The Best Rainy Day Ever

We spent Saturday morning attending the highlight of Auburn Family Week, the 5k Fun Run. I'm not sure you should really be able to use "fun" and "run" to describe the same event but, whatever, I'm not in charge. As some of you know, Camille has been running religiously, every morning at 6:00 am for over a year now. In Seattle that means dark, cold and rainy while pounding out 3 miles every day without fail (except Sunday, Camille just gave a great talk in church today about keeping the Sabbath day holy so I must put in here that she DOES NOT run on Sunday and she's blessed for it). So, since she's now a die hard runner she decided to enter the Fun Run. In fact, most of our friends decided to run too. Since I was the only member of the group who still doesn't think that fun and run should go together I got to take care of all the kids! In typical Seattle fashion it was raining all morning long and there were puddles everywhere. (Puddles + kids) X (overly laid back supervising adult) = FUN! At one point, while walking through a puddle that was knee deep, little Alyssa Hatch just stopped and shouted "this is the best rainy day ever!"

This is how it all started. Emma found a spot where some water was falling. At first she just put her hand in it. Then she decided her head was more fun. Notice the kid stealing oranges in the background.

And it led to this...

And eventually they migrated to the sand volleyball courts. In the background, on the right, is the Dad of some of the little tykes yelling at them to get out of the mud. I hope he doesn't read this blog.

The highlight of the day was Camille taking 3rd place in the 20-29 division. She'll be 30 this coming up Sunday so she should have competed in the older division where she would have been first. She had a time of 23:45! Pretty awesome for her first 5k ever.

There was also a kids race. Linsey came in third. Hunter had a fight with a bump of grass and needed Mom to help him recover.

Pure happiness...

I spent the rest of the day working in the yard trying to get the garden ready to grow me some goodness. Of course it rained all day and now, Sunday, it's all blue skies and sunny. Sometimes Seattle frustrates me. But sometimes, when the sun comes out and everything's green and we all come out of our caves to let the kids play, I actually feel like running for fun.

Sunday Best

Just a quick post here to put up a new pictures. This was one of those "oh look, the kids all match, let's take their picture before we head to church" moments. We got about three pictures taken before Emma decided it was more fun to pick flowers and Linsey decided to kneel down on the wet grass. Yeah, we were late to church. But at least we got some nice pictures, right?

Angry minivan man

Have you ever had one of those days? You know the ones where you should have stayed in bed, read a book and taken two naps, one at 11 and another one at 3? Well, that day was yesterday for me. Even as I write this I'm shaking my head at the sequence of events. As one of my co-workers put it "man, you should go home, drink a six pack and don't leave the couch all night." I don't think he meant a six pack of diet sprite but that's what I did.
The morning started off a little hectic, as always. I had an important conference call at 11:00 with some customers from my biggest account, Boeing, and some R&D folk from our headquarters in Austin. The way our conference call system works, someone (in this case me) has to be the "moderator". That means they log into the call and once they are in everyone else can join. If the moderator gets disconnected, everyone gets dropped. So, when the time for the call came I was in my car driving to another appointment. I got logged in, got everyone introduced and mostly just listened to the two other parties chatting. About halfway through the call I made a left hand turn onto a road with two lanes in my direction. Except that the inside lane was blocked up ahead by some construction. I put on my signal, looked in the mirrors and noticed a light blue minivan trying to pass around me before I could get over. Now, if you’re a guy, you know what happens next right? You push on the gas. No one in a minivan is allowed to beat you in a merge for any reason. Even a guy in a minivan knows he has to yield the right of way simply because he's in a minivan. Don't get me wrong, I actually love minivans. But when I drive ours I know the rules and I drive like I'm driving a minivan, soft and gently. Of course every once in awhile there is an exception to this rule and it's usually pretty extreme. You've seen that guy who’s grumpy that he has to drive a minivan instead of that red Porsche he's always wanted and so he takes it out on the road and anyone on it. Well, this guy in the sky blue minivan must have been one of those guys. The more I sped up the faster he accelerated. Of course I'm running out of merge room here so I eventually have to put on the brakes and get over. But I'm not happy about it and the only way to let him know is by honking my horn really long (if you thought I was going to say "flip him the bird" you need some counseling). Honestly, I wish you could get a horn with variable loudness control. That way you could really let someone know how you are feeling. If you’re just a little irritated then you could honk softly. If your really mad, crank that baby up to 11 and let them know how you feel!
Somehow, my honking was unacceptable to angry minivan man and he decided that the only way for him to let me know how he felt was to get out of the car and come and talk to me. Except that talking is not really what he did. As he’s walking over I start thinking, “this is it, this is the situation I’ve imagined a million times when I’ve honked my horn, an opportunity to confront the offender. But I’m on a conference call with very important people. I’ll hang up, NO, I can’t, I’m the moderator and it’ll drop everyone.” By now pierced lip angry minivan man is at my window yelling something that I couldn’t really understand. At some point I had rolled my window down so I was getting a full verbal throttling. I looked down at my phone and noticed the MUTE button, pushed it and simply asked the guy why he didn’t let me over. I don’t remember what he said but he eventually got back in his car and drove off.

I must admit that in thinking back on the situation, I’m glad that it happened the way it did. If I hadn’t been on the phone, I would have gotten out of my car, a fight would have ensued and nothing but trouble would have come from it. I would have had to rip out his piercing, broken his nose and read him his minivan driving rights. Eventually the cops would be called and I’d spend the rest of the day dealing with the aftermath. The way it went down I get to leave with nothing on me but a good story to tell.

About two hours later I’m stopped at a stop light and a teenage girl who probably struggles with subtraction, rear ends my car.

I should have stayed in bed.

Bowling and breezes

On Saturday Camille's parents came into town and we decided to take the troops and hit the local bowling alley. A one hour rental, shoes included, on the lanes with bumpers and the kids were in heaven. Having an hour was nice. We finished a full game and still had time left over for Emma to try her hand at pushing the ball down the lane. Having seen her big siblings do it for the last 45 minutes, she was pretty excited to take a turn.
Yeah, she didn't even notice the breeze.

Doesn't this pose just scream "I just knocked those white thingamajigers down, I can do anything!"
When will this ball ever get there!

The Aireplane Store

Yes, I realize I've misspelled airplane. You'll understand when you see the picture. On a lazy Sunday afternoon we were all recovering from the affects of Daylight Savings time (well I shouldn't say everyone, mostly just Camille while I was attempting to rest on the couch and entertain kids at the same time, yeah, not much resting was going on) when Linsey suddenly reverse engineered a paper airplane I had made for her. And not just any paper airplane, the glider type, which is the hardest plane to make. Then Hunter conscripted me to make him enough planes to match Linsey's growing stash. Then they decided to make a store to sell their planes at. This required that there be two jets for each chair and enough gliders to cover the table. It was decided that each plane would cost a quarter. Of course the only "customers" in the house were Mom and Dad. It was interesting shopping for paper airplanes made from paper out of my office made by me and spending my own money on them. Nonetheless, I bought the sleakest looking jet I could find and Linsey wrote my name on it as proof that it was purchased by me. Needless to say, it's on top of my desk and, I must admit, it's the nicest paper airplane I've ever seen.

Coach Mendenhall

So my brother Mike walked on to the BYU football team a few years ago. It was right when coach Mendenhall was taking over. Out of 75 walk-ons, my brother was the only one to make the team. He eventually got to play on the kicking team on national TV when they played Boston College. He made the tackle after a kickoff on the 10 yard line, blew out his shoulder and is now done with football forever. But hey, what a proficency rating, eh?
Mike sent me this email today that I thought was really interesting. I had already read the article (had to wipe my eyes a couple of times, there was something in them) but I though Mike's comments were cool. He was there, going through the initial weeks of Mendenhall taking over the program. That guy is amazing. He has no qualms about liking the scriptures to his football team (highly controversial in, of all places, Utah). He is the man. I....love him? There, I've said it.
Can't wait for another season of watching the Cougars, sitting on the Hatches comfy couch seeing touchdowns in all their HighDef glory!

Here's the email from Mike...

http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1961

This article is pretty long, but when you get a minute, be sure to read it. It is REALLY cool. It is about Bronco Mendenhall, BYU football coach, and all the changes he has made to the program. All the references of the changes and things he implemented in that article,,, I was there for them all: burning the helmet, listening to highlights in the stadium, listening to LaVell Edwards, Ty Detmer, Steve Young, the Beep Test (I had the 3rd highest score on the team), and was the 2nd person to reach the "Y". Thought I'd toot my horn a bit about the glory days! =)

I actually take partial credit for the part where Bronco says he know suscribes the Harvard Business Review. Jared, that article you posted on here about the Yorkes-Dodson curve? Well after reading it, I sent it to Bronco, and he told me he really liked it. Then he later told me he had suscribed to the magazine.


Well anyways, thought you would enjoy this article. Bronco has seriously done so much for that program it's amazing. I came on just when he got hired, so it was REALLY cool to see how drastically everything began to change.

He is one of the greatest natural leaders I have ever known...

Everything's better with Chocolate

We pulled out the ole chocolate fountain on Sunday and had the missionaries and the Hatch family come over to partake of the delectable nectar. There's something about watching Chocolate cascade down a fountain and sticking something edible in it and watching it get magically covered in sweetness. It's easy to imagine yourself walking around the wonderful world of Willy Wonka tasting the trees and drinking from a chocolate fountain of youth. I think there should be chocolate fountains in every building and house. When you come in people could ask to take your coat and offer you a dip in their fountain before the meeting starts. Wouldn't that just make everything better?
As my Dad says, "your right, fruit does taste better dipped in chocolate." Good Dad, you’re beginning to see the light. Come closer and soon you'll be eating trees.

Miracles

No, it's not what you think. Nothing miraculous has happened in our family since our last post. Just the daily grind of kids and all that comes with them. The kids did learn about miracles in church on Sunday and the result was some interesting stories for the car ride home. I'll let Camille tell it...

"Oh, on the way home from church I was asking the kids about what they had learned in their classes. They were telling me they had learned about miracles. Hunter went on to tell me about how he raised his hand and told the Primary an example of when Jesus put mud in a mans eyes and then when he washed them he HAD EYES...said everyone laughed and he wondered why. I told him it was because they were surprised at how smart he is! I aksed Linsey "what is a miracle?" trying to encourage her to share something she had learned. She went on to say that a miracle is something that happens that would never really happen (in her words). For example she says, "If you made us dinner and then right in the middle of dinner you fed us candy, THAT would be a miracle!"