Hillary 2017

Lots of training in the months previous

The Big Day arrives - sending the team off for the 5-day Hillary competition

The 2017 Team

A few pictures of the event:



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2 days of 1-hour initiatives, followed by a 2-day rogaine, and then a 1-day multisport race.

Prizegiving.  Oak looked down and chewing on his tongue
when they announced that no team had ever won by a wider margin.  

Haka from the younger boys to honor the team after prizegiving.
A group of 13 HIllary hopefuls, including Mercy, played a lot of cards,
jumped in freezing waterfalls, and got inspired.  

a 2-day vacation, of sorts, for Mike and me along with some awesome friends

Goodbye to Tongariro

For Mike and me, the entire experience was capped off
as we listened to Oak and Noah swap stories when Noah called on Mother's Day.  

Books

 "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there" 
I'll take a pass on the plural marriage, but I like the idea of accepting tithing credits
in exchange for big volunteer jobs!

My hair is straight like table legs (Love Poem)

There are many joys of motherhood that I could never have predicted.

Joycie, age 6, waiting for the Hillary team to come in from the expedition

Mom
Her hair is straight like
table legs,
Her eyes are like leaves in summer,
Her smile is curled up,
Her skin is soft like
dirty warm snow,
She smells like perfume,
Her skin has freckles all around.
Her hands have lots of vines [veins]
Her teeth are very straight.
I love my Mom because she helps me.
-Joyce

The team comes in.  I've never seen Oak more spent.

Maps

There was a time when I found marbles and nerf bullets in every nook and cranny. Now it's maps. On the kitchen counter, in the kids' cubbies and on their dressers, saved in special drawers, strewn around the desk, or at the bottom of backpacks.



After all the effort that goes into following a map for an event, it's hard to part with a map at the end of day.




To write this blog entry, I walked around the house and collected just a few of the maps I found lying around.

map for 1 leg of the Taranaki 6-hour event

       




Oak also prides himself on owning out-of-print maps that show trails which are no longer maintained, but which are fun to explore.

Girls created this map for their Map Game.

Oak recently came home with this giant case full of maps to study for an upcoming event.  They practice planning routes on old maps to help them plan quickly and well when they get handed their own map.  The race time starts when maps are handed out.




Because of my kids, I can now recognize a thumb compass, a map board, and a sport ident.

thumb compass

thumb compass

 

This is a picture of a commercial mapboard,
but everyone around here just makes their own.  

Oak's map board from school

sport ident

During orienteering events, the ident records
when the athlete reaches each checkpoint.

Sport ident needs to be punched by the orange marker
on the left of the photo above.
When Mercy and Oak go to a sprint event, they do a long course and go for speed.
Sage and Joyce just try to finish the short course in less than an hour.   

Nothing like comparing maps after an event...

Oak and Jason in the foreground.
Nick, the ultimate map guru, in the background.

Books of the Week

Swapped primary texts with an atheist friend.

Girls and I listened to this on the way to and from the temple last Saturday, along with the other people in our van.

One interesting moment...After finding herself alone on her island, the main character must decide whether or not to make weapons to defend herself against wild dogs.  The tradition of her people strictly forbid the making of weapons by women.  The main character can specifically remember her own father saying that if a woman makes a weapon, it will fail at the moment when it is most needed. I asked the Mercy and Sage if they thought she should make weapons or not.  Both girls answered at the same moment.  Sage, emphatically, "I WOULD!"  Mercy, thoughtfully, "I don't know..."

Feijoa Season Comes Again

A box of feijoas for the day we spent supporting Mercy at the Taranaki 6-hour.
This photo was taken in the area above Urenui - the beautiful blue ocean in the background doesn't show up very well in this picture. 

after school snack

Sage and Joy with feijoas - April 2014

I'm very thankful for this book.

Tipping Point

I'm wary to confide this.  Perhaps I'm even just imagining it.  I'll write it down and see if it still rings true:  I feel a little bit of breathing room.  

It is 6:07AM on a weekday; nobody else is awake.  I slept enough.  There are about 20 important things I could and should do, but there's actually nothing that I HAVE to do.  

With each birth in the family, there have been more demands on my time.  As demands on my time have multiplied, it seems that my capacity to manage has grown as well.  My capacity to let things slide has grown in equal measure, but I'm still juggling more than I could have ever imagined when Noah was a baby.

However, since Noah left for Bulgaria about a year ago,  Joyce started school a few months later, and then Danny decided to stay in the USA at the beginning of this year,  demands on my time have plateaued, and, just recently, even shown signs of dropping.  

The tide might have turned, but it still feels like high tide.  It's just that, every now and again, one of the waves isn't as high as I expect.  Like this morning.  I feel a little bit of breathing room.

*************

Danny's senior pictures, taken in Utah with the Jorgensen twins and their 3-year exchange student, Bobby:

BOOKS

from the last month or so...

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty - thanks for the recommendation, Jen!

Using the Piano to Help Raise Your Family by Fifield and Aikele.  A booklet more than a book.
I knew the Aikeles and watched their family implement this philosophy.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy:  Towards a Better Understanding by Hales and Hales.
Interesting and historically useful, but I found myself disagreeing so often with the authors'
assumptions that I found it a frustrating book overall.