Bike Race and Other Stuff

Ashton, Hunter, Isaac, Hattie and Sawyer ready to start the race

Jared's best man from our wedding, Derek, is really into mountain bike racing. He and his wife and four kids came down from Alpine for a race this weekend and Jared and Ashton and Isaac decided to do the race as well. With no training, they got in there and did pretty well on their first race and I think there will be a lot more mountain bike racing in their future! We had a great time with Derek's family hanging out at the race area and enjoying a lovely afternoon at the sand dunes - so great to be with another family we "click" with so well and talk about life and kids and work and ideas while our kids play so happily together.

Isaac, Eliza, Hattie and Sawyer loving the sand dunes

This week was Dr Seuss week at school so the kids had fun wearing their PJ's to school, doing mixed up clothes day (wearing things backwards, inside out, mismatched shoes and socks, clashing colors...) and crazy hair day. I thought crazy hair day could be everyone just going to school with their hair the way it always looks when they wake up (pretty darn wild bed head hair we get around here). But the kids had other things in mind. Eliza did her hair herself with tons of clips and Ashton and Isaac had Jared do elaborate hairdos requiring Isaac to hang upside-down off a stool while the hairspray "set" on his thin hair and Ashton yowled through getting spikes put into his hair (he's such a baby about anything to do with his hair - but he was the one who insisted on the spikes!).
Have I said on this blog yet how much I hate daylight savings time? I hate it. I really really hate it. What sort of crazy world do we live in that some group somewhere can decide unilaterally that everyone should change their clocks and mess with what time of day the sun comes up and goes down? Don't mess with nature, I say. And DON'T mess with my kids' sleep schedule!!! It was so nice to put the kids to bed when it was dark. It was so nice to get up when it was light. Now that's over. Sad sad day. I think we should all rebel. Who makes these decisions about daylight savings time? Who can we complain to? I've seriously contemplated moving to Arizona to avoid daylight savings time. How did the Arizonans get out of it?

And speaking of light, I'm totally perplexed by something: Why do most people seem to have all the blinds drawn in their houses all the time? I just don't get it. As I drive around, I've noticed that the vast majority of windows of homes I pass seem to be covered at all times of the day. Do people keep their lights on all day long? Why don't they open their blinds? Are they so worried about privacy? You can't even see into houses except at night when lights are on inside and even then, does anyone bother really looking into anyone else's windows? Maybe if everyone opened up all their blinds and used all the good daylight that's available, everyone would use so much less energy that there would no longer be a need to save energy through daylight savings and we could get rid of the whole stupid thing!

That's all for now.