Sunday, October 03, 2021

2021, September 27-October 3

The downstairs remodel nears completion. We had some drama with Landon and gymnastics. The girls saw the Gold Over America Tour (GOAT) with the GOAT herself, Simone Biles. 


The mountains glow with autumn hues. It fills the souls with gladness.


On Monday, Mike installed this new toilet in the freshly painted and floored powder room. He found out that is the way to his wife's heart.


Eliza is learning about the properties of matter. Here is some salt and sugar. How could you tell which was which? 


Eliza also is learning how to retell the main points of a story. 


Y Mountain is showing fall flair. 


Hallie is making friends with Eliza's horses. It has been a tough time for Hallie, and being with the horses (who thinks she has treats) is fun.

Eliza switched horses with her friend Reese and she had a great time riding Rue. It is so fun watching Eliza succeed at horseback riding.

Mt. Timpanogos is getting its first sprinkling of snow for the season. 

Mike and Eliza took in views of the fall foliage when he took her to work on Thursday. 

After work on Friday, Mike took Eliza and her friend Jordan to Jaker's Jack-O-Lanterns. They got lost in the corn maze, ate Mexican sweet corn and donuts, and carried pumpkins home to meet their ends at knife point. Bwah-hah-hah! It is so fun that Eliza has a friend her age and grade in our neighborhood. They get along so well and have a lot of fun together.





In the evening, the girls went out to make candles and eat churros in celebration of Grandma's birthday. This was a well-needed outing after a long and somewhat harrowing week for Mom, who spent a lot of emotional energy supporting Landon as he made the decision to stick it out at Bold for this year's meet season. While eating churros fireworks went off in the background. What a fun way to celebrate grandma's birthday!




On Saturday, the girls got dolled up for their trip up north to watch the Gold Over America Tour. 


After getting her hair done, Hallie went to the Provo Farmers Market, where she bought a pretty ring from one of her ISS students and got Mike a delicious Chilean sandwich (he didn't realize it was to share. Soooo good!).  


As of Saturday morning, here's the front room. Mike spent a little time in the early afternoon replacing the current ceiling fan with a new one. Hallie thinks it is awesome! After a couple of false starts and a few choice swear words, the task was accomplished. 


These lovely ladies headed up to Salt Lake on their gymnastics-themed excursion. 


Below we have Grace McCallum, Laurie Hernandez, and MyKayla Skinner partaking in a fun Q&A.

A majority of the University of Utah women's gymnastics team was on hand to sign posters for everyone. It was awesome!!


The girls sat in the 8th row, 2 rows behind MyKayla Sinner's husband. Coach Megan sat 3 rows ahead of us, and man how fun it was!

Meanwhile, the boys watched horror movies (e.g., Gremlins) and ate Panda Express. Landon had a long emotional week as he contemplated quitting gymnastics. Mom promised him Panda Express for boys' night.

Sunday dawned with Fergus getting loads of love from Eliza. Eliza is also is sporting her new tank top that is way too big, but she is happy.

Mike installed the old ceiling fan in the office, which can tend to get pretty toasty in the summer (or even on a sunny day any time of the year). After installing one fan this week, the other was a piece of cake. He even managed to reinstall the dishwasher, which had been poorly reinstalled by our flooring guys. It helps to remember that undercounter brackets hold the dishwasher in place. More happy wife activities!

Another view of the updated family room bathed in the afternoon light. Our curtains arrived yesterday, the blinds are supposed to be here this week, and who knows when the curtain rods will come? Lowe's has given us quite a few different emails. So, they will magically appear when they do.

Hallie and our friend Emma had these tasty nachos during a girls' luncheon. The girls tried Peace of Earth Coffee in Provo. They didn't know the shop served food, and boy the sandwich were great!

Mike and Eliza joined our next-door neighbors in building LEGO robots. This will be a multi-step process. Eliza and the other girls seemed pretty engrossed. Who knows but what we may see some budding engineers? Hallie didn't take pictures, but Landon dabbled at the piano with an app he found that helped him learn the notes to some simple songs. 

It has been a long week, and sometime after 5:00 Hallie fell asleep sitting up on the couch. When she woke up it was slightly after 7:00 and she thought it was the next day. Oops!!! 

As part of some work he has been doing, Mike found an online class on social and emotional learning. One of the practices for cultivating joy and well-being he learned about was the practice of daily identifying three good things. We put the idea into practice tonight as part of what will become a daily practice of identifying what we feel grateful for in life.  

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