A Day in the Life...

 My sister is a photographer for small businesses. She is very good at what she does. And she is a very good sister.  Sometimes she's funny, sometimes she's sarcastic, sometimes she's compassionate, sometimes she's straightforward, sometimes she's just plain kind and considerate. Sometimes she and I and Amber exchange dozens of texts about important, not important, random, meaningless, and meaningful things and the two are kind of my life support. Last week on Friday Shandee sent us this: Yikes!!  Some older guy either had a medical episode or was really confused and drove quite a ways into a park in Murray, along the trail, and right into my sister. Thankfully he didn't keep going because he would have hit a bunch of high schoolers finishing at the cross country meet. The hospital was right across the street and when they finally checked her out she had no broken bones but she had no feeling in her feet and especially her toes. Didn't sound like such great ...

I took the girls and their friends to an event at the high school last night.  Promptly upon exiting the vehicle they all took off and I realized they mostly want nothing to do with us anymore. So I called Tim to come over and we watched the marching band event for a bit before leaving early.   First: band kids are something else.  :) Second: Gone are the days the girls want to stay home with Tim and I; we are basically chauffeurs because they're too young to drive.  Sometimes Micah will call for a family night and we had to officially assign at least one night a week with no events so we could connect; most of the time, though, they have grand ideas on how they want to spend their time.  I looked over a bit into it and saw Dakota, Micah, and their friend Emery pulling the high school football team's equipment up over a hill in the back field. I took a picture before calling them. Here's how it went: Me: Dakota, what in the heavens are you guys doing and wh...

 Sometimes I wonder why kids nowadays are so dysregulated emotionally. There is such an uptick in anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, and just an overload of poor reactions to stress. Typically clinical therapists focus on the connection between our thoughts and emotions and our behavior, and I think there's real benefit to this. The first three questions I always ask kids though are one, what have you eaten today, two, are you hydrated, and three, how did you sleep last night? Those pieces really matter. Also, they're really some huge pieces going on that are so discounted. Did you know the food I grew up with in the '80s and '90s, and the food my parents grew up with 50 and 60 years ago is literally not the same at all? Food is injected with hormones, crops are sprayed with pesticides, everything is chuck full of preservatives and artificial dyes and an overload of sugar that it's disrupting so many hormones in the bodies of all of us, especially our kids. It t...

Camping on Labor Day...  outside of going to Lava Hot Springs, this was only our second camping trip of the year, which is weird... This is how the dog rides nearly all the way to camp... When the forecast said four days of rain, Tim and I decided to buy a little TV. It wasn't used much, but it is fun when it's pouring outside! Micah's fort... Ty and Amber were at her grandparents' property about ten minutes away so we spent time with them doing absolutely nothing... Tree fort time... Copper and I built a new firepit in a different area we liked better... It's a flatter spot and roomier. It was a lot of work and my back didn't feel great after but I'm glad we did it... Ty and Amber and kids and dog came by to say hi Brother dogs looked a lot alike this weekend... Copper, Micah, and Cameron staring off and daydreaming... Ty brought a riffle and a couple of tiny 22's to shoot back at her grandparents' place. It was way fun!! Copper didn't want to t...