Physical Therapy and pumpkin pie for Dad's birthday

I went to Physical Therapy for the first time last week. The therapist was concerned about my lack of flexibility and told me that before we could work on strengthening the muscles around my left knee, we'd have to start with flexibility. He gave me a big white foam roller and prescribed a whole regimen of stretches for me to do multiple times per day. After a week of diligently doing the stretches, I felt a bit better, but still pretty tight.

At our second visit, he recommended some additional stretches but added a few strengthening exercises. Here are a couple photos I had him take of me to serve as reference when I'm at home trying to remember the proper position.

Seated stretch

Simple stair-stepper, made out of an old phone book

Mom sent me a picture this week that really had me puzzled. I've included it below. There were a couple colorful sections, and written on one was, "Mark was here... July 15th, 2001. Exactly one week before my 16th birthday!"

I vaguely remembered having written this, but couldn't remember where it was. Turns out, it was written on the carpet pad in my parents' downstairs bedroom at their house in Provo. We had to replace the carpet pad down there all those years ago when they had been having some moisture problems. She sent me this picture because she had begun a remodel of the room, which is the room where our boys always sleep while in Provo.

Carpet pad

Well, Thursday was Dad's 71st birthday. In usual fashion, we had pumpkin pie for dessert. It's a tradition that I hope we always do. Emmie got in on the action this year and enjoyed her pie. Luke, as always, polished his off in no time and was asking for more. Logan, however, was somewhat hesitant and merely picked at his pie a little bit. Not a huge pumpkin pie fan.

I wonder what Dad would think of my family and our life. We were just barely starting out in Texas when he passed away. I hadn't even found a great place to get a chocolate shake yet! Luke was a little (big) pipsqueak, just seven months old when Dad passed away. We've come a long way and lived a lot of life since May 2009. We sure do miss him, but we talk about him often, and I think the kids will have a sense of his closeness even though they never really knew him.
 

Emmie enjoying some birthday pie

This slice is for you, Dad!

Logan, being a good sport about it.

Luke with a face that says, "Where'd my pie go!?!"

msh

Dad's 70th birthday!

Even though it's a day full of emotions, I love September 25th.

And of course, September 25th means pumpkin pie!

Doesn't that look good?

This was Emmelise's first September 25th. She was a pretty happy seven-month old. It didn't escape me, though, that Dad passed away the day Luke turned seven months old. Thinking about who Luke and Logan are now in comparison to Emmelise, the seven-month old, it blows my mind. They've turned into fun little boys with very distinct personalities. I wish Dad could be here to play with them and see them. And of course, I wish they knew him, too.

Happy Birthday Papa Rich!

All smiles from the baby

msh

TBT: Rivertrip July 1994

This post could be so much longer than it's actually going to be. While I only have a handful (okay, maybe two handfuls?) of memories from that week in July 1994 when Dad took Brian and me with him on a trip to ride the rapids of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, I could probably write many pages about those memories and the significance of some of them.

Tonight, though, I will let it suffice to say that this trip which we took just one week after my ninth birthday, stands out in my memory as one of the most fun, exciting, and cherished experiences I can recall. Five or six days of riding the river and camping with my dad and brother. It was a great time, and I hope to some day revisit the Middle Fork of the Salmon river, perhaps with my own sons, to re-live that week.

Just last month, while visiting Utah for our yearly summer trip back, Mom got me set up with her slide digitizer and a few sheets of slides from that trip. Of course, most of the pictures were of us kids or the other participants or the river since the whole reason we went was for Dad to take photographs for advertising and brochures. But he did show up in a few photos, the best of which I have included below.

This picture makes me happy. Makes me miss Dad more than I usually do and wish I could have recorded him retelling his memories from that week so I'd have more than my few scarce memories. But I have what I can remember, and now I have some photos to go with it. And for that I'm grateful.

msh

The Day After Thanksgiving

It's the day after Thanksgiving, so we've been busy this morning setting up our few Christmas decorations including a small tree with lights, a snowglobe, and some holiday candles. We also pulled out this familiar little metal top from Grandma Jessie's. Luke is big enough now to know how to make it work, and besides putting it in his mouth, I think he's got the idea! I love the way he flicks his little fingers to make the top spin!

Speaking of the day after Thanksgiving, last year I was in a Humanities class, and we were studying different styles of art, including Surrealism. We had to do a project where we make a piece of art in one of the styles, so I decided to do a surrealist painting in the style of Rene Magritte. You'd recognize his paintings in a second (the guy in a bowler hat with an apple over his face or the pipe with a plaque reading, "This is not a pipe"). Anyway, I had a dream a day or two earlier where I was sitting in the parking lot at Carrabba's and I had my backpack open with books spread out all over. Someone came up to me and started talking to me, and while I was distracted, another woman stole my wallet from my backpack. I remember that there was a lot going on and a lot I had to do, but because my wallet had just been taken, all I could think about was trying to get it back. So that's what I painted. The man in the bowler hat looking at a giant canvas where the only thing visible is a wallet with a pair of wings, flying away.

Of course I commissioned Dad to help with the painting. We had a great time, the day after Thanksgiving last year, drawing sketches of our ideas, studying lots of Magritte's paintings to see what themes he used , mixing paints and cleaning brushes in the fishbowl, taking a break for leftover turkey and potatoes with gravy, turning up the music really loud in the studio and whistling along with it and loving it all. We spent almost the whole day working on that painting. I had bought three canvases, so I painted my own version while Dad did his own similar version (same subjects and colors, but leaps and bounds more technical and artistic). Here is a picture I took of my painting (which has been sitting on our mantle, above the fireplace since we moved to Texas):

We painted the background and sky first. The clouds came next with the giant white canvas. Then we painted the trees that look like individual leaves. We finished with the main character, the man in the bowler hat who represents the artist, and the flying wallet. Dad spent so much time on his that he didn't finish that day. I asked him about it later, and he told me he had since finished his trees, and all he had left was to paint the man in the bowler hat (himself) and the stolen wallet. Unfortunately, Dad passed away before he ever finished the painting. His painting and mine look very similar except for that one striking difference: his painting is missing the artist, and it will remain unfinished forever now that the real artist is gone. I hope to frame and hang my painting with his unfinished painting someday to always remember the attention he always gave to his kids. I'll never forget that day after Thanksgiving 2008 when Dad and I spent the whole day together, doing something he loved so much.

(It was his idea to have me sign it like Magritte signed his paintings in the bottom right corner, but slightly modified: "Mark-ritte.")