Sprinklers

Wanting to be with Randy as he ran but not being able to actually run myself with my leg injury, we decided to go to the Middle School track.  It was frustrating to have sprinklers on, which meant we couldn't use the entire track, but it sure made for a beautiful sunset as we walked to our car.  It was the perfect way to end a great workout.

Awards Ceremony

Just a dad running a mile with his daughter in the morning...

And then teaching his son to mow the lawn that night...

 *I took this picture of him taking pictures for me*

And the award for Best Dad in the World goes to Randy Arthur Dirks!

Light Switch

 We have hated this light over our dining room table from the second we first walked through the house.  We finally found a light we liked enough to replace it with.

 We almost had a travesty on our hands when Randy started to just pull up the wires will-nilly and the realized that they couldn't' come back down again.  We got everything measured and ended up liking the end result, thank goodness.  Randy said he could have probably figured out a way to release the wires, but we got lucky.

It makes the space feel right.  Not only is it an updated light, but it fits the shape of the room much better.  It also looks cleaner, because you look at glass and mirrors, instead of two massive white bowls hanging over the table.  I love it so much.  It's heavy because of the glass, but it makes the room feel light.  See what I did there?  Light, because of the light, but also light, as in not heavy...  I have such bright ideas for puns!

Organized

Since beginning our Covid Competition five weeks ago, our games have pretty much stayed like this...

 Not always in a jumbled mess like this, but in this area of our tv room.  Every game that we own and can play as a family, unlike Chess and Checkers and Connect Four, out for easy access.

While doing a ten minute clean today (we all spend ten minutes-- and only 10 minutes-- walking around and putting everything away that we see out of place.  It gets the job done quickly!), I came back to find someone had organized the games.  Works for me, kids!

** While not even remotely close to winning, I do want to remember that I won the most games yesterday, coming in at four which doubled my entire first week of competition, even though one game I was doing everything in my power to make sure someone else won.  It felt pretty amazing to lead the winner board for one whole day.  Randy is 1st, with Keilie behind by only one win.

Boys

Brennon: "Mom, is there anything I can do to help you around the house?  The people across the street are trimming their tree, and since I can't offer to help them I thought I'd offer to help you."

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

Tyson: "Thank you for going on a walk with me Brennon.  (Chuckle) This morning we were fighting, and now we're best friends.  I'm sorry I didn't say sorry."

Brennon: "You did, remember?"

Tyson:  "Well if I said it, I didn't really mean it then.  But I do now."

I guess boy behavior surprises boys too, cause girls definitely don't forgive as quickly most times.

Run, Randy, Run!!!

HE DID IT!!!

Randy ran TEN MILES today!!!

 Five weeks ago, at the beginning of the lockdown, we had our first run of four miles.  It was just days after we'd both suffered Flu A, so we were super slow, but still-- we did four miles in 50 minutes.  We gave it everything we had.  There were times I kept him going, and times he kept me going.  We were pretty evenly matched for our first outdoor run of our shared longest distance.

At the beginning of Orange Theory in September, I started everything too fast and ended up with an injury that had me in some pretty serious pain.  I got it back to a good spot, not realizing that I hadn't healed it completely.  After those first few runs outside, my leg got right back to how it felt in September.  It broke my heart, but I had to stop all running for six weeks.  Not wanting to miss out on the victories that come from accomplishing fitness goals, I got on the bike and rode next to my Mister as he got into Beast Mode and conquered every challenge he set for himself.

September 20th-- Randy could barely run .3 mile and was a heaving asthmatic at the end of his first OTF class.

March 21st-- 4 miles at a 12'22 pace.  It may have been faster but for our flu-exhaustion, but it is still a pretty good base run.

April 25th-- 10 miles at a 9'37 pace.

Because I'm on the bike, I've had a front-row view of Randy's legs.  It has always struck me as weird that he isn't in more pain since my leg has had such trouble.  There is on point on my shin bone that feels like one more step is literally going to snap the bone.  When fixing it, which means using a massage gun to break down the muscle tears, it literally feels like someone is ax-murder driving a screwdriver repeatedly into my bone.  If pressed, I'd say it was a much worse five minutes than when I had Brennon without an epidural and he was flying out of me.  I couldn't figure out why I struggled to add as many miles in a day as he did, going from 4 to 6 miles in a run and then running another mile or two that night, adding more and more miles and hours of running each day and week, without some serious pain, let alone any pain.  All of this was made even more pronounced when I continued to watch how his feet fall step after step after joint-pounding step.

Both feet fall just like this.  This is what you call SEVERE Over-Pronation.  He didn't know it was this bad.  I don't think I could have prepared him any more for what it truly looks like to see him run.  Even he says it looks painful, even though he had no idea!  We plan to go and get him some "real" running shoes if we can, since the store may be shut down.  I say "real," because these Nikes he's running with were categorized as running, but they obviously do not have the support his feet need to keep his ankle from rolling inward.

Let's not forget though... RANDY RAN TEN MILES TODAY WITHOUT STOPPING!!!  GO, RANDY!!!

*Stats* Randy has lost 48 pounds and 8" off of his waist since November 19, 2019-- six months!

Pond Removal

April 17, 2020
The afternoon began with this pond intact, fully-functional, and half-filled with black sludge water.  It was many hours of all six of us moving rock and emptying the nasty, stinky muck.

 I feel a bit like Ariel with the rocks we pulled from this one place.  Look at this stash, isn't it neat?!  There are thousands of dollars worth of all different types and sizes of rock.  Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what we're going to do with them all.

 We stopped for dinner of delivered pizza, breadsticks, and soda.  It was not only a splurge for the pizza as payment for their work, but for delivery.  Randy does not ever have things delivered!  We sat down around the table, ate till we were stuffed, and got back to it.

 It felt SO good to see this space without the massive pond.  Like it was cleaner somehow.  I can't wait to see it finished.

April 18, 2020

Coming along.  It doesn't look like too much of a difference, but the vines and leveling had us both a sweaty mess after hours and hours of hard labor.  It gets better by the minute.

April 19, 2020
I loved the statue too much to try and sell it.  Now that it's our choice to have her, I gave her a name.  Aphrodite.  Aphy for short.  Her base is now a flower pot.

April 20, 2020
We shaped the vines I wanted to keep, that looks more like a large bush than vines, and, in an effort to use some of the nicer big stones, made a "river."  I'm pleased with how it's coming together.

We tried to go and get more river rock, but the stone quarries are all shut down right now.  We'll have to wait to finish this project.  That seems to be our theme this quarantine: start a project, take it as far as we can ourselves, and then wait on the world to open back up to finish.

We brought Caden's cemetery light out.  We brought him home tonight.

Sunday Drive

We took a little drive today, to break up the never-ending boredom of doing the exact same thing every single day.  Nothing big, just a drive to see the location of the temple site in Moses Lake, Washington.  It's an hour and fifteen minutes away, but that didn't stop our boys from taking a nap on the way.

The kids used to balk at us when we'd suggest a drive, any drive.  The tune has since changed.  "OH MY GOSH, I LOVE CAR RIDES!!!!!"  They practically pranced to the car... and immediately started arguing about who got to sit in the middle two seats, even though NO ONE could remember our seating chart that rotates each month to be fair because no one could remember the last time we drove anywhere.  Yep, things are still just the same at the Dirks' house.

Remember

I want to remember that we take these masks with us wherever we go, always just the two of us, never our kids.  When going inside a store, we take a Ziploc bag with two Clorox wipes to wash our hands and cart and car parts before and after the shopping.  The moment we walk in the door, we wash our hands with soap and water.  We don't live in fear, but we are very cautious.  We carefully consider if our trip is really a need, choose our stores wisely, and venture out if we deem it worthy.  I miss doing things without so much thought, but I don't feel as if we are living in fear and not living a good life.

I had a thought the other day: my life hasn't changed much since 2014.  The shock of needing to stay in one room-- be it the hospital or Ronald McDonald-- or even our house for that one week we got to come home during treatments, was had by us years ago.  Needing to consider the health of a loved one because of ventures outside or people visiting.  Finding enjoyment in the one thing we could do: walk outside but not touch anything.  Being separated from extended family even though they were close.  Going to the store (grocery store only) because we need food, never buying extra.  Even quickly leaving to quickly return.  I've lived this kind of life for a very long time.  While I haven't lived within the confines of cancer care for two and a half years, I do find that I have craved and needed to stay home in recent years.  I rarely left, even when I could, always considering how much energy and emotion it was going to take out of me.  If I was going to the store, I'd grab a quick 2-8 items-- get in, get out, as quick as possible-- and go straight home.  While I wasn't worried about a virus, I did feel the need to just be home.  While I hate so much about cancer care, it did prepare me for this.  The shock of this unknown situation and effects is something that I felt but didn't quite understand the breadth of when that first ER doc said, "We've ordered Life Flight.  They'll be here in 10 minutes." Our lives have all been changed in the blink of an eye, something we had no way of knowing could ever happen to us.

Engage-aversary

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of our engagement, so I gave Randy the gift of curled hair, makeup, and nice clothes for this picture.  He hasn't seen me done up for many a week, so it felt nice to get spruced up for him, even if I changed out of my cute clothes minutes after this was taken so we could watch a show together in comfort. 

I am so grateful he asked me to be his.  I love him so much more than I ever thought possible.  We may not be in that honeymoon stage of new love, but what I feel for him has more substance and background and life to know that the honeymoon stage, while fun and special, is nothing to what is to come with real-life experience and work.  We truly do have a love story that any young girl would dream of and hope to have when she grows up.  I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Slow Leak

We found a water leak from the main line a few days ago.  They told us they turned off the water, but we continued to get a steady flood in our backyard, so we called them to come out again.  Again they told us they'd turned off more valves, and again we continued to get a steady flood.  They told us they'd figure it out when they finally came around to do the work.  Yesterday at 8:00am (on the dot, which I find interesting) they rang our doorbell, ready to work.

 It wasn't hard to figure out where the water was coming from when you looked for the air bubbles.  They dug and found the hole to never truly drain.  See the pump to get the water out, the dirty spot soaking into our grass? (Which is still there and still wet to this day.  It makes me sad that they had to ruin our backyard to fix this)

 After about 30-minutes of continuously rising water, they decided that all of the valves they had off were not helping.  They went to de-pressurize the whole neighborhood.

From our dining room window.  Directly in the center of the above picture you can see the pressurized water shooting 6'+ into the air.  This happened for over and hour.

 Once the "Old Faithful" didn't produce as much of a show, they came back and dug out a little more before heading to lunch.

 This leak is the culprit. 

With the water turned off, they were able to dig out more.  That hole was now large enough to have a grown man up to his armpits lifting that heavy, wet mud almost above his head onto the pile.  They got it all fixed (that man was soaking wet by the time he was done, but said he didn't have time to wait for the leak to stop so he cut the pipe and allowed it to gush out on him while he worked), buried, and told us they'd come back in a few days with fill dirt, since the leak-- which most likely had been there for years and just manifested above ground-- had eroded away quite a bit.

 They did a really good job backfilling it, but Randy and Keilie worked for another hour making it exactly level.

I'm glad this is all fixed.  We have plans for this space.  Next order of business is to rip out the pond that I love the idea of, but not the actual thing.