videos.  We make them just as much for ourselves as anyone else.  On days (and nights) when Jonah won't stop crying,  Grace turns into a pint size drama queen, and Sam seems to have ear plugs in, we watch these videos and it reminds us how good life really is. We feel blessed to have so many loving family and friends and so many opportunities to do fun things and go cool places and know great people.

Below the video is a written summary of our year.


In case you missed last years review:


Written Summary Of 2010:

Family:

• Jonah born!
• Connie and Kevin went to the several Operas (we have a friend who is a professional opera singer)
• Connie and Kevin took ballroom dance classes
• Went to Indiana for a family reunion
• Went to Alaska to visit the Jensens
• Stopped at Grand Teton National Park after LOTOJA
• Went to Arizona for Thanksgiving
• Kevin and Grace went to the Nutcracker
• Connie and Sam went to the Symphony
• Connie and Grace went to California to visit Aunt Christy
• Kevin and Sam went to Lagoon and got to ride all the big kid rides
• Lots of hiking (Dipper falls, Donut Falls,  Adams Canyon, and more)

Kevin:

• Personal best bike century (100 miles) Avg. 21 mph
• LOTOJAAF
• Trip to Germany for Work, with a side trip to Paris
• New mountain bike

Connie:

• Brought Jonah into the world
• Book Club
• Hiked Mt. Olympus
• First road bike 
• Lots of work in Primary (the kids division at our church)

Sam:

• Soccer
• 1st Grade
• Lots of reading
• Coach Pitch
• First mountain bike
• Mile run (9 minutes flat, to the hundreth of a second)
• School play (the jungle book)

Grace:

• Soccer (sort of)
• Dance Class
• Preschool
• Annabelle(BFF)

Jonah:

• Born
• Hair turned from brown to blond
• Learned to roll over
• 6 teeth
• Almost crawling

Gracie's Song

About a month before Christmas, we were listening to some Ben Folds' songs and one of our favorites 'Gracie' came on.  Now if you have never heard this song, you should now, that it describes our own Gracie perfectly as if it was custom written for her.  When Gracie heard it, she looked at Connie and said "Did daddy make this song for me?".  Well, I couldn't claim that I made the song, but I decided I could make a video for the song, and that would be just as good.  So I compiled a bunch of pictures of her growing up and made this video: