Wordless Wednesday

An Innerlock Studios short film

Tyler got a new video camera for Christmas, and on Christmas day, he worked on a little short film with some of his cousins. He's appreciate if you like and subscribe to Innerlock Studios! Enjoy!

Happy birthday baby Theresa!

The newest baby in our family just turned one! Baby Theresa had her first birthday party today, and she had fun! She's a very happy baby, and super friendly. She loved all the attention and friends at her house to celebrate. Bethany and Mike had no idea so many would come to the party, and it was a full house! They put on a very nice party for their little sweetheart. 

What's a first birthday without cake? Really, what more is there to do at a first birthday? Theresa was curios about her cake, made one weird face when she first tasted the sweetness, but then she dug in!

Remember when we were having a first birthday party for Ava? Man, does time fly or what? I can't believe I ever made that fancy, 6 layer rainbow cake. That was pretty awesome, I must say.

 Happy first birthday Theresa! You are a lucky girl to have so many people to love on you!

Happy 16th Josh!

When I met Dave, he had a little 10 month old nephew named Josh. Now, Josh is sixteen years old and has a car. When Josh was 10 months old, he was the only grandchild. Now there are 9 of them. He started this whole thing, and I can't imagine a better role model for all of the younger cousins. He's such a great kid. Smart, kind, funny, hard working, determined...we're all very proud of the young man he's becoming. Tina and Tim threw a surprise birthday party for him at their house last night and it was a fun night. He was definitely surprised! 

This is a horrible picture, but they can't all be perfect! 

Another thing I love about Josh is how good he is to his little cousins. He's always tossing the little girls around, lets them climb all over him, and makes them laugh the whole time. Thanks for being such a good kid Josh! Drive safe out there and make good choices!

Some trapeze firsts....

Do you see anything missing from this picture? Unless you pay close attention to my blog or are up on your trapeze, you  might not notice--but it's a big deal! I caught my first ever trick without safety lines! I can't believe Ashley trusts me enough to through a trick out of lines to me. I wasn't expecting it at all, it's not something we really talked about ahead of time. As she started heading up the ladder, she said "do you want to try a straddle out?" I thought about it for a second and decided I was ready. Rod was there to make sure the timing looked good, and it was a smooth catch! So exciting!

Here's the video...

The other first today was that I caught my layout with Rod out of lines. I've been throwing it out all month since Brian was here last, but hadn't gotten up the nerve to take it to catch. Today was a day for firsts, so here it is! It wasn't the smoothest catch, but it's a catch. It'll take a little bit of repetition on this one to get over the nerves. The good thing about this trick out of lines is that it's a safe trick to miss. If we miss the catch, I just land on my back. I'm glad to have this first out of the way!

We had a great practice today, and as we were all starting to wrap up, George said "before you all leave, let's all put on a belt and try a trick we've never done before." What a great idea! Rod did a "man splits" (out of lines no less), Nadia did a half time layout, George tried a pelicano, Ashley tried to invent a new trick, and I did a double. Ok, so I've done a double before, just a couple times (4-5 times in Turks and once or twice back home), but I think it still counts. It actually wasn't half bad! I guess all that work on fixing my layout translated well. It was such a great practice! It's days like this that I'm just blown away at my good fortune of finding this trapeze family. 

Game night

As I mentioned before, Jason and Janae have been in town for almost 2 weeks now. We've seen them quite a bit in the evenings--shared many an Instant Pot dinners. On one of their last nights here, we played some Raspberry Pi (old school video games) and Apples to Apples. Janae was trying to keep up with Tyler on Tetris, but he is getting pretty good! We had some fun nights together!

Catching the big guy

I was up in the catch trap tonight, and Rod was getting ready to do a trick. Now, obviously I can't catch Rod. He weights about 85 pounds more than I do. As a joke, someone told him to throw his trick as a timer to me (meaning we do everything on time but don't actually catch it). It was pretty darn funny. Make sure your volume is turned up because the sound I make tell you how I felt about 215 pounds flying at me. I couldn't even make myself keep my hands out to pretend like we were going to catch. I don't need to be a hero--no need to catch the big guys. 

My new normal

Don't freak out, it's really not a big deal....but, this is pretty much the new normal look for my legs. Catching another human being while hanging upside down from my legs can be painful if things don't go smoothly--and they don't always go smoothly. The metal catch bar actually sits right there on the front of my thighs when I'm locked into the catch position, and when I catch someone, I slide down just a little bit and the pressure causes this bruise. It's mostly just on my right leg for some reason. The left gets little bruises, but nothing like this. Ok, so it's not always like this, but I'd say I have bruises at least 50% of the time. Circus hurts!

Zoo day with Jason & Janae

Jason and Janae have been in town for a week or so, and they asked if they could have a day with the kids. After some discussion, they decided that they'd take them to the zoo for the day. It was really nice for them to spend the day together, and it sounds like they had a good time! Janae sent a few pictures afterwards, and I almost forgot to include them when I was finally getting my blog updated. Here they are!

Tyler's new room

Since Ava got to refresh her room with a new paint color, Tyler wanted to get in on the fun too. He and I did some of the work while Dave was golfing one day. We painted the edges white around the ceiling, floor, window and closet. Dave finished it up by painting all of the gray. Gray is a hard color to choose, and anyone who's painted knows. We had about 3 or 4 different sample grays on the wall before we decided on this one. It's a good color and really brightens up his room. He has too much furniture for his small room though, so it was a little tough to figure out how to orient everything. We would like to get him a full sized bed, and preferably one that has storage below. He currently has two dressers (one in his closet), and it'd be nice to be able to get rid of one of them. It was a little sad packing away some of the previous Tyler phases, but it was time to put away the model trains and space shuttles. Our kids are growing up!

Pete Souza book event

My mom and I went to the greatest event today! We got to spend an hour or so listening to President Obama's photographer talk about his 8+ years of photographing his historic presidency. When I heard this book was coming out, I pre-ordered a copy for myself. I later heard that Pete Souza was going to be speaking at the Mesa Arts Center and signing books. Of course my mom wanted to go too, so that ended up being my Christmas present to her. The problem was that she went back to ND for Christmas, and wasn't flying back into Mesa until the day of the event! Her flight was to get in at about 1:00, and the doors opened for the event at 2 pm. Since she flies Allegiant, we were aware that there was a chance she wouldn't make it in time. Even if she landed on time, it would take awhile to get her luggage and get to where she needed to be. We were a little worried about it, but figured that even if she was late, it was still worth trying to get there. Turns out we got lucky! Her flight actually landed a half hour early (when does that ever happen?!), and she made it in plenty of time. I got there early and secured some great seats, and she met me shortly after. I hadn't seen her in over a month, so it was great a great place to reunite. I think she was also glad to be out of -30 degree ND temperatures. Isn't it great to see these three smiling faces! 

Pete Souza showed many of his iconic photos and told background stories about the images. I could have listened to his stories all day! How amazing it must have been to experience those 8 years, essentially as a fly on the wall during all of the most monumental moments that happened during that time--and during all the not monumental moments. Some of my favorite images are the ones of Obama and his family together because the show how genuinely kind and loving he is. It was almost hard to look through the images in this book because of how different it is now. I never knew I could miss a president so much. What an amazing man. 

We brought our books with us, so we were able to get them signed after the show. This is such a special memento of those wonderful 8 years. We can look back through those pages and think of a time when our country was in a much happier place. Man, I miss #44. 

It was a great day! I'm so glad mom made it back in time to enjoy this special experience with me. 

Last minute homework

Tyler does pretty good at getting his homework done on time. On our drive to school today, however, he realized that he had some Spanish homework that he thought might be due today. Turns out it wasn't luckily, but I guess it's better to be safe than have mom harping on you about bad grades sorry. 

Accident prone

This little girl is a bit accident prone. She has definitely had more injuries than her brother, and most of them have been pretty silly. She broke her arm jumping off a swing, busted open her eyebrow walking into the kitchen, and now she possibly broke (or really badly bruised) her finger on a sit-down scooter thing at school (and I just got a call while writing this on 2/23 that she was walking backward at school and when she turned around, she ran into a tree and scraped her chin and got a bloody nose!). Dad fixed up her finger with a popsicle stick splint and some tape. Good as new!

I had to take this picture of her in the bath because it reminded me of this one from just a couple years ago....be careful Ava!

Out for a ride

We went for a little bike ride today and stopped to play in some green grass along the way. Happy kids after school on a beautiful winter day!

Sleeping in the closet

Grandma Claire has a closet under her stairs where she stores all of her Christmas decorations. Twice a year, this closet is completely empty, and the kids love to camp out in there. When she took all the decorations out, Braden got to have his closet camping experience, and Grandma promised Ava and Lacy they could sleep over on January 6, which is the day before she puts away all the decorations each year (the Epiphany). It won't be much longer that they cam comfortably sleep in the closet together, but until then, they'll cozy up together and enjoy it! Don't they look comfy?!

Those clouds though

Simultaneous new tricks

Since I took two new tricks out of lines within a couple of days, I put these two videos together side by side. Exciting times! 

Trapeze filled days

Our amazing coach, Brian, has been in town again for the past couple weeks and it's we've had some great training. When he was here in October, I couldn't believe how lucky we were to have such high quality, dedicated coaching. When I heard he wanted to come back, I was blown away. We all benefited so much from his coaching last time, and it would be great to pick up where we left off at the end of October. So much happened during those 2 weeks (and as you all know, I'm writing this two months after the fact--I'm SO behind!), so it's sort of hard to remember it all. The highlights were taking two new tricks out of lines (penny roll and layout), catching some new tricks (uprise shoot!), and having Susan in town from Colorado.

Having Brian here over the holidays was nice, even though our families probably didn't think it was a great plan. Since I'm off work for 10 days over Christmas, it left a lot more flexibility to when we could fly. I managed to fly 11 out of 15 days, only missing one or two practices. Ava said "Mom! You can't go to trapeze on Christmas Eve," but I said, "why not?" Thanks to my awesome family, we had everything ready for that night--house cleaned, food prep done...might as well get some flying in!

Before Brian came to town, I had been working on a penny roll. I was doing a few things wrong with the timing (surprise surprise), but Brian got that fixed pretty quickly. It wasn't long before he said I could go and and do it out of lines. It's a fun trick to do to the net, but I'm not crazy about catching it. I don't think this will be added to my regular catching routine, but it's another one for the list.

I worked hard to get my layout consistent. It's a foundation trick that is easy enough to do, but hard to do correctly. It's never been one of my favorite tricks for that reason. I never really had anyone teach me how to do it right, and while mine wasn't horrible, it was inconsistent and had several things wrong. It's definitely not perfect now either, but after 2 weeks straight of working on it with an actual coach, it's so much better!

Susan flies with a group called Imperial Fliers in Denver (here's their You Tube channel). It's the oldest flying trapeze club in the country. I flew there when Dave and I went to Denver a few years back. I wrote about it here. It was the first and only time I flew to a lady catcher--and look at me now! I am one! Susan is my trapeze roll model. If I could emulate anyone's style or ability, it's Susan. She does basic tricks beautifully and perfectly every time. She flies very clean and tight, returning every trick back to the board. She's so fun to watch, and is such a sweet person. I really enjoyed flying with her. She's also a big fan of flying at our rig. We do have a pretty great thing going for us here, and other flyers know a good thing when they see it!

Susan threw me my first ever uprise shoot. It was such a fun trick to catch! The flyer is coming at the catcher from up above the bar, rather than below the bar like most tricks. Here's a screenshot of it, and the video as well. It was a really smooth catch too!

My aunt Karen came out to watch practice one day and she took a few pictures while she was there. 

Susan was glad to be out of the Denver cold. We had some amazing weather for her! 

She got in a on a few practices with us while she was here. She had originally planned on coming a couple weeks before, but something came up and she had to reschedule. It worked out well that she came when she did so she could meet Brian too. I know she'll be back again, and look forward to flying with and catching her again soon. Another benefit of trapeze=making new flying friends around the country. 

On Brian's last day here, which was actually my first day back to work, Ashley and I took a couple hours off to do one last class. At this point, I had gotten my layout to be very consistent and was feeling pretty good about it. I took my belt off and put it back in the shed because I had to get going, and Brian said "Oh you're leaving? I was going to have you try one more thing." I asked what he wanted me to do, and he said he wanted me to do a layout out of lines. Even though the trick had been super consistent, I hadn't even thought about taking it out. I was a little nervous, but definitely wanted to do it out while Brian was there and while I had his blessing.

Here is a video of my first ever out of lines layout....not the best, but the nerves came into play a little bit. It was so exciting! This is an important trick for any flyer to have in their repetoire, and I'm so grateful to have had the coaching to make it happen. 

These two weeks working with Brian have been so great. Since he was here over the holidays, our group was pretty small most days. We got a ton of one-on-one attention and amazing coaching.  On New Year's Day, we ended our practice toasting to a great 2018 with mimosas that I brought with me. What a fantastic way to kick off the new year. I'm so fortunate to have this in my life.

Endless thanks going out to George for making this happen again. We are all so appreciative of every minute of the coaching and flying. 

Happy New Year!

It's 2018! Tina had all of the kids over at her house for a kid's party, and they had a great time! Dave and I went to a party at Kathy & Joe's for a little while, but honestly, both of just wanted to go home and drink a glass of wine together on the couch in our comfy clothes. We managed to get a photo before we got into our sweats to play old school video games. It was a perfectly lovely evening with my love. Hard to believe we're heading into 2018! Let's hope it's a year of happiness, good health and peace, and filled with blogloads of new memories together. Lots of love to you all!