Making Time

A common theme in many movies is the parent who is too busy to spend time with their children, then something happens in their lives—either humorous or tragic—to make the parent realize the importance of participating in their children's lives while they still have the chance. I know at times I'm a "go ask your mother" type of parent, I'm inconsistent and wishy-washy and make a lot of edicts that don't make much sense to anyone. I often forget things and act foolish, like the time I gathered the whole family around the back of the car to force a confession out of someone and find out who put the big dent there—only to realize later it was me. But for the most part, I don't feel I've failed too miserably in one area, that being I try to spend time with our children and be a part of their lives.

It's not easy sometimes, with the demands of work coupled with a family of six pulling us all different ways. I've suffered through some painfully squeaky orchestra concerts and sat in the freezing rain at soccer games where the only warm place was the port-a-potty and the parents are starting fist fights with each other. But I've tried hard to attend the piano recitals, choral performances, and kindergarten graduation ceremonies ("They keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity." — Mr. Incredible).

And it's paid off. I've had some experiences I'll never forget and wouldn't trade for anything. One example is Miara's cross country running career. It was brief, she only started running the summer before her high school senior year. She related how she nearly gave up many times—as the other runners made it all the way up to Elephant Rock and she had to walk much of the way because she'd just started running a couple weeks earlier. Her younger brother Aarim is a very talented runner and had been running for several years by that time. He and her coaches and fellow runners kept encouraging her and she kept with it all the way till the region finals.

I took time away from my work to go watch her team run at the finals. I jogged to different points around the course and kept encouraging her. While not the fastest, she's a strong runner and passed a lot of others on the hills. I stood at the finish as she crossed the line with tears in her eyes, taking third place for her entire region. It was a beautiful example of perseverance and I'd really hate myself right now if I'd missed that because I was too lazy to go or claimed I was too busy.

Spontaneity

I like making plans, but unfortunately, there are so many things going on in life that often you just have to toss the plans aside and go with the flow. But that's not always bad. See, if I make plans to, for example, go hiking this Saturday, I know ten other things will come up between now and then to destroy those plans. I could be inflexible and say, forget it—I'm hiking anyway. But sometimes it's better just to make things up as you go. Below I'll list a few things that just happened on their own, but turned out well.

At the end of March, we got a late spring snowfall on a Friday night. So next morning, I grabbed the kids and said, "Hey, we're not going to get any more snow this year, so let's go tubing!" Of course, it snowed here until June, but we didn't know that would happen at the time. I asked Miara if she wanted to go. She was still in bed and asked, "When?" "Now," I said. She loves it when I do that. So we had a great time tubing and when we were tired with that, we made giant snow balls and rolled them down the hill.

We were tubing on a golf course, and of course Tian Tian had a great time finding all the yellow golf balls under the melting snow. He and Ro Ro rounded them up and delivered them back to the club house.

Another day in early April, I went down to Miara's room and said, "Hey, the rest of us are going to the zoo, do you want to go?" "When?" "Right now." So we did. That time of year, there aren't a lot of people at the zoo, so it was fun wandering around seeing all the animals that don't like our hot summers. We even bought a season pass, so we can be spontaneous for 365 days. In fact, we've been back twice already.

On another fine April day, Stephanie and I bought some new wardrobes for our room, but on the way home from Ikea, we thought, "The new furniture will look a little out of place in our old room." So by the time we'd arrived home, we'd decided to take everything out of the room, rip out the carpet, repair and paint the walls, install new carpet, THEN put in the wardrobes. I'm not a fan of interior decoration projects, but this turned out OK, despite the banana yellowness all over.

Now here's something I actually sort of planned—a landscaping project. I've been meaning to rip our strip for several years (the parking strip) and replace the grass with rocks. So once I finished the yellowing of our room, I gathered the fam' and we went out to Stansbury Island in the Great Salt Lake and got a trailer full of rocks. Then not long after that, we tore out the grass, put down the fabric, used all the rocks up real quick, then had to go back out for another load of rocks. But with everyone's help, we got it finished.

The Great Salt Lake can be quite pretty in the right light, despite the smell.

So I guess the purpose of this posting is to remind everyone that planning is important, but spontaneity isn't all that bad.

As the World Happens

I stand alone in the distance while the foreground slowly moves.

Dropkick Murphys

Do you ever feel like your life gets all arranged for you and you don't have much say in it? Saturday was like this. We had so many things going on, they wouldn't all fit in the little calendar square. Here's a partial rundown:

• 7:30 am, Aarim's track meet in Kearns
• 10:30 am, Tian Tian's scout bowling activity in Bountiful
• 10:30 am, Amria's piano federation test at the University
• 11:00 am, Amria's church activity in Salt Lake
• 11:30 am, Miara's rock flying (or something) activity in Ogden
• 1:00 pm, friends stopping by to visit
• 5:00 pm, dinner party at friend's house in South Jordan
• 8:00 pm, stop by another friend's house in South Jordan to see their new baby

Meanwhile, Stephanie and I both have things we'd like to do for ourselves once in a while. She's trying to spend some time on the treadmill each day. I'm trying to spend every spare moment I can revising a manuscript I'd like to finish soon (and I have two more in line waiting.)

Yes, the birds and dogs hit the fan Saturday.

Amria barely made it into her test on time. I was parking the car and ran in and couldn't find the room. I kept texting Stephanie, "Which room is it?" She kept texting me "We're in room 006. " But we had no bars in the basement of Gardner Hall. So by the time I found the room, I ended up listening to Amria's performance from the hallway because you can't enter during performances. Then when we got outside, Stephanie's and my phones started buzzing like crazy as all our texts finally made it through.

People keep telling me that when the kids are grown up and move out, we'll miss these days.

But once again, in the end, it all worked out.

• Aarim did well in his events, running at my alma mater, Kearns High
• Stephanie had time to run on the treadmill
• Tian Tian had fun bowling
• Amria did very well in her piano test and had fun at her activity
• I assume Miara fell off the rock OK, but I don't think I've seen her since Saturday, so I'm not sure
• I spent about an hour writing
• We enjoyed Taiwanese food at the Hong's house and saw the Leavitt's cute baby

So even though we try hard to schedule well, sometimes life plops on us all at once, but we manage to survive.

Birthdays, Birds and Burns

I've resisted starting a blog because most people quit after a few postings, which is probably what will happen with me. But I'll give it a try and this first posting will explain why this blog is called what it is.

There's a Chinese idiom 雞飛狗跳, which roughly translated, means, "flying chickens and jumping dogs", and describes an out-of-control situation where everything and everyone is going crazy. This sort of describes our family life sometimes, and probably many of yours. But I find that despite all the busy activities, things usually work out well in the end, especially when the family pulls together to help. The following is a good example.

Last Monday afternoon, we made last-minute plans (we don't have any other type) to have Grandma and Grandpa over for dinner and a small party for Rami's tenth birthday. Stephanie scrambled to make a simple dinner of Costco potstickers and Costco pizza (to which I'd added Costco spinach and Costco artichokes) while Aarim helped shuttle Amria to and from piano lessons while everyone helped get the house in order while I sat at work hoping all was going well.

After an initial exciting moment when Grandpa explained to Rami that they'd brought him some presents but his birthday wasn't actually until the next day and Rami misunderstood and started crying and we had to explain he'd still get his presents that day, we had a nice dinner. As a child with Down Syndrome, Rami sometimes perceives things differently than other people.

Rami enjoyed opening all his presents and thanking Grandpa for each of them, even though some were from us. He even got a toy dog that looks just like Autumn. Then we brought cupcakes with ten candles and Rami blew out each one individually and he was really happy.

After that, Amria put together more cupcakes and candles for Grandma's upcoming birthday. Stephanie tried helping her, but she said, "Mom, I'm twelve years old, I can do this myself." Then she entered the room and everyone sang, ". . . happy birthday dear Rami . . . " "No, this is for Grandma!" "Oh, . . . dear Grandma . . . " I recorded it while Stephanie snapped pictures, and she bumped into the bird cage causing Tiki and Chi Chi to fly all around the room. Then Autumn saw the cupcakes and jumped all over the place trying to get them. And Amria hurriedly put the cupcakes down and yelled out, "Mom, I burned my finger."

But in the end, we all had a good time and ate potstickers and cupcakes and opened presents and put aloe vera on Amria's finger. And the soaring birds returned to their cage while the leaping dog gnawed her rawhide bone.