Spring 2022

I am laughing that the title of this post is Spring 2022, when the first picture is a winter wonderland. Really it should be titled, 'After Legoland Until Cruise (minus Ellie's birthday).' It wasn't a particularly cold winter for Utah, but it was a little snowier than normal, which was great for the drought that has been plaguing the west. It snowed especially a lot in December, but there were a couple of bigger snow storms after the new year also. 

We particularly enjoyed the snow when we brought the sled over to Bicentennial Park to go down the big hill. It was hilarious to see all of the kids try to fit on one little sled down the hill. I love them. I also loved Darcy's snow suit. She loved it too and wanted to put it on regularly, even if we weren't going to get in the snow. 

After we got home from Legoland, we had to face the music that we were all sick. And we had been traveling like crazy. We decided to get tested for Covid, but John was the only one who tested positive (apparently you have to get tested at just the right times in the illness for it come back positive). But I ended up losing my taste and smell for a while so I know I definitely had it. 

I wonder if Darcy lost her taste and smell too. She was not willing to eat normally for a few weeks after being sick. For the record that was her one job: eat and sleep, and she was failing at both. She was not interested in eating at all, thankfully she would still nurse (at all hours). I really hated losing my taste and smell. It made me realize how much enjoyment I get out of tasting and smelling things. Taste came back pretty fast, but it took a couple of months for my smell to fully return. Even now, sometimes I think my taste and smell are just a little off. The good news was that it was no big deal to change a poopy diaper. 

Miriam doing a school project to test water freezing again and again on a rock to see if it would erode at all. 

Still learning to color.

Sleepy baby with crazy sleep habits for awhile.

Another major thing that was happening during this time was that we were full steam ahead on our landscaping class. We went through so many exercises, thinking through so many factors of our yard, until we came to this yard plan. We measure light patterns, thought about traffic flow, thought about things we wanted to see, didn't want to see, functionality, and dreamed a whole lot. 

The master plan that definitely ended up being tweaked. 

One of the steps was to kind of draw out what we wanted. I landed on taking some photos and drawing our ideas on them. 

Before

After???

Before 

After

Just after. I got a little happy drawing flowers. 

Being creative one night with Legos.

Occasionally my girls go through spurts of wanting to do their hair all fancy. I love that they always want to take photos.

Hey eating again, even if it is just a banana!

The plumeria went dormant, but the leaves came back. 

Sleepy nurser. So sweet.

Mustache day

Watching babies sleep is the best.

Valentine's dinner. Steak is tradition! We also pulled out the fine china and decorated the table.

Valentine's floats.

Mommy's punny cards.

Cards from my sweet girls.

 

Matching sisters!

Our ward did a fun carnival one evening. Games, face paint, bouncy house, candy. They loved it. I remember actually not loving it. I just didn't know that many people yet and didn't having anyone to talk to. 

Eliza did a 3D art class that spring that made her experiment with some pretty creative things.

Peekaboo baby in a mound of pillows.

Mom came to visit while Dad was finishing up his show in AZ. Darcy loves her so much.

This was also on of the first days that we had work done in our yard. It was fascinating to see the truck go.

Since we had our yard plan in place, it was time to start getting quotes and do some big projects so we could get our yard in this summer. One of the first things we got quotes for was getting some concrete poured. This was the most expensive part of our plan, but not the only expensive part. Man, that was an expensive time of year. We made the joke that we had to stop writing checks for thousands of dollars. But for real. Thankfully we saved money from the sale of our Phoenix house to do this, but still it stung. 

One expensive thing was buying a shed. We picked out which one we wanted and got the concrete poured to fit it. It came way quicker than we thought it would. It seemed like there was shipping delays on everything, but I guess not this thing? So we ordered way too soon. I think we bought it in February and didn't put it together until August. 

It was such a circus getting that thing delivered. The boxes were too wide to get through the back of the semi. He had to unload them the long way, which was way too long for the lift. He ended up half dropping them on the ground, But then we couldn't get his hand truck under it properly to get it off the lift, so he tried driving the semi down the road to see if he could drag it off the lift. He eventually got it off by kind of unpackaging it. Then he had the audacity to tell me that these sheds don't last very long. Jerk. It was completely ridiculous. I ended up carrying all of the pieces to the shed up from the bottom of the driveway in to the garage. 

We still made time for occasional parent child dates. John and Miriam went to the Bean Museum. 

Holland and I were out the same evening on a date to the library we we ran into Miriam and John at the BYU creamery. 

On our library date we picked out books for our entire family. 

It was also during this time that I spent some time relearning some piano songs from my teenage years. Muscle memory is truly a remarkable thing.

Family board game time has become more and more tricky as this year has gone on and Darcy has gotten older. She is not patient with us playing and want to have all of the game pieces and cards, and preferably be on the board. :)

Chocolate silk pie and apple cheesecake pie for Pi Day. :) 

Holland made a leprechaun catcher at school. She's adorable. 

I wonder if her arm is asleep.

Nursing baby doll/chewing on her hand

Darcy wants to play with Dada.

Now bum in the air sleeping

One night Ellie and I took a walk up to Slate Canyon and checked out the valley full of lights.

Darcy definitely went through a hat phase.

I guess I took a lot of photos of her sleeping.

Miriam went through a cooking phase and broke out the saguaro cookie cutter when she made biscuits.

Hat and shoe phase.

Braided french bread.

Her favorite shoes are Holland's. 

Date night throwing axes.

It was so fun! And so satisfying when you actually got a bull's eye!

John did a little better than me. Jerk. ;) 

It turns out that when Darcy splashes milk with her hands, it goes quite far.

Other Darcy shenanigans: she found a marker.

First day of Nursery! Since John is a nursery worker, it wasn't a big deal for her to go to nursery. Lots of little girls in there with two dads.

Another big expensive dirt project: getting topsoil brought in. They removed about 6 inches of rocky soil and was supposed to spread about that much. It was 7 dump truck loads. Then a guy drove the skid around to spread it. They thought it would only be a 1.5 day job, but it took them more like 3 days. It really seemed like they only worked 4-5 hours a day though. The main guys said we got a steal of a deal on labor though. 

It sure left the road and driveway a mess.

We were left with some big piles of dirt in various places. We tried to be smart about it, but for real after this project, we moved that dirt around by hand so many times. We had farmer hands from the shovel and wheelbarrow after just a few weeks this summer.

The skid hit the RV gate post and thankfully they replaced it. One thing that was kind of weird about this project was that they wanted to be paid in cash. I had to go to the bank and get 6 grand out in cash. The cashier tried to be really subtle about showing me the money. Glad I didn't get mugged!

Date night to make for reals creme brulee! The real vanilla beans and kitchen torch were pretty epic. 

Ellie said it was like pudding. She didn't get anymore. :) 

Holding herself up with a foot in Daddy's pocket!

Such a good trick. 

Those lashes

Burp cloth bonnet.

All of our creative rainbows for devotional.

Date night to see Pride and Prejudice at BYU. We had tried to go to two other things at BYU since this date but both were disrupted by a trip to hospital. Once because John got mulch in his eye, and once because our niece had to go to the hospital and we needed to pick up Hendrix from his fishing class. We're nervous to try to schedule anything else there!

Pig tails! She loves them.

Fire pit in our dirt lot.

I love them.

We squeezed in a quick weekend trip to Lake Powell over conference weekend. John didn't have any extra vacation time for the year, so it was just a day and a half. We camped across from Wahweep, and hiked around that canyon. 

Can't believe how low the water is.

There still is some though. I believe we explored Face Canyon or maybe it was Navajo?

We had to get out and do some exploring. 

Those walls are amazing.

My girls playing around on the kayaks. You can see the ramp across the bay.

Fancy houseboat.

Darcy and I went on a walk by ourselves.

She fell asleep during our exploring.

Good thing I could find a shady spot to wait for her to nap.

Some ducks found us and these girls were more than happy to feed them.

Spring at Lake Powell means sweaters and jean blankets.

We drove down to see the dam.

Hiking in the sand canyons.

A little sand graffiti. 

Don't worry it is super temporary.

The kids made a little slide and playground area.

This little one loved the sand so much!

We had Anna, Jane, and Suzette with us. So fun to have cousins.

Plus there is someone there to take a photo of our family. 

This is a pretty awesome cousin shot.

It was a nice big houseboat. We are sure lucky to travel there so often.

Besides work we had to rush home because our concrete was about to be poured! They had two big cement trucks come but they just poured it into this electric wheelbarrow of sorts.

My girls watched them all day. 

We had to do handprints.

They turned out pretty well considering one was practically a baby.

Shed pad.

Patio

Pool pad

After dirt and cement, John started on a garden box.

Still love hats.

Besides doing all this yard work orchestration, we were trying to get ready for our cruise! Wow, that was insane. And I got called to be in the RS presidency. 

Springtime snow.

Right before we left on our cruise, like the day before, we got our sprinklers installed! I can't believe how much craziness was going on at that time. 

This was her favorite hat. She's so cute!

I remember packing for our cruise and this is what Darcy wanted to wear. She was so cute, but it was definitely not weather appropriate for a Panama Canal cruise.

Yay, it is almost cruise time!!!

I feel like I have to go into a little bit more detail about how insane the weeks and months were leading up to the cruise. We were taking on putting in a whole yard. So many calls to so many people trying to get bids. What we learned was that no one really wanted out jobs. So the people that did them were the ones that called us back. I couldn't believe how many people didn't seem very eager for the job. Most places wouldn't call back at all. 
The one exception to that was the concrete, which we got several bids for, but they were all over the place. The highest came in about $18 per square foot, which would have made that step more than 20 thousand dollars. We ended up getting it for about half of that from someone else and it was still $11,500. Yikes that was the most expensive step. 

But everything was expensive. We had done the fence already which was about $7000. The dirt project was another $7000, and the sprinklers were about $5600. We were hemorrhaging money. Not only that but we bought the shed which was a couple thousand dollars.

Before all of that started John installed a water softener and RO system in our house in January and February. It is so nice, but that also wasn't cheap, a couple thousand dollars, even though he did all of the plumbing work himself. Yikes. So much money. We made a joke that we were just trying to see how much money we could spend in February. Turns out that wasn't a funny joke. Thankfully we saved out some money from the sale of our house, but it was still getting to be a lot. 

In addition to dealing with all of the house and yard craziness, we were struggling a little bit as a family adjusting to living in Provo. Specifically Holland was having a hard time. I think all of the changes in her life were just way too much (new sister, school, covid, moving, new school, new church, trying to make new friends). Everything was just building, building. Not surprisingly, we had a ton of issues. We really tried hard to make time for fun things too (see all of the photos from the dates and things), but it still was just too much. She was in a really hard phase. I feel okay saying this now, because when I am writing this months later, she has gotten through this phase, but she really didn't get past it until part way into 2nd grade. Thank heavens for her teacher for whatever kind of magic she is doing in that classroom. Or maybe she just outgrew it, or maybe all of our attempts at kind and firm discipline actually paid off after months, but she did outgrow it! Eventually it just clicked for her that is okay to not get mad if a parent asks you to do things. She would go from 1 to 100 in a second, and it made for a hard time. This temper issue was exacerbated by the fact that she stopped being willing to go sleep at night. Eventually I started giving her melatonin in the evening to help her fall asleep. That was a big hurdle. Then at her well check in May, her pediatrician recommended we try to not give her melatonin during the summer and try doing sleep meditations instead. This worked surprisingly well and we still turn on one for her most nights. Getting more sleep really helped a lot with how she felt, but it still took a few more months for other bad habits to fade away. It really made such a difference when she decided she could do her chores quickly and well. Wow, that was such a hurdle, but when she decided that it was like everything else fell into place. If she could do chores, she could also to small tasks without freaking out. That sure made a difference in the peace level in our home. I am grateful every day that she outgrew that difficult phase. 

So on top of expensive, organizationally difficult yard and house projects and difficult parenting issues, I was called to be in the RS Presidency, which is fine and a good opportunity for me to get to know women in the ward and appreciate the service needed in the ward, but because of the associated committees that I have to be on, it really is like 3 callings. Wowzers. It was fine, but a lot. 

And on top of all of that, I was trying to plan this amazing cruise. We had to figure out flights, hotels, shore excursions, covid requirements, passports, etc. Maybe this doesn't sound that difficult, but I was also doing for someone in a wheel chair and an infant. It was a lot of logistics to work out. 

There were two major problems that happened in preparation for this trip. The first is that Carnival wouldn't actually let us sail with them. But it wasn't that simple. Because of the poor customer service, I was literally on the phone for hours at a time waiting to talk to people to try to figure this out. Then I would talk to someone and get an answer and then mom would get an email contradicting it. Then I would wait on hold for more hours to talk to someone else to get a different answer. Eventually it came down to a judgement call from a supervisor saying that we couldn't go because Darcy wasn't vaccinated. Darcy wasn't vaccinated because they didn't have vaccines for 1 year olds. The language was ambiguous, but they made the call that wasn't in our favor. 

It was absurd. We had booked this cruise literally a year in advance and had worked out all of those logistics (which wasn't an easy task for those shore excursions) and they cancelled on us within 2 weeks of our sail date. I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe how many hours I spent on hold trying to work out that mess for it all to not turn out. 

Just to add salt to the wound, they didn't even offer us any kind of compensation. They refunded the cruise obviously, but we were just out the money for the hotel, shore excursions, and flights. Thankfully we were able to get refunds on everything but the flights which weren't cheap. Mom lost about $5000 because of that. 

After a day or two in shock, we decided to look up other cruises and found an almost identical cruise on Norwegian Cruise lines. Actually it was a better cruise--there were more stops, and it was a nicer ship. I was almost exactly the same sail dates from the same ports. I couldn't believe it. We booked it with just over a week until sail date. Then one of the best things was that they offer a bidding program to upgrade your room. We just picked a number ($251) to see if we could get a balcony room. And we got it!!! We were beyond thrilled. In reality it was even better than we imagined. That balcony room was a huge bonus for our experience on that cruise. 

So when all was said and done, we got a better cruise ship, better stops, and way better rooms--all for the expense of my sanity and many, many hours waiting on hold. We threw together the shore excursions at the last minute, and rebooked our same flight (man, that hurt!), and packed our bags. So, so exciting!

Miriam surprised us by heart attacking our door. What a sweetheart!