Challenging

Birthdays are special. That is our family mantra. Just ask William and Romney and Bill (who foots the bill for the big ol' parties they enjoy every year.) Apparently, not every one feels you should just kick back and celebrate your arrival on the planet overdosing on gluttonous activities. Some weirdos think it is a good idea to challenge yourself on your birthday. Pushing yourself to your up-most physical capabilities. Setting crazy goals to reach using your age as a magic "challenge" number. I am not one of those people. My brother in law and sister are. He is the creator of this website: www.birthdaychallenge.com. He is also, unfortunately, injured this year. A landmark year, his 50th birthday.

My sweet sister is the best gift giver ever. Really. She can give some of the most thoughtful presents. I bow to her gift-giving prowess. With Edwards injured and unable to complete a birthday challenge for himself this year. She has recruited all his family and friends to do one for him. She will then collect their photos and experiences into a book for him to see all he has inspired. Here is the story of our journey(s).


As a family, we committed to challenge ourselves to give 50 hours of community service (sounds like an imposed sentence, right?) I co-op 3 hours a week, plus drive for field trips (see photos above of me hauling all kinds of kids around both Silver Lake and Red Butte Gardens.) Bill coaches 7 year old soccer every week. We are half way there. But only half of us would have volunteered. The boys would be robbed the chance to participate. Not fair. We hunted down some opportunities that we could all do together. (This is harder to accomplish than one might guess, short term volunteer opportunities with kids--not so easy to find.) Using this website we found a few things we all thought would be fun to do. First on our list, Wheeler Farm. They were looking for people to help with their Halloween activities. We helped unload a semi-full of pumpkins. Moving them from the unloading spot to the place where people pick them out.


Carrying pumpkins one at a time through a dusty field was going over well with everyone but me, who asked what else we could help with. They asked us if we would be willing to roam the farm asking people to take a survey about bringing back an old attraction (The Haunted Forest). The boys were very much into the whole shebang. They loved it every second. Even shy William was approaching people.



Stuffing envelopes for Wasatch Community Gardens fundraising was the final family step to get us to our goal of 50 hours. The boys were especially excited about this opportunity, mostly because it included a pizza dinner. William and Romney were champions stuffing and putting postage on the envelopes Bill and I hand addressed. We stayed until they ran out of letters to stuff and then headed home. Romney and William both sighed and told us how great it felt to help and that we should do that all the time. This part of the challenge is bound to become a tradition.


The four of us each also picked personal challenges we wanted to do for Edwards' 50th birthday as our gift to him. (Man are we cheap, or what?) I chose to go 50 days sans sugar. Anyone who knows me (or any other Romney I have ever met) will know this is, indeed, quite the challenge. Not to mention the fact that my challenge would fall during the mother of all holidays--Halloween. Truly a masochistic endeavour.



Bill is a masochist of the first order, however. Trumping my 50 days no sugar, he chose to do a 50 mile mountain bike ride. He and his friend, Alan, rode for the better part of a day. Starting at the top of Big Cottonwood, they rode the Wasatch Crest trail to the top of Millcreek (about 1800 feet of elevation gain. And that is why his legs are so super sexy!) Then they dropped into Millcreek, did a secret ride by of Steve and Lisa's house, and headed down to the Jordan River to knock out the rest of the milage.


William started out saying he was going to do 50 push ups. After trying very diligently to hit that goal, and after I tried diligently to help his form (think pyramid shaped push-ups.) He switched to sit ups. He trained for a few days, and then hit his goal. He was the most surprised that he could do it. The pride was dripping off of him and he yelled for me to get the camera, because he was definitely going to hit the goal this time.

Romney set himself the challenge, being the monkey he is, to climb up and down the door jams 50 times in a row. (I already posted photos and video of that lovely activity in another post.)

If it is true that “Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.” (Perhaps the point of a birthday challenge in general), then it is safe to say that we have discovered sugar is not a necessary food group, Romney really is a monkey, William has abs, Bill can bike like the Energizer Bunny and that volunteering together won't end for us at the end of this challenge.