Back to our humdrum lives

This week was most normal week we've had in a while. Cinderella was over. Spring Break was over. It was back to our humdrum lives. 

And so this will probably a quick post.  

But first we have to look at a few Cinderella pictures that I completely forgot to add to the week about the 3rd week of shows.

First up is my favorite picture with my back stage fairy godmother crew. This was taken by Jared before a show.  I don't know what setting he had the camera on, but somehow I'm VERY brunette in this picture.  

One night we made sure to get a picture with Cinderella. 

It's kind of an unwritten tradition for the ladies in each cast to go take pictures in the ally behind the theatre during intermission for the last show. I've seen so many pictures of casts in front of this white wall. It was so fun to finally be in the picture. (Even if I'm kind of obscured in the back row.)

Okay now let's talk about this week. March 31st was the first day back to normal. It was a little hard getting everyone up and out the door. But we all mostly remembered what to do. 

Derrick is getting pretty sick of being on the bus for like two hours every day. So we made a deal. He'll still ride the bus home from school if I take him to school. It's actually really nice to not have the stress of making sure he's up and ready for the bus by 7:25. Now he can sleep in until about 7:45. I take him in the car when I drop the twins off at their middle school. Then we drive across town to his middle school. He's about 5-10 minutes late every day, but that doesn't really matter since he doesn't really have a first period. 

I went to work after I dropped Derrick off. I spent a LOOOOOOONG time there. I think I was there for close to 5 hours. 

That afternoon we planned to go to the County Recorders Office to get all of our passport paperwork turned in. I wanted to do it on a Monday because all the kids get out of school an hour early on Mondays. The recorders office had told me they didn't mind what time we came, but I really didn't want to show up there with the six of us at like 4:30 in the afternoon. I felt it would be better to be there around 3:00.

Brandon had gone to work early so he could get off early. He picked Derrick up from school at 2:40. Veronica was already home with me and we went over to the other middle school and picked up Charlotte and Lydia at 2:40. The middle schools get out at 2:50, but traffic is a nightmare so it's just easier to pick them up 10 minutes early. 

We all met at the "County West" building. It's in what used to be the old hospital. It's a really nice building. The recorder that helped us was super nice and helpful. She was not phased at all to help a family of 6. 

I had all our birth certificates and other paperwork ready. She took our pictures and put them on the paperwork. Brandon and I signed our paperwork and the paperwork for the kids. 

I wrote a check to cover the admin fees and the photo fees for the county. Then I wrote SIX other checks to cover the passport for each member of our family. I don't know if I've written seven checks in the whole of last year. 

And then we were done. I've felt like this has been a project in the back of my mind for a long time. It was nice to finally get it done. We went home and I took a two hour nap because I was so exhausted from all that paperwork. 

On Tuesday Derrick had an orthodontist appointment. I was kind of surprised that he didn't have anything broken. The appointment was really quick and then I dropped him off at middle school. 

 I met with my new client, Cassy, to get her business ready for me to help with her billing. We spent most of the time just making sure I had access to what I needed. But I did take a minute to look at one of her clients. I made a little adjustment to something to make the billing work. Casey was like, "how did you know how to do that?"  I was like, "I don't know. I just do."  I've just been doing this for five and a half years and so I know what works." 

I also did stuff for Ivan's business and for Aspen Grove. Aspen Grove has a new clinician joining us ASAP (again) so that means I'm working on all the paperwork to get her transferred to our Tax ID. We also have two new clinicians coming in the next few month. And we have two students who just took their licensing tests and will be newly licensed in the next few weeks. (Hopefully.)  So that's FIVE new clinicians. I'm realizing I need to start working more hours to keep up with the growth.  

The other set of twins came over after school on Tuesday. I'm so glad that Charlotte and Lydia have such good friends. 

Veronica didn't have theatre that afternoon because the other class was doing their tech week. Veronica's class would go to their dress rehearsal on Thursday. 

On Wednesday I had Scripture Study again. We are done with the book Restoration. Now we are reading "The Mother Tree."  Jori and Diantha came as usual. My friend Rachel from Cinderella came for the first time. It was a REALLY good time. 

I spent some time cleaning the house and then watched the movie, "Best in Show."  The Baconsale guys have talked about this before and said it was really funny. I thought it was okay, but it wasn't as funny as I thought it would be. I actually fell asleep for a while. 

Brandon had taken over the attempts to get chicks because it was stressing me out to figure out when to go. He was like, "I'll just take the kids after work."  But when he got home he called the stores.  All they had at D&B were turkeys and Valley just had ducks. So no chicks this week. Charlotte was disappointed. 

None of the girls were interested in the young women activity that week so they didn't go. But Derrick went to his. It was a game night with rootbeer floats. That sounded amazing to me so I went grocery shopping that night and bought vanilla ice cream and rootbeer so we could have some at home. 

Thursday was a rough day which is so weird because I don't know if I've ever had a rough Thursday before. I felt like I just got up on the wrong side of the bed. It didn't help that the kids were running out of clean clothes. 

Normally I'm REALLY on top of us doing laundry on Saturdays so that we have enough clean clothes for the week. But the kids hadn't really changed their clothes a lot during Spring Break so I hadn't worried about laundry that Saturday.  I was like, "oh we'll just do laundry on like Wednesday."

But guess who has no habit of making sure the kids do laundry on Wednesdays?  Me. I never even thought about it again. So on Thursday I was kicking myself when Derrick and Veronica didn't have clean pants in their drawers. Fortunately, Derrick did have a few clean clothes on the laundry table that hadn't been put away. So he did have clean pants. And Veronica was fine wearing some of his pants. 

I felt like I was staring at the base of a mountain as I looked at my day. I had to do work for Ivan, Casey, and Aspen Grove. On Tuesday I'd been fine with that. But it felt super hard on Thursday. 

I really just wanted to crawl back in bed. But I pushed forward with my morning. And I made it through. I got all the stuff done that I needed to do. 

When I made it back home at 2:00 I climbed in bed with ice cream and the book Wind and Truth and just kind of sat there like, "I made it."

The day got slightly better in the afternoon. But I still had a lot to do. Brandon was at CSI so I was in charge of everything. 

He was supposed to go to a production meeting with the rest of the creative team for the play Much Ado About Nothing. He's been asked to build the set for that play this summer. Since he was at CSI I went to the meeting to represent him. I brought one of his hats and put it on. I told everyone. "I'm Brandon." They laughed. 

It was cool to hear everyone talk about the plans for music, costumes, marketing, and dancing for the play. I took notes and tried to give a good answer about what Brandon could do. At one point the director, Alexandra, said, "Jared told me to see if the twins can help with painting the set too."  I was like, "I think we've become the Illguth Creative Team at this point,"

That meeting ended at 6:00. I went back home and was there for a little bit. Then it was time to take Veronica to the Orpheum for the dress rehearsal for the other Willy Wonka cast. That started at 7:00. So it was back to the Orpheum. 

I got her situated in the theatre and then went back home. I was home for about 45 minutes and then I went back to the Orpheum for a THIRD time to pick up Veronica. 

Good thing I love that place. 

Veronica was so excited after seeing the other cast do the play. She was like, "WOW, I can't wait until it's my turn.

Brandon came home and everyone basically sent me to bed. Charlotte made muddy buddies and brought me some. I liked eating those and reading. 

Friday was a much better day than Thursday. For one, Derrick and Veronica had more clean clothes. Also I just woke up feeling better mentally. 

I got my work all done in the morning and then came home and read for a little bit. Charlotte and Lydia had a pep assembly in the afternoon. They hate those so I'd agreed to pick them up early. So at 2:30 I picked them up. 

After we came home I spent the rest of the afternoon working outside. My strawberry bed had lots of grass growing in it. I spent a long time pulling all the grass out. 

When I was done getting all the grass out I covered the bed with mulch. 

Then I moved a bunch of my blackberries to an area near the chicken coop. I hope that this area will be better than the hot white fence. 

While I was out there Lydia came out and was asking if anything had sprouted yet. I told her no. But then she looked at the pea bed and said, "Mom there's one here!"  that was good to see. 

When Brandon came home he helped the kids light a fire. We were still trying to burn through our junky wood. We had hot dogs for dinner and later had s'mores. It was really fun. 

After the sun set I got cold so I went inside and took a shower and then spent several hours reading Wind and Truth. The kids and Brandon stayed outside a long time. They played dark tag and then st by the fire some more. 

On Saturday Brandon went to work on the living room shelves. I started out by cleaning the kitchen, but I was hoping to get outside at some point later in the day. 

At 10:00 we turned on Conference. I wasn't sure how I was feeling about conference this year. I was thinking, "I'll listen until it get's too hard."  Turns out that I didn't even make it past the Audit Report. I was like, "Nope! Can't handle this!"

And I went outside and spent like the next like 9 hours pulling weeds. 

Every so often I came in for water or food. It was cool to see Brandon's progress over time. 

Look how amazing!

He was able to build one whole shelf. It looks so good. (And I completely forgot to take a finished picture.)

Here's what I was doing. I was working to get grass, leaves, and other stuff out of the front garden beds. 

now you can see the tulips and other flowers as they are getting ready to bloom. 

There are still a few leaves I need to move, but my compost ring is full again so I have to wait for it to compress a bit more before I get the last of the leaves out of the beds. 

This area especially had a lot of grass in the bed. It was good to get it out. 

Here's another area I cleaned up.

And look at this pretty hyacinth. 

I love these crocuses. 

Here's a happy daffodil. 

And in the back yard I already have tulips coming up. 

I did take a break at noon to go to my friend Rachel's house. She was letting Lydia and Veronica borrow some fancy clothes for the curtain call awards next week. 

Brandon was having one of the best days he's had all year. He LOVED building the shelves. He said he was super relaxed all day. When he was done with the shelf he went to Lowes and bought a part to fix our barbeque grill. He replaced the part and then cooked hamburgers for dinner. 

After dinner I took a shower and then read more of Wind and Truth. I was at the point where EVERYTHING was coming to a head. It was super exciting. All the work of re-reading the series was paying off. 

I read until about page 1250. I still have over 100 pages to go, but I got to a part where I felt like I could stop. 

Today has been a good day. Conference didn't drive me as crazy this morning so I've been half listening while updating my blog. Brandon made donuts. 

At 1:00 our friends Bob and Vonnie came over. They were our military relations missionaries in Texas. They live in Idaho Falls and now have a son in Twin Falls. They were here to visit him and then they stopped to see us. 

It was so great to see them. They kids had fun showing them their art and other special things. 

And that basically sums up the week. 

Thanks for reading. 

Spring Break (The one where we stayed home and spent money)

The end of Cinderella coincided perfectly with the beginning of spring break. I would have loved to do something like go to San Diego, but since Brandon recently started at his new job he didn't have a lot of time off yet. (But he actually will eventually take time off because this company doesn't treat employees like traitors for asking for time off.)  So that meant we were staying in town. 

Last year we stayed in town for Spring Break and my goal was to not spend any money because we were saving all the fun money for our trip to Texas a few weeks later.  

This year my goal was to spend money. We were going to take the money that we would have spent on hotels and gas and use it to pay to do some of the more expensive things in Twin Falls. We were also going to eat out for dinner every night. 

The kids and I had a running list of things we wanted to do during Spring Break, but the final plan was put together by Derrick and me. Both of us love calendars and lists and planning things. So a few days before Spring Break we sat down and made the official schedule of when we were doing what and where we would be eating each day.  

I was really excited about the plan, but when it came to actually spending that money - oh boy did I have anxiety. I'm normally fine spending money when we are on vacation, but spending money while we are at home was a whole different thing. It was especially bad around the food. My brain was like, "YOU CAN'T GO OUT TO EAT THIS MUCH WHEN YOU ARE IN YOUR OWN TOWN. YOU SHOULD BE STAYING HOME AND MAKING YOUR OWN FOOD. IT'S WASTEFUL TO EAT AT RESTURANTS WHEN YOU COULD MAKE THIS FOOD CHEAPER AT HOME."

So yeah, I was dealing with that all week. But it was still a really fun week. 

Brandon and I both stuck to our regular work schedules so most of our activities were in the evening. So on Monday we went to work like normal. I came home and the kids and I spent the whole afternoon playing in the backyard. We were so lucky to have AMAZING weather all week. We had days in the 70s every day. 

So instead of going anywhere on Monday we decided to just enjoy the weather in our own backyard. 

Our patio is currently going through a white trash phase. (Again) We still have all the rubble on ground from taking down the brick wall in our house. And our old mattress is still just hanging out on the patio. The kids are currently using it as a combo lounge chair/ trampoline. 

On Monday Charlotte directed the other kids in making a tent on top of the mattress. 

Here are all the kids laying in the tent. 

I spent the afternoon rotating my compost. I took the plastic circle off from the current compost. I moved it a few feet over and then starting shoveling all the existing compost into the new spot. All the stuff on the top was put on the bottom. The stuff on the bottom was sifted out and put into one of my garden beds. And I also just left a lot of the bottom stuff on the ground. The soil here is soil that I moved when we dug out the fire pit area. It's TERRIBLE. So it needs a lot of amendments on top of it to hopefully make it better eventually. 

When Brandon came home from work he and Derrick went to a local hamberger place called Shake Out and ordered hamburgers and fries. There isn't a lot of seating at this place so we didn't all go. They brought the food home and we ate it on the patio. 

It was delicious. 

When I was done with the compost I mixed the compost into the garden bed where I had been dumping it. Then I planted carrots, lettuce, and onions. Brandon hooked up the hose and I was able to water this bed. 

Brandon and the kids started a fire. This was so we could burn up a lot of the junky nail filled boards that have been contributing to the trashy vibes of our patio. I was also hoping that Derrick would run around and start picking up random garden trash like sticks and long grass stems and burn that. He's done this before and I was kind of counting on his need to burn EVERYTHING to help me clean up the yard. But he must have sensed that I really wanted him to do actual work, because he just sat by the fire. 

He had a good time playing with the fire. 

We had a good time with the fire, but I didn't stay outside as long as everyone else. I took a shower and then read from Wind and Truth. I'd made it about 200 pages while still doing the play, but now that the play was over I could REALLY start reading it. 

Tuesday is kind of a blur as I try to remember what happened. I know I went to work, but I can't remember specifics. 

But hey, here is a picture of a crocus that I found in my side yard. 

That evening we were going to eat at McDonald's, but I was feeling like I needed a break from hamburgers. We'd had hamburgers the previous Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. 

So I made spaghetti for dinner and we ate that at home. At 6:30 we went to the Planetarium to watch one of their movies on the big dome/screen. This was $37 for all of us. The show was "T-Rex" the kids had seen the pre-view for it on Cabin Fever Day and had been like, "WE HAVE TO SEE THAT."  It came out this day, March 25, and Derrick had made me write it on the calendar way back in January. In fact, this might have been what kicked off the staycation idea. 

The movie bounced back and forth between animated videos of a T-Rex growing up with a story about three boys who found a T-Rex fossil. It was really well done. At the end we found out it was narrated by Sam Neill - the guy who plays Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. 

I felt like this was the best movie we've watched at the Planetarium.  Usually I leave thinking, "I paid $7 for THAT?"  But this time I felt it was worth the money.  

When it was over we went to Orange Leaf and everyone got a Beginners cup.  That was fun. 

While we were there I opened up Facebook and saw that Baconsale had put out the quiz to take to try to be on their anniversary show and compete to be The Listener. I've been trying to get back on the show ever since I was on it a few years ago. So I hurried and opened the quiz. They list the date they will do the recording. It would be Tuesday April 8th. AKA Derrick's 13th birthday. AKA the dress rehearsal for The Curtain Call Awards. 

 

I was like, "I'll figure all that out if I make it on the show."  And took the quiz. I felt pretty good about the quiz - especially since one of the answers to the questions was Veronica Mars. 

But in the end I didn't make it one the show. It's disappointing, but probably for the best anyway. (And I ended up with like three more important things on the 8th so really it's good I didn't have a reason to run off to Bountiful Utah on Tuesday night.)

On Wednesday I was going to go to work. I try to protect my Wednesdays as my day off, but I'd been feeling like I was behind on things and needed to go in. I got up and made a whole schedule for the day. I was going to go to work, and then later in the day I'd take the kids to go see if we could get chicks from either D&B or Valley Country Store. 

But then I realized I should probably find out if the stores we really getting chicks. So I called both store and they both were like, "We'll get chicks around 10:00. It's first come first serve." At D&B they said people were already taking numbers to get in line. 

So then I realized that maybe I shouldn't go to work. (And I hadn't really wanted to go to work anyway.)

So I went to talk to Charlotte. She was the most interested in getting more chicks. We decided that we'd go to Walmart and buy a tote to use as a brooder. Then we'd drive out to the Valley Country Store in Buhl. All the other kids decided to come along too. 

So within a few minutes all the kids were up and dressed and we were on our way to Walmart. We all went inside and bought the tote. This felt a little like a mini miracle. 10 years ago if you had told me that I could walk into Walmart with all four kids and we'd walk to an area of the store without going to the toy aisle and we'd only buy the thing we went into the store for - well that would have sounded impossible. But we DID it. 

Then we drove out to Buhl. I LOVE driving out to Buhl. It always reminds me of driving through the Texas Hill Country. And I have such good memories of driving around the Texas Hill Country with my four kids in the car. So driving out to Buhl, with all my kids, on a lovely spring day - oh it was just wonderful. I was like, "Oh this is like old times when you guys were little."

We made it to the Valley Country store a little bit before the chicks were brought out. I asked when they thought the chicks would be available. The lady said it would be soon. But a few minutes later she told us there that for some reason there were only ducks in this shipment.

That was disappointing. 

So we drove back to Twin Falls (which was still a lovely drive) and we went to D&B. There were tons of people waiting around for their turn to get chicks. We couldn't even see what chicks they had and there was probably no way there would be any left by the time it was our turn. So we decided to leave. 

But before we left I mentioned to another family that we'd been out at the Country story in Buhl and they'd only had ducks. They were like, "Oh that's what we want!"  I told them, "Call them and find out if they still have them. It's possible. We were there 30 minutes ago and there was nobody in the store."  

So hopefully they got some ducks.

I told Charlotte we'd try to get chicks another Wednesday. There was still a lot of Spring left. When we came home she made the brooder out of the tote. She cute a hole in the lid and put chicken wire over it.

When we came home I did a lot of yard work. That was way more fun than going to work would have been.   

Veronica was doing silly things with painters tape. 

And got Derrick in on it. 

At 1:00 we went to the pool. Brandon's not as crazy about swimming as the kids are so he didn't care if we did this activity without him. We don't currently have a pool pass so we had to pay to get in. It was $20 for the five of us. This is the cheapest activity we did all week. 

I got in the deep end with the kids and played around with them for a while. But after about 20 minutes I left them to play while I went and read Wind and Truth some more. 

Yes, I'm the crazy lady with the giant 1300 page book at the pool.

We stayed until about 3:00. It was a good time at the pool. 

That evening when Brandon was home we went to Dairy Queen for dinner. (I was feeling like I could eat another hamberger again.) They have a deal where you can get a hamburger, fries, a drink, and an ice cream cone for $7. For $2 more they switch out the cone for a shake. We've wanted to try that deal for a while so this was a good opportunity. 

I'd meant to eat a snack a little before Brandon came home, but I'd forgot. So I was super hungry at Dairy Queen. It made me a little shaky - also the money spending anxiety was taking over. So I just sat while Brandon ordered.  After I ate I felt better. And I was really happy that the food was good. That meal deal was worth it. 

We went home to digest for a while, but about an hour later we went out for our next activity. This time we went to Glow Games to do Laser Tag. We paid $47 for all of us. Which I was kind of thinking was a good deal. But the game was only like 20 minutes so maybe it wasn't that great of a deal. I'm not sure. 

Also the teenage worker was not very good at explaining things. He just kind of put us in the arena and let us go. Which was a little confusing for Veronica at first. 

But overall it was REALLY fun. Brandon, Charlotte, and Lydia were on a team. I was on a team with Derrick and Veronica. Brandon - who actually has combat training - smoked us all. He was kind of scary. He's sneak up on us from what felt like no where. I ended up just finding a sniper area and staying there because it was so scary to know that Brandon could be anywhere.   

Here's the score board at the end. It's hard to read. 

Laser Tag had been so fast so we still had a lot of day light left for the evening. We went home and tried to figure out our new power washer. 

It took a while so it wasn't as satisfying as I wanted it to be. 

I took pictures of what I'd been doing in the yard that day. I'd trimmed our decorative grass and removed a lot of the leaves that had been piled up all winter. 

And look, here's a hyacinth. 

Jori had been on vacation in San Diego (lucky!) so I hadn't seen her in while. She was back and came over to drop off yogurt. (Her husband works for Chobani so they always have more yogurt than they can eat.)  I then walked her home and talked to her a little longer. I was so happy she was back. 

On Thursday I went to work and was able to get a little more caught up on things there - even with the day off on Wednesday. 

When I came home I did a whole bunch of paperwork. One of the paperwork things was to do the kids passport paperwork. Brandon and I have talked about getting passports for our kids for a while. But we decided to actually do it because my brother who currently lives in Vancouver, is possibly moving to Ottowa later this year. I was like, "Oh shoot, we need to visit him before he moves farther away." So that kicked off getting passports. (Also in Trump's America it feels like a good idea to have very strong documentation of our citizenship.)

 At first I was going to do all the paperwork by myself. But then I realized that would be really annoying. I decided that the kids should participate in the process. So I had them each take turns sitting with me while I filled out the paperwork. 

This was really fun. It helped that I had M&M's for them to eat while they had their "appointment."  I asked them things like "What's your birthday? What's your address? Where were you born?"  I showed them their birth certificates and their social security cards.  They also had to know things about me and Brandon like where we were born and what our birthdays are. 

When Brandon came home I also had him do a little appointment while we filled out his paperwork. And I did mine too. 

I wanted to go to the County Recorder to get the paperwork turned in. I called them to see if we needed to make an appointment. They said we could just come whenever. I was like, "There are 6 of us. I don't want to overwhelm you."  But they said anytime would be fine. So Brandon and I planned to take the kids after school on Monday. 

Brandon made taco salad for dinner because we all needed a break from burgers again. After dinner we went to Gem Stone Climbing to go rock climbing. 

I opted not to climb because this was an expensive activity. For Brandon and the kids to climb and rent gear it was $113.00. But in hindsight that was an AMAZING price because we were able to stay for as long as we wanted. 

I was super impressed by the teenager who was working the desk here. I told him it was our first time and he gave us a tour. We did have to wait a minute for the tour. I took a minute to try to get a selfie of myself. I'd HATED every picture of myself from the last week and that morning I'd decided it was time to cut bangs. So I'd cut those and they'd actually turned out okay. 

Then Veronica wanted to take a picture with me. 

After our tour we were able to go where ever we wanted. Veronica started out in the little kid area and was really unsure of herself.  She needed me to help her get down this wall right after I took this picture. 

It was good I wasn't climbing because Veronica needed a lot of attention. Anyone under 14 had to be clipped into the automatic belay systems by an adult. So I spent a lot of time clipping and unclipping her. (I also was supposed to help Derrick, but like 50% of the time he was just doing it himself.)

Veronica and I left the kid area and went out to the bigger area. Here's Charlotte going up.

Here's Derrick in another spot. He'd been here with his Young Men group a few weeks ago. He'd come home saying, "It's the perfect spot."  And I could see what he meant. He has a climbers body - long and lean. And he didn't have to worry about points or time or anything. He could just climb up however he wanted.

There is a big "Boulder" in the middle of the room. Lydia had made it to the top and posed for me on her way down. 

Here's Derrick getting ready to go up.

This is Lydia coming down.

And Charlotte going up.

And up.

Here are Lydia and Derrick on top of the boulder. 

Veronica had been struggling with a lot of her runs. She wasn't as sure of herself as the other kids. But I was tapping into my ropes course instructor training and helping her feel good about trying and doing personal bests. 

She never made it super high. But she kept trying and did make it higher than she thought she could. It was cool to see her improve. 

I think this was the highest she ever made it. She was also able to go back to the little kid area and get up that wall with no problems by the end. 

Here are Charlotte and Lydia getting ready to do some runs in the kid area. 

Derrick was still going strong, but he and Veronica pretended to be sleeping under the boulder. (Veronica was more done than Derrick.)

Here are all the kids pretending to be tired. (Except Derrick who was NEVER actually tired.)

We had so much fun at the climbing gym and we will definitely be back again. 

On Friday morning I went to work. When I got home Derrick and Veronica went grocery shopping with me. (Or maybe I went shopping before work. I honestly can't remember.)

That night we went to Applebee's. The kids and Brandon all ordered burgers. I got a salad. The kids did so well at the restaurant. They were great while we waited for our table and then for our food. 

After Applebee's we went to Target and window shopped for a while. Then we went to the Twin Falls Escape Room where we'd made an appointment to do the "Book of Secrets" game. 

This was the most expensive thing we did all week. It was $29 a person and cost a total of $184.00. I'm not exactly sure if it was worth that. But I didn't feel ripped off either. 

The premise of the game was that we were trying to steal "The Book of Secrets" from a library, but the security system had been activated. We had 1 hour to get out before the police arrived. We had to find USB drives that had clues on them. 

We couldn't take videos or give away things, but I took a few pictures right at the start. 

The room had a lot of things in it. And there really were so many clues and secrets hiding. It was so fun to solve things. Everyone had different things they'd figure out. I was especially impressed with Brandon at one point. He figured out a really complicated things involving the drawers of the card catalogue.

We could get hints from the game master and those helped a lot, but in a lot of ways we were figuring things out on our own. 

My favorite parts were when we'd figure something out and something would start moving. Walls moved. Secret doors opened. It was all really cool.  

There were lots of music cues. At one point the Stranger Things theme played. That scared Veronica. (It didn't help there was also fog streaming out.)  So I spent about the last 10 minutes calming her down. 

We were sooooooo close to solving the puzzle but in the end we didn't get the last clue. Here are all the USB's we did find.  

Even though we didn't win we still loved the experience. I would 100% do one of these again. 

On Saturday we slept in and then we slowly jumped into our next project. We cleared everything off of the area around our fire place. We were getting ready to build some awesome shelves on the two sides of the fire place. 

Here's another before picture from another angle. 

We were especially excited to get ride of this odd shelf thingy. 

Brandon and I went to Lowes and bought a bunch of wood. Then we came home and he went to work cutting things and starting the project. 

I had my own project. Several years ago Brandon made me a shelf to go above our window. I never asked for this shelf and I was always a little perplexed as to why he made the shelf. It only had like 6 inches of clearance so not a lot could fit up there. And the curtains under the shelf looked TERRIBLE. He'd strung them on a string and then hung and bunched in weird ways. 

But it was one of those things were I was like, "whatever."  And just lived it with. After a while I really stopped thinking about it and that's just how things were for a while. 

When we started talking about refreshing the living room I knew I wanted to fix things on this window. After playing around with a few ideas I decided to (finally) take down the shelf, and put in a new curtain rod. 

I liked the curtains so those could stay, but I bought room darkening curtains to go behind them. I bought a curtain rod with two tracks so the curtains could be hung separately, but still kind of together. 

I started out by taking down the shelf and the old curtain rod. I was kind of hoping Brandon would step in and help me at some point, but he was busy with the shelves. So I gave up waiting for him and put the curtain rod up by myself. I was pretty impressed by myself. When I was growing up putting up curtains was like the most complicated math problem ever. Our plaster walls didn't help things. But I was able to get these up without many problems. After they were up I was like, "OH MY GOSH THESE LOOK AMAZING! I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS YEARS AGO!!!!!"

Brandon had been inspired by all the hidden compartments at the escape room. So he spent a lot of time figuring out how to put hidden drawers into the bases of the shelves. So it looks like he didn't make much progress. But he really did. 

On Sunday we had a nice relaxing day. In the evening we watched Wicked. I liked it, but I'm still partial to the original Broadway cast. I relistened to those later and I was like, "Yeah, these are better."

And that was our spring break.