April: the fourth month of the year, consisting of 30 days

"April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain"

T.S. Eliot

these are a few of my favorite things

We went to Payson and ran (well, walked) a 1 mile/5k "non-race". The point was to get people active, without having it be a competition. The girls were great- Megan even wanted to do the full 5k, so Kim and I continued with her, while Rusty stayed with Liz and Katie and played in the park. It was a lot of fun- and we even got these sweet medals at the end.

Liz doesn't like pictures. Can you tell?

Later that night, we did a bit of bedaubing:

...to make these pretty nifty yarn balls. You dip the yarn in glue and wrap it around a balloon. Once they're dry, you pop the balloon, leaving you with a whimsical little yarn ball to decorate with as your heart desires.

I love hanging out with my nieces. (Though I'm glad I can pass them off when they get too cranky.)

From the wise words of Dante Alighieri:

And here we both sat down to face the east,

to rest, as we surveyed all we had climbed--

a backward glance can often lift the heart.

..."But would you kindly tell me, if you please,

how much more climbing we must do: this peak

soars higher than my eyes can see." And he:

"This mount is not like others: at the start

it is most difficult to climb, but then,

the more one climbs the easier it becomes"

The Divine Comedy

quattuordecillion

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That right there is a quattuordecillion. Sometimes, I feel like I have this many things to do. Naturally, it's really quite a bit less. Probably about 970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 things less.

Yesterday, I decided to ignore all those things and take some time to go running in the canyon. It was one of those days that makes me realize, in the long run, none of this stress really matters.