Cohesive Pieces: iphone dump: a lot of wrestling (with a little ice & poetry)

Wrestling started. . . it has sort of taken over our lives lately. Tonight is meet # 3 of 4 this week and if its a day with no meet, then there is practice from after school til 7:30 between all the different schedules for the different ages.

But, look at all these 6-9 year-olds doing pushups? It's good for them. We'll have normal dinnertime routines again sometime soon.

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Ice rescue training last weekend. . .

We got to wear these fabulous suits. And attempt to do things I cannot do even without gigantic red martian fingers: tie tricky knots.

The suits are much more fun in the actual ice water:

Sort of amazing actually.

And these two are Michael's photos:

A very flattering photo of both Eldon and me. We surely would inspire confidence showing up like this should anyone need any rescuing.

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Right after the training, we were back in the car and over to Plains to catch the second half of the kids wrestling.

All the photos of the actual wrestling are on my real camera, but I do have many photos of what seems to be the key to surviving long wrestling meets with many children.

iPods.

or iPads. or even iPhones.

Really any combination of the three will work.

But, the smaller your child to device ratio, the better.

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Of course we had a few birthdays this week. Mom's was on Valentines day and Dylan's on Saturday. So, the usual after-church Sunday dinner had a bit of an Angry Birds/ birthday theme.

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Dev made salmon and even a couple lobster tails for dinner Wednesday.

My kids thought they were being punished. They opened a can of tuna fish.

I don't know what's wrong with them.

Lex did, however, like the challenge of trying to get the meat out of the lobster.

As long as I didn't make him eat it.

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I went to shower in Azia's bathroom before work yesterday since the huge windstorm had once again blew out the pilot light for the water heater for my bathroom.

Not only does she not only have any shampoo in the shampoo dispenser in her shower, she (or someone else who lives here) has filled it with rocks. This is especially ambitious since we don't really have any rocks around here.

My children are trying to make me crazy.

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The kids all had Thursday and Friday off school this week. I did not.

So, Thursday as I was leaving, this is what the two younger boys were doing:

I asked them if they were going to take care of each other while I was gone.

Lex quickly told me, "I am in charge!" (I think he gets tired of my usual way of leaving the teenager, rather than the 4-year-old, in charge when I leave.)

"You are?" I asked.

"Yes! I am!" he said, jumping out of his blanket and onto the coffee table.

"I am in charge, and in my underwear!"

At least the underwear part was accurate. Possibly the other part too. He is pretty bossy.

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We had a couple students from Big Sky come do a Slam poetry workshop at the college yesterday.

They did a really great job, despite every technical difficulty possible and a tough audience.

They are pretty amazing for high school students. I'm excited to see their own performances next month in Missoula.

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And, back down to Arlee for more wrestling Thursday night.

Both the boys did really well in this tournament. Israel was 4-0 Tuesday night, all pins.

Zoran wrestled last night and was 3-0. Also all pins.

This is apparently as close and Canyon and Zoran can get to just looking at me and smiling so I could get a picture of the buddies.