Sunday, August 25, 2013

Entrepreneurship

Natalie and a couple of her friends in our new neighborhood decided to do a lemonade stand last week.  Great idea I thought, that is until I discovered the only somewhat lemonadey thing we had in the house was the canned fruit juice mix from our food storage (might I just say we are discovering many interesting things about our food storage, but that is for another posting...). 

We mixed it up, took some sips, and discovered...it wasn't very tasty.  It was too late to convince the girls not to pursue the stand, especially since they'd already made their signs and put out the table and chairs. 


So, they sat out here for about an hour and much to my surprise, garnered a lot of business.  I felt slightly guilty that they were serving not-so-tasty drinks, and many of the folks even paid triple the asking price, which did nothing good for the guilt factor, that is until church today. 

I had one of the senior ladies in the ward - someone I hadn't yet met - who told me how thrilled she was to see the lemonade stand with the cute girls.  Apparently its been awhile since she has seen a lemonade stand in our neighborhood.  She admitted to just paying the girls without even bothering with the lemonade - she was just happy to help out with their business!

Guilt - Gone. 

Besides, it was fun watching how excited the girls were when they came in to show me how much money they made - nearly $12! 

 

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

New Family Pictures

 
We got new family pictures...
 

...as did the Rimington Clan...
 
 
What a great looking bunch, if I do say so myself!
 

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

High up in the Uintahs

We went camping again this weekend, this time up to Mirror Lake in the beautiful Uintah Mountains.

Did I mention how beautiful it is up there? 


 We did LOTS of fishing... 
 
 

 

 
 But alas, Alicia was the only one who caught a fish...



She had a love/hate relationship with the fish.  She loved catching it, but hated eating it.  (She is not the seafood fan in the family)

We played games, like kubb, which consists of tossing sticks at your opponents blocks, or in the case of our family, a slight break from the game to look like this:  
 
 
 John taught Kimberly how to throw a hatchet:


 
and the clan played on logs in the rain.
As usual, it rained on us, as it does every camping trip.


Here's the difference in temperature from night one:



 
Night two:
 

 
 
Now it's back to reality, that is, surviving this last week of summer break before school starts up next Monday.  The jury is still out on whether or not the girls and/or I will survive.  

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Quirky Changes

First things first.  You are probably wondering the status of our old house.  Well, it's a long story, but for the time being, it is under contract.  The only problem is, it is a contingency because they are trying to sell their house up in Logan, but they have to be down here for a job transfer in September, so we should be going through the closing process soon whether or not they have an offer on their house. 

I am a tad skeptical because things didn't work out so well the first time around (you recall the first offer backed out midway through the process), so hopefully that doesn't happen again.  I'll keep you posted.  By golly, our house will sell eventually :)

Secondly, we have been in our new house for a month, and other than a few downer days when I missed our old 'hood', we are loving it up here.  The neighbors are all uber-friendly, and the girls have already made several friends up here that they play with, er, excuse me, 'hang-out' as the older ones keep reminding me.  They still frequently 'hang-out' with their friends from the old neighborhood too - always a good thing. 

Here's the deal.  Change is hard.  I knew it would be, but we felt so strongly that this was the right move at the right time, that it hasn't been too hard.  We have all commented on how it feels like home here and everyday I discover cool things about this house that makes me love it even more. 

Going to a new ward was hard at first - for all of us.  It was hard to say goodbye to a place we had loved for 14 years.  A few weeks later, our new ward is starting to feel more "homey," and I have a calling already - oh, and subbed in primary already too.  They don't take their time in this ward :) 

I have always wanted to serve as a Relief Society Instructor, but have never been given the chance.  I am thrilled to say that is my new calling and I am thrilled!!  I was worried because when the primary president asked me to sub last week for Alicia's class, she told me she had submitted my name for nursery.  REALLY???  A newbie's very first calling in the furthest place away from getting to know people?  Sheesh.  I'm glad the bishop vetoed that idea. 

Enough of the epistle here.  I do have some pictures to show you.  Remember how I said there are some really cool things about this house?  Given that it was built in the 70s, this home has some true character - aka, quirkiness that I just adore. 

One of my favorite parts about the house is this cool little nook area upstairs between the two bedrooms.   
 

I've decided to turn it into a reading area and plan to get a bean bag or something to sit next to the bookcase.


 
Those doors lead into the storage area of the attic (given that the bedrooms and this nook area are already in the attic).  I discovered something new about our house today as I was loading some boxes into this area today. 

Check out that chalk board on the right.  This was obviously a former play area, because there are still cute drawings on the board!  Not sure how great of a play area it is though with all of the nail points poking through the ceiling from the roof on the other side.  This will definitely NOT be a play area for my girls, but a cool discovery nonetheless. 

Also something really cool about our old house is the bathroom upstairs between the two girls' bedrooms. 
 

It is this teeny bathroom wedged into a corner of the attic.  The shower is only about 2/3rds the size of a normal one, which meant I had to cut the shower curtain down to size.  Alicia barely fits in there for her daily showers! 

Okay, another really cool feature of our home is this ancient storage room with the 1970s paneling still up and the 70s laminate - obviously from the first home owners.  I love that there is a little portion of the home that reminds us of its origin. 


One last quirk about our house.  When we moved in, I noticed there were absolutely no curtains on the back doors and windows on the back side of the house (except for our bedroom).  I thought this was a bit quirky, until I realized - why of course we don't need curtains - there are absolutely no neighbors behind us, except for the rats, snakes, and raccoons that visit our yard frequently from the acre of woodlands that sit behind our property.


It's actually really cool because every morning when we walk into the kitchen, the sun is streaming in over the mountain tops and through the trees - it really is a gorgeous view - so much so that I usually pad my way out to the patio and eat breakfast out there in the mornings.  That, and the kids usually can't find me, so I get to eat in solitude for a few precious moments before all heck breaks loose. 

Here we are now at the very end of this novel, so I'll include a few miscellaneous pictures from our summer. 

We made it to Pineview for a day of fun with friends.  We had a blast, as always at a place I love.


 
 However, all of our summer fun is catching up to Megan, who will often fall asleep in the strangest places, like today when she was watching a movie on the tablet (while dressed up in her tiger costume).

 We did also get our family pictures taken this year, this time as part of the Rimington clan photos.  The last time we took family pictures with John's family, Natalie was a baby.  It was definitely due time for another one.


 
 Only two more weeks until schools starts - but who's counting, right? 

Monday, August 5, 2013

The Usual Pilgrimage up North

Again, we made it up to Bear Lake for our annual Rimington tradition this weekend.  It is something we look forward to every year.  We always leave early Saturday morning and zip on up, only this year, there was a slight snag to the plans as we were all trekking up Logan Canyon. 

Just 20 cars ahead of us as we neared the top, a really serious car wreck occurred.  Since the car was  completely totaled and sitting in the middle of the road, the entire highway was closed while we waited for the slew of emergency vehicles to make their way up from Logan.  Not too long after they showed up, a rescue helicopter landed right in the middle of the road.

At first, it seemed like a huge annoyance to be held up in the canyon taking away from our time up at Bear Lake.  Since we were all following each other up, all of the Rimington clan was held up for over an hour.

When we saw the seriousness of the situation though, the annoyance gave way to gratitude that our day hadn't been ruined with one of us being seriously injured.   

While we waited, we trooped over a hill to find a potty spot- amongst other women doing the same thing, then we hopped on the jet skis and got some practicing time in.
 


We finally made it to the beach, and had a blast for the rest of the day with all the cousins...


Only 363 days until next year's Bear Lake fun.
 
...and just for fun, here is me while chilling during the Rimington clan photo session yesterday at City Creek Park in Salt Lake City, all cleaned up after the day of lake fun.  It was pretty funny listening to mom remind all of us regularly to put sunscreen on our faces so we wouldn't look like lobsters in the family pictures. 

 
See?  I don't look a day over 30, right?  I am in denial about the fact that my 40th birthday is looming closer and closer.  ick.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Here goes...

Given our new furloughed status, amongst thousands of others in our same shoes, we are experiencing a 20 percent pay cut with each paycheck for the next several months.  At first I didn't think that was very much, until I took our tithing amount and timed it by two, then it was a much larger number.
 
So, we experienced our first dinner this week from our food storage. First, we had to dig all of those boxes out of the garage, but once we found them, we hit the payload. 
 
Many years ago, I was inspired by our prophets' counsel to build a 3-month food storage.  I didn't think we would ever need it, but thought it would be better to be safe than sorry. 
 
I can now say, I am so grateful we heeded the wise counsel.  In our storage I found spaghetti sauce, spaghetti noodles, and apple slices - quite tasty, we all decided. 
 
 
Next up on the list is a delicious soup mix I found in food storage boxes, intermingled with some great coupon deals I have found this week. 
 
Yes, I have begun couponing - purely out of necessity.  We shall see how successful I am at it.  It takes a lot of skill I've decided, but I will master it!