now reading, The Book Thief

Beach's b-day trivia game with answers

Beach has saved her mom’s life 2 times by doing what?

1. Stopping her from texting and driving
2. Stopping her from falling off a cliff
3. Stopping her from stepping on a rattlesnake
4. Stopping her from walking in front of a bus

When Beach was 4 years old she:

1. Tried to rescue shrimp from a buffet by putting them in her pockets so she could let them go
2. Used to sink to the bottom of the pool and yell at the lifeguards if they tried to rescue her
3. Had a whole imaginary family that one day up and moved to Hawaii and she never talked about them again.
4. All of the above

At the first gym meet where they gave out medals what made Beach cry?

1. She didn’t get any
2. All her medals were the same color- gold
3. She wanted ribbons for her dog
4. She only got one

What food item does Beach eat most often following a gym meet?

1. Nachos
2. Cotton candy
3. Salted soft pretzel
4. A hotdog

When Beach was 3 she climbed in a laundry basket with 2 kittens and they all fell over a ledge and down a flight of concrete steps splitting open Beach’s head. Right away she:

1. Started yelling for help
2. Decided it was kind of fun and did it again
3. Started yelling at the kitten because she thought it was their fault
4. Started cleaning up the laundry

Beach’s first eye patch fabric was:

1. Camo
2. Dogs
3. Pink power ranger
4. What patch mom? I don’t remember needing an eye patch!

When Beach was little she would only wear what?

1. Denim Overalls
2. Tie-dye clothing
3. Pink dresses
4. Camo shorts

What was Beach’s first favorite toy?

1. A piece of granite named rocky
2. A plastic jellyfish
3. The dustpan
4. All of the above
5. None of these, she didn’t play favorites

Beach has a list of adults in case anything ever happens to her's. What adult is her top choice?

1. coach Dan
2. Alexis, her older sister
3. coach Morgan
4. Jeff, Sophie's dad
5. big coach Derick

At Beach’s first dentist appointment:

1. She bit the dentist
2. She refused to open her mouth
3. Her dad got her kicked out
4. Nothing happened it went perfectly fine because dentist appointments aren’t scary at all

When Beach was in preschool she didn’t want to do what?

1. Learn to write numbers so she made up a secret counting code
2. Write her name so she changed her name to only her initials EB
3. Ride a bike so she flattened all the tires
4. Take turns at the art station so she pretended to be deaf instead of blind

Before Beach was a gymnast she was also a:

1. Soccer player
2. Swimmer
3. Rock climber
4. None of the above
5. All of the above

When Beach was little her favorite tv show was:

1. Law and Order, she liked the music
2. Mr. Rogers, she liked the creepy puppets
3. The Comfy Couch, because someone had to like it
4. Dragon Tales, because she had a crush on the brother

Beach is undefeated in the board game:

1. Scrabble
2. Monopoly
3. Memory
4. Parcheesi

Which of these things can Beach’s dog NOT do?

1. Fetch
2. Shake
3. Be around children
4. Rollover

Beach’s favorite color is______

1. Perfect green
2. Light pink
3. Blue
4. She doesn’t have one
5. It’s so complicated I couldn’t figure it out

What is Beach’s favorite dinosaur?

1. T Rex
2. Triceratops
3. Brontosaurus
4. Utah Velociraptor
   
   

When Beach won the all-around at Lady Luck her first year what did she call home to tell her dad about?

1. The horse statue in the lobby
2. The chicken strips at the diner
3. How nice the girls were on the other team
4. That she found a perfect little rock at the bottom of the hot tub

Beach is so good at making friends at meets, what item did a gymnast from another gym give her to prove their new friendship?

1. her brother’s phone number
2. A pink cookie
3. Glazed Donut
4. A chocolate bar

Beach is the only member of her family who?

1. Related to everyone in her family
2. Wears glasses
3. Has blonde hair
4. Who hates mushrooms

Beach does not like:

1. Hats on boys
2. Dressers in bedrooms
3. Orange cats
4. Wallpaper

The kids in Beach’s neighborhood call her”

1. The Girl
2. Edison
3. The homeschooler
4. She’s at the gym so much they don’t know she even exists

When did Beach learn to ride a bike without training wheels?

1. Never she still uses them
2. When she was 5 like everyone else
3. When she was 3 because she is a super freak
4. When she was 10 because her mom is overprotective and thinks biking is dangerous

Which of these crazy things has Beach done?

1. Kissed an alligator
2. Run away from home
3. Stolen a horse and hid it away
4. Had a 3 legged pet skunk
5. All of the above
6. None of the above

Beach's b-day party

Little Giants at play

Fun and games on the floor

 Beach's sweet mates Pay and Sage designed a scavenger hunt for her to complete in order to find her gifts.  How amazing was that?!?! It ended at the bar trench pit so that is where we stayed to open gifts.

Sophie's Birthday Video for Beach

 This little one and her sister came up from Jessie's party with Jessie to join the big kids at the gym.

 

We even had 2 out of 3 of Beach's siblings come to play.

The difference between adults and kids in the gym.

 Too cool for school.

The look on Beach's face when BC does a not so bad leap on beam.

Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us!

baby J's party

Baby J's proper birthday party, bounce house included at her Pop's and Nana's house. 

 Her Nana baked 48 pink unicorn cupcakes at Baby J's request. 

Happy 4th Birthday, Baby J!!!

little giants study session

On Monday Beach spent a little bit of the afternoon wandering through the Sugar House shopping district.  She told me she wished she had her homework with her so she could have studied in the coffee shop.  She thought it looked fun.  

FUN? Okay.  On Wednesday, we picked Sophie up from school and I dropped them off at the coffee shop by the gym for a study session before gym.  I'm not sure how much studying got done but it looks like a promising step towards educational independence for Beach.

snapshots of me

I stood at the counter watching the black and white pages pop from the machine.  The weight of the notebook a phantom in my hand. I had found it while waiting to be helped by the man at the print shop.

It was tucked away on a shelf.  The cover, a waxy wash of blue, pages dots, not lines, an open spine, and only $10.  But still, with so many expenses this month I told myself I didn't need it.  I didn't need another notebook.

Over the weekend I thought about it.  The smell.  The blueness.  The clean slate.  Sunday at 5:55 I checked the prints shops hours- Sunday 12-6.

On Monday I struggled with the rumpled green bills inside my wallet.  I mentally tagged each one of them towards the desserts needs for Beach's birthday, for a proper gift for Baby J, towards the trip to the bounce house for her, and fresh vegetables we would be needing midweek.

No money for a notebook.

But on Tuesday morning I made an excuse to go to the post office and drove the print shop.  I found a blue notebook.  Rubbed the cover.  I opened it.  Shut it.  Turned it over and rubbed the back.  I put it back once but the second time I picked it up I carried to the counter.

"This one is my favorite," the man said.  Then he showed me its blueness, it's open spine, its grid, not lined pages. He was the same man who had helped me the week before.

When I got home I was too nervous to write in it.  I got out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote: Pieces of Me. Below that, I spaced out the words: Me, Family, School, House, Yard, Travel, and Work across the paper. Then I got to work adding in the details under each part.

When I was satisfied I took up the blue notebook.  Opened the first page and printed in 4 months of calendars and listed important events off to the side.  I skipped the second page but on the third, I carefully copied in the Pieces of Me. Adding artful accents and using 3 different colors of ink.

It wasn't until the late afternoon when I was standing on the summit that I realized it had been one week.  That last Tuesday I was not on top of a mountain.  I did not have a new blue notebook and a clean slate.  I was way out in the valley at the dentist's office closing old doors.

One week.

What divinity is this?

A naked dragon with granite bones

It sleeps like a cat coiled and still

but rises like a serpent

rolling to the sea

breaking the surface of the sky

with scales of red and yellow

and eyes of winter white

In that space, I have already hiked 2 hikes that mean more than miles to me. The Living Room is inside my soul.  It is my heart and my fears.  It holds pieces of my sister, of love, of loss, fire, and snow.

Elbow Fork is of another lifetime- and another love.  It is the fight I have been fighting for the past 3 or 4 years.  The fight to make it to higher ground.  It holds the sound of silence, ghosts of steamy breath, BC's hand outstretched, flannel, rain, and lightning.

As I hike I take snapshots of myself smiling at nothing and marvel at how much I am starting to look like ME.

The mountain breaks the October sky,

tearing at its white dress

ripping holes in its autumn peace

I could stay here in its whisper

rest in the wind

let the dog go feral like the trees

When I return from the mountain I gather all the notebooks from this past year and burn them in the yard in a nest of fallen leaves and narrow branches.  The flames blacken out the calendars with important events.  The dentist appoints littered like buckshot among them disappear.  The fire licks the pages; meal plans, medication schedules, soft food lists, chores, projects completed, words already written, gifts already bought and given. The notebooks burn.

I go inside and take up the blue book.  On the fourth page, I write.