2022, March 7-13

Spring tries to break through. Hard to imagine that it's been two years that Eliza has been doing online school! Also (because the furnace died), we bought a new HVAC unit. Ugh.

Eliza had a bit of a hard day on Monday. A few weeks ago, she saw a safety device in Dad's car that can cut through a seat belt. Sometime between then and today, she cut the seat belt, and she didn't like that she got in trouble for it. Julie from across the way kindly offered to have Eliza over and help her cool off (long story, but if you know E, you know). E came back with homemade cookies to share. 

We also happened to get our Girl Scout cookie order, so there is plenty of sugar to alleviate anyone's woes. We'll figure out the seat belt eventually. Frankly, it's low on the list, as will be elaborated shortly. Thank you Jenny Transtrum for remembering our family each year. We are happy to help your cute nugget!

At dinner, we had a guest. He smelled the home cooking and couldn't resist. 

Ferg keeps hoping for warmer weather. So do we. We got a bit of snow mid-week, but it was replaced by warmer weather later on. We even got rain on Sunday!

Wednesday night, Mike heard an odd sound as the furnace started up, and he immediately suspected the worst. Given that our furnace is 14 years old, he wasn't surprised to see that the blower wasn't kicking in. This meant us scrambling to figure out our next steps. Hallie got the word out, and kind neighbors supplied space heaters. We spent a couple of days weighing our options before opting to bite the bullet and buy a new car HVAC unit (priced like a car. Dang). Here's hoping everything works out. P.S. the garage door broke about a month ago. That is low on the list too. Oh, and Mike's car, which used to be Hallie's. It has lived in Michigan, California, and Utah is deciding to give up the ghost as well. If we can get another 30K out of it, that would be ideal. 

On a positive note, Landon no longer needs to wear his cast. While he still won't get to compete this season, at least he can start getting into competition shape again. Dr. Campbell at Utah Outpatient in Provo has been great. He answers all of Hallie's crazy Gym Mom questions and has said to Landon if he wants to keep doing gymnastics we are playing a long game and you need to take care of yourself. Landon will keep going to gym two hours a day like he has for the last six weeks. We are now letting him go without a cast for the next two weeks and hope for the best as he slowly adds physical activity back in. Hopefully, his knees like him a little bit better since he has given them a lot of time off as well.

In other news, the seedlings are popping up. Looks like we have the start of a bountiful garden! Eliza was asked to write a paper a few weeks back about having a school/community garden. Who knew it would fall in line with the same time the girls were starting their garden at home/school?

Fergus seems to enjoy the warmth of the space heaters. We'll be back to forced-air heat as of Monday. 

We got a surprise photo of the boy with friends at the local Arby's. Landon made the decision to fill out his first job application while eating at Arbys. It didn't hurt that his friend works there as well. The next step is waiting to hear back from someone at the restaurant. When Mike and Hallie were kids, we could do lawn care or babysitting or tutoring, but it doesn't seem like these options are as easy to come by. We look forward to seeing what pans out. Landon texted Hallie later in the day saying he made Lincoln (his buddy in the white shirt pictured below) dinner, and he was proud of himself. He should be proud of himself. It is fun and weird watching Landon grow up.

Eliza has been spitting up blood now since February 16. We have taken her to a pediatrician, and ENT, and two ER's. Finally, Hallie, her mom, and Eliza headed to the scheduled Pediatric GI appointment. The doctors were quite nice and explained a lot of things. The bottom line is we have no answers to why this is happening and they say it is a mystery. The doctors will follow up with us in a month.

To prepare for our new purchase and installation of our HVAC system we had to quickly get some things to DI that Hallie hadn't gotten around to selling. We are grateful that Grandpa and Grandma M own a truck and were able to come over on such short notice.