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.