Back in Utah

We're back in Utah. It's nice that the elementary kids have spring break this week - giving us a little down time as we recover from the trip. Poor Abi and Lily that had to head right back into school - Early morning jazz band for Lil. Wes took her yesterday cause he had seminary, I took her today and went climbing after. Lovely full moon this morning!

There's a lot of beautiful snow in those mountains. The rumors and new reports we heard in DC were right. We left spring time in DC and returned home to winter in the North Pole. Check out the snow on our little deck - 

That, my friends, is a lot of snow. Crazy. 

I hear the ski resorts have had more than 800 inches this winter, and that the Great Salt Lake has risen 3 feet so far. This is good news to help the drought the West has been in. We are hoping for a cool spring so that things don't flood! Even though it's still snowy and cold, it's good to be back. I loved our trip to DC, and I'm also so glad to be back home. I have decided I do not want to do World School or live in temporary places. I want a home, routines, and a life I can control, at least a little bit. Not that we can control everything here, but I have the means to wash clothes and cook food (our hotel in DC didn't have a kitchen or laundry machines.) It's also nice to have downtime to just be here. The kids need time to relax and to play and be creative. And to watch tv sometimes. We didn't watch a lot of movies this trip, but we did watch The Birds - and that was kinda funny and unique experience. The kids also watched a bit of Bluey when we had a 30 min break. We've watched a few episodes here too. The kids like it. Corey does too. He liked the episode when they told their kids that they aren't special! "You're special to me, but you're not special to everyone else..." I don't know what episode that was in. 

I'm not sure when/how they discovered this Aussie show, but they're all engaged and I'm just starting to be aware of it, but it's is a refreshing kids' show compared to most of the woke stuff coming out of the US. Here's a cute article about it. It's been a fun, the kids follow the examples of those cartoon dogs with some of the games they've played. The kids were pretty creative on the trip. They made a mancala set out of rocks and an egg carton. It was a pretty busy trip, but I guess that is how it has to be if you visit DC. Better to just live out there! I'm totally willing to move back to Virginia. I love Centreville. I could do Alexandria too. Nothing will come of it probably, I'm just dreaming. I would miss the mountains if we did, so I'm ok if we stay. I'll do whatever God wants us to do.

So our tub has been broken and I thought it would be fixed yesterday, but they came and then ended up not being able to fix it for whatever reason and it needs to have the tile removed or whatever, so still no tub. Once again I am grateful that I take cold showers, cause for the past 12 years up until this past January I have ALWAYS taken baths and did not like showers. But I started cold showers right before our water heater broke, and now the tub has been out of commission for 2 months, but it's been ok! Sure, it's kinda annoying to not be able to give the boys a bath in the big tub, but the small tub in the kid bathroom has worked. And today I figured out how to do it in the big tub without me having to stand and hold the shower handle - I hung the handle over the glass partition and let it spray! Perfect! Peter you ready for a bath?

It took a long time to fill, but it works. and now I can give the boys a bath in the big tub, yay. Hopefully the tub will be fixed next week. 

And, amazing news - I finished blogging December. I finally finished Dec 26, Dec 27, and then I added Dec 28 onto Dec 29, so you can go look up those dates if you want. I'm not going to link it here, but just for the time stamp now you know: those were done today. I'm slowly catching up, fingers crossed.