Weekend Getaways - Yes, Plural

John and I enjoyed a getaway weekend recently - no kids - just us - it was absolutely delightful!

We went hiking, biking, out to eat...just lovely. 

I also just got home from a getaway weekend to Phoenix where I got to visit with my sister and mom. 

 We checked out downtown Phoenix, which included the Japanese Friendship Gardens and some delicious donuts...

We also went to the Renaissance Festival. 

It was really fun watching various performances and musicians, eating yummy food...

...and mom wanted a picture of us in these lovely outfits - 

In other news, we went as a family to see the test launch of ATK's rocket booster. 

We had to get up before the crack of dawn to make it up to the launching in time. 

It was worth it though...

Biology Lesson and other news

What do you get when you put a male and a female molly fish into your tank? Baby mollies...

 You can see one here. We had two, but we lost one. They were itty-bitty at first. This is after a couple weeks. In a few more weeks, the baby will be big enough to move from the baby tank into the big tank with the other fish. 

Watching the two mollies, I am certain we will have more babies...

(Megan just thinks they are playing tag. We'll let her keep thinking that)

 Kimberly turned 15. She got a nice bike for her birthday and is thrilled. 

Maybe she'll go out exercising more...one can only hope. 

Interesting thing about the above photo, I took several pictures of her with the cake, but this was the only one that turned out good - except that it was really, really dark. I pulled it into Photoshop, and wa-la! You can actually see her face! I have got to play around with that more.

To get Kim's bike, we drove all the way up to Logan - we got a killer deal - and while we were there, we took Kevin out to lunch and then of course we went out for Aggie ice cream. We asked the gal to give Megan a kiddie cone, but she got a full-size adult cone instead. She did her best to eat it up, but  she only made it halfway. 

Kimberly caught this beautiful sunset in front of our house on the camera. I love sunsets in Utah. 

It's been so lovely that we've spent a lot of time outside, including painting fingernails. 

Kimberly and Alicia competed with our ward young women's basketball team. 

They all had a lot of fun. 

and I saved the best for last... 

My sister-in-law, Delores, gave me this awesome recipe for sugarless brownies using dates, walnuts, almonds, coconut oil, cacao powder, and honey...they are DELICIOUS!!! I am so excited to have found something that is sugar free and yummy. So far I'm the only one in the house that likes it though. Fine by me - all the more for mah. 

Here Fishie, Fishie, Fishie...

We finally have a working aquarium! Thanks to all of John's several month's of work putting together the sump hidden in the cabinet below and three aquarium's later - the first one got cracked, the second one wasn't working, so we splurged and bought this one with the pipes already in place - and it is working beautifully! If you ever need to sit and relax watching fish while listening to bubbles, you know where to find us...

We all got to pick our own fish.

We have molly's (Megan)

gourami's (John)

Angelfish (Alicia)

Betta (Dana)

Neon Fish (Kim's)

Guppy's (Natalie)

Not pictured are the catfish who help clean up the algae, the tetra's and the zebra fish.

We are having a lot of fun with them. 

Let me tell you a story

When you give John some wire, he is going to want to poke it into the wall, so he's going to ask for a hammer.

When he gets the hammer, he is going to want to poke some holes into the wall.

Poking holes into the wall will allow John to see the crazy, not-so-safe wiring going on behind the wall, so he will need to take down some walls.

He will discover that taking down walls makes for a very large pile of debris, and a very unsettled wife.

Seeing the large pile makes John think about his two older girls who spend too much time on their electronic devices, so he will ask for their help putting all of the debris into the garbage.

Seeing the debris gone and the holes in the wall will remind John that he still has wire to put through the wall, so he will start inserting the wire.

Connecting the wire to the outlet box will remind John he needs to ask for some electrical assistance, so in come the older girls again.

Shutting down power for the hallway leading down to the basement allows him to install this fella,  which will remind John what the wire was meant for in the first place.

Thanks to the Give a Mouse a Cookie series that inspired me. Those are some of my favorite books, and apparently there is an actual method that is studied in school, something about cause and effect and Natalie had to write her own version, so I thought I'd add mine to the pot.

Anyway, as you can see, what was meant to be a very simple project, turned into a massive undertaking. Does this really surprise you though after our adventures with our family room? However, now the hallway leading down to the family room is not so dark and dingy because we've added the light, and as soon as the hole is patched up in the stairwell, I can paint and that section of the house will be done! (really trying to focus on the positive, and not the massive demo area downstairs that now needs to be repaired. On the plus side, John spent all last Saturday fixing wiring, so portions of that are done.)

Side Note: All of the photos in this post are from my cell phone, which are far, far removed in quality from our other lovely camera, just in case you were wondering...

In other news, we spent Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ice skating. Natalie was about the only one who enjoyed herself. Kim lasted about 5 minutes, and Alicia for about 30. Actually Megan had a lot of fun too, thanks to help from Alicia, but she called it quits after about 30 mins too. 

We all watched Natalie have a blast for the last 30 minutes. 

Megan loves to play with play-dough, and made these cute play-dough dresses for her monster-high dolls.

And with all this crazy warm weather we've been having, we dusted off the bikes and rode on the rail trail. 

Seriously, 62 degrees February 8th? Ghastly. 

The older girls and I had planned to go skiing this month, but unless it snows, we will be waiting until next year...

Bumping along into January

Though I may be done with Target, there have been some editorial shifts at the newspaper, so I am working for four different editors now - one for education stories, another for the military stories, one for the city news they want me to cover in the north part of Davis County, and another editor for religion stories and other features stories they send my way. That translates into a lot of stories, which means I'm getting inundated.

I may look like this at the moment.
(I totally just found this picture as I was looking for the ones below. Looks like someone got a candid shot without me realizing it)

However, I am happy because as I burn the midnight oil right now, my awesome husband is sweeping the kitchen and wiping up the kitchen table. Sweetness!!

Anyway, having my stories increased may or may not be a good thing. Good, because the higher ups at the paper like me. Bad, because I've jumped from one boiling pot into the next. Thankfully, most of my work is from home, so I get to have these fun moments:

 Megan likes to sit on the heaters in the house every time she hears them turn on. 

Seriously funny. 

 Kim was out playing in the snow the other day without her coat while it was snowing. 

For fun. Hmm. I prefer to stay inside next to Megan on the heater vent. 

Okay, that was fun. Back to my story...

December Came and Went

Aahh, my blog...oh how I have missed you! My time at Target has come to an end, and can I just get an Hallelujah from the blog world! Glad I had the opportunity there, as it paid for Christmas and we could continue with our house projects, but I am ready to get back to my regular life at home with the family and back to solely writing for the newspaper instead of trying to juggle two jobs at the same time. Heaven!!

So, you are probably wondering what in the world we have been up to. 

Here's the recap.

On Christmas morning, we woke up to a white winter wonderland...finally. Our first really good snow of the season.

 

We spent the morning opening gifts, then the younger two girls headed out to hit the white stuff. 

I happened to look out the window and saw Megan doing this while it was snowing:

Christmas Day was so much fun spending time as a family and relaxing. 

Kim and Alicia, who are die-hard Dr. Who fans, were thrilled to get a Tardis Lego-like kit from the show - John worked his wonders and found it for them.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the gifts the girls make for each other. We started this a few years ago where they are allotted $5 in supplies and make something for the sister they are in charge of. They spend weeks planning and working on their item, and it's usually the first gift they want to open Christmas morning...LOVE it!!

This year Kim sewed some barbie clothes for Megan, Alicia wrote a Dr. Who story for Kim, Megan decorated the frame surrounding this picture for Natalie and wrote 'I love my sister.'



and Natalie (with Kim's help) sewed this lipstick body pillow for Alicia:

We attended the annual Rimington Family Christmas party where we enjoyed crafts, yummy food, and sharing of gifts. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this guy? 

...and of course I love that gal too. She is growing up too fast. 

The girls and I went to the Festival of Trees while John was on a business trip in Orlando.

While he was there, he went out to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the launching of the new Orion spacecraft. He was mere miles from the launch pad, but sadly, as they were preparing for launch, several things went wrong, so all of the spectators left disappointed. The launch happened the next day while John was on the plane back to Utah. 

However, John brought home some paper rockets the girls put together with him while I put up the Christmas tree lights. 

Kimberly and Alicia's parakeets added their chirps of approval during the project. 

I think I have completely failed to do a blog posting of their birds. 

They saved up their money and bought all of the supplies, got the cage put together, then purchased their birds. They have been a fun addition to the family. 

After Christmas, my Meldrum cousins and Uncle Bob stopped by for a visit. 

It was so much fun being with them again. 

In other news for the month, I was assigned a story covering an event down at the capital where the Governor was learning how to code with several students. 

I had no idea it was going to be held in the Gold Room and a gazillion other media hounds were covering the event too. 

Nonetheless, it was a really cool experience as I've never visited with the governor of Utah before, or any other state governor for that matter. I happened to snap this shot before.

Okay, back in November I helped out at the Thanksgiving Feast for Natalie's class:

Now that it is colder, the deer like to visit my neighbors' yard. I love watching them. 

You probably can't see them in the picture, but there are three deer back there. 

Back into December, I got to play this:

My friend and I have been playing Christmas piano/organ duets for the last eight years.

It is absolutely beautiful. I wish we had recorded it for your viewing pleasure, but alas, I didn't even think about that. 

On New Year's Eve we got together with our dear friends, the Oylers, who introduced us to a new game, Seven Wonders. We will definitely be picking up that game because it was so much fun. 

And lastly, we have discovered that Natalie is really, really flexible. 

She did not get that from my side of the family.