We Are the Champions!

Intramural Championship T-Shirts!

Congrats to SLD and N.D., who won the BYU Intramurals Co-ed Championship tonight!  Their team beat the Care Bears or the Polar Bears or something like that to pick up the coveted intramural championship t-shirst.  I appreciate that you blew out the other team so that I didn't have to worry too much about the outcome.  Thank you for that...I have enough stress in my life already!  :-)

It's been fun watching you play this season.  I'm not very good at watching other people play.  I'm more used to playing myself, but--given that I've only touched a basketball on three brief occasions since moving to Utah--I'm glad that you're giving me some good opportunities to practice how to be an energetic and enthusiastic fan.  

As much as I enjoyed watching you drain outside jumpers, I think it was even more fun to see your passing out there.  It made me jealous that I couldn't play too.  SLD, you had a particularly great bounce pass to finish off a fast break tonight.  You managed to thread the needle on that pass just under the outstretched arms of the defender to hit your teammate streaking down the court for a wide open layup.  N.D., you had a great pass as well where you drove the lane, got the defender to commit to you, and then dumped it off to a wide open teammate for the bucket!  Those types of plays show that you really understand how the game is supposed to be played.

Congrats also to the Crickmore twins who dominated the paint and yet maintained their grace and poise!  I loved cheering you on as well--particularly since you are basically family!

Is it too early to start planning a Three-Peat celebrations?  Maybe we better worry about you winning it all again next year!  ;-)  Good luck on your finals to Team "Los Banditos"!

Throwback Thursday - Take Me Out to the Ballgame Edition

Go Padres - August 29, 2007

Six years ago today (as near as I can tell), we took this picture at the Padres game together.  As you can tell, the seats were up in the nose bleeds, but we still had a lot of fun.  My two youngest brothers have both gone on missions (to Argentina and Florida) and come home.  Another brother got married and had his second kid just recently.

I think that B.S. and I still have those Padres shirts laying around somewhere.  Even though it looks huge on me, I'll always love it--mostly because B.S. gave it to me and it reminds me of him.  He is so generous about stuff like that and seems to have a knack for giving me cool gifts that I would never get myself (and wouldn't even think of asking someone else to give me).

This picture also reminds me of how important family is.  In the intervening years, we five brothers haven't always been together at the same time.  At times, we've been separated by oceans and continents.  Most recently, we got together for the Camp Pendleton Mud Run...good times!

World Famous Camp Pendleton Mud Run 2013

A mis hermanos queridos, les quiero mucho.  Gracias por ser tan buen ejemplos para mis hijos y para mi.  Estoy muy agradecido por ser parte de esta familia.  Un abrazo!

Camp Pendleton Tri 2013

Last Year's Competitors

As you have probably noticed, one of the things that I like to post on my blog are race recaps from the races that I've done.  It's fun for me to do the races with family and then to put up some fun pictures, etc.

The first real triathlon I ever did was the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon in 2010.  It's become a fun tradition because the race is practically in my backyard.  Not only do I do it every year, but every year we've had more and more people (both friends and family) doing it.  (See pic above.).  Last year's race was the biggest yet with 7 members of Team Skil!

Maybe because of our family reunion this year or maybe for other reasons, the silence this year was deafening.  I pleaded with my brother to do it and I think he would have, but ultimately Team Skil was unrepresented this year.  So I can't give a race recap.

Instead, I felt like I needed to go out to Arizona to visit my kids and family out there.  So even though I didn't do the Camp Pendleton Tri this year, I felt like I got a "triathlon-ish" experience during my whirlwind trip to Arizona.

Swim

Rather than fight through the breakers for a 500 yard ocean swim, I settled for some time in the pool with the kids.  We worked on some very technical dive techniques:

It looked pretty much like this..."Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention...."

Bike

Are you crazy?  I don't think that anyone bikes in the summer in Arizona.  The temp is 110+ and the heat index is off the charts.  Instead, I satisfied my need to heed the call of the open road by driving over 800 miles roundtrip in a 36 hour period.

It's a lot easier to handle the heat when you have the AC cranked up to full and a cooler full of ice cold water and soft drinks.

Still, an 800 mile roadtrip is about 7x as long as an Ironman bike course and requires a certain amount of endurance and stamina in its own right.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's the type of training that's going to help me in Florida!  :-/

T2

I managed to find a great job to transition from driving to the "run."  Getting a shaded spot is just half the battle.  You need to try and make sure that you have shade when you leave church as well--not just when you get there.  These spots are worth the extra walk!

Run

I got to chase after Baby M. all through church.  It was actually a lot of fun and I'm realizing that he's not such a baby anymore.  He's getting big and I feel like I can't really hug him enough.  Here's some more gratuitous pics (even if I'm the only one that wants to look at them!--well, okay and the grandmas too)  :-)

Summary
Even though this year's Camp Pendleton Race didn't happen, I still feel like the weekend was a success.  And don't count Team Skil out quite yet.  I have a feeling we'll back back in even bigger numbers next year!

Happy 101st!

It was my grandma's birthday yesterday. She would have been 101. The picture above is of her and my grandpa. 

My mom was her youngest child and we grew up only a few miles from grandma's house. It was always fun to go visit her and on special occasions my mom would  let us spend the night at grandma's. 

Grandma had her share of adversity in life, but she successfully overcame it. She never had a lot in terms of material possessions, but she was generous with us anyway.  

She had to work hard her entire life. For a while she worked as a cool at a restaurant. I'm sure the patrons loved her dishes because I know I always did. My two favorites were her homemade chicken noodle soup (with hand rolled noodles) and her chili which she always served at her New Year's Day parties. 

She had a small garden that she loved and would send us home with oranges, tomatoes, figs, and pineapple guavas. I never did care for the figs  (#idontgiveafig), but the pineapple guavas  have become the stuff of legends in our home. 

Grandma loved to tell the story of how one year an apple tree in her yard bore a prize apple. I think she planned to enter this apple in the County Fair. That is until a certain 3 or 4 year old boy took a bite out of it as it was sitting on her kitchen table!  I like to think she forgave me for that so quickly because I was such a cute little kid. ;-)

There are so many things I love about my grandma and so many happy memories, like the Avon soaps she would give us as kids since she was the Avon lady in her neighborhood or sitting next to her on the pew at church. 

But I think most importantly, I saw her kindness and compassion for others. She was constantly worrying about us--in a good way. I learned how to be kind and compassionate and tender, in part, by watching her. 

Grandma, we love you and miss you!  Happy 101st birthday!

Best.HouseHunters.Episode.Ever!

My sister T. and her husband T. (Whom I like to think of affectionately as "TNT" because they are dynamite!  Yes, I just said that... :-) are going to be featured tonight on HGTV's newest edition of "House Hunters."  I already know the outcome, of course, because I have been blessed to visit (and stay at) their beautiful home on several occasions, but I will be watching tonight for sure!  I can't wait to see what happens.

Here's the official summary:

I also want to publicly thank TNT for graciously allowing me to do multiple loads of dirty laundry for myself and my kids following our weeklong family reunion at Bear Lake.  I don't think that I could have made it home without getting all of that smelly dirty stuff taken care of!

Tune in tonight at 10 p.m. EST for TNT's episode of House Hunters...I can't wait!

TNT...I love you guys!  :-)

No Brother Left Behind: Camp Pendleton's World Famous Mud Run

Team Dyer Brothers

Last month, my four brothers and I got together for the last session (June 15th) of this year's Camp Pendleton World Famous Mud Run.  This was the first time that all five of us have run together in a race and it was a lot of fun. We started off the race fast and I did my best to keep up.

Look closely and you can see Team Dyer Brothers just off to the right in our blue sleeveless shirts

I bought matching shirts (moisture wicking, of course) so that we looked like a team.  It turned out to be a good call.  The light blue color that I picked really stood out in the crowd.  My parents were watching the live feed in Colombia and they were able to pick out all of us on the live feed (and by "all of us," I mean everyone but me!  Apparently, I didn't get any love from the cameras!).

This year's race had a lot more obstacles than last year and it was a lot of fun--except for the low-slung cargo nets.  They were set at about 2.5 feet off the ground and were pure torture for me.  I was just too tall!  I also narrowly averted disaster when the watch strap on my million dollar Garmin watch broke going over the "Wall" obstacle.  Luckily, I noticed that it was loose and grabbed it before it was lost forever in the Camp Pendleton mud.  That was the good news...the bad news was that I had to carry it the rest of the way and that meant I didn't have full use of my hands for the remaining obstacles.

One of the first obstacles: The Steeplechase - My brother N. successfully completes this!

The first few obstacles went smoothly...N. is my youngest brother and is just a year removed from his mission (to Argentina).  This was his first race, so I kind of stuck with him and within sight distance of L. and Big S.  Click here for a cool pic of L. with N. and me in the background going over the Steeplechase.  SLD was gone as soon as the gun went off.  Only later would I learn how amazing his race was.

SLD tackles the high "Wall"...Notice how there don't seem to be any other runners in sight.

The high "Wall" was a difficult obstacle.  I was so tired by the time that I got to it, that it seemed like it was 8 feet tall.  I managed to get over it somehow, but landed in the mud as my watch dangled from my wrist.  Luckily, I snared it and kept going.

Here's some video of me going through the final obstacle...the Mud Pit:

One thing that occurs to me when re-watching this is how utterly exhausted I am at this point.  You can see it as I enter the Mud Pit and then you can see it as I stagger out to finish the race.  Even though I was tired, my motto is to just keep moving forward.  Hopefully you can see my determination to keep going.

Here are the links to the videos of the rest of us going through the Mud Pit:

• SLD
• L.
• Big S. and N.

Thanks Nicole for taping these for us!

Here are some of the notable achievements.  Indulge me for a second while I brag on my brothers:

• SLD - 51:59 (for a course that billed itself as a "10k" but was actually about 6.6 miles long!).  SLD got 14th overall and 2nd in his age group!!  There were about 3,000 runners in the race.  SLD is a frickin' amazing runner!
• L. - 1:02:34 - 13th in his age group (118th overall)
• Big S. - 1:06:05 - 19th in his age group (#168 overall)
• N. - 1:06:53 - 8th in his age group (#186 overall).  This was an awesome result for his first race ever!
• Me - 1:09:44 - 28th in my age group (#246 overall).  As the oldest brother, I took responsibility for making sure that no brother was left behind.  Someone had to do it....  :-/

After the race, we hit the showers:

And took some more pics:

N. and SLD with his medal

Superman photobombs the post-race brothers pic..

My miracle, super-nephew!

If you're family and not already bored out of your gourd, you can check out Nicole's photo album on Google Plus here.

Love this cute fam pic!

Riding the shuttle to the parking lot...

I love my nephew's cute smile

This run has become somewhat of a tradition now in our family:

2011

2012

2013

I'm sure we'll be back next year!

I Would Walk 3,000 Miles

Juan Bandito Rides Again

Many of you have probably heard that song: "I Wanna Be (500 Miles)" by the Proclaimers.  The chorus of the catchy song talks about walking 500 miles.  Well, last week, I got to drive 3,000 miles to get myself and my two oldest kids (R. and S.) to a family reunion up at Bear Lake, Utah.

Over the course of the past 8 days, I have driven nearly 3,000 miles (approx. 2,900 to be exact) which took 19 hours of drive time each way.  We got to spend the week with about 120 members of my family, including sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins (both near and distant)--including some I'd never met.  But by the time the week was over, I felt like I'd known these new-found cousins for years.

I've always felt like I've been blessed with a pretty awesome family and extended family.  That was confirmed this week over and over.  I have cousins who I practically grew up with (or watched them grow up) who feel more like siblings to me than cousins.  I sure am grateful for the love and support that I feel from them.

Here's a quick photo dump of a few of the highlights from the week:

R. and my brother SLD doing a little stand up paddleboarding...

Jordo and me

S. and I doing some tubing...It was S.'s first time ever on a boat.  I was proud of him for being so brave.

Later, I decided to try a trick that I saw one of my younger cousins doing.  It looked a lot easier when they were doing it!

"Hitchhiking" is jumping from one tube to the other while the boat is moving

Making sand castles with the cousins

Cousins...B-Man and S.

We also hiked a mountain....

R. contemplates the Universe

Hiking back down the mountain...the wildflowers were so incredibly beautiful

My family has given me a legacy of faith and I'm so grateful to be a part of our family tree!

Our (partial) family tree...

Some pics of my grandpa from his polar explorations

And then I was grateful to make it back and to see the rest of my kids...

I think it's impossible to get all four kids looking at the camera at the same moment!

It was a great week and a lot of fun to spend some time with my kids.  I hope that they will draw the same strength and comfort from our family tree that I have.  I think that this bunch is definitely worth driving 3,000 miles!

PS--The pic above is my kids with the lead actor in the play "Bandito Rides Again" which we saw at the Pickleville Playhouse on Thursday night.  The play was a complete riot and my kids were practically rolling in the aisles.  I'd definitely go see it again.

Team Dyer Straits

Tonight we played in a 3 on 3 tournament at my brother's high school. It was a fundraiser for his high school basketball team.  They also had an alumni game and L. played in that too.  The original Dyer Straits is an intramural inner tube water polo team at BYU founded by my siblings that has won a bunch of intramural championships.  I never played intramural inner tube water polo, but I know my siblings have had a lot of fun on that team.

L., who put together this team, used the same name because there were supposed to be at least three brothers playing.  Our team was pretty stacked. Brett L. and I are both 6'3". My brother L. is 6'6" and A. (aka Thor) is 6'9". It was fun playing with those guys because they're all good basketball players and play smart.

Here's a quick video showing our teamwork in action:

Plus, it's always fun to play with my brothers. I was disappointed that S. was a last minute no show because he couldn't get his work schedule changed.  Even though L. is  tall, he has an outstanding jumpshot:

I also managed to get a shot of L. dunking before the alumni game.  He makes it look pretty easy:

I also managed to put down a few:

(thanks to Brett L. for directing traffic out there!  :-)

We won all 3 of our games--the first two were blowouts (15-2 and 15-4) and the last was a little too close for comfort. We won by a score of 15-13, but were down 13-9 after they hit a few surprise 3 pointers. We cranked up the "D" and put the game away though. 

Here are some pics from the festivities...

Pre-game warm ups.

Brett L. shoots a 3.

A. shows his mid-range game.

My miracle nephew.

L. goes in for the dunk. 

Brett L. hits a layup.

L. catches a pass.

L., A., and Brett L., it was fun playing tonight.  I'm looking forward to next year!  (S., we need you next year too!)

Weekend Update

S. and R. with their  bikes and new helmets on our street today

Well, it's Sunday evening.  I hope that everyone has had a great weekend.  It was fairly relaxing for me, despite having a full day of baseball (2 games) and basketball closing social and potluck yesterday.  It was so busy that I didn't get to my workout until I did 6.2 miles last night (this morning) at 2 a.m.  Yes, I am crazy, but I really needed to get that run in.  And I was happy with my time, so maybe my preparations for Oceanside are coming along.

So without further ado, here is an update on some of the items that I've been blogging about lately:

The Parable of the Bicycle:
Remember this post?  Well, S. has loved his bicycle.  He got it on Monday night and I wasn't able to take him out for his bike riding lesson until yesterday (Saturday).  As I suspected, it took S. about 2 minutes to learn how to ride his bike.  He did great!  (And I feel a lot less guilt!)

He ran out today by himself and was doing laps on our street on his bike.  He will get more confident and faster as he gets more experience, but he is on his way.

After our lesson, I took S. and R. to our local Walmart to get them some new helmets (see above).  Mom, per your instructions, I used the birthday money you sent for S.'s new helmet.!  He didn't have one and he had a lot more confidence today now that he has a new helmet.  He was also really excited to get it last night!

I even took the rest of the kids out to go riding as well since the weather was so beautiful this afternoon:

M. really enjoyed his ride

E. was begging for me to keep doing lap after lap through the neighborhood

My brother even made a surprise visit and wanted to test out S.'s cool new bike

Baseball As Life:
R. had a game yesterday.  He was pretty nervous during batting practice beforehand, but we worked on it together and he actually put the ball in play both times he came to the plate yesterday.  I know that sounds kind of lame, but he didn't strike out and it was definitely an improvement.  I don't care whether he is the world's best baseball player or the world's worst, but I want him to learn to not give up and to keep practicing.  I'm so grateful that he made tangible progress yesterday.

I *Heart* Tyler Haws:
I've been getting my basketball fix with the March Madness tourney.  BYU (and Tyler Haws) will be playing tomorrow night at the Marriott Center.  Too bad I'm not in town.  That would have been a fun game to take the boys to watch.

The BYU women's team is also in the NIT tourney.  They advanced to the third round by beating SDSU on Saturday at the Marriott Center.  They play WCC conference opponent St. Mary's (a team that they played twice this season--beating St. Mary's at home and losing to them on the road) on Wednesday night at the Marriott Center.  Go Cougs!