You're Gold, baby. Solid gold.

Sunday: work, sleep, made a thank you card with photos from seven years of hockey, packed for the goodbye picnic, photographed Bucky with his friends, made a feast of watermelon when we returned home while Oly packed for moving to Canada on Saturday, the where he's going to play hockey talk before work (it never gets old).

Love With Your Soul

I forgot how much Sun Valley felt like home.

Jobs Fill Your Pocket

Adventure fills your soul...

Happiness is...

when you realize your kids are turning out to be really good people!

Thursday: oatmeal, AGT, watermelon and chicken salad, hockey, training center, scootering, sleepover at Gavin's.

When the Icy boys finished the Elk Cup at last and Max stood watch with a duster over the house, I went out alone for laundry detergent of all things, since he's finished his laundry. And some cash back for his late night date and snow cones.

Close to one, he glowed from under his hat inside his car. The way he aced his final accounting assignment and his GPA to be able to qualify to get in to the accounting program commenced straight away. We drove to the gas station from home where he informed me he'd had his oil changed and bought new brakes with his paycheck from this week and took turns visiting the joys of responsibility while he gave me a ride to work for a meeting since Max had my car and tried to offer him some food. Eating used to be a race but today he borrowed gardening gloves instead to go help his friends parents with some yard work..

Much 💞

We left Sun Valley with sore legs, stripey suntans, and images of endless sky and green earth calling us back.

Good ole boys

And our night ended with the Boys and Alaska hats from Grandpa Buck.

Always Take The Scenic Route

Pioneer day: pancakes, Kneadery: Boys = bacon, bags packed, short walk to historic downtown Ketchum, skate trip with Darlin, epic view of Sun Valley, Johnny G's for lunch before hitting the road.

SV

After breakfast, we paddled in the lake for an hour then rollerbladed over to the skating rink in Sun Valley.

Glass half full always

I love...

Traveling 

Long roads with mountains 

Windy days

Children 

Laughter 

Cooler weather

having wanderlust

berries and cold water

Overnights with sisters

Window shopping 

Bright cities

Nature

Woods

Being nostalgic 

Hugs

Long walks

Smiles

Enjoying delicious food

Drinking hot chocolate 

Flowers

Bookstores

Reading books

Vintage Photos

Before and After

The eighteen months of intensive smile making were close to done. One more month before the retainers go from all day back to regular worn at night. After the oil and A/C was changed, we went to Sun Valley where we spent hours running through skate parks in the summer sun.

In love with every minute of life...

They said it was the hottest day of summer, I felt cooler at the rink. First teaching this afternoon and later on for Marko's game. He hoisted his orange jersey over his narrow shoulders next to the ice. Two cameras were in his face. His friend walked up behind us and he pleaded for me to hurry up and take the picture. “One more,” I replied. Then they were off. Summer league one more game, just like that.

Scootering

Evening came with a patter of scooter wheels that fell around us like a heartbeat. The laughter rang down the hill enveloping the street with a soft echo. It was my favorite kind of night and I thought about making popcorn and reading a few pages of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, but stayed put watching America's Got Talent curled up on the couch.

Gotta Catch Them All

They said it was the most downloaded app of summer, I believed them. We moved slow likes slugs trailing a group of Pokemon chasers from the park to ice cream and back, it was so different to see so many at the park compared to last year when there were only a few people at most. Still, we dined outside under a partially shaded canopy and talked about not much at all. Diving into water, as cold as cold be, was surely in our thoughts.

Heart

After the hockey playing and crowd cheering went down, I put myself to bed then sat in the living room for a late dinner. Tortilla chips and salad for me, pork burrito for Max. He played like I've never seen him play for HS, He's in Love (Presley was there). A new old hangout date. I remembered skating to Linda Ronstadt's version of When You Wish Upon a Star in Sun Valley and falling in love at 17.

Just Love

It wasn’t until after dinner when the sky lit up like a summer peach that the heat finally broke. I lay down on the back porch with the cool breeze against my back watching the curtains billow in a slight breeze and the light press through. Then I walked to get ice cream with my boys and came home to find two police cars blocking off the road with lights on and telling the kids inside to keep their hands up. I'm not sure who they were or what they'd don't but apparently the undercover police had tracked them from Midvale.

Do what you can with what you have where you are

I read chapter after chapter of Winter Street before and after Seven Peaks. Hilderbrand’s haunting black and white images of the Nantucket landscape had been in my mind for weeks. I imagined her driving a jeep down back roads of an island as she drove from Boston down to Hyannis and The Ferry. The cesarean section of twins with a prolapsed cord process was a painstaking one that required an O. R. packed with drugs so potent not to mention explosive we kept the oxygen on and babies out of life flight.

Squad

Over the past year, I worked on two projects that left me wondering what’s next. You’ve likely caught a glimpse of the first, a 365 day photo project documenting my daily stories, posted here. For the second project, Labor and Delivery, I created a goal about the social and emotional impact on childbearing communities. I wove a network of positive examples (known as Peer tutoring which were historically used for teaching) and I shot a film over the course of a year to document life and living. One side of the coaching was open so I could learn from it. The other side displayed the CSS.

Max has exhibited his rebellion in two ways. The first was in Dating Presley where he received his first ear piercing from his friend Jenna to show the left ear with accompanying ice, stud, redness, and swelling of the making of the finished effect. The second was at the Drive In movie tonight, Secret Life Of Pets and Tarzan where he held another layer of contempt within the teenage environment of not texting me back. Thanks to all who helped support the Mahalo three year anniversary (including Jack, MHS student body officer, Maxi boy, Marko, Easton, Justin, the Jr. Mahalo and Sam) and to those of you who followed along on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

Beyond showing my work progression, I found the daily practice of telling a story in words and images to transform my life the most. Being part of the L and D in IHC along with a number of skating clinics helped me see a larger vision for new work that includes travel and large group training. I’ll write more about our Colorado trip soon.

Until then, wishing you safe travels. Happy Mahalo Day.

Swingin' Summer

Three photos from a recent trip to Monet's backyard where we visited with family and a few of her friends, dropped off hamburgers on the grill at dinnertime, and ate chips and salsa and drank watermelon smoothies in time before they watched fireworks.