Snomaggedon

Take note - today is April the 11th. Last year in early April we had temps alarmingly in the 70s. Felt like the end of days, with so little water and such high temps.

The good people of our city and state spent the spring, summer and fall praying for water. Literally praying. And it seems that this is the year our prayers were answered - in fact, many years of prayers were answered at the same time. 

We have had a lovely, wet, snowy winter. Just what we have needed. It's been such a relief to keep track of the snow and water totals building up all winter long. People did start to grumble a bit once it got to be late March and the snow kept coming, but I tried to remember that we have been absolutely desperate for water for a very long time. It seems like half of the headlines lately have been about the shrinking Great Salt Lake and the deadly consequences of its disappearance. So yay for the water!

Our Spring Break was not much of a break at all. I mean, yes, it was a nice break from school, but it had very little to do with spring. Emma was signed up for some sewing classes up at the top of the avenues and we had to abort the mission halfway there one day because I simply could not get up I street because of the snow and wind. The van just kept sliding back down and it was a miracle that I was able to avoid smacking into another car. It was quite the wintry week. Sideways snow for two days. Finally it started to clear up and get a little warmer over the weekend. But that was just the warm before The Storm.

I'm going to go ahead and say that I feel like our school district had a solid three days that they should have at least postponed school if not closed it. Monday we woke up to 6" of snow and terrible roads. Round two of the storm arrived on Tuesday, lasted until Wednesday, and brought us to a total of 18" in our yard. A foot and a half! It was so crazy. We were lucky enough to get a call from the district at 4:45 in the morning to tell us that school would be happening as usual but we wouldn't get in trouble if we were late. Seriously? So ridiculous. 

The storm finally blew itself out by Wednesday afternoon, and the sun peeked its little face out. Things stayed pretty cold for a couple of days, but it was 70 degrees by Easter Sunday, and today was 80. Welcome to Utah, folks!

 

A Quick Note on One of the Best Parts of Life

Picture this. It's late in the evening, getting close to bedtime. It's a cold snowy day (more on the state of the weather coming soon) and Troy and I are sitting on the couch, feet up on the ottoman, just resting since Troy is like 2 days post surgery. Suddenly there is a pretty loud knock on the door. I go and tentatively answer the door, and who is there but our dear friend The Other Troy! Plus his cute daughter. They were in town from Seattle to do a little skiing. I had seen him the month before when he brought his son for a ski trip, but here he was again! How good does it feel to know that you have a friend who makes it a point to come see you even when there's not a lot of time. 

Troy and Lucy came in and we had the most lovely chat. I'm just so so grateful to have friends I love so much.

Here's an awkward photo I snuck of them. 

We had the same treat the day before from our best buddy Ben who came to check on Troy, who also made a late-night loud-knock visit.

Dear friends are one of the world's high points.

Midnight SanDiego Adventures of Carpools, Puking, and Baby Chickens

How does that saying go? Something about when it rains it pours? Oh yeah. I think it goes something like, "If you think things are busy you'd better watch yourself because it's about to get way worse."

Troy had his surgery on the Wednesday before spring break. It was only natural that Romney would be leaving on her choir trip the next morning. At 4am. So of course on Wednesday night I was trying to keep Troy comfortable and bring him anything he needed while simultaneously helping Romney pack for a four-day trip to Southern California and trying to get everyone to bed since she and I would be up at 3:30 to get going. 

boarding the bus in the dead of night

Does that mean we should have been sleeping soundly until 3:30? I suppose so, but that is absolutely not what happened. We were both awake around 2:00, nervous that we would sleep through our alarms. We did not. We finally got up, tiptoed around, trying to make sure we wouldn't wake Troy. Sadly, that turned out to not be an issue, since he got basically no sleep that night. When I got home from taking Romney to the bus-loading party in her high school faculty parking lot, I got a text from Troy, asking for help upstairs. I thought I WAS being helpful, taking him food and pain medication, but an hour later when I heard him lose it all into the sink, I realized that I had not been at all helpful. 

Then it was time to get Emma up for school.

I would have crawled back in to bed after that, but seriously, I could not. I mean of course I was doing Emma's carpool that day, and meeting a new doctor for Romney. Crazily, one of the other things was buying more chicks. What bad timing. We haven't had chicks since 2020 because our chickens have miraculously been staying alive since then. A new feat for us. They're actually getting kind of old to be laying eggs, and we realized that we should start adding two or three hens to the flock each year to prevent us losing all our layers at once. Chicks are still in high demand around here, and I had already tried a couple of times without success to purchase the kind of chickens we like. That day was the day that IFA was getting silkies in. So....chicks were purchased that day. Did we have a place to put them in the garage? Oh no, of course not. They moved into a laundry basket in the living room. 

They're the cutest little things. Three black silkie bantams, plus I caved and bought two frizzled bantams. We have had the worst luck trying to get frizzled, but I'm giving it another shot. We're already pretty sure that one of them is a rooster, but that will be a blog post for another time. 

Oh yeah and it's been dumping snow for basically the entire month. 

I'll tell you, Friday morning, after I got Emma out the door for school, made sure the chicks were all in good shape and Troy was snoozing quietly upstairs, I climbed into Romney's empty bed and slept until 10 in the morning. 

Here is Troy recovering by a cozy fire on a gray day, the chicks under their heating lamp behind him:

Our suspected rooster, already given the very feminine and delicate name Orchid: 

Two of the three silkies, which so far are indistinguishable from each other

Here are some photos from Romney's trip to San Diego, which consisted of one full day of driving. two busy days in the city, and then another full day of driving. The choirs won all sorts of awards, including an individual one for Romney, who won the "maestro award" for outstanding musicianship. She sang in multiple groups plus played the cello in the orchestra and accompanied another group with it as well. Way to go, Leopards!

Here is a photo of the beloved choir teacher, getting his now-traditional birthday celebration as they were out to dinner on a boat in the harbor. Was it his birthday? Nope. But the kids tell the waiters every time they eat together that it is, each time with an increase in age. I think he's now up to about 45, despite having been born in the late 90s. 

 

Good thing that when she got home on Sunday night, it was just the beginning of Spring Break. You wouldn't know it, since we were getting pelted with snow as we gathered up her bags, but it was. At least the snow cooled off her sunburn a little bit.