So far, 2017 has been the Year That Just Wouldn't Quit. Every time we think we are hitting a "slow patch," about ten new events/responsibilities/chores pop up. At least life hasn't been boring! However, as you can see, the blog posts are getting fewer in number (and longer in length) to compensate.
February was more than just cruises and cheerleading for the Barretts. We had a little of everything, starting with an uncle visiting from out of town.
My brother Ray and his family live all the way in Massachusetts, and thus far it has been too cost-prohibitive for our family to travel to visit them. Usually, we are only able to see them at our every-other-year Nash family reunion. This February, though, we were lucky enough to have Ray come to Tucson for a quick weekend visit. He had a conference in Phoenix earlier in the week, then decided to come down to Tucson for a couple of days. We missed seeing the rest of his family, but it was good to bond with him, even for just a little while.
We didn't plan too much for that weekend...most of it was spent visiting. However, we did take Ray out to dinner (Sonoran hot dogs at El Guero Canelo, mmm), and then took him on a short visit to another fine Tucson tradition: the Gem Show, which visits our city every February.
The Gem Show features thousands & thousands of vendors, and they set up all over town, so it's not really possible to visit the whole thing. We chose a large tent in the hopes we would get to see some cool stuff. We were not disappointed!
We also took him to take a look at our soon-to-be completed Tucson Arizona Temple. At this writing, the temple is about to start its open house, in preparation for its final dedication/opening in August.
But on this day in February, there was still a lot of construction around, so we had to settle for a few distance shots.
February had a lot of other "this and that" activities. Weather-wise, it ended up being a fairly warm month, and my swimsuit-loving girls were quick to take advantage of that.
Sunbathing in mid-February...I never did anything like that as a kid! We even visited the pool once in February (at least it was heated!).
We had a handful of warm days in March as well; so much so that we were able to take a short trip to nearby Madera Canyon, and frolic in the small waterfall that's hidden at the canyon's base. We went with some friends and had a terrific time!
In other (slightly alarming) news, my oldest daughter attended her first school dance. I thought I wouldn't have to worry about dances until high school! But our little charter school throws a dance for the middle-school students every few years. This year, the theme was "Yule Ball," and the kids at school were all so excited for it.
Even Lorelai! You know, the daughter who can sometimes barely be bothered to brush her hair, apply deodorant, or wear a bra. The girl for whom makeup, earrings, and dresses are either not worth her attention or a millstone about her neck, depending on the day. Lorelai talked about the Yule Ball for weeks in advance. She insisted on buying a new dress for the occasion; she even found YouTube hair-braiding videos to demonstrate how she wanted her hair to look.
This was all a little overwhelming to poor Mom, who hasn't ever had to deal with Lorelai's "makeovers" or discuss beauty tips with her in any way. I'm sorry to say I didn't do the braid justice; I am not the greatest at doing hair. At least she was polite about it to me! We also had a mishap with the dress in the washer, and had to buy a replacement for it online; it arrived just a few days before the dance.
But it all turned out okay. It may not have been the outfit of her dreams, but Lorelai was still more dolled up than she usually gets, and she had fun both showing off to her friends, and complimenting them on their lovely outfits too. It filled my heart with several emotions sending Lorelai to this dance. I was so amused and pleased that she wanted to get dolled up; I was happy that she was able to dance & have a fun time with her friends. I was also relieved that there was no "pairing off" at this dance...it was just for fun! I don't think I am ready for her to date and be interested in boys...but I suspect that pretty soon, it won't matter if I'm ready for it or not. My "duckling" is turning into a swan, and her metamorphosis is fascinating to watch.
March was a busy, busy month, and I'm sure I'm going to forget about some parts of it during my blogging, but I'll do my best. It started off, as many months do, with a school field trip.
I don't get to go to as many of these field trips as I used to, but I was lucky enough to not be working that day. Aurora and the rest of her first-grade class visited the Tucson Village Farm (a local growing project sponsored by the University of Arizona). It was a fun way for the kids to learn about fresh vegetables, and they had a lot of fun exploring, trying foods, and learning about farming.
Trying some fresh-picked broccoli
If January was the Month When All Our Appliances Broke, then March was the Month When We Had A Lot Of Projects To Complete. Most of those projects involved work around the house, but one of these "projects" was somewhat happier...
...we got to see Grandma's wedding! That's right, Sandra Barrett has a new beau, and his name is Owen. They dated for several months, and finally decided to tie the knot in March. Nathan's dad passed away in 2014after three years of battling cancer; it was rough for a while afterwards. We have loved having Grandma around more, but we knew that living on her own was very lonely for her. That said, we were still a little surprised when Owen became her "boyfriend/fiance," but only because it was difficult to imagine her with anyone besides "Grandpa." But Owen is a good guy, and he has treated Sandy well. Most importantly, the two of them are very happy together and we are happy to see Grandma happy again.
Sandy and Owen had a simple wedding in the courthouse. Nathan acted as one of the witnesses, and it was a sweet, intimate service. We went out to dinner afterwards with a few close family members.
The next night, the Green Valley Country Club hosted the wedding reception. It was a really fun party, with delicious food, lots of music and dancing, and great company.
March 14th is informally known as Pi(e) Day for our family, and for lots of our friends as well. Can you tell we live in an area with a lot of engineers & math lovers? Anyway, Lorelai will be attending our LDS Stake Girls' Camp this summer, and the girls need to do a lot of their own fundraising. I thought it would be a great idea for Lorelai to bake & sell pies to celebrate Pi(e) Day. We would bake whatever the buyer requested, and we would add a little onto the price if the pie was "a la mode." We advertised our nascent "business" on our LDS ward's Facebook page; within 12 hours, we had enough orders to pay the entirety of Lorelai's Girls' Camp fee! Hooray for us!
Of course, baking 12 pies is a lot of work. We spent one whole Sunday afternoon making all the crusts! Then, the day before (blessedly, this was during Spring Break), we whipped together all the pies. With both of us working together, the work was hard but manageable. We were very proud of our handiwork! Altogether we made five apple pies, three mixed-berry pies, one cherry pie, two chocolate-banana-cream pies, and one Virginia peanut pie (think a pecan pie, but saltier!). We also made two pies for our own family--a second peanut pie, and a "grasshopper pie" (mint fluff & chocolate crust). The results were both profitable and delicious!
We also did multiple house-painting projects in March. The first project was our stairwell; it was finally time to paint it! For years now, I have been forced to stare at the ugly walls of our stairwell, with their flat-white cheap paint, and the years' worth of smudges made by countless little hands. No more, we declared! But since we had gotten so busy, we decided to ask for some help with this project. We found several willing hands from our LDS ward. We ended up "hiring" several teenagers to help us paint, and then donated their earnings into their summer camp funds!
I didn't really get any pictures of this project, because I was too busy either painting or supervising our young painters. But I was so happy to have their help, and so pleased by the result! They worked steadily, never complained, and did their very best, while remaining in good spirits. Nathan and I still had minor touch-ups to do, but most of the "heavy lifting" portion of the painting was done by the kids. It would have taken a lot longer to do that project without them, and it was so helpful to have them around! It makes me wonder if we should enlist the help of teenagers every time we need to paint in our house. Hmmm...
But that wasn't all the house-painting that happened in March; we repainted the whole exterior of the house as well! In this case, our hand was forced...we would have been happy to ignore the exterior paint for several more years, but our vigilant HOA sent us a note informing us that we either paint our house or risk a fine. Oh well...it was unlikely the house had been painted since it was built, and the summer sun in Arizona does a number on house paint! So we hired a local company that came recommended to us by our friend, who is a realtor. They offered a very reasonable price, for which we were very grateful!
The painters were small in number, so it took them a few days to finish the house (a windy day delayed them a bit, too). However, they were always polite and tried very hard to stay out of our way. When they were done, the house looked great. It was a relief to have it all done. Hopefully the HOA will leave us alone now for a while! (Not likely.)
We had one more fairly major addition to our house in March: solar panels. Way back in December, we spoke to a friend who was a sales representative for Solar City. We have been interested in "going solar" for a while now; we reasoned that it could be a wise investment in a place where the sun is shining brightly just about every day of the year! After learning a little more about the system, we signed a contract to purchase some solar panels and have them installed on our home. Buying the panels is a bit more expensive than just renting them, but the payoff is set at a fixed rate for the next twenty years...that's a better deal than the electric company could offer us!
It took a while for the financing to be cleared, for the company to get our account set up, and for all the red tape with the local electric company to be dealt with. But finally, at the end of March, the installers came, and got right to work sticking a bunch of panels on our roof!
It was slightly noisy work (I even had a piano student at the time; the poor thing had to deal with a bunch of drilling!). But the workers were polite & helpful, and did their best to not be a bother. A few weeks after the installation, Solar City called me and instructed me about how to turn on our panels.
The solar meter...IS RUNNING!
All it took was the flip of a few switches, and bam! Just like that, we were a "solar family." According to Solar City's calculations, our panels should be able to generate nearly all our household's power. It is exciting to think about! We hope this investment pays off.
That's about it for all our house upgrades...for now! I'm sure we will have more in the next year or so. But it was nice to get some of these repairs out of the way all at once (even if it may have cost us more out of pocket). But springtime wasn't all hard work; our kids had some fun performances as well. I'll tell you all about them in the next couple of blog posts.
Until then...Aloha! *spoiler alert: that's the name of one of Aurora's dance numbers from this spring!*
I have already blogged about some of our biggest activities this winter...namely, the addition of Coco to our family, and the big anniversary cruise Nathan and I took in February. But there was a lot of other stuff going on as well; some of it awesome, some of it not awesome, and some of it involving cheerleading. I'm still trying to decide where cheerleading fits on the aforementioned spectrum.
First, I should probably talk a bit about the non-awesome stuff...like how almost every single kitchen appliance broke down in the month of January. Our month of appliance misadventures actually started in the waning hours of 2016, when our dishwasher stopped working on New Year's Eve. We were frustrated but not panicked; we were busy celebrating the New Year, after all. But after a few days had passed, the dishwasher still not turning on and hand-washing gradually losing its novelty, we summoned a repairman, who informed us the control panel was dead...and repairing it would cost 2/3 the cost of a brand-new dishwasher. So off to Lowe's I went, to purchase a brand-new dishwasher and to set up a payment plan.
Literally the same week we had the new dishwasher put in, our microwave suddenly stopped working. The light and the fan would turn on, but the food inside wouldn't heat up. I was amazed that they both died within such a short window. Both the microwave and the dishwasher were the original appliances that came with the house...coincidence?? It must have been their time to die. Not having any more spare cash, we scoured Craigslist until we found an old, similarly sized microwave for sale. I drove up to Tucson to get it, and Nathan and his home teacher installed it. It is much noisier than our old model, but at least our food heats up! (and at least our wifi doesn't go on the fritz every time the microwave is running! That happened a lot with our old microwave). Hopefully this microwave will last us for another couple of years, until we have the cash to buy a brand-new model.
But our appliance woes weren't done yet! Our clothes washer had been leaking for many months now, and since I figured we were already neck-deep in repairs, I should ask our repairman what was to be done with it. He fixed not only the leak, but the loud "clacking" noise the washer made every time it was in the spin cycle. That was another $250 down the drain. And just a couple of days after that, our oven stopped heating things up. Its control panel was also dead, and the gas interface inside the oven needed some fine-tuning. By this point, we were on a first-name basis with this sweet old handyman that had spent literally hours at our house (his name was Jim, and he actually turned out to be a member of our church!). I'm thinking about sending him a gift basket. Anyway, a couple hundred more dollars later, the oven was finally repaired as well.
Ouch...to think all of that happened in January alone! The refrigerator was the only kitchen appliance to stay fully functional this winter (knock on wood). Having all these repairs hit us immediately after Christmas was tough; having to pay for them while knowing an expensive cruise was on the horizon felt even worse for Nathan and I. And there was quite a lot more housework to come later in the spring, too...but that might be a story for another time.
On a lighter note, here are a few more cheerful events from our January:
--I did a lot of post-holiday cooking...including this Thanksgiving-style feast! True, we already had one Thanksgiving feast last winter...on actual Thanksgiving, with my sister and her family in Utah. But I am a turkey junkie; I love to cook them and all the food that goes with them. So when the birds were on sale in November, I bought an additional, smaller bird to be consumed at a later date.
Was it a lot of work? Of course. Was it delicious? You betcha!
On another occasion, I had fun using one of my Christmas gifts (a homemade pasta maker!) to make our family some homemade spaghetti. It tasted surprisingly light and fresh. It is kind of hard to use a pasta maker, but the flavor was so delicious that I hope to use it again soon.
--We also continued to use up our Christmas money!! A surprising amount of people sent us Christmas money or gift cards this year...more than we are used to. So we put those funds to use in a variety of ways. A lot of those funds went towards buying lots of new books and DVDs (always favorite gifts in our house). Some of that money went towards getting new clothes. And one gift card in particular got us very excited: we went and had dessert at The Melting Pot, a delicious fondue restaurant.
We had done this same family date a few years ago, but it was fun to come back for another go-around. This time, we ordered two different fondue flavors...a chocolate peanut-butter flavor, and a berry-based fondue. It was fun to try out both flavors!
--In other dining-out news, Aurora had a fun dinner out with some of her best buddies to celebrate her seventh birthday. Aurora being the thrill seeker she is, she wanted a fun party night out at Peter Piper Pizza! We made sure to go to the restaurant that had a mini roller coaster in it :)
Some days, it is hard for me to remember that my "tiny little baby girl" is seven years old. I remember thinking Lorelai was huge by the time she was seven, and Aurora doesn't seem that big; she still seems so young to me
But I can definitely tell she has grown in wisdom, strength, and cuteness; she really has a good heart and a lot of love for life and for her family.
Working on one of her birthday gifts; a "jewel dig"
I hope her great spirit will continue to bless others for a long long time to come.
--Lorelai had a big night in January, too...she attended her first Young Women's New Beginnings event!
Even though she is not a part of our church's Young Women's program yet (she will enter the organization when she turns 12 in August), part of the New Beginnings night is welcoming all the girls who will be entering the program during that calendar year. There are several 11-year-old girls in that age group; they were welcomed beauty-queen style, with a crown, sash, and rose! Lorelai decided to react to these gifts in true beauty-queen fashion:
She had a fun night hanging with her friends, learning more about what to expect in the Young Women's program, and preparing herself for this big step in her life. At this point, Lorelai is really tired of being in Primary; she feels she has learned all she is going to learn there, and she wants to try something else different. Well, she will grow up and advance soon enough, whether she (and I) are ready or not!
--Even though she doesn't enjoy Primary on Sundays, Lorelai and Celeste both still enjoy Activity Days on Wednesday nights. In January, there was a special Activity Days that everyone was really excited about; the Pinewood Derby (Girl's Edition!).
Normally, the Pinewood Derby is an activity for the Cub Scouts in our stake. But our stake Primary presidency has added a derby for the Activity Day girls as well, and they love to participate. Lorelai was out of town for the derby last year, but Celeste participated and had a great time. This year, both girls were able to create cars and race them against those of other girls in the stake.
As you can see, we are not a family or artists or engineers. Our girls' cars weren't the prettiest, and they weren't the fastest (they finished up somewhere in the middle of the pack on both counts)
But they had a lot of fun decorating the cars anyway, and enjoyed designing and racing them on their own. I sure hope they are still holding the girl's Pinewood Derby by the time Aurora is in the program!
--Coco's "red-letter day" in January was a medical milestone; she got fixed! Hooray; now I don't have to worry about her having an unexpected litter of puppies. I was a little worried about how she would handle being left at the vet's office, but she handled everything like a champ. She was just a little tired out the following day...
...as was her "big sister." Aurora, being our wildest child, is most comfortable snuggling with Coco and this day was no exception. Coco is usually happy to oblige her cuddles! Just a day or so later, she was back to being her usual energetic, hyper self.
--Last but not least, January marked the beginning of Celeste's first-ever season as a cheerleader!
I have long said that no daughter of mine would ever become a cheerleader. I admit to being biased, and having a bad opinion of cheerleaders based on the ones in my own high school many years ago. I am sorry to say that most of the cheerleaders at my high school were very snooty, slutty, and crass...they fit all the bad stereotypes of cheerleaders everywhere. I was terrified for my girls to adopt those sorts of behaviors, and fervently hoped that they wouldn't ever express interest in cheer-leading.
I should not have been surprised that it was Celeste who got really excited about cheer-leading. She enjoys dancing and performing in front of others; and she always wears her heart on her sleeve, and is very demonstrative with her enthusiasm. She had participated in Sahuarita Dance classes for a few years, but told me last spring that she was not as interested in it any more. She was drawn to cheer-leading because it had lots of the same elements (dance/tumbling and performance), while getting to cheer out loud and encourage noisy crowds at the same time.
I decided to let Celeste try a season of cheer-leading for a couple of reasons. First, my friend and neighbor Kellie was a coach affiliated with a local flag football league (her daughter Mercedes, a friend of Celeste's, was another member of the squad). Kellie (who was a cheerleader for many years in her youth) was a tough, no-nonsense coach, who loved the sport but despised some of the behaviors that sprang from it. She tolerated no attitude from her squad members, and encouraged them to be good examples, be on their best behavior, and always work hard as a team. I thought it would be a good environment for Celeste to cheer in. Second, Celeste is not as "sporty" as our other two daughters (and that is saying something, because none of them are hard-core athletes!). She is more sedentary, and so any activity that encouraged her to exercise and burn calories was okay by me (cheer-leading, for all its other trappings, definitely has a big athletic component).
Last (but not least), the team Celeste would be cheering for was called the Broncos! Yes, named for my beloved Denver Broncos...same color scheme and everything. I figured it wouldn't be too bad for Celeste to be a cheerleader, so long as she was a Broncos cheerleader.
So in January, we started driving Celeste down to Quail Creek Park (about a 15-minute drive) two nights a week for Celeste to get her cheers on.
Some of those nights were pretty chilly and we had to bundle up quite a bit! The girls managed to move around just enough that they didn't freeze up.
Sadly, the football team for which the girls cheered struggled with many injuries and other setbacks; they lost more games than they won. But the cheerleaders' enthusiasm stayed strong, and they were pretty inspiring to both the team members and their parents.
I was pretty impressed with Celeste that season. It was a large time commitment for her (she was already involved in the school play and one additional club, plus Activity Days at church), but she was fully committed to it. She took practices very seriously, practiced her cheers at home (both in her bedroom and in the living room), and remained focused and attentive at each and every football game. Quite a change from when I watched football games at home; she would always lose interest a few minutes in! I liked that she was so determined to be the best cheerleader she could be.
It's true that Celeste has no gymnastics training; she didn't have the flexibility or the athletic ability of some of the girls (she couldn't do any of the fancy flips or tumbles, for example). But she worked diligently throughout the season to stretch her joints & muscles, to try her best to improve her performance, and become able to perform stunts.
Celeste was a great little cheerleader; she made me mentally swallow some of the snide remarks about cheerleaders that I'd carried around for so many years. If she wants to do another season of cheering, I will encourage her to do so.
Plus, she looks absolutely adorable in her uniform! All the cheerleaders do! I suppose that is also a plus.
The cheer-leading season went though early March. At the end of the season, the girls prepared a longer dance number, choreographed to music so as to wow the crowd. It was really cute and the girls did a nice job.
At that point, we opted to take a break from cheer-leading for a little while (the school play tends to take up a lot of time in the spring, so we try not to over-schedule). But if Celeste wants to do another season of cheer-leading, I will happily sign her up. She proved to me this winter that she was committed, and that she would work hard. How my outlook has changed!
January (believe it or not) was the least busy month of the year so far. But it still had a lot going on! But March was another animal altogether, as I hope to explain in some upcoming blog posts.
