March fun

Last weekend we went snowshoeing. We've had a pretty dry 2022, so there's not a lot of snow anywhere, but there was just enough to have a good time. We ended up going super late in the afternoon, so we only went for an hour, which was totally fine because it was three of the kids' first time going and they were a little squirrelly about it. But I think it's going to be a fun thing for us to do in winter. Maybe just not with all of them along every time. 

I am so close to done with this temple picture. It is really awesome looking, but I'm struggling to find time to finish this last little bit. Someday I will be done! I really love how it turned out. 

We made this super cool curtained off bed for Aaron so he would have a cool cave after he was using three of those big square pillows to do it. I was so pleased because those leftover curtains from an old house fit so perfectly. He came home from school and hated it and made us take it down and went back to the three pillows. Parent fail! Hahaha! You never can tell what your kids will like. 

I'm ridiculously pleased with my desk setup. I got my monitors and hub and set them up this week. 

I'm particularly tickled with my cord organization, lol. My desk can go up and down from a standing desk to a seated desk, so I needed the words long enough to be able to do that, but not get all tangly. This is with the desk raised and they lift the surge protector off the floor a bit, but it settles down nicely when I lower it, which is how I have it more often. My OCD tendencies just love the order here. 

I got myself a new chair. Oh it is so plush and comfy. The white one goes to the hall desk now at my home computer, which is white, so it matches perfectly. 

It finally snowed a bit last night and today and after church we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house, where it always snows more than at ours, for some sweet sledding. We had a great time. It was super fun. 

My FiA friends brought me this super tasty Twisted Sugar cookie for a late birthday present. It was delicious! I'll definitely have to go there and try. more of their offerings. 

One week done, birthdays, and furniture

 It's been a great first week of work. I am really enjoying my new job. Yesterday was the first day in 13 years that I've had a paid day off of work. I have worked a contract job for that whole time and so if I didn't work, I didn't get paid. I'm salaried now and having paid holidays is one of those simple but lovely things that I'm enjoying. 

We have family birthday celebrations every few months, and generally combine with those that have birthdays at similar times. We have three in January and one in February, and typically we do a January party, but we decided to postpone since we were in the midst of the Omicron surge at the time. We celebrated Sunday evening and it was really nice. 

My grandma snapped a shot of me and Chloe at the party. It's pretty much my only picture from this week.  Been a bit busy! Hahaha!

One of the things I have in common with my boss is we both enjoy woodworking. That was a delightful surprise. I haven't built much in the last couple years because of life craziness. And unfortunately, when we moved in, my miter saw suffered an accidental but tragic death. It got knocked over while folded up on its stand, and the handle and all the wiring in it completely disintegrated. I actually had wanted to replace it anyway, but didn't have a good reason to get rid of it. It was about 12 years old and didn't work as smoothly anymore. Well now I have a reason! But I haven't replaced it yet in the last five months. My boss lent me a woodworking book this week and it either sabotaged me or gave me the oomph I needed to find a project to do worth getting some new tools. I might call it sabotage because I'm finally using it as a reason to get the table saw and drill press I've wanted for a long time, plus the new miter saw. Soon at least. But really, I'm super excited about it.

When we moved into our new house, we bought a ton of new furniture since we had sold most of our old stuff or given it away. It was all mostly worn out and used up from so many years of grad school anyway. We had planned to get this super cute console cabinet/TV stand sort of thing to put all our games in, but before we moved in when it was in stock at Costco we didn't have anywhere to put the very large box. From the moment we moved in, it was out of stock and I've been checking daily since then to see when it would come back in stock. Yesterday or the day before I looked and it had disappeared from the website! Tragedy! I really loved that cabinet. But between the book I had and shopping around and not finding exactly what I wanted, my building spark was lit and roared back to life and in a matter of a late evening I had a plan crafted in my head for what I want. 

The cabinet I had planned to get had a brown top and white base. I've always wanted a reason to build a chevron top like in this first picture. 

And this second picture is a cabinet I really loved, but it's way short, only about 26" tall, when I want 33"-36" in height and probably ten inches wider. 

So my plan is to build a cabinet similar to the white one, but wider, with four doors, and taller. Do gold handles and legs something like the ones in the next two pictures. I'm pretty excited about it all! It's going ot be so fun to get in and make something beautiful again. It's been far too long. I built some garage shelves when we moved in, and they're awesome, but only functional, not beautiful at all. I'm going to pick some lovely wood for the top, not the pine I've regularly used in the past, and make this a really beautiful piece of furniture that we can keep for years to come. Eeeeee! I'm so excited! 

Last week before the big job starts

 It was a great week. I did all the things I could to prep for starting full time work this week, and that worked out really quite well. Chloe helped me fill Valentine's treats for hers and her siblings' classes.

Bill got a great new haircut. 

I bought a couple plants because why not? I don't have to have a reason to buy more plants, lololol.

The kids had a mental health day Friday instead of a flex Friday, and I took them to the Tracy aviary. It was lovely. We did lose Chloe for a few minutes though, and that was scary. Thankfully there were very few people there since it was a weekday and we were reunited quickly. I think that's the first time I've actually lost one of my kids at a public place. 

Bill and I made a ton of tasty treats for our Super Bowl party with Suzanne. Rugelach. 

Fruit dip.

Cinnamon chips for the fruit dip.

Thai sesame chicken dip. 

Salsa.

I will be using a work laptop so I got the kids a desk and moved my one-year old 27" iMac out to the hall for them to use. They have no idea how lucky they are. lolol. 

Genevieve made this treasure box for her Valentine's box. She filled part of it with jewelry and other trinkets to make it a real treasure box, and then her friends put her cards in it. She's so creative. 

I made these twixster cookies. They are shortbread with homemade caramel and chocolate drizzled on top.  Oh goodness, they are so good. 

These are the rest of the soft caramels. 

I got a job!

My life completely turned upside down this week. Except instead of the norm where everything broke, instead it's a new fabulous opportunity to do my dream job on my return to full time work in my industry. It took me two solid months of job hunting before this came through, and it was worth every day waiting and the work put in. It's just what I wanted to do as I transition back into working full time from doing a contract job for the last dozen years while we bounced around the country and Bill did school and then his first job and what not. We're both super excited about everything this will entail.  

We went to Rita's to celebrate the new job Tuesday night. 

Saturday we took the kids to the Discovery Museum in downtown SLC. We have a pass with tickets to a bunch of places that ends next month and we've got to get to some of them we haven't gone to yet! They had a pretty good time. It was better for the younger two than the older two, but I thought it was pretty great. 

Chloe finally got her first real live haircut. Turns out there's a real name for the thing she has where she has not really grown hair for years. I don't remember the name but it only happens to girls and it lasts from 2-7 and then their hair starts growing more normal. She's five and a half and it's finally starting to thicken up a bit and so I had them cut off the scraggly ends, probably a couple inches, so she has this super cute bob now. We're working on growing her bangs out as well, so they trimmed them a bit shorter but more even so they'll look good growing. She's so cute! 

Oh, and I bought a couple more plants to fill these two pots I had that I was able to use once I learned how to cut holes in pots that don't have them and Bill actually did the cutting for me the other day. It worked perfectly, so now I can get any pot I want and still have it be a good plant pot since it'll have drainage.