My New Obsession

It is difficult for me to turn my brain down from dealing with the daily stresses brought on by fatherhood, work, and priesthood responsibilities. I have never been able to “chill out” like many men can by watching sports all afternoon some Saturdays. In the past, I have found the motocross track to be an excellent method of relaxation as it requires a significant amount of physical effort and control coupled with total mental concentration and focus leaving no spare brain cycles for the day-to-day worries. Two traits of this activity made me finally put it away for a time:

Grant has no fear. Should I be worried?

1. Expense – not just the bikes, but of all the required accessories such as a truck, trailer, membership fees,  fuel, maintenance, gear, ect…

2. Solitude – it is largely a solitary activity, meaning it was difficult for my family to participate. Even when you have several bikes, it is difficult to have conversations with your family members through helmets and over noisy motors.

Over the past few months, I have begun to love a sport I thought was just for hippies and tree-huggers; rock climbing. I have found that I get the same benefit from climbing that i used to get from motocross.

Physically demanding – isn’t it great to wake up on Sunday morning and discover your muscles are so sore your wife has to help you put your shirt on.

Mental focus – Imagine this: your 100ft up the rock face clinging to a 1/4 inch lip and you feel your feet start to slip. You thinking about work? Yeah, me neither.

Expense – Our whole family was outfitted for a few hundred dollars, now you kids might get to go to college!

Voices – One person climbs at a time, but everyone is on the wall with them. We laugh, we cheer, we tease, we push, and we all hold our breath in unison during the tricky spots.

Craig the hippie giving me some pointers on anchor set up.

A game of stratego while waiting for a turn

Charly's job is to pull the rope down when we have finished

Headed home, the easy way.

Goldilocks takes it down a notch

There comes a time in every girls life when they begin to be concerned with how they look to others and start to take a more active role in the determination of their outward appearance and grooming. Today, at the age of three, Charly decided she would no longer have her hairstyle decided for her, but would trim her lovely golden locks more they way she thought would be best. She grabbed a pair of decorative edging scissors and before anyone was able to intervene, several large chunks of yellow hair lay on the kitchen floor.

I was working on a motorcycle in the garage when Garrett came to tell me the news. Why does it happen when Dad is supposed to be watching the children? It is hard enough convincing our wives we are responsible adults without this type of catastrophe.

Well, that is a lot of hair. After a decent spanking we surveyed the damage. See that significant portion of forehead that used to be covered up? Yeah, that is going to be a problem.

I put her in the tub and asked, “Why did you cut off all your pretty hair, Charly?” She said, “Its OK Dad, Mom and Marci will fix it.”

She was mostly correct, in that Leanne was able to make it look a lot better that I feared at first site, but I guess the Price family will have two unusual hair dos for a little while. (Leanne and I were talking about how my hair doesn’t lay the same after my horse incident.)