Sunday 24 August 2014

A Week in Review (August 17-23)

A Week in Review (August 17-23)

Watched: Several of the Lego Chronicles from Star Wars. Jack checked out the Empire Strikes Out from our library and loved it, so we started to do research into other episodes. Amazon had the whole "season" which ranges over 7 years and is only 6 episodes long. We bought him one episode as a Back to School treat and he purchased one with part if his allowance.  He likes them both quite a bit.  Lots of humor in them. 

Read: I finished up The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes. It is a really captivating read that pulls you in. I could have seen me in 16 yr old CeeCee's shoes.  I think it's an excellent story about loving flawed people. 

Listened: To a lot of Pandora. The house is too quiet, so I put on music to keep me company. The idea of getting a four legged fur companion has come across my mind several times, but I think I would prefer to wait for summer so that it can bond strongly with Jack instead of me. Hopefully some volunteer opportunities open up at the school soon. 

Made: A menu plan. I figure since my weekdays are much more open now, I should spend that making dinner instead of eating out as frequently. With my love of Pinterest and my lack of desire to always eat the same thing, I'm sure we will be trying lots of new recipes. On Friday, I made a version of this using hamburger and green sauce in the place of chicken and red sauce.  It made way too much food.  Jack wouldn't try it because he didn't like the way it smelled. I liked it more than Nick did. It will be a couple lunches for me next week. 

Felt: Nervous about sending my little man into a school where they do things quite differently than we are used too.  You can see by the way he has his hands in the third picture below that he was pretty nervous too.  He seems to like his teacher and I like her too. I know he will do great.

Planned: To stop at Little America on our way home from my mom's, but Jack had dozed off and so I drove on past.  He woke up about 5 miles too late and was none to happy with me. Guess we will just have to road trip soon !

Loved: The book club that I was allowed to crash at the invitation of a friend of a friend. Little did I know that Jack's love of trips to the neighborhood bakery would one day net me adult conversation with women in Salt Lake City.  I had been feeling nervous about it all day.  It was like a first date and I haven't been on one of those in about 15 years. Would I do it right?  Would I fit in?  These ladies all made it very easy to fit in and feel right at home.  It will be an event I look forward to monthly :)

Here are the pics for the week:

A quick pick with Grandma before we headed out Monday morning



Our Mille Born cards look just like Grandma's even though the cards are 30 years newer. We were shocked because we assumed the styling was due to bad 70's graphics.



First Day of School Pics









A picture sent to me by his teacher.



On Saturday, Nick suggested we visit Scheel's for something to do. It is huge!  We couldn't believe it. They have lots of fun different photo ops and even a Ferris wheel inside. We didn't ride the Ferris Wheel because the line was too long, but I can see Jack and I making a pit stop there on the way home from school someday.  If you come to the area, I think it's worth a look. 





Wednesday 20 August 2014

A Week in Review (August 10-16)

A Week in Review (August 10-16)

Watched: A cute movie called About Time. I had never seen any previews for it, but it was in the comedy section of Streampix so I decided to give it a shot. It is a pretty interesting movie, but I think it felt more in the drama class. If you liked The Time Traveller's Wife, I recommend this highly. 




Read:  The Language of Flowers for  my first face to face book club. This book surprised me. I really thought that I was going to struggle with it because I just couldn't connect in the very beginning. But once I sunk my teeth into it, I really enjoyed it. It is an excellent story about forgiveness and acceptance in a messed up world.  I gave it four out of five stars.  Next, I began reading The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes.  It also seems to be about mother daughter relationships.  I am breezing through it.


Listened: To my phone ring several times. I have had many Kansas friends text or call and chat with me for a while this week.  I am so thankful for these calls. It is nice to have updates as to what is going on in my old neck of the woods. 



Made: A last minute decision to travel to Alliance for my mom and step-dad's end of the summer/welcome home Kyle and Jess party. We had a great time visiting with everyone.  It made me worried for our winter visit because Wyoming is such a barren land around i80 that any snow could really spell trouble.


Felt: Ready for routine. I like back to school because it lets us fall into a nice steady rhythm. While I am anxious about what I will do with myself all day while Jack is at school, I know he will love it. Well except for the spelling test, but maybe I will be wrong there.

Planned: On teaching Jack the game
Mille Borne.  It took him quite by surprise and he loves it. We played several different team combinations and he usually came out on the winning team so that always helps.  We are going to try to get Nick to play with us when we make it home on Monday. 


Loved: Spending
the day outside with my boys on Sunday.  We drove up into Big Cottonwood Canyon and saw the Hidden Falls. After climbing around the area, we tried to trek to Donut Falls. Apparently everyone and his brother tried that as there were no parking spots and lots of people parking where they shouldn't be. We will have to save that for a weekday!  Jack was getting hungry so we pulled off the road and went down and had lunch by the stream. We had fun trying to splash each other by throwing rocks in the river.


Our pictures for the week:

Hidden Falls






Our picnic spot:






Jack with his DP licorice.

An underwater selfie from Grandma's Pool. 


Tio and Jack messing around in the pool before the party started. 

Jack made me a party hat. 



Wednesday 13 August 2014

A Week in Review (August 3-9)

A Week in Review (August 3-9)

Watched: I am finally able to watch Days of Our Lives again.  Oddly, it is only on from 1:07-2:07AM!  I guess there must not be a huge market for it hear in SLC. Thank goodness for my DVR. We also got hooked back up with American Ninja Warrior. 


Read: I finished up The Phantom Tollbooth
I was very surprised by this book. It was like an Amelia Bedila book for grown ups. It had so many quirks that I have a hard time believing that a younger ages audience could really enjoy it. If you are looking for a delightful read full of plays on words, I highly recommend this story.

Next I started on The Language of Flowers . I haven't gotten very far in it.

Listened: To the sounds of the city and new construction fade away as we made our way back into the Rocky Mount Falls. It was pretty neat to find the little treasure hidden back there. Then we heard something pretty ominous--Big Loud Thunderbooms.  Another one of the hikers got a call that it was pouring rain about 25 minutes away.  We all decided to trek back down and we made it to the car before the rain hit.  We did stop to take a picture of the big cloud that had formed.

Made: A fun night of work out of packing up the majority of paper the packers used.  We ended up with 13 60-gallon trash bags full of paper.  And the bags were stuffed full. Each bag was treated to several rounds of Jack jumping in it to compress the paper.  I'm thankful that I convinced the city of Draper to let me take it in rather than try to keep filling up my recycling bin.

Felt: So sad. On Friday, Barley came in from outside and tripped on his doggy door. I thought he was just had a cramp. But as it kept getting worse, I had a big fear that his time had come. I called and made a vet appointment for him.  He could tell we were getting ready to take the trash to the recycling facility and walked out and sat by the car. I couldn't refuse him so I let him in. After running the two loads to the site, I called Nick's office and asked them to pull him out of his meeting.  Upon seeing Barley, he decided he would take the time to go with us to the vet.  When we pulled him out and the vet, he could no longer use either of his back legs. It was pretty awful.  It became quickly apparent that a tumor had most likely pinched a nerve in his spine and caused him to have paralysis. With very heavy hearts, we chose to humane euthanize him. My heart still aches as I write this and I think this is why I put off writing the blog for so long. He was such a great friend and fallen food catcher. The house feels empty without his bark to greet me when I return.  Thanks for 10.5 good years my friend.

Planned: To find a Kansas style farmers market so that we could try this new recipe,  Instead we drove clear around town before finding something that resembled a vendor fair with produce at it. We did learn that they can grow a yummy peach here and we did find the tomatoes. We also found a bakery that had cheap prices so I bought several things to sample. My favorite was the raisin filled cookie.

Loved: All the support that I have gotten in the ways of texts, calls, and Facebook messages. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to reach out to me.  I really miss a lot of things about Kansas and our friends are one of the biggest. Love you all!

Here are the pics for the week:

Rocky Mount Falls





Barley at the Vet. As you can sadly see, his top half was just fine and happy. It made it so much worse. 



Jack in his skills of justice pose.


The boys playing lightsabers when we took Nick over to Jack's new playground. 








Saturday 2 August 2014

A Week in Review (July 27-August 2)

A Week in Review (July 27-August 2)

Watched: Jack climb up every tree he could.  There is something about here that make him want to climb the trees.  I really could foresee a broken bone while we are here. He just loves being outside and is quite a daring fellow.  He injured himself on the plastic of the swing set the first night we were here.  About 3 days post injury, he took off the band-aid and had to message it to the cousins.  I had to really laugh about the conversation that he gave.

Read: I finished up One Plus One ,which was a huge surprise to me. I didn't really think that I was going to be able to get it done with how tired I have been with the unpacking. However, I took most of Thursday and Friday off and so that gave me the time that I needed to finish it up. It was another great story, but not one of my favorites of hers. I next started on The Phantom Tollbooth. It's a children's story, so I am counting on it being a nice easy read that will eliminate one book off my bookcase.

Listened: To my boy beg to ask go up a mountain to the cloud. While I don't think he got up to the clouds, he did have a good time with his Dad.  I convinced Nick to go out with him while I stayed home and did some laundry.  Nick did take a couple neat photos that I have places below.  On Saturday, I decided to be a nut and join in the fun. We selected one of the hikes in the book, Best Easy Day Hikes. When we got there, the parking lot that the book suggested was full and so we had to pull down into the town parking lot. The "helpful" gal at the top suggested that walking the trail would be a fast as waiting for the shuttle. The gentlemen at the bottom said if you took the shuttle, you'd miss all the best wildflowers.  So we decided to take the trail. It was about an average of a 15% incline. It about killer this out of shape KS girl.  It took us a total of four hours to make it the top of trail, (Not-so) Cecret Lake.  But the gentleman was right, they did have the best views before the shuttle dropped you off.  We also would have missed the moose.  We decided to hike back down the whole way and that was much easier. Jack was running down and biffed it and both Nick and I were worried that he might have broke his arm bracing himself. Luckily there wasn't anything worse than a banged up arm.  I have attached several pictures from our hike below. 

Made: A run to Savers (yes, they have one here too!) to drop off a few things that didn't really fit into our new space.  Outside there, they had a shaved ice place called The Shack.  We ordered two smalls and then laughed quite heartily when they were delivered. They were HUGE. It was so much so that Jack insisted that I take a picture and put it on FB. Cracked me up.

Felt: Glad to get the cable and internet hooked back up. While I wasn't a fan of Comcast when we had them in Olathe, so far, things have been okay here. A huge step up from our Surewest service.  When I went to set the DVR up for Days of our Lives, I was shocked to see that it airs here at 1am. Isn't that just crazy?

Planned: On getting our cars into the garage over the weekend. Since Jack was out playing with the neighborhood kids on Friday night, I got Nick to help me get the garage in order. It was a good thing he helped or I wouldn't have gotten out on my side. It is a bit of a tight fit, but it will be so worth it. 



Loved: That Jack has met some kids on block. They are a few years older than him, but he seems to fit right in. It is nice that we live on a quiet street so he is able to pedal his bike down the street and see if they are out. :)

Here are the pics for the week:






The boy on a hike with his dad. 



Okay, I know that one day that I will be old, but for now, this totally makes me laugh.




You probably can't tell it, but the moose was scratching himself with his antlers and it appeared his leg was getting caught. It was pretty funny, especially to Jack. 

Jack doing some rock climbing 



A pano shot Nick took. 



Praire dogs were very abundant this trip





Neither Jack nor I want to ski, but we both like the idea of riding the ski lift to the top. 

We snapped a picture so he could see how dusty he was from his fall. We told him we'd better avoid water or he would become a mudbutt (only Harry Potter fans will appreciate that.)

A Week in Review (July 20-26)

A Week in Review (July 20-26)

Watched: Saving Mr. Banks with Nick on Sunday night. We put together our new entertainment stand (which I am excited about because it has an excellent cord hiding system and lots of space for stuff) and then decided to end the night with a redbox.  There wasn't much in, but I had been wanting to see this for a while. I really enjoyed learning the back story to one of my favorite kid movies, Mary Poppins.



Read: Due to Nick's work and time at the airport, I was able to complete The Diary of Mattie Spenser. It felt like an authentic read for a woman trying to make her way in the Colorado Territory. It made me thankful that my move for my husband is taking place in 2014, not 1865!  While there are a few historical facts, it looks more at what a woman would have had to struggle with. I found all the characters quite endearing. My only wish is that there had been some historical marker that would have let us know what became of Tom, Jessie, and Earl.  I did end up picking up One Plus One from the library, but didn't even get close to finishing. Luckily a dear friend said if I mailed it back to her, she would return it for me. 

Listened: To Nick confirm with the driver  of our moving truck that we would take delivery on Sunday the 27th. I couldn't believe it. That just seemed so soon! My last 3.5 days in Kansas were exhausting and emotional, but I know things will be okay because we are all together. 
Made: The drive to Sidney, Nebraska after the movers had loaded up our stuff. It was so nice to see my mom at the half way point of this long journey.

Felt: Overwhelmed, underprepared, sad, anxious, thankful. There are just so many new things to face on this new journey and I hate not having a strong plan. However, we have had great support from neighbors, friends, and family that 
have made this easier to deal with. 



Planned: On the packers being adults, but the crew that they sent us were a bunch of teenage boys and an woman. It will make the unpacking seem a lot like Christmas because each box will be a surprise. Our movers were a very efficient team though and I was thankful for them. 



Loved: Having one last Bunco blast with my gals. Unfortunately a few of gals couldn
't be there. I called Nick and informed him that I have to plan a vacation around a Bunco night!  I also loved that Jack got to have one last time with the Beane's, although saying goodbye for quite sometime to all those wonderful ladies was rather difficult.

Here are the pics for the week: