Catching My Breath

My iPhone has a feature I haven't been able to disable which reminds me to simply breathe.  Nine times out of ten I mute it.  If you haven't experienced this feature before I highly recommend taking the 60 seconds to do so.  The watch vibrates to match the rhythm of your breath and the data proves that your heart rate is lowered.  I stepped outside this morning, Monday of Labor day, a coveted three day weekend and I clearly was present with the thought of , "I feel like I can catch my breath."  I had nowhere I really had to be, chores were caught up, I wasn't packing for something, planning for something, I was just.  .  .  present and taking a deep breath.


Labor Day signals the end of summer and the beginning of fall.  A season of gathering and preserving before winter.  Tomatoes are canned, firewood is stacked, and the freezers begin to fill.  The 10 weeks of summer vacation are a precious commodity, but signal our busiest time of year.  It's a complete blessing I don't have to go to work every day.  It's been an incredibly full summer and understandable that I felt I couldn't simply take a breath.


We were able to go to the lake several times.  Jet skiing with friends, boating, camping and even getting my mom up on water skis.  Camping at Trinity Lake was easily a highlight of our summer.

This summer each boy had raised a pig to take to our county fair.  Every morning required diligent walking, feeding, water, and poop cleaning.  We still have the two wild feeder hogs at home and Miles's pig.  All three are sold and we are pumping them full of all of the goodness from our garden and small fruit orchard in hopes of butchering them in the next few weeks.  Miles made it into the Pee-Wee championship showmanship at our fair and Carter placed very well in all of his classes.  It was another memorable week with friends at our fair complete with a Thunderstorm and a Redneck Roundup where Miles's garnered county attention when he helped a 14 month old across the ring to safety and earned box seats to the rodeo.  He had dressed up for the event by going shirtless with ripped jeans.  The rest of the fair he was known as "that kid with the mullet from the Redneck Roundup". 

The beginning of the summer found us in the Bay Area at a Cal Berkeley baseball camp.  We traveled with our friends, Air BnBed a house and took in our first MLB baseball camp of the season watching the A's at the Coliseum. 

Mom did manage to take a few deep breaths this summer when she ran a 50K at high altitude in Ashland.  While she took on 30 something miles the boys found a Caribbean colored lake in our local mountains and covered over 10 miles.  The fishing was mediocre, but the views were incredible.  Sadly, mom had to help everyone into the house and put away gear as their legs were more tired than hers were.  

The boys and Joy also managed to compete in the annual 4th of July run and the local cross-country racing series.  Miles finished the series by competing in the 5k event instead of the mile.  Mom and Miles completed it together.

Baseball tournaments at the beginning and end of summer provided copious amounts of entertainment with nightly dress up contests.  The biggest excitement was the improvement of the team.  In their first year, they only won one game all season.  Their second year ended with them playing in the championship game of their final tournament - the only game they lost.

Lots of baseball was enjoyed around the pool with many afternoons with friends and dinners with families.

We were lucky enough to head east for a family reunion in August.  We took a few days in NYC before heading upstate.  On the way we had an eight hours layover in Houston so we took in an Astro's game.  We hit every major tourist attraction in NYC including a Met's game before taking the train upstate to enjoy nearly a week with family.  Deep breaths in the city allowed you to take in the intensity of the smells and the humidity of the Northern region.  Regardless it was a very memorable trip and one that we are grateful to have taken. 

Once we returned from NY and survived the fair, Bradley and Joy celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary by covering 22 miles in 24 hours.  It was a miscalculated hike, one that made for a lot of deep breaths, but allowed us a high mountain take to ourselves (minus the pesky doe in camp).  One of our first dates was backpacking into a lake and although we are little older, we feel even stronger.

The school year has started and the boys are off to a great start.  It's hard to believe that six year ago Carter and I both started at FJE as Bulldogs together.  This will be his last year at FJE. 

We have enjoyed this past weekend at home.  Mom did a spring triathlon this Sunday.  I first did this race 20 years ago and fell in love withe sport.  I purposely went to CU for college so I could race with the team.  It took me all across the southwestern part of the US and Mexico.  I hadn't had a chance to do this same race since 2005 and I decided to go for it.  Ironically enough during the first even - the swim, I found myself not able to catch my breath.  My collar of my wetsuit has always been tight, I felt unsafe and I simply began to breath way too fast.  I consciously told myself to slow my breathing to simply catch my breath.  I did and I ended up 7th woman overall out of a large field.  How ironic that on this Labor Day I awoke with the same feeling - a feeling I hope to embrace all of fall.  I feel like I can catch my breath. 

Black Eyes and Black Diamonds

If the first two and a half months of 2019 are any indicator as to what to expect for the remainder of this year, then we are in for a ride!  Between skiing, snowboarding, Carter turning 10, and baseball it's hard to believe that we also managed to sneak away to Disneyland.

The boys got to experience a little bit of our local backcountry this season and it was a love-hate relationship.  Love the fresh virgin powder, hated the sinking and hiking.  It was especially rough on Miles with his light frame and ability to sink well into the fresh snow.  For this mama, it was especially sweet to share this favorite pasttime with her boys and their best friends.

Balancing out the sweet virgin powder were the three Fridays that they spent ripping up Mt. Ashland with their school friends and grandma.  It's pretty badass to have a grandma who can ride the Black Diamonds at the ripe old age of 73.  The snow was absolutely epic and all of the kids learned so much.

The first school ski/board day fell on Carter's 10th birthday.  He enjoyed a two-night sleepover with his buddies Wyatt and Finn, a steak dinner, and a day out of school shredding the mountain.  We simply can't believe that he is 10 years old and are so proud of the young man that he has become.  He is kind, smart, an excellent baseball player, good sport, can rip up the mountain and a true help around the house.  In fact, last weekend he traveled several hour with his Mema and Papa to watch his older cousin play Varsity baseball and his dad commented that he was "sad to lose his number one helper" for the weekend at home.  He hit his first home run (out of the park) last week and he was amazingly humble about the whole thing despite the intense internal excitement.  He also earned a nice black eye from baseball practice last week and kept telling everyone, "I kept my eye on the ball." We are just jazzed to be on this ride with him through life.

I finally got around to interviewing Carter this evening.

Name:  My name is Carter Isbell.

What is your favorite thing to do?  Play baseball, and go hunting and fishing.  

Who is your best friend?  Miles and Wyatt and Finn Hilton.

Favorite Superhero? It's time to retire this question.

Favorite Color?  Orange 

Favorite Toy?  A baseball bat

Favorite Food?  French Dip 

Favorite Drink?  Pepsi

Perfect Day?  Winning a baseball game with the Dirt Dogs 

What do you want to be when you grow up?  A major league baseball player.

What will you miss about being nine?  Now at some restaurants I won't be able to order off the kid's menu.

What are you looking forward to about being 10? I can sell my pig at the fair in the market class.

What are you really good at?  I am good at playing baseball.  

What are your chores?  Weedeating, leafblowing, feeding the chickens, fair pigs, sometimes the horse, wood on the porch, chopping wood and kindling, working on learning how to mow the lawn.

What makes a good person? A good person is kind to others and doesn't show off.

Favorite thing to watch?  Baseball movies and the Giants.

What is your favorite thing about school?  PE

Something you can work on?  Not arguing with my mom and being nice to my brother. 

I was invited to speak at a state-wide conference for administrator's last month at the Disneyland Hotel.  I still can't believe how incredibly nervous I was.  I gave a dry run the week before and totally bombed in front of my peers and admired individuals.  One of my closest mentors told me, "Would you run a race in a brand new pair of shoes?"  I ditched the fancy Prezi and went with my gut and.  .  .  I killed it.  I spoke to 100 people about contagious school culture and it was amazing.  I don't "toot my own horn" often, but it felt really good to just nail something. 

I'm not ready to take my show on the road quite yet, but I won't turn down further opportunities to speak about something I'm passionate about.  While I was busy representing our county, the boys racked up an average of 11 miles a day at Disneyland.  In fact, Miles blew out a pair of shoes and we had to Uber out to find a place for some new sneakers.  Bradley truly gets the "Dad of the Year" award for single handedly mastering the "MaxPass" option at the park.  On the final night when we left Miles broke down in tears that "It's over!". 

We are now getting ready for our Fair Pigs and enjoying five nights a week of baseball.  Miles will show pee-wee and has already helped feed "Arnold" the runt of the litter.

Bradley is helping coach Miles's Little League Minors team with his cousin Clint, Carter plays on a Majors team, and he is still on the Travel Ball team.  In fact, they just had a home double header today.  Carter pitched, caught, played first base, and helped his team win both games.  (We only won one game all of last season and we won TWO today.)  

We celebrated Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's with fun shirts and I'm sad to report that we might be nearing an end to this era with our decade old eldest.

We are so excited for what this spring holds in store for us.  Black eyes, black diamonds, black pigs and all.  

Saying Goodbye to 2018

It's the last few hours of Christmas Break and what a break it has been.  Our annual festivities with family and friends took a bit of a nose-dive when Carter was diagnosed with Influenza A.  Santa gifted us all some Tamiflu and we managed to enjoy our time together as a family of four.  The good news is that we managed to sneak in that ER visit (due to a febrile seizure and sustained heart rate of 150bpm) before the end of the year and thus our deductibles had already been met.   Since we didn't manage to gorge ourselves on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, we went all out on New Year's Eve with friends and then again with family on New Year's Day. 

As we say goodbye to 2018 it was a year of mixed emotions as we experienced some great highs and some lows and a lot of personal growth for each member of our family.  The saddest part of 2018 came when we said our good-byes to Bradley's Grandma Cora.  She has been a part of his life since the day he was born, a part of our life together since we started dating, and an integral part of our boys' lives from the moment they were born.  The silver lining in her passing was the abundant amount of time that we were able to spend with family.  We continue to miss her in all of the regular tasks that we take for granted.  A pheasant recipe here, or a reminder on how to properly seal the canned tomatoes there, or even just to get some sound advice.  She leaves behind a great legacy and there's nothing more she would want. 

As a family we enjoyed several concerts together.  Thanks to Mema and Papa we took the boys to see ZZ Top and Chris Stapleton this summer. We also snuck in a Giant's game along the way.  

Then we traveled north to Portland in the Fall with friends to enjoy Journey and Def Leppard.  The boys still have their hearing, didn't witness any obscene acts at any of the concerts, and prefer the Journey channel on Pandora to any "Top 10" hits, so we are chalking all experiences up as a win.

We went to new lakes this summer and a favorite was Statue Lake.

Another first for our family together was rafting on the Klamath which was a fitting end to Summer.  Ultimately, a highlight of the year was going to Cabo San Lucas as a family with Bradley's parents, and his sister's family.  We also brought along Mason's friend Mason (Bob), and left right after school was out, packed and ready for adventure. 

We managed to coincide our trip perfectly with a Hurricane headed straight towards the Baja.  It put a bit of a dent in our pool time and beach time, but wonderful memories were made and we all made it back home with no reports of food poisoning. 

Miles and Carter enjoyed great baseball seasons.  Miles finished off his last year in Farm League and Carter finished off his last year in Little League Minors, in which their team placed second in the end of the year tournament.  A real treat was watching Bradley and his cousin Clint coach Carter's team.  Carter also played in a travel ball team and we spent many fun weekends at different ball parks.  The experience of being on this team has been truly rewarding.  We have become closer to other families, this has pushed Carter to become a better ball player, and we have truly enjoyed watching his team play.  They won their final game of the season and that was a true highlight of the year.  Both boys also managed to rally their friends to attend a summer baseball camp in Eugene, Oregon.  I don't know who had more fun, the moms or the boys.  It was a great experience with many members of his travel ball team.

Carter and Miles also competed on the local swim team over the summer and although the early mornings in the VERY COLD pool were not the highlight of their summer memories, they sure enjoyed helping their team earn the high point mark at the county meet.

Construction efforts were also at an all time high.  Inspired, by the construction of the "pig palace" the boys built their own fort with scraps.  Since this picture it has since developed into two rooms and a back deck.

It wasn't the best snow year, but we also managed to get a few turns in on the mountain and both boys are now certified knuckle draggers.

Bradley and Joy enjoyed a trip to Los Barilles in February for two friends' destination wedding.  A moment of personal growth occurred for Bradley when he was put on the spot to deliver a killer toast at the reception.  Celebrating the event with close friends from childhood made it even more special.  

Miles and Carter also managed to pass Hunter's Safety (in the middle of baseball season no less) and this has since opened up a completely new and fun world for the boys to participate in a hobby with their dad.  Pheasants, dove, ducks, and even a mountain buck hunt have been experiences that the boys have shared together with their dad.  

Miles developed a passion for running this year and was one of two students in the school to join the "100 mile club" at school.  He competed in various races throughout the year and effortlessly enjoyed them all.  He also worked hard at losing his baby teeth and growing new adult teeth.  His consistent loss hit the Tooth Fairy's pocketbook pretty good, but his smile is drastically different.  Miles is consistently praised for his ability to bring fun and kindness to all that he does.  He's really pushed the "personal growth curve" with his dedication to growing his own mullet. 

Carter continued to display his consistent dedication and hard work through his help with the EHS football team, his commitment to two baseball teams, and raising two pigs.  He stepped up to the plate with all of his new responsibilities and enjoyed the rewards of his hard work.  His participation in 4H and the fair was a highlight of the year for our entire family.  

Between being the right hand man at the family business, being the most involved father, and supportive husband it's crazy to think how much more Bradley accomplished this year.  A benefit to his hobby of growing amazing produce was the fact that a new local restaurant/distillery purchased everything he grew.  He managed to sneak in a guys' fishing trip to the coast complete with some crab and many weekend days on the local rivers.  This hunting season didn't find him with a buck, but he spent a lot of time hunting with his boys so that was a win.  He managed to build an amazing pig palace in between coaching Little League and making sure the boys passed Hunter's Safety.  He's taken up an old past time and begun playing the drums again.  It's really nice to see the boys learn more about music from their dad.  We are so lucky to have such an amazing father and husband.

Inspired by Bradley's interest to play the drums, Joy has begun playing the piano again.  Bradley's parents had gifted Grandma Ann a piano years ago and it was time for it to find a new home.  Being the devoted father he is, he managed to move that piano into the perfect spot in the house and not hurt his back.  While she didn't run a full marathon this year, she did manage to run two 1/2 marathons and many various races with many age group wins and podium places.  A highlight of her year was seeing the culmination of the playground remodel at her school.  This was the result of close to two years of hard work and completed at little cost to the district.

When it all comes down to it we managed to enjoy many wonderful experiences as a family, by ourselves, as a couple, and as brothers.  We aren't sure how it will happen, but we hope that 2019 brings us as much happiness and experiences as 2018.  To those of you who choose to be a part of our lives and experiences, thank you.

Here's to 2019!