A letter to the birthday girl

 Dear Reina: 

Today you are 13.  THIRTEEN.  (We have two teens in the house but that's a post for another day.) You were sad last night that you weren't going to be twelve anymore but I reminded you that you've been sad about that just about every other year of your life - "but I don't want to be eight!"  You woke us up early and you unwrapped presents before school - just like every other year.  This year, you asked for and received art supplies, clothes and money for clothes. 

Reina, you are such a cool girl.  I'm sure I say that every year too but it's the truth.  You are making your way through your first year of junior high. You wouldn't say it's been fun but you are making some friends and finding new classes that you enjoy.  You are also taking a bunch of dance classes at night and your schedule is busy.  But you still find time to play your computer games and read books in your free time.  

You have a delightful sense of humor that's getting more um... adult every year.  You love to watch old Saturday Night Live clips on Youtube and cackle at Will Ferrell movies.  You still love a good chick flick.  Your favorite book genre is what I call YA Gothic but I don't know if that's really a category. But you love a good story about a house that's haunted by a disgruntled ghost and the tween/teen has to figure out why.  

You are still our social justice warrior and you have a champion of the underdog.  You are a good friend and you are doing your best to get through this tough time in life (COVID, jr high, social unrest, etc. etc. etc.).  We love you kiddo.  Happiest of birthdays and we can't wait to see what the next year brings you.   

Birthday outfit 

Grandma H's birthday card to you, Queenie.  

"Knee" surgery

Last week, I went in for a hysterectomy.  It's a surgery that I've been wanting to get done so it was elective and not an emergency situation.  And this is probably more detail than most readers of this blog want anyway.  I'm a week out and I'm feeling decent.  Still pretty tired and relying on pain pills but I'm feeling better everyday.  This point of this post though is to memorialize a little story about Will.  He wasn't comfortable referring to my surgery by it's correct name so he decided just to tell anyone who asked that I had knee surgery.  Knees...uterus....potato....potahto.  

Skiing

Sunday, the kids and I piled into the car and headed up to Snowy Range for a day of skiing.  The mountains have had some good snow recently and since we didn't get out at all last winter, we decided to take advantage of a long weekend and go skiing.  This picture paints a rosy picture of our day and that's how we'll go ahead and leave it.  But someday when the kids are middle-aged and possibly flipping through this blog like we do with our old fashioned photo books they might remember this as the day that mom completely lost her cool when Reina inexplicably couldn't get her ski boots on (boots that fit perfectly fine the day before), how at one point both mom and Reina were yelling and Will was trying to be the calm one and later suggested that he would now refer to Reina as "fat foot" which actually made her laugh, mom threatened to drive back home like fifty times, Reina finally got her boots on, everyone skied a bunch, mom and Lucy fell getting off the lift at least 50% of the time and the last time, the lift operator had to stop the entire lift to help mom get up and then Reina was worried mom had a concussion, Will had to ski by himself most of the time because he went down runs that were more advanced and he needs to go skiing with friends rather than moms and sisters, and a bunch of other little things.  But hopefully they will also remember a mom who wanted them to have fun doing some of the same activities that she liked to do and even a bad day on skis is never a completely bad day.  

January Snow Day

 We had snow in the forecast this week which was great news because it's been an unusually dry and warm fall/winter so far.  I was skeptical that we'd get any moisture.  I was pleasantly surprised when the snow started yesterday afternoon and quickly started to accumulate.  The temperature dropped and an email from the school district indicated that today might be a virtual learning day if the weather continued to deteriorate.  Then the state offices closed at 4:00 pm so that we could all get home (that RARELY happens!) and we settled in for a chilly night.  

 

Short hair dogs love fluffy blankets. 

The phone rang at 5:05 a.m. apparently (I slept through it) but Glenn woke me up and I checked the messages and schools were closed for in-person learning but it was time to fire up the Ipads for virtual class.  State offices were open but our agency got permission to work from home for the day.  This level of detail is probably unnecessary so I'll jump ahead to the highlights.  It was like March 2020 again - wheeee!  Reina tackled her classes and needed help from time to time with technology and algebra.  Thankfully she handled her health vocab list on her own (estrogen, pituitary gland, puberty, etc. etc.).  Will was pretty independent but wanted help with a sports marketing project and how can I resist the words sports and marketing?  I squeezed some work into the day but ended up taking some vacation time because it was hard to juggle everything without losing what little bits of sanity I have left.  

We ended up with a good amount of snow (7 to 10 inches in town) and some crazy temperatures - negative 3 this morning and right now it's back in the 30's.  

This girl captures my energy today.  Also, she kept sitting on my laptop whenever I stepped away.  Cold and hungry.  It's me!  

A short story in four parts

 

And a Happy New Year

It's 8:08 on New Year's Eve.  We just finished up a dinner of homemade curry with chicken that Reina made for a class assignment.   It received rave reviews from Glenn, Will ate a big bowl and Reina even had some.  We also had a (mostly) homemade creme brulee for dessert.  Mostly because I found a mix for creme brulee at the store last week and thought it would be fun to try.  Man, we are exciting around here. 

I had hoped to write an eloquent post wrapping up the year but I just don't have it in me tonight.  Life feels a little bleak with covid still ever present, fires in Colorado, division in our country, drought and to top it all off - football teams that I dislike keep winning big games.  I know I need a dose of perspective but that's where I'm at.  I want this blog to reflect our real lives and it's not always goofy pictures of kids and chaos.  But I think for now, I'll try to focus on some of the good stuff.  We're all here. The house is nice and warm on a night that is supposed to be the super cold (negative wind chills expected).  We have more pets than we can probably handle but one of them is serving as a heating pad right now and it feels delicious.  We are still having a fun holiday break and it's only Friday night!  

There are some good things to look forward to and maybe that will be my New Year's Resolution - look for the light instead of paying attention to so much darkness. 

We'll give it a try.  

Merry Christmas 2022

 It's Christmas Day 2022 and we had a lovely time.  I was just reading my post from last Christmas and it's nice to have most of us back together although Covid still casts a shadow over our plans.  But let's talk about Christmas. 

Reina's favorite Christmas present is without a doubt her VR thing.  VR headset?  I don't know how exactly to refer to it but she loves it, it was #1 on her list and we might have lost her to the void.  We've all tried it out and it's actually really cool.  She can't wait to save up some money to get more games because her only game right now involves her working different jobs in the VR world and that sounds too much like real life for me.  

Glenn's favorite present his bipod which is a fancy way to describe this two-legged thing that he attaches to his hunting rifle blah blah blah.  Lucy also got him an ancestry DNA kit so that we can see if we are related and some sardines from World Market.  

Lucy's favorite present is a lens cap for her camera that is super sturdy.  (For the record, this was one of those years where I didn't really need anything and I bought myself some stuff on sale before the holidays so I said let's just call it good.)  Glenn did an excellent job filling up my stocking with candy so that was awesome.  

Will's favorite present is his airpods - which are noise cancelling so I think that's his answer from his room with the door closed.  He also got a massage gun to help with his training and some Wyo clothes.  And a stocking filled with authentic ramen from World Market (guess where Lucy did some last minute shopping?)   

We spent Christmas morning with the Fry family and Grandma and Pop-pop and it was sweet.  It's still fun to see Christmas through the eyes of the younger family members and especially sweet to have us all back together.  We got a surprising white Christmas too - we woke up to a few inches of snow on the ground and had fluffy white snowflakes coming down during the morning.  After everyone left, we napped, walked dogs, ate a bunch of delicious leftovers, watched football and played with our new toys.  What a nice Christmas.