13 Roses

 Rose turned 13 on February 7th! I jokingly told her "now you're a real teenager instead of a fake one!" because Rose has seemed like a teenager for the past two years. She is almost 5'10'' and such a bright intelligent sweet human--she almost seems like more than a mere teenager. We love our Rose girl so much! Usually I ask my kids what they want for their birthday, but this year I artfully avoided talking about birthday gifts because we got Rose one big one: a new bed! She had been sleeping in the same twin sized bed with a footboard for years, and the taller she got, the more her feet pressed against the footboard. So Jeff and I found a queen sized mattress at Costco and a bed frame on Amazon, and even though we got excellent deals on both, this quickly became the most expensive kid-birthday of all time in our family! Rose is worth it. The middle child turning 13 needs an extra boost. Amber wanted to know if she was going to get a queen sized bed when SHE turned 13. I told her to wait and see.

Fog & Fam

The week of January 29th was full of fog so thick I may have strained an eyeball trying to drive. When I went running I could see more clearly without my glasses! One morning while driving Jay to seminary, I could only see two dashed yellow lines at a time on the road. TWO. It was maybe 10 feet of visibility. The fog was like cotton candy, but gray and cold and sad instead of pink and sweet and happy. We soldiered on into February anyways.

A "less-foggy" view during one of my three back-and-forth runs on the paved pathway behind our old house. The fog was too thick for pedestrians on the street, so I resorted to mind-numbing back-and-forth running on the pathway.

Saturation and Bailout

The theme of my week was water. All of the snow plus freezing rain plus rain over the past two weeks has completely saturated the ground around our house. Our driveway became a sloppy puddly sticky mud pit. Our yard transformed into a squelchy marsh. As the temperature came back up into double digits last week and the snow receded, I noticed that the low gravel area next to the barn had become a full-on lake of frozen ice water. It didn't surprise me because of the intense weather we've had recently. Over the past week, a lot of snow started melting and plenty of rain fell, so I teased the swim team about doing a polar plunge at practice and avoided walking in that section of the driveway.

Winter Weather

 Winter weather hit us HARD this past week. First came the cold: the temperature dropped into single digits, with that painful negative windchill we experienced while ice skating on the canal last weekend. Then came the snow, in several installments. Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day so there was no school. After Tuesday night's snowfall, Wednesday school was delayed 2 hours. Youth church activities and parent teacher conferences were cancelled on Wednesday night due to a winter weather advisory in the forecast, but Thursday was a normal school day. The snow started around 11am on Thursday, which caused Jay's swim meet to be cancelled that night. School was cancelled on Friday. Saturday night, freezing rain rushed in, glazing the snow in a shiny layer of ice. Church was cancelled on Sunday (today, Jan 21st). Our week can be broken down into three sections: sunsets, running in the cold, and a snow day. 

Ice skating

 The only good part about freezing winter weather is when it makes the canal freeze! The temperature plummeted into single digits on Thursday night and froze the canal hard and fast. It was the smoothest ice we've ever had on the canal, possibly due to the speed of the freeze. No partial freeze, thaw, freeze cycle. It froze all at once into this diamond hard smooth sheet of glass. Amber and I braved the 1 degree air on Saturday morning (Jan 13th) for some ice skating. We spent a solid 30 minutes bundling and layering up before heading out into the cold. The wind was about 9mph, making the windchill negative. Usually the inside of the canal ditch is protected from wind, but somehow the wind was blowing the length of the canal this time. IT WAS FRIGID. Best ice ever, in the coldest air ever. It figures, right?

The Two Tooth Week

Over the past week, I spent several hours at the dental office. On Friday (Jan 5th) I had a routine teeth cleaning for myself. The following week, both Jay and Amber had separate appointments for troublesome teeth.

Tooth #1: On Saturday (Jan 6th), Amber was playing with a ball on the basement stairs when I heard a thump and a bump. A wobbly little voice drifted up: "I chipped my tooth!" Amber came upstairs sobbing, clutching something in her fist. When she opened her mouth, my stomach clenched. Her right front adult tooth had an unsettlingly large chunk missing! Still crying, she opened her fist and showed me the tooth fragment. 

Happy New Year!

 Happy New Year! We had our usual crackers, cheese, and dips for dinner on New Year's Eve. Since my lactose intolerance made me less than excited to prep all of that dairy-liciousness, Rose cut up all of the cheeses, and Jeff and Jay each made a creamy hot dip to go with crackers. Jay even learned how to toast almonds in a skillet! We played several rounds of our family favorite Wii game, Luigi's Ghost House, which had us laughing and screaming. We had "special drinks" (citrus soda, orange juice, and cherry grenadine). I finished my 2023 goal of drawing a picture every single day all year long, and it was a little sad to be done with that quest, but also very satisfying. I went to bed at 10:30pm on New Year's Eve, while my family stayed up. I did not exactly get much sleep-- I dozed off but was awakened repeatedly by random fireworks in the countryside around our house and my own family's various noises as they stayed up till midnight. 

Christmas 2023

Christmas was only 6 days ago and somehow it already feels so distant! I think that means we thoroughly enjoyed our week off from the school day routine. We didn't go anywhere or do anything out of the ordinary beyond continuing to get our new house in order and daily swim practices. I love that we don't have to GO and DO anything particularly special to have a wonderful, restorative, luxurious time on a school break.

Christmas Break Week 1

Christmas break came early this year! School was out for the entire week before Christmas, starting Monday, December 18th. We felt lucky to have the full week to ourselves in our new house. To use our time wisely and avoid completely vegging the week away, we implemented a loose structure:

• Sleep in or have morning screen time until 8:30am; must eat breakfast by 8:30am. 
• 8:30-9:30am: work around the house! We did unpacking, cleaning, and other projects around the house every morning.
• 9:30am: Amber and Jeff do a workout together in the barn.
• 10am: Jeff, Jay, and Rose get ready for swim practice.
• 10:30am-12pm: swim practice for Jeff, Jay, and Rose, and together time for Amber and Shaina.
• 12-2pm: lunch, complete unfinished morning work, and rest/quiet time.
• 2pm-4:30pm: screen time.
• 4:30pm-5:30pm: everyone prep and eat dinner.
• Evening: we had family scripture more than 50% of the nights, and we watched one disc of the Lord of the Rings series per night on 4 of the nights. Jay declared that Lord of the Rings has elves in it, so it's a Christmas movie. I declared that we had to at least match our movie watching nights with nights where we remembered to have family scripture 50/50.

We followed this framework for the most part, and it worked great. It was a simple but good week, and we got a lot done around the house while also feeling like we were resting from our regular school day routine. 

Repairs and Races

 Our week was kind of a grind on all sides. Jeff and Jay had lots of swim practices and a weeknight swim meet waaay out in Wenatchee. Jeff, Jay, Rose, and Amber all had five days of school. Jay had four days of early morning seminary. At home, I fielded a nearly endless parade of workers bent on finishing the last odds and ends of our house. Wednesday was the craziest, when we had a dozen different guys tromping in and out of the house for various reasons: 1 plumber, 3 electricians, 2 HVAC guys, 3 carpenters, 1 foreman, and 2 delivery guys. It was loud and our floors were covered in dirt tracked in. I found myself obsessively sweeping and vacuuming the floor twice in a three day span. 

Second Swim Meet

Jay's first ever high school swim meet was last week waaay out in Moses Lake, WA, so I couldn't go watch. This week's swim meet was in Yakima, a mere 45 minute drive from home, so Rose, Amber, and I were able to go see Jay swim. The girls and I went to Costco before the swim meet. We got a big rug and some winter boots and a coat for Amber and all kinds of foods. It was a lot. Rose was a huge help with  unloading the cart into the trunk. Then we went to the swim meet! 

Christmas Tree Week 2023

Part I: Cutting the Tree

The day after Thanksgiving, on Friday, November 24th, we got our Christmas tree from the mountains. We were all exhausted from the move and from Thanksgiving, but we made the 80 minute drive to get our Christmas tree on Black Friday out of pure tradition. It was cold (22°) in White Pass but not snowy. We found a nice a tall tree for our new house! It was actually one of our quicker tree-hunting expeditions. It took four of us to team-carry the tree down the steep steep hill to the clearing. Only Jeff in the front of our tree-carrying line could see anything, so it was like a blind trust walk through the forest with tree branches whipping our faces, tripping over logs and slipping downhill, all while carrying a 20 foot Christmas tree.