The forgotten week

That five days in between Christmas and New Years is just weird. Routines are off, meals are a hodge podge of leftovers, stale treats and heating up tater tots. 

It's no man's land.

We're in a holiday fog.

We managed a few things...

AJ picked up her official driver's permit!

I'm working on my paint by number. It's coming along,

The ward held their ice skating party....it was "winter raining". 

I sat in the truck. I draw the line at watching ice skating and getting soaked. I had a nice nap and Megan took pictures for me! I know I'm lame and totally no fun.

Even though I bark at her alot and tell her to "stop parenting your sisters", I am really glad that she's so good at stepping in when I am snoozing in the truck. 

We held our 3rd annual Power Hour at the gym and Mark set it up so that there was a big rowing race at the end with little boats to show who was winning. It was super cool. People suffering on the floor is a sure sign. 

I'm glad this weird week is over. Lets take down the tree and get organized. 
 

The birthday skeleton

When your wife is on crutches, your kids are all at work and at school, you are doing all the work for everyone and it's a Monday, for crying out loud....

You might have low expectations for a birthday celebration.

Because you are 47 now and so very wise. 

When she asks you what you want for your special dinner (as she lays strapped into the that leg machine for hours and hours), you say, "I've really been craving pizza from Minsky's, let's order in!"

When she worries about not being able to decorate, you say, "I don't care about streamers." 

And then you go to work and take care of business and you got to the gym and also take care of business. 

And then you come home for lunch and take your bored wife out to grab a burger and pick up your 12 ft skeleton that is kinda your birthday present because you really never could think of anything else to ask for. And you aren't mad about it, you don't silently pout or punish. Your 47 and there's no time for that. Not to mention, that skeleton is gonna be super cool.

 Megan picks up the Minsky's and Everly sets the table with the special red plate and one of the fancy glasses from the dollar store and there are all your girls. They love you and you are the man in their life and you get the best hand drawn cards in the world. 

We call up Mathew and Ethan and Kassie so we can all sing happy birthday, but despite your wife's repeated attempts to take a screenshot of everyone together, she absolutely cannot stop cutting someone's face out, turning down the volume or clicking the power button. Too many buttons!

Mathew comes to the rescue and offers to take the picture from his phone. 

Its a birthday singing, harmony finding event and then there is a clamor of "I love you!!"  "Happy Birthday Dad!' before the grown kids resume their activites.

It's cake time.  The best cake ever....made by the lady that loves you most of all. 

On crutches. Using her gardening roo pouch to fetch the eggs out of the garage fridge. 

Holy smack, we love you.  You make our world go around. 

Thank you for being our IT guy. You keep everything humming along, setting things right, fixing, automating, improving and loading the dishwasher. 

And not for nothing, that skeleton is very cool. 

We'll worry about where to store him in later. 

Hollywood Ending

Once upon a time, we got burned by the mean girls and their mommas. I won't go into detail. 

Fine. 

The details: In Anna's fifth grade year, we found out after the fact that almost the entire grade got together and went to "Day at the K" together, even though the school had stopped organizing it as an official fieldtrip. It was put together by the queen bees and their offspring.  All but a few kids were made aware. So Anna went to school that day only to find out that she not only wasn't invited, she had to sit through a useless day of classes. 

It was a jerk move. 

I may have made my feelings of frustration known on the school facebook page. I was mad and hurt for Anna. 

Fast forward to Everly's fifth grade year! We were tipped off by one of the nice moms that the same thing was taking place. Did we want to get in on it and buy tickets with the group? I had mixed feelings. I suggested that everyone in the grade be invited. A novel idea! I asked Everly if she'd like to go and Mark offered up an alternative plan. 

Would we like company seats in the Diamond Club?

Why yes, that would be PERFECT. And even better? We had four seats. So Anna got a redo and Laney got to take a day off of school. 

Diamond Club seats are FANCY.

They include an all you can eat buffet as well as candy bar, ice cream bar and free ballpark food brought to your seat by a darling waitress that asks you every 10 minutes what else you would like?

It's a kid's dream come true. 

It isn't often that those childhood wrongs are made right. 

And it didn't even require therapy!

Peace out, Day at the K! 

Pee carpet and Picklemans

The wedding is over and we have two weeks to get things under control at the house before the Newlyweds and In-Laws are coming for the open house. 

Am I stressed?

You bet your sweet bickes I am. 

But we still have to get our house to a point where we can move out of the garage. Kinda seems like we're getting comfortable with the premuim potty seating. 

Unfortunately, the refinishing of the hardwood floors did not go as well as we had hoped. They need to come back and fix approximately 63 flaws (if only I was exaggerating). 

The carpet installation was a disaster. Did you know there is worse carpet out there than the stuff our geriatric dogs peed on for 14 years?

There is. 

And it was recently installed in our house. 

I will not cry. 

There is no crying. 

We will figure it all out, but first....it is time to pick up Megan from KU! She is coming home to work for the summer and we will celebrate with sandwiches at Picklemans. They have magic bread. 

70's day

Mark and I have instituted 70's day.

Every Sunday after church we turn off the phones and laptops and ipads and computers...anything that encourages separation and isolation. You know...like they did in the 70s!

And then we figure it out from there. 

Boredom is likely. Anger is all but guaranteed.

But, so far...

We are having fun and making a few memories.

Week 1: We had a project that needed attention at the gym. We took all the kids with us and set them loose with their scooters, skateboards and a gym full of rings, bars, boxes and ropes. 

They figured it out! (I left my phone in the car, so I grabbed a few shots off the gym camera feed)

They even did a few dance routines to "Can't take my eyes off of you"

And get this....about 30 minutes into our forced family fun, my loudest complainers were begrudgingly admitting that this was a really good thing.

Week 2: We packed some sandwiches and went over to Bull Creek Park. I remember doing a simple hike there a few years ago and I thought it might be the perfect way to get ourselves out of the house for the afternoon. 

Megan made us some peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches...the strawberry jam was GONE. How could we have let this happen?? 

The hike was cute a short and interupted briefly when Mark realized he'd need to go back to find a bathroom. While he was gone we gave Megan a hard time over the insane amount of jelly Megan put in each sandwich...I mean, who is that girl's mother??

Stay tuned for our upcoming adventures!

Everly's Turn

 It's time for Sophie the Elf to rejoin society for 25 days. 

Everly is rearing to go and armed with a list of ideas she is hiding under the love seat. We don't clean very thoroughly, so it'll probably be safe there. 

One might wonder, "If the youngest child is the one creating the mystery elf magic every night, who exactly is the mystery magic for?"

The answer would also be a mystery. 

But I don't really care about that...it's Everly's turn, by dang, and she is excited. 

Let the fun begin!

Wallace 2023....I might be done

 Oh Wallace. 

You started out innocently enough, then you morphed into a whole thing.

We've been going to Wallace since 2016. This was our 8th year. 

We've seen in grow and become almost unmanageable...kids running wild, teenagers flirting and "fighting", splinter groups going for hikes and pick-up football games, moms napping in hammocks. 

Now the teenagers are adults and off gaining educations or getting married. The littles are moving into the teenage space and claiming their own firepits each night so they can have conversations outside of parental earshot.  Little do they know we are happy to give them their space.

It makes me wonder how many more years we will go out to Wallace.

This year it was just me and AJ and Everly. Mark promised to come up for a night and wanted to use his barrel smoker to make some burnt ends. Whatever works! 

Other families have shrunk down...the Flynns had no kids there at all but made up for it with a new puppy, the Peterson's were just Amy and Syd, Jensons just Heather and Katie. We're still missing the Guenthers. 

It was...quiet.

The food was still on point. 

Whenever I looked around and the girls were missing, I could find them in the truck doing their makeup!

We didn't realize at the time the bees...the bees weren't actually bees. They were hornets pretending to be bees and soon they would have their revenge!

The girls caught this floppy little snake that was definitely just "sleeping".

They spent many hours down at the Clay Wall, carving steps into it and gathering little dry bricks to

 work with back at camp. That sent me on several solitary walks down the creekbed to make sure they were still not kidnapped.

Hooray! Mark arrived and promptly engaged in manly bbq pursuits. We were all happy to hover nearby to enjoy the spoils.

I'm a total sucker for a late-night camping book. Everly is super committed to her reading fluency...SUPER committed. 

While the adults chatted away at a separate fire, the young toiled and ground down the clay... sculpters gotta sculpt. 

That was the last photo I took...I didn't know that the next day would bring an attack of the "bees". They weren't just after our open soda cans of syrup drips, they wanted us. I got stung on the arm and AJ got one on the finger and the leg. We packed as early and as quickly as we could to avoid the warm part of the day, when the little buttheads seemed to really emerge en masse. 

In the end, we pretty much frantically toseed everything haphazardly in the back of the truck and tried to drive out of beeshot. We pulled over to strap everything down and the bees were still looking for us. 

Fair to say, not really our favorite year at Wallace. It might actually be our last year at Wallace!

Time will tell. 

Unplanned

I didn't know that I would be in Utah this weekend. Mom is very sick and the siblings there have been taking care of her around the clock. They are tired and we're all worried. She isn't eating or drinking and so I flew out to take a turn and give everyone a break. But mostly I don't wanna miss time with my mom if she isn't planning on sticking around for another 10-20 years. That's really not something I wanna think about, but when we lost Dad 16 years ago, reality came in uninvited. 

So I loaded the fridge with Costco meals and hopped on a plane. 

Mom stayed in bed for just one day, and then she rallied! She wanted to go outside and work in the garden. I know exactly how she feels. It's the best medicine. The siblings that had been watching over her these past weeks a monitoring how many ounces she drank or trying to convince her to eat a little something were flabbergasted. 

I'm not sure why she started feeling better, but I won't argue! We're gonna make the most of any feel-good days she has. The garden soil worked its magic on our souls and Mr. Carrot popped out to say hello. He was definitely a Mister. (stoooop!)

Mom grabbed her binos and we went out to check the water levels and look for any winged creatures. We drove around Burraston Ponds and remember the time I forgot that I had a straw in my drink and went to take a sip and that straw stuck straight up my nose...in front of my whole Beehive class at Burraston Ponds. This is what Utah does to me.

We drove past our old Payson house on the way back to Spanish Fork. It looks mostly the same, but sadder. I wish they had kept it up. That house deserves more love. 

Back in Kansas, Mark had a run in with a stray trailer hitch on his way to Arkansas. It was dark and raining and it completely totaled his Jeep. Which sucks. But I am grateful he come through that without any injury. That easily could have flipped the Jeep on impact, or he could have been hurt out there in the dark while he was checking out the damage. 

The offending hitch: 

But he didn't let it throw off his Dad game! I still got me Sunday Sacrament Selfie

And he forced the kids outside to go swing on the swings are get away from their screens. He's my favorite.

I got to sneak in some Ethan time and he introduced me to the wonderful world of Kolaches. 

I continued the tradition of being totally startled by the scarecrow girl in her basement. Dear Heaven, that thing looks like a real kid from the corner of my eye. Never fails. 

I set off with loaves of bread in my purse. A happier trip than I anticipated on the way out, but that's how life goes.