Valentines Day 2017

Everybody has their favorite holiday and Valentine's Day is mine.  I like it because it provides a good opportunity to express your love to people you care about in simple ways.  There isn't a lot of build up to the big day.  Unlike other holidays Valentines Day can just happen and be fun without being overwhelming and exhausting.  (I'm looking at you Christmas.)

Over the years we've morphed Valentine's Day from a romantic day about our love as a couple into a fun day focused on our love as a family.  We don't do a lot of big things each year, but one thing is for sure - the kids always get a balloon on Valentine's Day.  This is the one day a year we buy helium balloons and the kids look forward to it all year long. 

I didn't want to miss out on Valentine's Day fun when I was at work on Tuesday so I decided that we'd do our family Valentine's Day party on my day off on Monday.  But I kept that a secret. I dropped the kids off at school on Monday and then headed down to the dollar store in Ogden.  The Five Points Dollar Store is the best dollar store I've ever seen.  They had tons and tons of Mylar balloons for only a dollar a piece.  They also had crate paper which I thought the kids would really like.  So I bought those things and then came home and decorated the kitchen.  

 Brandon had bought treats when he did the grocery shopping on Friday.  So I got those ready as well.

 I also went to Walmart and bought some small presents. Mostly they were things the kids needed anyway.  Hence the hair tie bow on this present.

 I stayed home to meet Derrick's bus, and Brandon went to the school to pick up the twins.  Derrick was so happy when he came in and saw the balloons.  Veronica kept shouting.  "Derrick!  You get frog Balloon! I get bear Balloon!  And Derrick would say, "Oh wow, Balentines Day Party."

In the car Lydia was telling Brandon how she wished Valentine's Day was today and how she couldn't wait one more night for Valentine's Day.  So when she walked into the house and saw the decorations she was so excited.  She kept saying "my wish came true!"

 We made the kids eat a real lunch before we got out the candy. All during lunch Lydia and Charlotte kept looking around and saying, "This is the best day EVER!" and "Thank you mommy!" Take that Christmas. They were pretty excited about the hearts, but most of them didn't like the chocolate.  Derrick carried around his conversation hearts most of the day and kept pointing to them say, "Balentines Day Hearts."

 We opened the presents.  Derrick got batteries for his Thomas the train engine.  He'd been asking for me to take him to the store to get batteries all weekend.

 The girls got a Strawberry Shortcake movie from the $3 bin at Walmart.  Lydia screamed with excitement and shrieked, "Strawberry Shortcake!"  You would have thought this was Christmas morning.

 Brandon bought me just some simple artificial roses, and I bought him some Twizzlers.  (We couldn't think of any big presents we needed right now.)

 Then the kids got to play with their balloons.  They ran all over the house dancing and marching with their balloons following them.

Derrick liked his balloon tied to either his wrist or his ankle.  I figured out how to weigh Charlotte and Lydia's balloons down with plastic cups.  But Veronica just wanted to hold hers.  As such it became the first balloon to explore the vaulted ceiling.  Later she agreed to the cup idea.

 Lydia had been asking for a balloon with zebra stripes.  I looked for one, but couldn't find one anywhere.  She was pretty happy with her butterfly one.

 Derrick wanted to pose with his balloon too.

 We were planning to make cookies as a family, but the kids were distracted by their balloons and I was disracted with taking pictures of them.  So Brandon made the dough.

 He had signed up for a 3D Printing class at the library.  So he went there while the dough chilled.  This is what he learned how to print.

While he was gone I took care of baking the cookies.  The girls took turns with helping roll and cut out the dough. 

 For dinner we had heart shaped pancakes.  Some of them looked more like real hearts than cartoon ones.  Lydia suggested we use the cookie cutter to make a heart in the middle of each pancake.

 After dinner we frosted the cookies.  Veronica had picked out the sprinkle all by herself while Brandon was picking out the frosting at the store.  He said he knew that she put one big container of sprinkles in the cart, but he was surprised to find two or three more when he unloaded the cart at the check out counter.

 Lydia's toy mouse, Mini, helped frost Lydia's cookies.

 Derrick had a lot of fun putting sprinkles onto cookies.  Then he asked for a spoon and just wanted to eat frosting.

 Here I am helping veronica.

 Charlotte wanted to take a silly picture.

 Lydia and Mini with a cookie they did together. (Mini had earlier helped with putting candy kisses on all of Lydia's valentine's cards.)

 And here are some of the finished cookies.

It was a great day!  So much fun and love for such little effort.  I love that kind of stuff.  And I love my family and how we enjoy simple things.

That evening we put the kids to bed and then watched The Martian.  (I'd ordered it from another library in the county.)  That movie is so great.  But honestly the book it better (if slightly more stressful).

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day Everyone. I hope you had a great day.  I love you all!

Birthday Shenanigans 2017

So I'm 32 now.  And I'm mostly okay with that.  I kind of feel like I should have my life a little bit more figured out by now.  Aren't 32 year olds supposed to settle down, own a home, and be basically stable?  But instead Brandon and I are facing some pretty big changes - again. We're getting really good at big changes - settling down and sticking to something, not so much.  

But this isn't a post about all the changes that we have planned.  (I'll write about those as soon as we have more of the details worked out.) This is a post about my birthday weekend.  And it was pretty great.  

We started out the fun on Saturday February 4th.  We went down to Salt Lake City and visited the LDS Church Museum.  I pretty much forgot to take pictures the whole time we were there, but it was really cool.  They've redone the whole down stairs so it's completely different from when I was a kid.  They have a new Joseph Smith's First Vision movie.  At first I was like, "no, I'm not interested in another movie about the first vision."  But this one ended up being cool.  It's shown on a screen that curves 180 degrees so you feel like you are part of the movie.  When the camera moves you feel like you are moving.  Derrick said, "ride on a train" as soon as it started moving because we really did feel like we were riding on a train.  At the end of the movie the camera pans up and it brought back Helicopter training memories for Brandon.  We saw the movie a second time and Derrick kept asking for "up" at the end.  So yeah pretty great.  

My sister Hillary met up with us at the museum.  After we finished up there we went to her apartment so she could dye my hair. This is something I've wanted for a long time. For the past 10+ years I've dreamed about putting pink steaks in my hair.  Brandon's wanted me to dye all my hair pink for pretty much all that time too.  But I've always talked myself out of it.  I've been working, or trying to find a job, or pregnant, or nursing, or growing my hair out, or trying to be an upstanding military spouse, or trying to be an upstanding church member, etc.  

But lately I've felt just a tad overlooked and slightly oppressed. And somehow those two feelings are the perfect recipe for wanting to do something outrageous and rebellious.  And so pink hair was going to happen.  

It also helps that Hillary is one of those talented amateur hair stylists that every girl needs in her life.

 I was very happy with the results.  Brandon was too.

Hillary had to go to a wedding so we'd made plans to spend the evening with my cousins Alex, Melissa, and Heidi at my Aunt Julie's house.  Since my parents are in Brazil I'm glad that my extended family is around to hang out with.  It was so fun to go to Julie and Mark's house and let the kids play there.  And we got to eat an AMAZING dinner of home made BBQ hamburgers.

Alex got out his Virtual Reality gear after dinner.  This was so fun.  A little background about my family - we have a lot of engineers in the extended family and everyone loves technology.  Not in the "hey have you seen my my new iphone that everyone else has too" way, but in the "hey here's this cool thing that's not many people are talking about yet but's it's going to be huge in a few years" way.  So when you go to Julie and Mark's house you know that you are going to see some cool new gadget.  This time it was the Virtual Reality stuff.

Alex set it up in his bedroom because the downstairs family room had toys all over the floor.  At first I couldn't see what the big deal was, but then it was my turn to try it on.  I felt like I was really in a different world.  Here I am shooting a bow and arrow to get rid of some bad guys.

The kids loved trying it out too.

 There was a game where you could blow up balloons and watch them float away.  Derrick loved blowing up the balloons until they popped.  He didn't like wearing the goggles so Brandon wore them, and Derrick watched on the computer monitor. He laughed every time a balloon popped.  When it wasn't his turn he kept saying, "I want to pop the balloons."

 Here's Lydia's turn.  She played a drawing program and tried to walk all over the room while drawing.  Then she laid on the floor and just drew in the air.

The next day was Sunday and we went to church.  I was slightly nervous about wearing my pink hair to church, but mostly I was excited.  Remember no one in this ward has really reached out to me in the past two months we've been here (that's like a year in Army time) and I figured that pink hair was definitely a way to get noticed.  Several of the little old ladies did give me strange looks, but I also got two genuine complements from two younger ladies.  So there.

On Sunday I was surprised to realize that my birthday was in two days.  I'd been thinking of it as "next week" for so long that I didn't realize it was now this week. 

Monday was my regular day off of work.  It was Veronica's turn for a Mommy and Veronica day.  I took her to a pet store to look at the animals (and to sneak in some "hey if you get potty trained we might get a pet" bargaining.) Then we went to Walmart to pick out underwear for her.  She has TONS of pairs from Charlotte and Lydia, but she isn't interested in Princesses or My Little Pony like they were.  I was hoping that underwear that she liked would help the potty training process.  She picked out some Inside Out underwear, but so far it hasn't seemed to help. 

On Tuesday it was finally my birthday.  And I didn't have to work!  My counterpart works Saturday, Sunday, and Monday's.  But he couldn't work this weekend.  So my boss asked me if I'd be willing to work Saturday if I could get Tuesday off.  And since Tuesday happened to be my birthday I was perfectly willing to make that trade.  

The day started out with an amazing breakfast made by Brandon.  Then we got the three older kids ready for school.  Brandon dropped them off and I stayed home with Veronica.  When Brandon came home he took this birthday picture of me.  I LOVE this picture. 

Brandon and I have been reading The Martian and we'd finished it on Sunday night.  We were hoping to re-watch the movie on my birthday, but Brandon couldn't find it in the mass of boxes in the garage.  (Having most of your belongings in storage is pretty annoying at times.)

So Veronica and I headed to the Library with the hope that we'd find the movie there.  We didn't, but we did get the Big Year which is one of my favorites (and also currently lost in storage.)  We picked up Charlotte and Lydia from school on the way back.  (Derrick gets done with school a half hour earlier than the girls and gets a ride home on the bus for special needs kids.  He actually could take that bus to school too, but it doesn't make sense to put him on the bus at the same time we are leaving the house with the twins.)

Anyway we got home and had lunch that Brandon had made for us all.  Then it was time for cake!  And what a cake it was!

 Brandon and the kids had worked on this while I took a nap on Sunday and while Veronica and I were gone on Monday.  I had no idea what to expect, and I was amazed at the results. Brandon is amazing!

 And then it was time for presents.  Charlotte wanted to give me her present first.  She's been hinting at this for a while.  She's been saying things like "don't look under my bed this week." Brandon tried explaining that she could probably put the present in plain sight and I wouldn't notice it.  (I'm really oblivious to stuff.)

She was so excited about this present.  She noticed it at Joanne's few weeks ago when she'd tagged along on a shopping date with Steve and Jacque.  Then a few days later Brandon took the girls shopping for my presents while I took Derrick on the train ride.  Charlotte saw Joanne's and told Brandon, "This is the the store where I saw the present for mom!"  She made him stop and they all went inside. She went right for the present and said, "This is what mom wants!"  Brandon wasn't so sure, but it was on sale in the Christmas Clearance area.  So he bought it.

Turns out that Charlotte did know exactly what I wanted.  When I opened it up and found a little bird's nest with two gold eggs and a red cardinal in it I was so happy I started to cry.  I miss a lot of things about the south - mild winters, sandy beaches, magnolia trees, but probably the thing I miss the most are the cardinals. And somehow Charlotte knew that.  I've never cried over a gift before, but that little bird in a nest touched me so much it made me cry.

 Lydia's gift was a picture she drew of us together.

 Brandon bought me some headphones and a running case for my phone. All the better to listen to podcasts with.

 And he bought me a new backpack because my old one was completely shot, and he didn't want to be seen with me wearing it in public anymore.

Then we settled down to watch The Big Year which is all about birds and the people who are obsessed with them. Which, given my tears over a present with a cardinal in it was probably a fitting movie.

In the evening Brandon's dad watched all four kids so Brandon and I could go on a date. I wanted to go see a movie and I was split between wanting to see Hacksaw Ridge or La La Land (I'm a girl with very diverse taste in movies.)  I decided on La La Land because it seemed like a movie that should be seen on the big screen.

I also figured La La Land would be a happier movie than Hacksaw Ridge, and for the most part it was.  But the ending was much more melancholy than I expected.  I thought the main characters would live happily ever after, but instead they were happy with a touch of what might have been.  I was not expecting that.

The movie left me feeling raw and emotional.  During the credits I was sobbing with feelings of home sickness for - well I don't even know what home. More like I was feeling homesick for adventure.  That doesn't make much sense, but that's how I felt.

Brandon was feeling kind of bad that so far I'd burst into tears twice on my birthday.  But I told him not to worry about it.  We spent the drive home talking about our hopes and dreams for our future and our new plan.

And really the new plan was the best thing that Brandon could have given me for my birthday.  Because if there is anything I love it's a plan.  After months of feeling adrift we finally have something that we can control and can work towards.  And it's going to be awesome.

But that's another post.

It's still winter - literally and figuratively

So you know how I finished my last post about how I was hoping that we'd a nice bit of good news that would make it feel like summer time again?

Well the next day we had a horrific snow storm.  

That kind of set the tone for the week.  

It snowed all night on the 22nd and when we woke up on Monday the 23rd there was over a foot and a half of snow outside. Brandon's parents usually are out the door for work by the time we start getting out of bed.  But they were still home when we all got up.  Brandon's dad just took the whole day off.  Brandon's mom tried to go to work a little bit later, but traffic was backed up pretty bad in the canyon so she just gave up.  I don't have work on Monday's anyway so I didn't have to worry.  The kids' school had a 2 hour delay, but since their classes are only half day anyway we decided that it was a snow day.  

About mid-morning we decided to go have fun in the snow as a family.   

 Derrick loves sliding down the hill that leads to the basement door.  He slid over and over again.

 This is a picture of Brandon's dad's little white truck.  Or at least what is showing of it.  It doesn't run and it's been parked by the garage since we moved in before Thanksgiving.  We'll probably see it again in the spring.

 Brandon and I made a big circular fort for the kids to play in.  They liked crawling on the walls.

 The funny thing is that the base of the fort is built on solid snow that was already about two feet above ground level.

 I decided to make a snow man. It didn't take very long to roll the balls.  Later Charlotte and Jacque went outside and added a nose, eyes and a scarf.

 Here's Charlotte standing on a swing seat that is usually about 2 feet off the ground.

 Derrick went to the garage door and started asking for "boat."  I figured out that he wanted a sled.  So I got that out for him.  He had a lot of fun sliding on that.  I love his little happy face in this picture.

It was snowing again when we came back inside.  I think it snowed at least another foot during the rest of the day.

On Tuesday the kids had a real snowday.  School was cancelled for all the students in the Valley because the roads were so full of snow that non of the buses could navigate.

I had work that day so I left Brandon at home to figure what to do with the kids for a second snow day.

At work I heard all the crazy stories about the snow from the day before.  Many people had been stuck in the parking lots after a day on the mountain.  One of the roads off the mountain had been closed at about 6:00 pm so a few employees had had to sleep over in the lodge on Monday night.

Work was pretty busy for us on Tuesday because everyone in the valley was taking advantage of the snow day.

At the end of work I took this picture of the road down to the parking lot.  The snow hills on the side of the road were easily 10 feet tall.

 On Wednesday we went to a birthday party for our niece Oakley.  Brandon took the kids over there at dinner time and I met up with them after work.  Melanie lives in one of the more rural parts of this already rural valley and the levels of snow around her house were insane.  Driving down her street felt like Luke Skywalker flying around the Death Star.

On Thursday we got an extension to our figurative winter.   Brandon heard back from the job where he'd interviewed.  They had decided to hire from within.  They encouraged him to apply again in the future, which was good, but it didn't do much to help in the short term.

If you remember from a few posts ago here are our options for different career scenarios.

1. Brandon gets a job in airport operations.
2. Brandon gets a job with the FAA.
3. Brandon gets a job with FEMA.
4. I find a good paying, full time job and Brandon stays home with the kids permanently.
5. Brandon goes to flight school for a third time, and gets commercially rated in either airplanes, helicopters, or both.

Our best prospect for Option 1 wasn't happening.  Options 2 and 3 are off the table for the time being thanks to President Trump's federal hiring freeze. Option 4 has the potential to be happening, but I still think Brandon could get a higher paying job than me at the current time. And so suddenly we are looking at option 5 like it's a good idea. In theory the VA will pay for flight school, and Brandon is actually very close to a commercial airplane rating it could work out.  

But flying in the winter is kind of an iffy situation.  So for now we are still playing the apply for airport operations jobs and wait game.  

There was one nice little silver lining to the whole not hired thing. 

I didn't have to leave my job yet!

If Brandon had been hired I would have had to leave my job (the commute would have been too hard on either one of us to somehow both work) and felt really bad about leaving Snowbasin in a lurch in the middle of the winter season.  Now I can continue to stick around until the season ends in April.

In case I haven't mentioned it lately.  I LOVE my job.  And I'm pretty awesome at it.  My boss has told me that having me work there is one of the best things that happened to her while she's been with the company. She likes how quick I learned all the processes and procedures.  I have to add that she's really good at training.  She'll show me the things I need to know and then leave me alone to figure it out.  She's also good at letting me make mistakes and then teaching me how to correct them. (And learn how to avoid them in the process.)  I'm so glad I have this job. 

Employee appreciation week was going all all week and on Thursday they had a little dinner and free skiing on the Little Cat Lift for all family members.  Brandon brought the kids up and met me after work.  Here they are standing in front of the Moose Statue in front of the buildings.

Of course we weren't going to ski, but we were allowed to ride the ski lift up and then back down.  Little Cat doesn't go all the way up the mountain - it only has 7 towers and only takes about 3 minutes to get to the top.  But the kids were so excited to ride it.  Even Derrick kept pointing and saying "I want that." Veronica was afraid to ride it so I stayed down with her while Brandon took the older kids.  When they got back the kids all yelled about how fun it was and wanted to ride it again.  So I went with them.  Here's Lydia's happy face while we went up the mountain. 

I quickly remembered that I do not like ski lift type rides.  I kept hold of Derrick's hand - not because he needed it - but because I was so scared. 

When we got to the top we all had to put our feet up while we went over the stop gate.  Then we started going down.  The wind was blowing directly on us and it was SOOOOOO cold.  I felt like I was going to get a brain freeze from the cold. 

There were people snowboarding on the hills below us.  Charlotte and Lydia would yell, "Hello" and the people would wave back.  The girls also laughed every time they saw someone fall.

When we got down Brandon said, "it's worth having you work here so that we could ride on that!"  The kids agreed.  

I took this picture on Friday morning.  It shows our fort and snowman covered with more snow.  Seriously, it just keeps snowing here. 

On Friday after work I saw one of the snow grooming machines driving straight up one of the ski trails.  It was so crazy to watch it drive up the steep slope.  

On Saturday we went to the Jordan World Circus. The kids had been given free tickets to the circus at school. and we figured we might as well go. Derrick loves the movie Dumbo right now so I asked him if he wanted to see some Circus Elephants.  He said yes and then spent the next week asking us to "go see Circle Elephants."  So that sealed the deal.

We got there early so we could get good seats.  That was a good plan except I didn't anticipate how much extra stuff we'd be pressured to buy.  There were vendors selling cotton candy, snow cones, funnel cake, etc.  Charlotte seriously cried for over half an hour when we told her we weren't spending $5 on cotton candy.

She was also pretty upset that we weren't going to pay $15 for an elephant ride or $10 for a pony or camel ride.

Charlotte wasn't the only one crying.  Lydia shed her share of tears. And Veronica got overwhelmed by the sound and the noise and cried a little bit.  Surprisingly Derrick didn't cry much. But that didn't mean he didn't get overwhelmed.  We'd brought his little blue security blanket and he put that over his head and stayed under there most of the time.  We got a few weird looks, but I didn't care because the fact that he wasn't screaming was actually HUGE progress.

I'll admit for a while I was thinking that this circus was a huge rip off.  Sure we'd had "free" kid tickets, but we'd still had to pay $18 for Brandon and I.

But then it started.  And I was pretty amazed by the whole thing. I've never been to a circus before so I was just like a little kid watching all the acts.  I could have taken pictures of everything, but I only took a few.  Here's a lady climbing up a pole that is balancing on a man's shoulder.

 Another time she climbed up and rode a bike around up there.

Another part of the show had a couple do an aerial silk act together. I didn't get a clear picture of this, but the hashtag should be #relationshipgoals.

 Towards the end of the show it was time for the Elephants to come out.  Brandon made sure that Derrick took his blanket off his head for this part.  He liked it.

 Everyone had loved the circus.  I don't know if we'll do this every year, but we will definitely come back again.

After it was over we went to McDonalds for dinner.  The kids played on the play place for a long time.

On Monday Derrick got to do another thing that he'd been talking about for weeks.  We got to go on "a big, long train ride."  He earned this by wearing underwear every day for 10 days.  Brandon and I were shocked at how "quickly" Derrick potty trained.  Sure it took him 4.75 years, but once he decided that he was ready for underwear did it perfectly.  He's seriously only had a couple of accidents.

So after school on Monday I took Derrick down to the Front Runner station in Ogden.  We got on the train and rode it ALL the way down to Provo.  That took two hours.

 Then we waited about 40 minutes before the train went back up to Ogden.  Derrick was glued to the window the whole time.  Every time we stopped he'd say, "I want to go faster."  He liked watching other trains go by.

I spent most of the time reading "America's War for the Greater Middle East." (You can read my review on Goodreads.)  I was only about 2/3rds of the way through when we started our ride, but I finished it by the end.

Towards the end of the ride we started talking to a man on the train.  He found out how far we'd gone that day and why we were doing such a special trip.  He gave Derrick a Trax pin.  Derrick thought it was so great and has worn it ever since.

As soon as we went to the door to get off the train Derrick looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I want more train."

We've started telling him that he can go on a big long train again when he can read.

Well that's pretty much sums up this week.  Oh there's also been a whole lot of political stuff going on.  But that's the subject of another post that may or may not get written depending on whether or not I want to keep most of my friends.

Tomorrow is Ground Hog Day.  Hopefully we'll have news that this winter is coming to an end soon. At this point I'll take either a literal or figurative spring.

P.S. We have some foreign cashiers at work who are awesome. Today I overheard one of the american cashiers trying to explain Groundhog Day and the movie Groundhog Day to one of the foreign cashiers.  It was one of the funniest conversations I've ever heard.  By the end of it we all decided that Americans have some pretty strange traditions.