Midway!

In January, Barry did the Boulder Mountain Ski Tour. It is a 34k cross-country ski race up in Sun Valley Idaho. He was able to do the race with his brother Warren. Our family has been seriously sick, so Barry didn't do as well in the race as he would have liked, but I'm glad he got the experience
 I told him he could do the race for his birthday! ;D He turned 44 this year. My how time flies.
While Barry was up in Sun Valley with Warren, Warren invited us to his family getaway in Midway Utah to watch the World Cup Biathlon Races. So I told Barry we could do THAT for his birthday as well. :D

I've always felt that the Biathlon was rather an obscure sports, but Barry loves it and has followed many of the top contenders for years.  So this was a rather exciting opportunity for him, and we were happy to tag along.

Midway is a BEA-U-TIFUL town located up in the mountains of northern Utah. It is truly one of the most gorgeous places that I have ever been. They had TONS of snow! It covered many of the hills in these lovely layers of pristine whiteness that was almost unreal.
We left on Valentine's Day for our little vacation and drove through some treacherous weather to reach Brigham City that evening. On the way down I had the time to write each of the children a love letter, and Barry gave them each a Reese's Peanut butter cup heart. :D (well except for Lauren, Lauren wanted Gummy bears... Lauren has been dreaming about gummy bears and smelling gummy bears all over the house. Anyway, Lauren got a little bag of gummy bears. Crazy kid)When we got to Grandma's, we had some delicious pizza from Dominoz and the kid enjoyed visiting and playing with Grandma's "new" toys.
In the morning we left for Midway. We arrived just in time to watch a race.
I really had no intention of standing out in the freezing cold and had brought a pile of books along for me to read. Barry decided that each of the kids needed to go watch a least one race since they may  never get such an opportunity again.  Heheh. So he took them all with him, and off they went.
It was so wonderful to curl up in the sun and read my book. Then I spied a new original Nintendo, so I tried my hand at a favorite childhood game of Bubble Boble for a little while.  That challenging game brought back some fun memories. While I was playing, my friend Carli texted me and asked if I wanted to go grocery shopping with her. She was also in town to see the race, and had also sent her family off to watch the race in the freezing cold. We googled our addresses and we're staying less than half a mile way from one another. She and her Aunt came to pick me up, and they showed me around the town a bit before we went shopping. When we were shopping I bought a 6$ bag of chips and a $8 container of chip dip. Haha hah! Not everything is great about Midway, their food prices are unreal. After shopping I went over to Carli's Aunt's house and was able to see where see was staying.
They were sleeping in a cute little ancient bunk house behind her Aunt's house. It was fun to catch up a bit with Carli.
Barry and the kid's came and picked me up and we went back to the Condo. Back at the condo I broke out my chips and dip(after carefully ripping off the price tags) and presented them to Barry.
:D The chips were a massive fail. They would crumble when you looked at them, and break into a million pieces if you tried to scoop up any dip with them. We tried about every technique to  scoop with them, even layering them up with three chips and they still would break...Oh well!
It was kindof funny that the most expensive chips I have ever bought were probably the worst!
Warren bought us all pizza that afternoon, and I curled up in the sun and ended up taking a long nap. When I woke up, it was time to go and visit some dear friends of ours that live in Oakley Utah. We haven't been able to see them for a couple years, so we couldn't miss the opportunity. The kids were seriously not excited about going. They were having tons of fun at the condo, with video games, and ping pong and air hockey and a huge place to play with their cousins. So amidst groans and complaints, we all piled in the van, and drove over another mountain into Oakley. It was an amazing drive. We saw a herd of yaks walking through the snow. It was really cool, and I spotted a snow hare and lots of deer.
Ki was Barry's good friend a co-student at Utah State. They earned their Ph'd's together and became good friends. When Barry got a job in Twin Falls and had nowhere to live because we had not yet sold our house, Ki offered him a room in his parent's home for Barry to stay in while we were transitioning our lives. Later, they even allowed us to move our camp trailer and live in their front yard for a few months. They are the kindest, most generous people. Our families have stayed in touch over the years and they have come and visited us many times. Sadly, a couple years ago Ki's father passed away and his mother moved from Filer. Not having a reason to make the long drive to Idaho anymore, visits have been scarce, and we have missed our good friends.

Ki's wife, Audra, made us some delicious chicken noodle soup and rolls, and the kids played and played and played and played. When it was time to go home, Lauren was nowhere to be found. Olivia(Ki's daughter) had hidden her away so she could stay forever. :D I was glad the kids were able to renew their friendships. They were able to try out a hoverboard for the first time, even Barry gave it a try. I was astonished at how good they were at it. I guess I have watched too many "hoverboard fails" on the internet. The kid each have a new goal to get their own. :D

We drove back over the mountain that evening through a beautiful snowstorm. When we got back to the condo, Corey and Nicole and their family had arrived. Some more old friends of Barry's. Corey has been Barry's friend since he was about 10 years old living back in Massachusetts. They came out west and went to college together. It was been fun to stay in touch with them over the years. Sadly, this summer their sweet baby girl passed away unexpectedly while they were on vacation, and it has really rocked their family. She was the same age as Owen and I cannot fathom the immensity of their lost. :'(  They have not traveled anywhere since their tragedy, so it was a giant step to come up to Midway to spend the weekend with us.  We had some good late night discussions while our kid's renewed their friendships. In the morning, Jackie and Warren made us pancakes, scrambled eggs and oranges. When we got everything cleaned up it was time for was another ski race. I decided to chance it, and put on all my warmest clothing. We brought Owen, and James and a cow bell.

After driving up to Solider Hollow. We parked our car, and hiked our way up the snow covered mountain until we had found the best spot to watch the race. It was fun to watch the racers come by. Owen was much more interested in a man dressed in a blowup dinosaur costume than the race, but I could hardly blame him. The camera panned over us a few times, and we were shown on International Television. Barry and Warren rang and rang the cow bells, and cheered and cheered for their favorites, while checking stats on Warren's phone. I believe I will be hearing those bells in my sleep for weeks to come. ;D It was freezing and I was definitely ready to leave by the time it was over. James spent the time digging a small snow cave in the side of a hill. He was sad to leave it, so i snapped a picture of it for him. We hiked down to the man in the dinosaur costume and got a picture with him.

When we got back to the Condo, we had grilled cheese Sandwiches for lunch. Corey took the kid's sledding, and they had a blast. Feeling a bit guilty for not contributing anything towards food, Barry and I decided to make dinner. We headed over to Heber to get some supplies.

Jackie offered to watch Owen for us, so we could make it a little 'date'. :D Owen has taken to talking very gruff and rough lately, and everything he says is rather demanding and fierce. He has also decided to call Barry, Barry... and not Dad. Even when Barry's says Owen, "I'm Dad! Owen just responds, "and I'm the Baby., Barry! Get me some milk!" It is rather comical, and Aunt Jackie thinks it is absolutely hilarious. So she was happy to keep an eye on him for us. We got the stuff for spaghetti and garlic bread and a giant salad, and some cherry chocolate cookies for dessert. We came back and Nicole made us her special spaghetti sauce recipe and I buttered bread and cooked noodles. Barry washed and washed lettuce and put together a fantastic salad. I must say it was a delicious supper, and I didn't stress about it at all! I'm glad Barry hadn't told me beforehand that we needed to make a meal. :D
We had more fun discussions after dinner and Corey and Nicole's family left to head home.

In the morning, Ellie woke up not feeling well, so we decided to attend church in Midway.
It was a really cool looking church, looked like some old Swiss building in a winter wonderland.

After church we packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes, and headed over the mountain to Liberty Utah.  Snow Snow Snow! The sun was shining and the snow was just calling us to pull the car over and jump in. We refrained, being in our church clothes, but it was a beautiful sight of those magnificent mountain covered in white.

Sweet Carli made a little quarantined space for Ellie to relax and read her book while she and I fixed lunch. Barry fell asleep on the couch and the kids all played together. Carli's boys had started a fire in the wood stove in the basement and my oh my did it get warm! The kids all came upstairs with rosy cheeks. It was fun to catch up with Carli and discuss her future plans for her little farm. She let us try all sorts of foods she had dried. Pineapple, apples, mushrooms etc.. she even gave Barry and Ellie an Elderberry tonic and a Gum-weed tincture.  She made us the most amazing sour dough bread, I seriously could have eaten the entire loaf... pretty sure I almost did. She was kind enough to give me a sour dough start and a recipe and some encouragement that I could someday make my own. :D It was a delightful visit and after eating, Ellie started feeling a bit better. Barry and Owen went outside in the winter wonderland to feed the remains of our lunch to the goats and chickens, and that afternoon we made our way back to Brigham City.
We had a relaxing super lazy Sunday afternoon. In the morning, Barry and I went to the Bear River Bird Refuge. My Happy Place. We saw so many different birds, and everything looked completely different from the last time we had gone. I love how it is constantly changing. It was awesome to see a Great Blue Heron so close. We saw swans, an owl, turns, hawks and bald eagles and geese.. tons of geese. It was a lovely, peaceful morning in one of my favorite places on earth with my favorite person.
We we got back it was time to head to Logan. We were fortunate enough to catch both Barry's Mom and Dad at home.  Barry's mom showed us her cool new car she had just purchased that weekend, and we looked at some old family photos. Barry's Dad had butchered a steer and had kindly given us the meat. So we loaded that up, and headed for HOME.
When we got to Twin, I ran into Winco and grabbed some beef broth and Rosemary sour dough bread from the bakery. When we finally got home we unloaded everything, checked on the animals, and Barry and I cooked up the most delicious beef stew with our new meat. With the slices of warm rosemary bread and left over salad it couldn't have been better.  It was probably 9 o'clock by the time we finally sat down to say the blessing and eat. Our entire trip I felt an immense measure of gratitude for what we are so fortunate to have and a sense of calm and peace. It was the perfect end to a perfect vacation.


Most of the pictures are on Barry's phone, but here are a few.

 no smile from Ellie she had just gotten her braces adjusted. She was happy though. :D

Good to be Home.

January 2019

I need to play major catch up on my blog. 

So here is an excerpt from a letter to Kelli with some updates. Yes, I know some are repeats, but you get what you get... :D

We had an ok Christmas. We also got sick. Stomach bug. We came down on the 22nd and must have caught something at Barry's parents house because we were all sick over Christmas.  We thought maybe food poisoning because Barry and I couldn't stand the sight of lettuce for weeks afterwards and that is his MAIN food staple.  Who knows what it was really. 

For Christmas, we promised the kids we would get them Zelda Breath of the Wild IF they read the Book of Mormon by Christmas. They seemed to realize that Christmas was getting very near and we started December 2nd.(I started over) The kid's and I read and read, and finished Christmas Eve. It was a very special time for our family. It brought such an incredible spirit into our home during that time. We truly immersed ourselves in the Book of Mormon... sometimes reading 20 chapters a DAY! I really think it was the best thing we did all year. When we finished James brought me the Book of Mormon and asked if we could start over again. :D He didn't want to stop and he honestly had forgotten about the reward. 😄

I have decided to do it again this year, but we will start on the day after Thanksgiving to give us a bit more time. We have continued reading since Christmas but only a chapter a day and then our home study lessons for church. How's that going with you guys? 

We ordered a Nintendo Switch off of EBay used for the kids, so they could have their Zelda game and still have a few other games to play without breaking the bank. James LOVES Mario Kart 8. 😄 and they have so much fun playing Super Smash Brothers together. I can hear them squealing and laughing from the other room when they play it together. That is ALL we gave them for Christmas and nobody cared of complained. Barry bought a big new HD TV and gave himself the Planet Earth blue rays... because he just loves though. HE was a little sad to find out Blue Ray isn't HD. OH well. 

As for our room, it is much the same as it has been for the last month.  Sorry, I can't remember what I told you. Barry ripped our closet... it was a his and hers closet at the back of our room and had sliding doors. He decided he wanted a walk-in closet. We don't have a particularly large room, so i was a bitnervous about his grand idea. So i asked him to make me a temporary wall, so I could see if I could handle having a much smaller room. He nailed up some 2/4's and hung up a sheet and I had my pretend wall. That lasted about a week ...and I decided I could live with a smaller room.  It's not IDEAL, but Barry likes to have a project. We would have to get rid of any furniture in our room except our bed and a small nightstand. That was fine by me. I don't like STUFF and I am totally with you for de-cluttering. Makes me soo happy to throw out stuff, it's so liberating. 😄 So I gave Barry the go ahead and he built a REAL wall and even wired it with plug and lights for the inside of the closet. Then he decided he wanted to re-texture our whole room, it has orange peel texture that he hates.  So he re-muded the whole room and installed sliding pocket doors into the new wall that he built up. We purchased Cedar planks to line the ceiling of our new walk-in closet because it was poorly constructed and the ceiling sheet rock is sagging and there is nothing above to attach it too. ......Not wanting to get construction dust all over my bedding, I moved our bed into our family room and all our clothes into various children's closets, and all Barry's closet stuff into other closets. So we are crazy displaced, it's a little nuts trying to get dressed in the morning and find the clothes I want to wear. 

So in the midst of our remodel all heck broke loose in our house. Our nice new washing machine broke and flooded our laundry room, not once... but 5 times!!! in Barry's attempts to fix it. To make a long story short. It is still not fixed, but Barry bought me a replacement washer from an old laundry mat. It is an old coin operated washing machine... and yes i do have to insert a $1.25 every time I want to use it, but it WORKS! :D and it is soo old and soo simple, that there are only two parts on it that could possibly break, and both are easy fixes.  The money just falls through the coin box, so I just use the same quarters over and over again. IT's actually quite fun. 😄 and I am content until we can get the other monster washer fixed. The same week our washer died, one of our goats got into a grain bag and ate pounds of it. Their stomachs are unable to handle that and it passed away. We tried everything to save it, Barry even went to the vet. It was not to be, she was a very expensive pure-blood goat and expecting babies in February. We were very sad. That left us with just one goat, which is not ok. They are very social animals and will just bawl all day and die if you leave them alone. So we made the trek out to the desert and invested in another goat. She's a cutie. I don't think the two goats are very good friends, the other's were sisters, but at least they keep each other company. 

The day after our goat died, our Explorer died. I was not happy. We had a dead goat we couldn't even haul away because our Explorer pulls our trailer and the goat had to go in that. We paid a mechanic 900$ and he was able to resurrect our Explorer. I really don't think it's going to last long though, but we kind of were in a bind. Anyway.. we had a crazy December and beginning of the year, just one things after another,  it was just like BAM BAM BAM BAM. Everything that you could think, like a dozen more things, kept going wrong. ....Well KEEPS going wrong. In fact, Barry just called me from work, our new van's steering pump is failing, guess what? They want 900$ to fix it. 

BUT I'm not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me .... well maybe a little. ;D

We are totally OK! We have NEVER been picked-on in trials, and so I am very curious to find out what all this is leading up to. I think Satan could tell our family was headed in a good direction with our temple attendance and scripture reading and decided to throw us a few hurdles. The awesome thing is that we're OK. More than okay, we're good! That is the peace the gospel brings.  I mean, I have no idea what major trials feel like, but I feel ''almost" invincible because I know God has our backs and is watching out for us.  We pay our tithing and have reaped enormous blessing from it. One example is we got a $20,000 hospital bill for Natalie in the mail a couple weeks ago and our insurance and her insurance covered the ENTIRE thing 100%!!!!! We paid nothing! Everything had been denied previously, was out of Network, and they were supposed to cover like 60% after we paid her 4000$ deductible! I know that was a HUGE blessing!  We try and do what's right and good and God doesn't take every trial away but gives us His Peace and THAT blessing is priceless! 😄

To make a long story short---er. ;D We are STILL sleeping in our family room and will be for some time ;D. We bought paint and there was some mix up and we were given the wrong kind ...and then it was the wrong color... hahah  Oh my! Barry did finally get the front part of our room painted on Saturday. It is butter yellow. Purdy, but will take some getting used to. 

((update) Since I wrote this letter, all our pigeons died, but one, and our pure blood goat had her babies, both of which were born dead.  I was pretty confident she was going to die too, but so far she is still living. Phew! Our whole family caught the flu and ended up with bronchitis. We have been sick sick. Yet still so very blessed. I feel the Lord blessing up in small ways every single days. I love my family, I love my life, I love the gospel and the peace it brings. )

So on to more interesting things. On Saturday, (drumroll please) we got two miniature horses! They are soooooooooooo cute. One is pure black, and one is pure white with blue eyes.

 (I just got up and looked out the window to make sure they hadn't fallen over dead or anything. Phew! they're good!)

 Emma named the white one Luna, and I named the Black one Noira. (Noir means black in french) We rescued them because they were being neglected by their previous owner.  My good friend also got two minis, and we are (eventually) going to train them to pull a cart around the neighborhood. You can ride them if you weigh less than 70 lbs. So the kids are excited. They are only 34 inches tall.  I am hoping to go outside and take some pictures to send you today. I am seriously afraid of the cold though and haven't put so much as a toe outside lately.  We will see. Hahah. Maybe I can get Ellie to take some pictures for me, she seems impervious to the cold.

 Owen finally feeling better after two whole weeks of being super sick.

 smaller goat is the NEW goat. She is also bred. Hopefully all will be well with her and we'll have some baby goats within a couple of weeks.

 Noira. My beautiful miniature horse. I actually already love her.  ;D

 Meet Luna. We were told she was a bully horse and MEAN. Hasn't been mean at all since we got her. She was obviously mistreated, so she has a few trust issues, but we're working on that.

Owen helping me with the laundry with our replacement coin washer. He loves to put the coins in for me. We finally got the new part we ordered for the washing machine. Barry installed it. The durn thing still doesn't work. I'm personally ready to scrap it.  Besides I have this sweet commercial washer who needs a washing machine with more than 3 different cycles? ;D

 New Wall color. Barry installed the pocket doors last weekend. Whoa do they make the room seem smaller, but the optional privacy will be nice.

 Emma's portrait of Luna. Her personal favorite horse.

 THe boys took me out to eat at the Blaze for Barry's birthday. We love the pizza there.

 Barry's coworker gave him a giftcard for his birthday, so we were nice enough to send her this picture of us enjoying her gift.

 Owen likes to put on Barry's deoderant. I really don't know how he can handle it. It is STRONG!
but he put on like three different kinds and then he smells soo nice all day. :P

 Tired of being sick Momma.

 This pulled pork recipe is DELICIOUS! Just so you know.

 Ellie almost got all her teeth in a row. Hurray!

 James wrote the sweetest note the other morning while I was still sleeping. He also completed a good chunk of his school work all by himself.

 Feeding his dragon pizza.

 I sliced my thumb good in January. I have never cut myself that deep except for the window incident in college. It was kindof funny I was trying to unclog our vacuum and my hand slipped and I sliced my finger on something sharp. I immediately grabbed my thumb and dropped the vacuum. James who was helping me, demanded to know what I did. I told him nothing and to go away. He refused and stood his ground. So I unclamped my hand and showed him. He immediately started dry heaving and ran out of the room yelling at me. "Don't you EVER show me ANYTHING like that EVER AGAIN! When he got his heaving under control, he started raiding the house for first aid supplies and tossing them in the room from the doorway. I was pretty sure I needed stitches, but miraculously even after pouring a half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the wound (thanks Jeana ;) ) the wound closed up and stopped bleeding. phew!

 We borrowed this awesome blanket from my friend. Barry kept using it ....even though it wasn't ours. So we decided it would be a great birthday present for him. I asked Lauren to measure the blanket so I could look it up online and see if I could order it. She came and told me it was 56 TURTLES long. Oh my goodness that girl! Grandma Stuart ended up ordering the blanket for Barry and he loves it! Uses it every night.

 We had a stuffed animal clinic at school one day. The kids could earn "medical services" for their toys by doing their work. Gee wiz! I sewed up a lot of holes.

 Sooooo many sick days. ugh!

 Organized my junk cupboard while I was sick. I felt soo accomplished.

Emma's Art. 

Lauren's Baptism and Birthday!

 Lauren was lucky enough to get baptized ON her BIRTHDAY!

 (letter to Kelli excerpt) Lauren got baptized on December 29th. It was so simple and beautiful. Barry's parents couldn't come.  His brother brought his family up. So it was just my parents, them, and us and a couple people from the ward. What a special day! I got Lauren some clearance cute zip-up Christmas footie PJ's to wear for her birthday. She loves them, they are so warm and snuggly. On her baptism day,(her birthday 😊) I fixed her hair, but since, as soon as she got to the church she was just going to change into her white jumpsuit ....and no one would even see her, we decided it would be fun to just wear her comfy PJ's to the church. When we got to the church, there were NO white jumpsuits to be found and the primary president and bishop were both out of town! It was time for the baptism to start and Lauren is still wandering around in her cute Christmas PJ's. We ended up eventually finding a extra small adult jumpsuit in a back closet.  IT made for some fun memories. After the baptism, I took her back into the dressing room, and the lights would NOT turn on, so I had to feel my way to the other end of the bathroom, waving my hands around, to try and get the light sensor to realize we were there. When I got back, Lauren was howling. She had got a bad bloody nose right after she was baptized.. I'm sure from pinching her nose too hard and was sopping wet and just covered in blood, as was the floor.  I gave her a big hug, and looked her in the eyes, and told her everything was just FINE.  I got her to stop crying and laugh about it, because there really was nothing else to do. She was all smiles when we finally emerged from the dressing room and was all ready to be confirmed.  

Lauren is so full of life, passion, and personality, she is so clever and creative.

She is an awesome reader and writes me some of the BEST notes and drawings.

She makes me laugh every single day.

She has the most beautiful long brown hair and dark chocolate brown eyes.

I love her generous ears and mischievous grin.

I love you to the moon and back Lauren LaRue!