Season's First Snow

Early in November our valley got its first snow fall. It made us feel better about giving in to the temptation to start listening to Christmas music much much MUCH earlier than we normally do. It was very cold and cozy and a perfect start to the holiday season. I bet when people look back on 2020 many will say that this was the year they felt just fine about getting into the holiday spirit a good month before they normally did. We need cheer! We need light and music and celebration! So although by today the snow is long gone, it was a great start to November.

The storm hit on a Sunday - the day before was weirdly warm and lent itself to a lot of yard work so we could prepare. It's not like it was a blizzard trapping us all in our houses but it did end up being quite a bit more snow than we had expected. 

Emma spent the afternoon out in the snow building a snowman. And Troy spent the afternoon alternating between going outside to build and play with Emma and coming inside to warm up his hands on my neck. Emma was thrilled with her creation, and found it hilarious that our only available nose-vegetable was a piece of celery.

 

 

Well that night, the girls climbed in bed and instantly Romney started laughing. It just so happened that the exact spot where she sat in bed to read gave her a perfect view out her window, right at the snowman's face. He was leaning over just a little which gave the impression that he was trying to peek in their window. We all had to take a turn sitting in her spot to look and it made us all laugh so much. Well, everyone except Emma, who was completely freaked out by it, letting her imagination run with the idea, much like her mother used to do herself. We got her settled down and tucked in to bed while Romney read for a while and giggled as the snowman continued to peer in at her. It's a little hard to see in this picture but you can get a glimpse of the snowman, peering in from under the drape of the hammock on the porch.

All of these shenanigans gave Troy an idea to sneak out and play a little trick on the girls. That night after lights out he left through the front door, walked around the house, crept into the back yard, and proceeded to MOVE the snowman towards the girls' window about 15 feet. The next morning Emma was getting ready for school when suddenly she looked out in the yard and froze in shock. Her reaction was better than we could have predicted and she was genuinely frightened, to the point that Troy had to confess, sooner than he wanted to and through some laughter, that yes of course he was the one who moved it. We had to reassure her that snowmen are not actually capable of mobility on their own. That did not stop her from needing more reassuring later when he did it again and the snowman ended up almost on the back porch. Oh Troy, you crack us up. Except for Emma. You seem to terrify her!

The Sunday Walks

Back in March when our Sunday church services got temporarily cancelled (temporarily for eight months), we started having our own church services at home. This was sad, in that we missed our dear friends we worship with, but also, it was kind of great. Having intimate church time with just our family was wonderful. We had many tender times together. Also we had no specific time we needed to wake up or be anyplace. Troy and I took this opportunity to begin what became a weekly date. We didn't realize that at first - it just started that first spring Sunday morning when Troy said, "Hey. Let's go for a walk." And we did, and it was wonderful. A nice long walk. And we came home and I made us poached eggs on toast and it was just heaven. We decided to go the next week as well, and then the week after that. And soon we had a standing date. Every Sunday morning we woke up early, went for a long walk, and came home to enjoy poached eggs on toast. Each week we seemed to walk farther and farther until we had established a route we loved that wound through the avenues and up into the University of Utah. It's about 4 miles long. We pretty much went every single week. Peter joined us one week when he was here, and that's the only walking photo I have.

Well, church isn't cancelled any more. We go once or twice a month. And also it's freezing cold now. So we have stopped going for our weekly walks. And I really miss them, but not enough to go on a walk when it's 20 degrees outside. 

The Exciting Conclusion

The day after Halloween a cold front came in, but cleared up and the first week of November was warm and sunny and so lovely. However, we knew a change in the weather was on its way. Sunday the 8th had a forecast of cold and snow. We knew that Saturday the 7th was to be the final push to really finish the chicken coop. We wanted the biddies to have someplace warm and cozy and dry to sleep just in time for the real cold to hit.

The last step of our big project was to get the fourth wall of the coop designed and built. It took a while to do this because it took a lot of thinking through. It was a complicated project, to have a wall that swung open like a door but also had nesting boxes protruding from it, with their own separate door for collecting eggs. Luckily Troy has a brain for building and was able to figure it out, though doing so caused many moments of frustration. I'm so happy with the result. We got the fourth wall attached and swinging open. it's so heavy! I can't believe those hinges are enough to keep it up, but they sure do the trick. And the little nesting box door is just perfect for peeking in and getting eggs. Assuming the dang chickens ever figure out that is where they are supposed to do that. So far only one of our hens is laying - we are getting probably four eggs a week from Sissy and we are so proud of her. She's the only survivor of the spring attacks. 

Anyway, we got the wall up, and next we had to make a ramp to get up to the coop and attach it. That wasn't too bad. Really the hardest part now is teaching the chickens that a) the coop is where they should sleep and b) how to be brave enough to go up and down the ramp themselves. It's been put together for a few days now - the first night it took 3 people 3 tries to get them all in the coop and then get them to stay there. Every day though more and more of them find their own way inside without our help. As I type this the sun is going down and I'm looking forward to going out and seeing how many went up on their own tonight. (Answer: 5 of 8, same as last night.) It's helped that yesterday and today I blocked off the area where they normally sleep. Hopefully within a few days I won't have to do that and they'll all just go up there. We'll see. Who knows how to teach them to actually go in the boxes and lay their eggs there. I did put ceramic eggs in the boxes to sort of give them the hint - lay your eggs here please! Since most of them aren't laying yet I guess time will tell.

So, yay yay yay our coop is done! Okay, in the springtime we may revisit it and add some paint to make it even prettier (we are thinking barn door red for the coop and white for the trim). And I'm so happy. And I love my husband. 

Happy Hallows

You would have thought that this year would have been the perfect Halloween. It had a lot of things going for it. It was on a Saturday - we could party the whole day long! It was quite a nice warm day. It was also a full moon, and not only just full, but it was the second of the month, making it a blue moon. Also daylight saving time was ending that day so we had an extra hour. The conditions were perfect! But......you know. Covid. 

We really did have a fun Halloween but of course it wasn't the same. Luckily we had a couple of heroes swoop in and save the holiday for us. 

For starters, Emma's elementary school decided to host an outdoor parade a few days before Halloween. She and I had a good time walking around the corner, looping around the school and saying hello to many beloved teachers and staff. Emma had the most intricate costume this year of all the kids - and it wasn't too hard. I'm so used to my kids having major demands for their costumes every year and me scrambling to piece them together. Only Emma had a specific character she wanted to be. She was The Painted Lady from the Avatar cartoon. Well, more specifically, she was one of the characters from the cartoon dressing AS the painted lady. Don't ask me. I've never seen Avatar. (I'm such a loser, I know. ) Anyway we just ordered a few things from Amazon, stopped at a craft store, and voila. The Painted Lady.

On Friday, the primary put together a scavenger hunt at a park. Emma is almost ready to graduate out of the primary but she and I decided to head over anyway. It was really for younger kids but it was so fun anyway. She and I had a nice walk through the park, hunting down clues and saying hello to people we hadn't seen in so long. Here's a photo of a very cute family dressed up as the Curious George gang. 

Halloween itself, falling on a Saturday, really got taken up with all of the stuff we needed to get done! It was a super warm day, perfect for raking up leaves and finishing our coop. A storm was heading in the next day and we wanted to get cleaned up, so some raking happened. Plus Troy and I were just so close to getting the chicken coop done for the season. We didn't get it totally done that day but we finished a lot of the major left-over stuff. It took up a good chunk of the day.

In the afternoon I got the kids to do some pumpkin carving. It was actually really fun to get them into it and they created some fun faces. I might have a pumpkin in the mix as well.

 

I know a lot of neighborhoods out there just totally skipped the trick-or-treating. And some others totally went ahead with it the way they always did. I'm sure there were trick-or-treaters here and there around us with some houses setting up a little treat table outside and others letting kids know not this year. We actually got one set of trick of treaters - we felt bad! We never get trick or treaters! We didn't buy candy, and not just because of covid, but because we never buy candy because we never get kids here. It was weird. We did not do trick-or-treating because we were provided with an alternative activity, thank the stars!

The youth leaders at our church were so awesome. They put together a big-kid scavenger hunt. And it was not joking around. They invited Emma to join in since she will age up into the youth group starting in January. The clues for this scavenger hunt were ALL over the place - from the cemetery to South Temple to the University. The kids split up into small groups (and wore masks) and walked for about 4 miles, taking over 2 hours to do it. I know they were tired but that had such a great time. The clues were clever and funny (Thank you Emily!) and I was thrilled that the kids were able to socialize and get some treats and celebrate the holiday.

Before heading out on the hunt, the kids got dressed up in their costumes. Romney was a vampire - it was so cute, she and two other friends all dressed up as vampires but were totally different from each other. One was what Romney calls "historically accurate," which she says means dressed in 1700s garb and had tuberculosis. The other just wore all black. And Romney of course was the classic Dracula type. So fun.

Chase...well...usually he has a very specific character he wants to be but really didn't have the heart for that this year. He just put in his weird contacts from last year and wore his pikachu pjs and called it good. 

And me? Well....I decided at the last minute that I needed to channel my mother, the Halloween Troll. She bought this costume from a theater and absolutely loved wearing it whenever she could. She even showed up unannounced and uninvited at Troy's work one time dressed in the costume. That was funny. I did not go anywhere in this troll suit but I did enjoy wearing it and thinking about my mom. I think everyone else thought I was extremely weird. 

So we had a happy Halloween, even though it had absolutely zero trick-or-treating. The costumes were less over-taking this year which was good, and thanks to Emily making prizes for the scavenger hunt, we seem to have as much candy sitting on top of our fridge as ever we do.

Birthday Boy. I Mean MAN.

Once upon a time I was this young mom with her brand new first baby who showed up six weeks early. He was really tiny and basically would only sleep if he was in touching me. He was so little he was kind of froggy-looking. That how things go when you're six weeks early and the day you're brought home weigh less than five pounds. 

 

Of course it didn't take long for this kid to put on a few pounds and get cute and chubby and happy and snuggly. (Chase would DIE if he knew I still thought of him this way. I can't help it! He was my first baby!)

Pretty soon though he was this funny little kid who was absolutely nutso for dinosaurs and also pretty  much any carnivorous animal. (This is still true.) He was happy and healthy and funny and adorable.

Fast forward a few years, (which went by in about 5 seconds, by the way), and suddenly I look around for my little boy and instead am confronted by a very large man in my house who still sort of likes me but won't rest his head on my shoulder any more. And I have a hunch that the main reason he still likes me at all is that I am the calorie-provider. I just keep feeding him, my own personal bottomless pit. It's an old joke about teenagers, but we tell it because it is true. 

Chase went ahead and turned 18 in October. I did not feel okay about this but I guess it was out of my control. I am going to say that raising a boy into a man feels a little bit like having the cutest boyfriend ever and then having him break up with you for 15 years. It's kind of heartbreaking. But that's how it is supposed to be. It is just amazing though to try to reconcile in my head the 6-foot-tall hilarious and occasionally irreverant person with the chubby little guy who used to climb into my bed every single night. Oh my gosh he's going to hate this post.

Chase's birthday fell on a Wednesday, which so happens to be the day when the kids don't have live instruction from their teachers. They just have online assignments and a catch-up day. It was a good day for a birthday. Normally at our house we have a fun birthday breakfast and let the birthday kid open their presents that morning. I offered to Chase to do presents later so he could sleep in. He decided presents were better than sleep and we carried out our normal birthday breakfast. Well, we tried, anyway. I made crepes and they were a bit of a disaster, sticking to the pan and scrambling a bit. Oh well. The gifts were basically all clothes - his favorite thing on the planet is hoodies, so naturally he got one of those, plus a couple of goofy t-shirts. Best of all, we gave him two climbing lessons at a local gym. I think he's really going to love those.

 

The plan had been to spend the day going shopping for clothes and going out to lunch, but Chase ended up spending time with a friend for a few hours. (Amazingly they wore their masks for the whole time. I feel compelled to add that. Feeling a bit touchy about social distancing, maybe?) That was certainly a better way to spend the day rather than shopping with his mom. 

I, instead of shopping, spent the day making a huge mess in my kitchen in order to, as a joke, create one last theme cake for my dinosaur fan. I've never been particularly good at cake design or decoration. This certainly looks homemade, but I think it got the point across and was pretty funny to give to my now-adult son. 

Before we had cake though our family went out to dinner. Chase really wanted to try Korean BBQ and of course I was all over that. We actually had an absolute ball - we found a great little spot called Ombu on State Street. It was basically an all-you-can-eat place, with the cooktop on your table. You just pay one price and then order anything you want on the menu. I don't know why this was so much fun but it really was. The kids got so into it. Romney ordered cow tongue which was pretty good. We had squid and shrimp and lots and lots of beef. We had potstickers and kimchi soup and really good kimchi. We had pork belly and fried rice. It. Was. Awesome. I would like to go back for Bleak Week.

 

After we rolled ourselves out of the restaurant we headed home and the Moores came to the back porch for the dino cake and some video games around the fire. It wasn't exactly the 18th Birthday Bash that I might have tried to throw in the Before Times, but Chase had a fun birthday and that was all that mattered.

I can't believe my little guy is 18. 

Here are some of my favorite things about Chase.

He loves music - and every week when we drive to guitar, he plays new songs for me and shares with me the music he loves.  He is hilarious at impressions. He does a mean Kronk, Gollum, Mr. Bean, Grenda and John Mullaney. He makes us laugh constantly. He still adores animals - so I know my little guy is still in there somewhere!

A Spooky Visit

In mid October, my brother and his family thought it was finally time for a visit up to SLC. In the Before Times, as we sometimes like to call the pre-covid days, Peter and Sheri were up here practically every other month for a visit, and we went there multiple times a year. But these days it had been months and months since they had been here. In June their girls came up to celebrate Emma's birthday, and of course my girls and I went down in August, but nothing like the regular time together. We were excited to see them for a few days.

The weekend started off with good fun - Romney's cello teacher had gotten a new puppy and we were puppy sitting for the afternoon. This puppy is the tiniest little thing ever. It's half chihuahua and half yorkie terrier - so small. And so cute. Her time with us overlapped with the arrival of Peter and company. 

Isn't she so cute? Of course, in true puppy fashion, she is much less cute when she's having a moment of biting frenzy and is trying to chew your fingers off. 

The reason Peter and Sheri were coming north was because her family was having a little reunion of sorts in Heber. That was supposed to be Friday night. And we had sad news - our sister-in-law Tonja's mother passed away that week and we were heading to the funeral in Vernal on Saturday. So we really didn't have a ton of time together. But then their family reunion dinner got cancelled and suddenly we had more time together than we thought. I was sorry that her family wasn't getting together but wasn't so sorry that we had more time.

Our first order of business, after returning the puppy, was to have Halloween movie night. We pulled the Luv Sac into the living room and gathered around to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. This movie has only taken 30 years to grow on me but finally it has. I really love it.

Troy had the very lucky job of snuggling up with the littles on the sac to watch the show. So cute. I wish they would stop growing up.

Friday of course entailed a trip to the zoo - do I even need to type that anymore?

The other thing that Sheri did was book us time in an escape room at the spur of the moment. I have never done an escape room - they always sound sort of alarming and stressful to me. Plus this was happening at a haunted house and was supposedly a zombie-themed room so I immediately did not want to participate. Chase was excited to go though and invited a friend. We got Emma and Cara to agree to babysit Iva and Sam (also did not feel great about this, just knowing Emma's tendency to slightly overreact to problems but Sheri assured me it would be fine). I confess to being extremely nervous. I hate going to haunted houses.

So guess what. It was completely fun. We had a rather big group and it was a little chaotic as were were all in this little tiny room all rushing around solving puzzles, or trying to. We didn't make much headway for about a half hour, but we ended up completing all the puzzles and escaping the room in just under the 1 hour time limit. And there were no zombie actors coming in and scaring us, for which we have Covid to thank. We were supposed to have zombies in a cage in the corner but nope! So that was a little anticlimactic. But we really had fun!

Then on the way home Chase and his buddy Brandon got a flat tire and Troy had to go rescue them and it took forever. Super hero dad. They would have been so toasted without him. Eventually everyone made it home and we enjoyed a dinner from Zao and watching a very bizarre movie that was Sheri's recommendation. It was called Scared Stiff and was a very old movie with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Had no idea that those two were once a comic pair. Seemed weird to me! It was pretty funny, though I'm not sure if we laughed more with the movie or at it. 

In the meantime we captured this beautiful sight:

Oh how we love cousins.