2026, April 13-19

Quite the eventful week! 

Monday morning, Hallie got Mike a birthday drink from the local Starbucks. They also took pictures to send each other from their respective spots. The baristas at Mike's store might have thought him a little weird. Hallie takes selfies at her store all the time.  

Kenyon was also there, and Hallie and he sat in a basketball-themed snack promotional chair her Smiths had. 

That's either a really big chair or a really small human. Or both.

Mike's weather was gorgeous, if a little brisk. 

Hallie had a couple of gifts sent to Mike's apartment too: a birthday cake and a smart scale. Since last fall, Mike has lost a significant amount of weight, but without a scale, he didn't know how much that was. Now he does! And birthday cake in a jar? Yum!!  

Mike received an amazing birthday present: someone made an offer on the house!!!! We're under contract, and (pending inspection) will be out of our house sooner than expected. It's a bittersweet feeling, but it's a relief too.

Brooklyn found Kai's toy and didn't want to come home. Hallie loves that girl.

Hallie got new spring-themed nails from Shelby. Shelby, is a relative and has graduated from nail school recently. Hallie enjoys helping her learn new technique. 

Speaking of skills practice, in the evenings, Mike has hopped back on to doing some graphic design work for the department. He drew this image and then went to the Makerspace on campus and used the Cricut and sticker machines they have there to turn the digital creations into real-life ones. 

His department now has an "official" emblem, hand-crafted by him (Just don't tell the people who do branding for the university). 

He also got to order pins and stickers to give to graduates from the department's programs. 

(Of course he had to add some department swagger his office.)

Both Springville and Missoula got snow later in the week. It didn't stick in the valleys, but hopefully some will stay in the higher elevations. 

This dramatic view over university buildings comes from the top of a building-exterior staircase near Mike's office. 

The snow falling off to the west came over Mike's office not long after. 

Eliza spent a significant amount of time helping Leslie on Friday. Among her activities, she found a mouse trapped in a bucket. That little thing was still alive in Eliza's hand. Leslie's dog Dooley made sure to let Eliza know that he was not fond of her holding the mouse.

On Friday and Saturday, Mike attended the 57th Annual Kyiyo Pow Wow Celebration at the Adams Center. He caught Grand Entries on two days and the Adult Dancing on Saturday. 

Hallie's Saturday consisted in part of going to the Bigtooth Maple Festival in Woodland Hills with Amanda. Hallie finds it fun when a good day shapes up unexpectedly. After they went to the festival, the ladies planned a trip to Walt Disney World (where Hallie has never been).

Hey! Syrup from Montana MapleWorks in Missoula!

She bought a turquoise ring to go with the wavy ring she has (Look how it matches her nails). Hallie has purchased other jewelry from Little Wildflower before and is a fan.

Some more photos from the pow wow. Mike moved from the west to the east side of the Adams Center to get different views. Below is the Blackfeet drum circle. 

Fancy dancing. 

Google is always doing something different with the photos we save in the cloud. Here are some mixups Mike made of the cat, the dog, and himself.  Hallie wants to get a tattoo of cartoon Kai. Make can go over to the Makerspace and get some real-life stickers of the pets now. 

(Mike's not as big a fan of the original upon which the sticker is based. Oh, well.) 

Hallie had to work on Sunday. There was a bit of a ruckus, but she got through it. Needless to say, the bumbling job she did today made her decide that May 3rd is her last day at Starbucks.

Then she and Cristy went out for lunch at Via 313. Hallie wants to go to places they won't have in Montana. After lunch, Hallie picked up Eliza to run an errand, and now they are spiffing the house up before the inspection on Tuesday afternoon.

Mike spent the day doing chores and watching the Argentinian dark comedy TV show El Encargado ("The Boss" or "The Building Superintendent") on Hulu. He remembers Guillermo Francella from all the way back when Francella was on TV back when Mike lived in Buenos Aires in the '90s. He always gets a kick from viewing media from Argentina. As it turns out, this show was filmed just a few blocks from where he and Hallie stayed with Elvira in Belgrano in 2002. Mike even found the building where the story is set (a character in its own right) on Google Maps. 

In other local news, the periwinkles are in bloom in Missoula. Sunday gave family members in Utah and Montana some phenomenal spring weather. 

2026, April 6-12

Over the past year, Mike has logged more miles than in any other 365-day period between trips to Japan, the UK, and trips back and forth between Utah, Montana, and California. Of course, four intrepid astronauts on the Artemis II mission did multiple times that distance in just 10 days, so we'll just admire their efforts. 

We have listed our house for sale. If you know someone who wants affordable living in lovely Springville, we might have just the house for them! 

The fam in Springville had Spring Break from their schools this week. Eliza is effectively done with school, and Landon is acting as if he is essentially done. Hallie and Eliza looked after Kohar's kids, and the kids had fun finishing the destruction of a door Landon had damaged a couple of years back and that we replaced last month. 

Eliza caught Ferg blepping, and Ferg caught Eliza by the hand. 

Kohar's kids caught crazy pictures of themselves and Eliza in Hallie's camera. 

And look at little smiley Brooklyn! 

Among their adventures this week, they went to the movies, Parlor Doughnuts, and Coin Crazy. 

Mike's last major trip of the school year was a flight down to Los Angeles to attend the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting. On his flight to LA, he had a brief layover in Portland, Oregon. He was lucky to catch sight of Mt. Hood and (maybe?) Mt. Jefferson. 

He had a bit of a harrowing final leg once he touched down at LAX. He missed two full airport shuttles and nearly missed his connecting train. This is a picture of a relieved Mike who caught the train with less than five minutes to spare.  

Hallie has been thinking of creative ways to use the pantry storage. Here are egg and cheese waffles (aka chaffles)

And here are overnight oats. 

For part of his trip to LA, Mike was able to make it up to Simi to check in and help his dad and sisters out with a few errands. He also got a meal at the Junkyard Cafe.

Errands included some organizing. 

He also found one of his old baby blankets. The '70s vintage is powerful with this one!  

Simi was full of spring flowers in bloom, including these bee-decked bottlebrushes. 

The townhouse officially has its own For Sale sign. 

We have stuff in the garage that still needs sorting and donating. Hallie got a lot of that done with help from the neighbors and grandpa and grandma's truck.

It's starting to look a lot better! 

On Friday, Jocie had a family night end-of-season musical performance at the high school. Fun! She tried out for and made Nebo Indoor Percussion (NIPS), and it has been fun watching her play so many different instruments.

On Saturday, Hallie and Eliza went to Cravings Bistro up in Pleasant Grove to celebrate National Grilled Cheese Day after celebrating Swig's birthday with drinks and keychains. 

E got a pizza grilled cheese, and the girls got a cup of soup to dip and share. As you can see, the cheese was amazingly stringy. 

Hallie got a new tattoo at Sideshow Productions Tattoo as part of a Humane Society fundraiser.  

After attending AERA session, Mike took a walk from the meeting hotel up toward Union Station by way of Angel's Flight, the Grand Central Market, City Hall, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, and Chinatown.  

LA has several sister cities. 

These furries made a day of being in Little Tokyo too. 

He had yummy onigiri, matcha cookies, and lemon green tea for his meal. So yummy! 

He found a gashapon store, but they didn't have anything Mofusand-themed.  

He caught this evasive Volpix Pokemon at the galleria. 

He ended the day with a French Dip before catching the Flyaway from Union Station. 

(This building is the USPS Terminal Annex, full of its own historical significance.)

Mike loves the architecture and interior details of Union Station, a beautiful historic piece of LA he has traveled to and from many times. 

Speaking of history, the Theme Building at LAX is pretty iconic too. 

Mike's Saturday felt a lot like one of his travel days in the UK. These were his stats as of 7:00 p.m. He stayed over at the airport, and he added another 5,000 steps to his ending stats.

Good thing he had this book Hallie got him to keep him occupied. 

We had our first house viewing on Saturday as well. Response was positive, and hopefully we'll have an offer soon! Landon couldn't find his PSP controller. Maybe Ferg took it. We think Fergus was playing the PS5.

Both Mike and Hallie woke up very early on Sunday. The cat slept like a baby near Hallie's side. 

Springville had some crazy weather, which Hallie tried showing to Mike from the inside of Smiths.

 

Mike left LA in rainy conditions. Until next time! This time he had a layover in Denver. 

He got back to Missoula in time for afternoon rain that more or less went away by end of day. 

Landon said he fell out of a tree. Said tree may have been between him and whatever vehicle he fell from that gave him what looks suspiciously like road rash. Hmmm.