Biggest Splash!

This last weekend consisted of a myriad of activities.  Wedding Shower, Summer Movie Night at our house, visit from Auntie Nessie, softball tournament, and the 14th annual Rachel Hanna Swim Olympics, with the Biggest Splash! contest.  This year my sister was in town and she and my mom took the boys to the Olympics.  This family friendly event is held every year at our local pool in honor of a little girl who has gone to heaven.   As I arrived at the event to pick up my children, I heard screams of "Go Miles!".  Turns out I had JUST missed his attempt at winning the Biggest Splash! contest.  Yep, the little two-year old dare-devil leapt off of the lifeguard stand and into the depths of the cool blue water without an inkling of fear in his eyes.  When Carter was two at Rachel's Olympics he was too busy kissing Macey and splashing in the water.  Not Miles.  He wanted to make his statement.  

Carter and Macey at the Olympics.

Miles' Big Splash!

Life is a lot like the Biggest Splash! contest.  We all have our chance to make our mark.  Some do it early on in life, and others take the leap when they're older.  Some do it year after year, like the Hanna family and serve as a beacon of hope to others suffering in tragedy.  Some never take the plunge and get hope from others that test fate.  Some go in with both legs crossed and a prayer, while others just simply shoot straight into the water like a pencil.  

One never knows what life will throw at them, but it's how we choose to deal with the hand we're dealt that matters.  The Hannas make their splash by honoring the legacy of their daughter, their family, and the importance of love.  They host the Olympics, caretake a garden, and offer support to others in times of hardship.  Sometimes the Biggest Splash! isn't about the size of the splash, but who gets a bit wet in the aftermath.  Because of Greg and Sherri, the lives of so many families are more enriched.   Year after year, we are reminded of how important our family is, our kids are, and quite frankly how much we have to be thankful for.  We are graced by the presence of people who have chosen to pay it forward and shine as examples.  They've made the Biggest Splash!, year after year by honoring their daughter, their family, and all of us.  

Miles, the Hanna Family, and the rest of the Sportsmanship award winners!

While I know that Miles' splash truly signifies that I may have my hands full, I also know that his determination, eagerness, and bravery had an affect on others.  He's already making his splash in the world.  It might not of been the biggest, but he made his mark.  

As summer winds down, I just count my blessings and remember that my with my family, and in my classroom is the place I have a chance to make my Biggest Splash!.  Last night we had my mom, sister, and the Hiltons over for dinner.  After the meal, I set up a projector to play a movie on the side of our house.  Those four little boys joined together on an air mattress on the lawn and enjoyed a summer show.

Even if summer is almost over and the pools will close, there's time every day to make your Biggest Splash!  

Family

Last winter Bradley's Grandma Cora and I had a discussion about family and the pace of life.  The conversation ended with her saying, "Well, if we have not our family left on this earth when we go, we have not left a legacy have we?".   In her own way, without directly saying it, she was proclaiming her prideful love of her family.  Because of the union she and her late husband had, the world is a better place with three hard working children, seven grand-children, and 21 great-grandchildren.  All in different places spatially, religiously, chronologically, but all from two people.

The "Grands" and "Greats" - only part of the legacy.  

This last week I witnessed the honesty of Grandma's logic at a family reunion on my mother's side.  40 people gathered.  Those 40 were the legacy left by my mother's parents.  It is truly amazing that from only two people, such a wonderful legacy has grown.  Although they have left this earth, their legacy has lived on through these amazing people I get to call "family".  All soooo different.  From all ends of the country, age ages 2 - 70+, everyone from a Fish and Game worker, to professional violinists, to a Radiologist at Stanford, to a college freshman.  Our family, my grandparents' legacy, gathered for one week, at a 100 year old YMCA resort in the Adirondack mountains of upstate NY.  There was no cell-phone service, TV, air-conditioning, 21st century mattresses, and barely any Internet.  Yet, all of the cousins played together as a unit seamlessly.

Ages 2 - 19 - the "Greats"

My children went from breakfast to fishing with Bradley, to shuffleboard, to lunch, to beach time, to treasure hunting, to dinner, to baseball, to ice cream, to shuffleboard, to bed.  Once a day the entire group joined up for a large activity.  Two nights we played baseball, one night we roasted marshmallows, and another night we were treated to a concert by our cousins.  Although I have only a few of the family member's phone numbers in my cell phone, and only see or talk to them every three years, it didn't matter because we were all connected.

I have been going to Silver Bay since I was only four or five years old.  I loved, loved, loved, it and made lifelong friends there.  As a parent, I get to see Silver Bay through the eyes of my boys.  Within 48 hours they were running around the porch of the Inn as if they had gone there for years.  They owned the baseball diamond and played shuffleboard like old cronies.

After our first two trips were done I joked about hoping that my children didn't turn into demons again during the next two trips, and I promised that we would use Yelp! a bit better.  In all honesty, the children were very well behaved on our last two trips, but we did not have to use Yelp on the last trip because at Silver Bay there are no options in food, and everyone just comes to expect to have to detox after a week of pre-prepared and highly genetically modified sustenance.

As I reflect on a week with extended family and the words of Grandma Cora, I can only smile looking at our two boys and know that our legacy has already started.

Two down, two to go!

We are about halfway through summer with two trips down and two to go.  The first adventure took us to the coast.  Actually, my running team and I ran to the coast, and Bradley, the kids, and my mom met us there.  It was a quick visit, and involved a beach bonfire, marshmallows, and an extremely awkward and awfully "non-kid friendly" restaurant disaster.  I learned my lesson to make sure to read all of the Yelp! postings, and not just look at stars and overall stats.  The short man did not appreciate Miles' interjections whilst he was describing his homemade cheese platter.

Our second adventure was sans-dad and this was when two demons decided to take over the bodies of my normally well-behaved children.  I should have known I was in trouble early on, when Miles traded his decent two-year old vocabulary for toddler profanity.  It was a week of opportunity: beach day in Oceanside, Knott's Berry Farm day, trampoline park day, movie theater day, Battleship Museum/Children's Museum/Giant's Game Day, evenings by the pool, two grandmas, five moms, ten kids, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Minus any booze.  That's right, I was dry for almost seven days.  I may or may not have slipped in a beer (or two) during the game to celebrate the Giant's victorious lead. When opportunity knocks, I welcome it.  Just saying.

Despite dealing with two really poorly behaved children, the week was really great.  My mother-in-law and her sister provide us with this opportunity of "Cousins' Week" every year and I truly appreciate every minute of it.

Growing up, I only had cousins on one side of the family and they were a lot older than us.  I feel so lucky that my kids grow up down the road from two of their cousins, see most of the Isbell cousins on a regular basis, and get to experience all of the "down south" cousins a couple of times a year.  The highlight of my week was boogie boarding ALONGSIDE Carter.  He really took to it and I was so proud of him.

The local YMCA hosts a cross-country race series during the summer on Tuesday evenings.  I am proud to report that Carter's mile time has improved by almost ten minutes between the last two summers.  The poor guy probably could have taken even less time if he wasn't waiting on his brother to get in and out of the stroller.  If you ask him about the race all he wants to tell you is about the raffle prize he won, "Yeah dad, I got a teddy bear, soap, coffee mug, and just what you wanted.  .  . steak sauce!  They must have thought I was really old or something."  Miles was equally proud of his new insulated 100 oz water bottle, mom won a nice travel mug, and I took home second place in the series.

This weekend marks the last weekend of class for me for the summer.  As of Saturday afternoon, I will have completed nine units towards my admin credential.  I only have six more units to go and they are both online.  Hopefully, I can complete both classes by early 2014.

The goal for the remainder of the summer is to enjoy each other, the moment, have fun, pay better attention to Yelp! reviews, and pray to God that whatever took over my sons for a week does not come back.  Steak sauce anyone?

But That's Life. . .

Thanks to my SVJH 7th grade PE teacher Mr. Forrester, I have now been running five or six days a week for almost 15 years.  I don't remember those first few miles that I logged, but I remember feeling proud and content.  Over the years I've run for many reasons.  Weight loss, depression, anxiety, death, loss, sadness, happiness, elation, frustration, soul-searching, fitness, PRs, qualifiers, medals, trophies, time, friendship, travel, with a stroller and kids, and without.  I've run in many different countries and on three different continents.  I have a whole room with a wall covered in race bibs, finishing medals, awards, plaques, motivational quotes, and trophies.  I've won a lot of races and lost even more.  Every day I lace up the shoes again, take a deep breath, and go.  The first few steps are always the toughest, and the last few always the most gratifying.  Some days the legs burn, the stomach churns, and the running sucks.  But that's life.

I actually enjoy sharing my passion of running with others oftentimes more than I enjoy my own running.  Watching those 4th graders push their mile times down, sweat out, and push the boundaries of their own limitations is awe-inspiring.  They learn that pain can be okay and that limits need to be tested.  But that's life.

Competing against and getting beaten by former athletes I coached is oftentimes a bear, but that's life.  Running with former athletes and racing with them is emotionally rewarding, and that's life.  I have circles of friends, but my running friends have accepted me in the worst of times.  We've sweated out our deepest secrets, pounded out our frustrations, and hugged through sweat. snot, and tears.  But that's life.

I've run through an eating disorder, on my wedding day, through three pregnancies, the loss of a child, the loss of my father, and nearly every day over the last 15 years.  I've run through snow, lightning, rain, wind, heat, and hail.  But that's life.

When I push the boys in the stroller I stop the run to accommodate potty breaks, throwing rocks into the river, and picking blackberries.  Sometimes the boys get out and run along side me.  My runs are slower but much more meaningful.  But that's life.

I took a friend I have been encouraging in her running, up to get fitted for a new pair of running shoes.  As she was on the treadmill having her gait analyzed, the handsome young man (national record holder of some trail race) asked her, "Are you training for any races coming up?"  She replied, "Yes.  .  .  Life!".

Two words, so simple, so true.  We're all just training for life, in our own way, in our own time.  It's our race to run.  The best race we'll ever enter and the longest journey of all.  But that's life.

Summer, summer, summer!

A gift from a student!

Some jobs in life come with financial perks and/or annual bonuses.  While the perks of teaching are not financially enticing, they are most certainly gratifying.  Besides having summers off (read unemployed), we are inundated with compliments daily.  My love language is written word and I have saved EVERY single card, note, and/or illegibly drawn on crumpled tissue I have ever received.  I have almost a full file drawer of these notes in my classroom.  At the end of the school year I could care less about the gift cards and more about what the parents and kids wrote to me.  Don't get me wrong, the gift cards are certainly appreciated, but the message is meaningful.  On the last day of school this year, a parent with whom I certainly went round and round, actually stood in front of the room of nine and ten year olds and gave a tear-driven speech outlining all of my fine attributes and all that I had done for his son.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

This year my favorite gift was most certainly intangible and I didn't receive it until a week after school got out.  I stopped in to sign some paperwork at another school site today and the mother of one of my students works there.  As I was leaving she called out to me and let me know that her son named his 4-H fair project Heifer after me.  At first I was a bit stunned and then I asked if the name was "Mrs. Isbell", or "Joy".  She said he chose the more informal approach because he "loved me, and he would love that Heifer".  Choking back tears, I got in my car and drove away thinking to myself that I might possibly be the luckiest girl in the world.  Sure, I don't get $10,000 bonuses, but those posers most certainly do not have livestock being loved in their name.

This family of four is a week into summer and so far our list of accomplishments is quite high:
1) 3,000 pumpkins transplanted from the greenhouse into the pumpkin patch.
2) Afternoon of swimming and a BBQ at Bradley's parents' home.
3) Afternoon of swimming, bug collecting, and trying to light things on fire with magnifying glasses on the Scott River.  (Thanks Papa Hilton, I guess that's how they do things in the South :) )
4) Mom is 2/3 of the way done with two different admin credential classes.  Which means that the boys have been without Mom for three weekends while she has been in class.
5) So far a tally of six different squirt gun purchases.
6) One box of popsicles eaten.
7) One propane BBQ canister drained.
8) We got rid of DirecTV and now only watch things off of our Apple TV.
9) Two little boys working their way from farmer's tans to muscle man tans.
10) Double digit miles logged in warm outside air with the Double Bob.
11) THOUSANDS of extra kilowatt hours banked.

As I go back to school this summer, I can't express enough gratitude towards my husband and my boys.  Bradley has been so supportive while I drive 4+ hours each weekend and he is on single-parent duty over night, or while I finish papers or reading and he keeps the boys relatively quiet.  I know it will be for the best and I am so excited about what I am learning.  But the question that begs to be answered is: How many principals get a namesake Heifer?  My guess is not too many, but there's first time for everything.

Happy Mother's Day. . .

The universe has tested me this week.  Last week's blogpost came from a place of centering and pure thought.  The morning after the post, the picture below appeared on FB.  The picture is truly amazing because it captures so many emotions after Carter was done riding the sheep.  A sheep that he himself begged to ride.  A sheep that Bradley carefully placed him on.  A sheep that he hung onto for dear life, was bucked off of, lay down in the dirt for a few seconds, and then raised up into his dad's arms.  Of course there were tears, but following the tears was sheer pride.

The old adage is that "a picture is worth a thousand words".  Some random person on FB began posting really negative things about the picture.  His rants attacked our son and our parenting.  Because I am a faithful rule follower and someone who has good sense, I did not return any of his posts because I was at work.  During this time, it was really hard for me to go back to the place I was in when I published the blog the night before.  A place of living in the moment, of realizing what was important.  Instead, this "poor sap" as someone referred to him, received several responses that were equally, if not more harshly written than his own untruthful claims.  An entire online community rallied behind the photograph, not because they knew us, but because they understood what the picture represented.  If we constantly allow our youth to thrive in a society where everyone earns the trophy, and no tears are allowed, what will happen when the real world comes knocking.  If we don't allow our children to face things willingly, that they might be scared of, then they will most likely not further attempt things they might fail at.  Human instinct is a wonderful thing, and to protect our intuition from failure or fear might suffice in the moment, but repeatedly will do more harm than good.

Already feeling like "mother of the year" because of the negative things written by Mr. Mande, (whoever he is), the week continued to get worse.  I must admit, that although this online community gave us great support, I did indeed question my parenting skills.  Was I wrong to allow him to mutton bust?  Did I subject him to "irreparable ramifications"?  I think Carter sensed my doubts intuitively because he proceeded to throw the most embarrassing fit in Karate Class on Tuesday that I have ever witnessed from ANY CHILD.  I have never before felt so out of control of a situation as I did in that little room on Tuesday evening.  I was just hoping it wouldn't get posted on FB, lest this Mr. Mande character get ahold of the evidence.  After repeated attempts to calm him down about his fears of me leaving him (?), it was obvious that we just needed to leave.  The walls of my mothering instincts crumbled as I drove home to screams of terror and "I don't love you anymore Mommy!".  Who was this child?  Was I being pranked?  The universe was surely testing me, only 48 hours since my "deep" post.  Yes, live in the moment, remember what is important, raising boys who will be. .  .

I am not one of "those mothers".  I don't force him to do Karate, and I most certainly did not make him mutton bust.  However, I will NOT allow the disrespect he showed that evening to continue.  Needless to say, after his piggy bank was emptied, and he has gone without TV and an iPad for a week (and no special chocolate milk - this was his dad), we don't think it will be happening again.  Just to be sure, we are ALL going to karate tomorrow evening.

Following the FB rant, and Carter's fit, I was a bit unsure of him going onstage to perform in a dance show on Saturday night.  I know, I know, what you're thinking.  .  .  "Rodeo, karate, dance, she IS that mom!!",  I'm NOT.  His unpredictable behavior at karate left me reeling inside, fearful of what he might do in front of 200 people on stage.  I held my breath as he entered, and then began crying.  He OWNED that stage.  Stole the show.  I was one proud momma.

Ironically enough, this entire week Miles has been an angel.  Normally, he is the one who gives us trouble.  Not in the last seven days.  He almost seems to be relishing in his brother's poor choices.

One week after I thought I had an epiphany worthy of sainthood and good deeds, I finish this post on Mother's Day.  A day to relish in the fact that I am the mother to two of the most amazing young men, and another little boy in heaven.  I told Bradley that I wanted a run, a Bloody Mary, and that I did NOT want to cook or clean anything today.  The run was amazing and I shared it with a good friend.  The Blood Mary turned into two Mimosas at Bob's Ranch House for brunch, and dinner was prepared by my boys and cleaned up by Bradley.  I am so blessed that I was able to spend half of the day with my own amazing mother.  We are so different, but I owe so much of my personality to her.  My dad would always tell me that "the two of you butt heads, because you are so alike".  I see it now more and more.  My boys gave me lots of love, and my mom decided that this mother's day was the right time to present me with some breast enhancers.  Nothing says "Happy Mother's Day" like your 67 year old mother recognizing that your children have sucked the life right out of you.  In this week, in more ways that one.  I love you Mom!

Solar Cowboys

"Slow down you're doing fine 
You can't be everything you want to be 
Before your time." 
--Billy Joel

Rush to get dressed, speed to work, hurry through to prepare for STAR testing, hustle to Karate, quickly eat dinner, bath, bed, housework, bookwork, mow the lawn, check the things off of the list.  .  .  Life is just too fast.  Where have the last years gone?  I know that looking back it won't matter if the lawn was mowed, if the project was completed on time, or if the floor was as clean as it was yesterday.  What will matter is that we have raised sons who appreciate the value of hard work, but know the importance of taking care of themselves.  That slowing down is not a sign of weakness, but of strength in the hopes of building a stronger self.  What will matter is that my sons will have memories of a mom who puts everything down for the slightest need, but who has given them the tools to be self-sufficient.  What will matter is that they will see their father's work ethic, but relish in his ability to relax with them. Yes, we want to be successful, to do, to grow, to fulfill, but life changes in a split second.  The endless checklists we have conquered, do not matter in a split second mistake.  Life is precious, life is good, life needs to be conquered with an awareness and appreciation of the moment.

Miles will only want to "snuggle" so many times, and Carter will only want to retell the same story for so long.  I know we are good parents, but today we were reminded of the preciousness of life and the things that are truly important.  My dad would ALWAYS remind us of all we had done, and reinforce the need for relaxation and taking things in stride.  "Look at all you have done," - I can hear it still.   

The solar project is coming to completion and I am so proud of Bradley for his ability to complete such a huge task.  From the planning, to the paperwork, budgeting, purchasing, permitting, constructing, wiring, it has been a huge task.  Within the next week and a half, we hope to be producing all of our own power.  

Today was the rodeo.  Both boys were in a "driving" float for Dotty's.  They all got to ride or drive in their own kid cars.  Carter drove the John Deere Gator, while Finn or Wyatt sat shotgun, and Miles held on for dear life in the dumpbed.  I don't know why I went for a run this morning, because I got quite the workout after Bradley showed them the difference between first and second gear.  The float won 1st place and all of the kids had a lot of fun.  

For the second year, Carter decided that he wanted to bust a mutton.  This year's ride was about a second longer, but equally exciting.  Don't worry about the end of the video, he just has a delayed reaction in getting up.  After some snowcones, cheesy fries, and tamables (wait is this the fair or the rodeo) it was time for a nap during an afternoon thunderstorm.  

Here's to a productive, mindful, and appreciative outlook to the week ahead.