Haunted by the inevitable

At some point, we are all going to die.

Not like this is ground breaking news that we all didn't realize before, but it's a fact I never really focused on until becoming a mom. Maybe it's because before starting a family, I really didn't care if I met my demise anytime soon. Maybe it's because I feel like I now have something to lose. Whatever the case, I feel like I'm constantly haunted by the inevitable.

Now that my boys are growing a little bit older, my husband and I have more freedom to go out on our own leaving them behind with a sitter. We are enjoying date nights at concerts at The Aggie and Mishawaka and have even started to do some overnight stays at hotels in Denver. The freedom to enjoy these moments with my husband is amazing. Long gone are the days of being home-bound and bored with limits and restrictions that revolve around diaper changes, nap schedules and feeding regimens. Through time, the shackles of babyhood have been broken, leaving us to run free.

On our last kid-free adventure, we drove up to The Mish with friends for a concert. Music blaring, friends laughing, the warm wind blowing through our hair as we rode the twists and turns of the road hugging the beautiful Poudre River while driving up the canyon. Our kids at home with the sitter and safely tucked in their beds, I couldn't help but think how dangerous this trip was. At a moments notice, we could be in a head-on collision, swerve off the road and into the river, or a true reality, hit a deer.

My biggest fear is not knowing what would happen to my kids if both my husband and I were to die at the same time.

Most families are fairly normal. When you have your first baby, one of the most important steps in becoming a parent is drawing up a Will, laying out a plan of care for your children if you should expire earlier than you hoped. Normal families have Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, or some trusted adults named to take over and keep your kids safe. We do not. Without going into a long list of specifics, there is nobody I trust enough with my kids if I should die.

This fact recently hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks ago after reading the news story in The Coloradoan. The one about the parents who made some very poor decisions, speeding and driving drunk down Lemay, only to end up in a fatal and gory car accident at the insurance office building. They left behind children with no plans for their care. Friends and family rallied to raise money to take care of the mourning children and their future was uncertain.

I can't even begin to explain how disturbing this was to me. Not that my husband and I make stupid decisions like speeding while driving drunk, but life is unpredictable. Anything can happen at any time. My boys could easily be in the same situation, parent-less and bouncing from house to house, or in foster care, while people manage the mess of the aftermath.

These thoughts are often buried deep within the halls of my mind, but every so often a door is opened and I'm tormented by what has surfaced. I don't care about an afterlife, meeting a maker or simply returning to dust. I care immensely about what happens to my children after I'm gone. And until they are able to care for themselves, I will always be haunted by the inevitable.

Kristin Mastre

So, I guess we finally have it right after all these years of not

A few weeks ago, I was able to join my husband in an all day Life Plan meeting that was set up by his workplace. I know, it sounds new-agey, which I'm not. And when I heard the words "life" and "plan" put together, I thought to myself, well, this is going to be interesting because everything I try to plan in my life never quite works out the way I intend.

My husband works for Otterbox, an amazing local company here in Fort Collins that is growing at a massive rate. His employment there has drastically changed our life for the better. This is just another example of that betterment. Otterbox really cares about their employees and everyone is given the chance to sit down with a life coach to develop this master Life Plan to figure out where they want to go in the company and how their skill sets will be best utilized. It's a fantastic tool for a business, but this plan also touches on personal and family life aspects...

The Life Plan experience, designed by Tom Patterson, is an intense two-day meeting that designs your total life strategy. It is heavily rooted in Christian beliefs where "God has a plan for you", which I don't buy for a second (says the Atheist in me.) However, I do believe in the importance of planning, having direction and focus in all aspects of your life. That's just common sense.

The first day is spent entirely on gaining perspective and understanding your story - where you've come from and why. You look for behavioral patterns and themes with life decisions you make. It's all about delving into who you are and what you do. I missed this day, but would have loved to experience it. I'm kind of a geek for insightful moments and gaining perspective.

The second day is nothing but planing and figuring out how parts of your life fit together. It's such a complicated, multidimensional experience with lists, circles, colors and 17 large sheets of flip chart papers covering the room from all four walls and to floor to ceiling. It all seems to flow along flawlessly. Each aspect of your life (Personal, Family, and Professional) is rated with a color: green = good, yellow = needs some work, and red = poor. It's just like a traffic light.

When we were going over the family aspect of Bill's life, every point was green, meaning that we had perfect balance. In our discussion, we concluded that our family life and our marriage is incredibly positive, strong and balanced, if I dare say near "perfect". It's never been better.

What an incredibly powerful moment for me. To see without a shadow of a doubt, right there on paper full of green circles, that all of the many years of hard work we've put into our relationship has paid off. We've reached our goal of a harmonious house and an amazing marriage. It hasn't always been this way, in fact, we've always been insanely imperfect and there were times we didn't think we were going to make it. It took many, many years of tears, stress, strife and counseling to get here. But we did it and only just recently. We couldn't be more proud of each other.

While this Life Plan was enormously beneficial and literally life changing for my husband when it came to his professional life at Otterbox, it was such a huge gift for me to be able to experience the second half and recognize the effort we've put into us and our family life. I don't believe God has a master plan already mapped out, but I do believe in us and the tremendous amount of work we've accomplished to get here.

So, I guess we finally have it right after all these years of not.

Kristin Mastre

The Sunrise Yurt

"What's a yurt?" Common question. It's a hut-shaped canvas tent on a wooden frame and deck, equipped with bunk beds, a table and chairs, and a skylight. We camped in one for the first time a week ago at Bear Creek Lake Park west of Denver. The campsite came with the usual fire pit, grill, picnic table, and mosquitos.

Although I grew up tent camping every summer at secluded lakes surrounded by lush lodgepole pine forests in the Oregon Cascades, my Singapore-raised husband is a greenhorn. Our only previous kid camping experience was in 2007 with a 3-yr-old and a 4-mo baby. The 3-yr got bored, scraped her knee on a rock, and woke at 4am jabbering on and on about the stars and how stinky the tent was. Good thing we only planned an overnight trip. The baby was totally easy, hanging out on a blanket during the day and waking once to nurse at night. Well he did have a very inconvenient diaper blowout but hey, it's not like outhouses are all that convenient either!

With a 6-yr, 3-yr, and 16-mo baby this summer, we thought we'd have another go. Not owning a large tent, the yurt was perfect. And the campground, though not the private and pristine wonderland of my childhood memories, was a big hit when all the kids saw not one but two playgrounds, a horse barn, and a swim beach selling ice cream bars by Big Soda Lake. We spent hours at the playgrounds and splashing in the water, when the kids weren't collecting rocks in plastic cups or tossing the frisbee or playing house in the 2-man backpacking tent we set up just for fun. I gave them an inflatable chair inside the tent and they kept pretending it was a potty.

But what's a camping trip without some little mishaps? I bought plastic spatulas at the thrift store for my camp frypan and didn't think about a flipper for hamburgers on the charcoal grill. Ok, drag out the grilling cage we registered for when we got married and have never ever used. The burgers hung out of the edges but still cooked up great under my husband's grilling expertise. Next challenge: pancakes for breakfast. Sounds easy, but I forgot to bring *any* butter, syrup, jam, honey, anything remotely resembling pancake toppings, and the pancake batter itself was an unsweetened biscuit-style mix. In fact the only significantly sweet item in the food chest besides whole fruit was marshmallows for the s'mores we'd enjoyed by the fire the night before. Out came the roasting sticks, and marshmallow-filled pancakes soon graced the picnic table.

Comforting a crying 3-yr-old at 1am who didn't want to walk a quarter mile to the toilet and kept insisting we go home right away was distinctly the low point of the trip. He woke the baby in the portacrib, who Daddy cuddled back to sleep and shared his bunk with until morning. And tropical-blooded Daddy needs to remember a heavy blanket next time! Again, good thing it was just one night. We concluded that our family is still quite young for full fledged camping and maybe we should stick to day trips for a while.

At least that's what we thought on the way home... but with all the fun we shared as a family, here we are a few days later thinking about how to plan the next camping adventure. It's surprising how easy it was to minimize the bad and crave a repeat of the good. All we need is a family tent and some kind of cargo solution for the gear...

...and another destination with a playground and flushing toilets wouldn't be a bad idea! I can survive this kind of "camping" - views of RVs through thin trees, Home Depot perched on the hill, suburban lights flanking the night skyline - for a few more years. My first camping memories were around age 7 or 8 and continued until I left home, so perhaps I'm not really ripping off my kids by not exposing them to truly rugged and hard-core camping at the preschool stage. Although I feel their childhood flying by so fast, I have to remember that they really are still little and there is still time for dozens of quiet and remote family camping memories to be made. And dozens more s'mores to be eaten.

The Good Kind of Sore

Last month I took my first "Spin and Tone" class twice a week at Aztlan. After three pregnancies (my final baby now 15 months old) I have no abs, unless you count belly fat hidden by loose fitting t-shirts. Technically I've reached my pre-pregnancy weight... so why are my favorite blue shorts still tight? As it turns out, pre-pregnancy SHAPE is an entirely different endeavor! While I'm not optimistic about certain body parts (like the ones that nursed three infants), I am determined to get in shape this summer and shed the final five pounds to my long-elusive goal. My simple motive: to energetically enjoy Colorado's beautiful hiking, biking, and camping with my family, and maybe even learn to snow board this year.

So I took the class. We rode spin bikes for 45 minutes in a guided workout of sprints and hills, standing runs and hovering climbs. Then we grabbed free weights, floor mats and fit balls for another 15 minutes of toning. Though a step up from biking my daughter to school every day, I could handle the spin section alright. The combination of Pilates, plyometrics and weight training, however, truly wore me out. I tried to take it easy the first night, but the next day I was unmistakeably sore - the good kind of sore.

I spent most of May feeling the good kind of sore. Though weight loss has been negligible, in just one month my energy and endurance are rising and the belly is beginning to shrink. I graduated from knee pushups to regular ones on my toes and I no longer roll off a bosu ball backwards. I even wore those blue shorts last week.

The best thing, though, has been to enjoy family bike rides more and more. On Mother's Day we rode the greenbelt trails north of our neighborhood, me pulling the two boys in a trailer and my recent kindergarten graduate chasing Daddy on her own bike. The next week Mama took the kids out alone. On Memorial Day we all rode the Poudre River Trail (photo) through the hot afternoon and to my amazement, I was hardly tired at the end.

I love these family excursions. My husband and I like to dream about the hiking and biking adventures we will have when the kids are all old enough to keep up. Yesterday I put training wheels on the three-year-old's black and yellow 12-inch garage sale bike. Soon there will be one less for me to pull behind!

This month my self-selected torture is 7 a.m. "Shreadmill" with a treadmill workout followed by circuit training. My first class was yesterday and I'm feeling sore yet again. The good kind of sore.