After the excitement of moving to Utah right before Christmas (of 2014), and then the excitement of Christmas, we settled into January. And January in Utah looked like this:
It was a little bit hard to get used to. I think living in Texas for the last 9 years had made me really wimpy with cold weather. I had forgotten that for lots of months in a row you just have to wear a coat all the time. Even inside! After I figured that out it wasn’t so bad.
Another thing I had to figure out: how in the world to manage all the snow clothes! Six sets of snow pants and boots and gloves and hats and other things just sitting around in big wet piles all the time. So we did a hook rack for the snow pants and some cubby things for boots and that kind of worked.
Then Christmas break was over and it was time to be brave and go start the second semester at new schools. Oliver, who was in the middle of 6th grade, which was in middle school in Texas, had to go back to elementary school. He was bummed about this at first (But Mom! Everything looks so tiny!), but he ended up having a great time and making lots of friends, which I think would have been harder going straight into a new junior high. Henry also got to take it easy for second semester – in Texas he had been in all-day kindergarten, and here it was less than 3 hours. Tristan was in 8th, and Cindy was home with me. Cindy loved Henry’s new half-day schedule because it meant she had a built-in friend again.
Sledding down a little “hill” in our backyard for hours.
BYU basketball! One of the fun things about being back in Utah.
When Henry was not home to play with Cindy, she had to make do with me. She made me lots of fancy rings and bracelets. She named all of the bracelets she made, and they were such fantastic names I wrote some of them down on a note in my phone:
1. Queen Anna Pretty Pretty Princess Queen
2. Awesome Alien Pretty Queen That Is A Girl And It Could Fly
3. Schlitterbahn Ride Bracelet Queen (Schlitterbahn is a waterpark in Texas)
4. Alien Pretty Princess Queen Anna Elsa Pretty Princess
So basically, if you are having a hard time coming up with super awesome names for your children, you know who to come to.
Other fun things in January:
Skiing with the Young Men in our ward, a first for both Tristan and Oliver. They loved it.
Getting to see so many animals. The big hill behind our rental house was home to tons of deer and also a fox. There were exciting animal things going on almost every time we looked out the windows.
Rachel and Lizza also played several hundred games of Dutch Blitz:
And Henry did several hundred puzzles:
And there were lots of cozy evenings by the fire:
FEBRUARY
February was actually a lot warmer. After a few weeks of snow and cold in January, it turned into a really mild winter. Which was nice for swinging outside in shorts and bare feet.
Cousin Maximus, Henry, Cynthia:
My kids were seriously in heaven with our backyard. It was the complete opposite of our yard in Texas. All these pictures are just from one day of backyard adventure:
Early Saturday morning. Kids in pajamas outside. Some sort of sign with arrows has been constructed, and there are snacks involved.
Balancing on rocks in a nightgown:
Attempting a little basketball:
More snacks:
Underdogs:
Monkey bar training:
Joined by the older boys for some more basketball:
Digging a giant hole for no reason. I love how all the kids except Cindy have changed out of pajamas by this point in the day; She just threw a cardigan over her nightgown and called it good:
The proud hole digger. I think they took apart the sign they had made earlier to measure the digging progress:
“Mom, look out the window because this is a really deep hole!”
Anyway, that kind of day was on repeat all year long.
Other February things:
Reading inside by the fire:
When we first moved in I didn’t unpack most of our books – I was hoping that it would make our next move easier if I kept some stuff in boxes, and I figured we could get by on lots of library books. Little by little I started bringing in some of the book boxes, and it was like Christmas for Cynthia every time. A new box brought in meant at least an hour of her sitting quietly surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. Probably worth having to re-pack them up at the end of the year.
Daniel had a long work trip for Dell that involved going to both Bangalore, India, and Shanghai, China:
Meanwhile, back at home we were getting ready for Valentine’s Day. This year it was chocolate drizzled pretzels. Times a billion.
And Tristan got up early to make everyone french toast with strawberry sauce. I love having kids who think it’s fun to take over the cooking once in awhile. I also love how in this picture Oliver is trying to figure out how to tie a tie by watching a tutorial on youtube or something. He had to dress fancy for the 6th grade Valentine’s dance.
Henry and Cindy at the Hogle Zoo with my sister and her kids.
Daniel sharing all the treasures he brought home from India and China:
A little bit more snow:
Lizza and a pretty small snowman. She must have gathered up all of the snow in the yard to make this.
A Taco Time picnic in the front yard under warm February sun. Cindy and I had to go pick up Henry from school every day right at lunch time, so somethimes this happened.
Triple spider swinging. With varying amounts of footwear.
Another BYU basketball game:
Campout for Tristan and Oliver:
A hike with the family near Dry Creek, just a few minutes away from our house.
Mid-hike, Daniel took the older kids on a little off-trail adventure:
I stayed back on the trail with Cindy and we took hundreds of slow-motion jumping off rock pictures:
Pretty soon we got high enough that the trail turned to snow:
Playing around in a snowy meadow:
On the way back, looking down at Alpine. I can’t believe we live in such a pretty place. When we first moved back to Utah, we thought we would build or buy anywhere in Utah County, but after living in our rental house for only a few months we were pretty sure we didn’t want to leave Alpine (and we didn’t).
A typical day’s set-up for Cindy while she waits for Henry to get home from kindergarten: some toy buckets, lots of puzzles, and stacks of books:
More triple spider swinging. This time with a stander!
Cinnamon-sugar french toast made by one of the kids and brought to me in bed. I can’t remember why this happened. Just for fun, I guess.
Also just for fun: Henry sweeping the floor in his spiderman suit. We had reached a point where I realized that my younger kids were never going to advance past the “put away the silverware and that’s your only job” stage unless I actually taught them how to do the jobs all the older kids were doing. So we made a weekly rotation and Henry started learning. Kind of painful, but still mostly a good thing.
The end.
