Screenless Saturday

As the self appointed CEO of this joint, I made a spur of the moment executive decision while lying in bed at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, wondering why I wasn't sleeping in.  I decided that Saturdays around here, from this point on, will be known as screenless Saturdays. This simply means that from Saturday morning until 7pm  Saturday night, there will be no video games, no tablets, no Facebook, no computers, no TV, no cell phone gazing and grazing.  No screens, all day Saturday.

For many many years, Saturday was the day the boys looked forward to for playing video games. They usually didn't play much if at all during the week, but on Friday nights and Saturdays after chores were done, video games were pretty much free reign. And that worked pretty good when they were in school. But somewhere along the way, with the addition of cell phones and tablets, and WiFi, and Netflix, our screen time got ridiculously out of control. Week nights are spent in front of our various electronic devices, sometimes working and sometimes playing, but they are always on. And Saturdays have become the worst. Dan goes downstairs and plays video games, Duncan is upstairs playing video games, Olivia is squirreled away in her room on her tablet or at the computer, and I am glued to my phone. Audrey is the least offending, but she does have a ton of homework, and she does a lot of writing on her laptop.

In all honestly, most weeknights, I don't have the energy to fight it. We are all tired, and when we get everything done, we all just want to veg out for a few hours, and that is okay. But Saturdays should be a day when we get a few things done, or at least acknowledge the existence of our family members. Hence, screenless Saturdays.

To my surprise, nobody even balked that much. I mean, it was only the first week, so I'm not holding my breath. But the first one was pretty successful. Dan was a handyman machine, got Audrey's car fixed, and the lawn edged and trimmed. Duncan worked until one, and he was kinda bummed that he couldn't come home and escape to his games. He survived though. He helped Dan get the lawnmower fixed. Olivia and I went to Wendy's and hung out at the mall together. She wore lipstick for the first time too, so that was exciting. Audrey was at youth conference all day. After dinner, Olivia suggested we go see Lego Batman together. It was a nice Saturday. We will see what next week brings.

Junior Prom- April 15, 2017

Can I get just a small hallelujah choir in the background please?

 I have just completed the last but certainly not the least of several large and hairy projects that have been congealing on my plate for the past six weeks. They were all terribly boring, time consuming, tree destroying things that suck your soul and your will to live. You know, like taxes and passport applications and work certifications. Medical crap.  All that dumb adult stuff I somehow got sucked into without ever realizing it.

Anyhow, as far as I know, it is all DONE, for the moment at least. So now I can finally get around to the important stuff, like posting Audrey's junior prom pictures.

We were like, the most awesome host family ever, and when we heard that Nicole really wanted to go to prom while she was here, Audrey arranged a date for her with our neighbor Jake, who was pretty cool to agree to go to prom with a girl he had never met. Jake goes to a different high school, whose prom was on a different night, so there was no interference there.  He even delivered the cute poster to officially ask her, and then she got to answer him by delivering a poster and candy to his doorstep. That was a fun night.

We had to get a shot of the back 'do's, courtesy of the talented Nikki. Nikki the hairdresser neighbor, that is, who should not  be confused with Nicole the German.

This picture makes it look like Audrey has a red corsage, but no, hers is the really pretty white one with a hint of purple. She had an odd colored, although lovely, dress and her date Zach did a great job of matching it.

I know I'm a little biased, but I think these two are the cutest couple there, especially the girl.

A Lull

Audrey pointed out the other day that it had been over 50 days since I updated this old beast of a blog. She knew this because my last post was about Will being gone 130 days, and we are now past the 180 day mark. Yes, it has been quite the extended break in our little world.

It's rather Twilight Zone-ish that he has been gone six months and is 1/4 of the way through. For your kid's whole life you think about those two years he will spend on a mission. As it gets closer, you start to count down how long you have left before he leaves. But you never spend much time thinking about what it will be like while he is gone. And suddenly here we are, smack dab in the middle of this time that we planned for and thought about for so long. It is weird that time is really passing, he is really out there tooling around the streets of Mexico, and these are his mission days. We just better buckle up and enjoy every moment of the ride, because it's already starting to seem like quite a fast one.

We have not been sitting around pining however. Life keeps happening here too, and while I for sure can't catch up on all the comings and goings of the past 50 + days, I will attempt to make a small accounting.

Duncan is a working man again. He got a part time job at McDonalds, making fries. And he is a substitute custodian for the school district, so he gets called in last minute to cover when regular custodians don't show. He is happy to be working again and is looking forward to a paycheck coming in one day soon.

Audrey, in addition to our big Paris trip coming up in June is also going to New York City in August with a group from her school theatre club. She has been busy working her tail off to earn money for this adventure She has been selling cookies and brownies, babysitting, and now has a temp job at a store that is closing. She has to earn another 300 bucks by the end of May. Yikes.

And perhaps our biggest news of the month is the arrival and departure of this kid:

 who came to stay with us from Germany as an exchange student for three weeks. In three weeks she managed to wrangle herself right into the middle of our family, going from complete stranger to adopted daughter and sister in 21 short days.

Nicole and Audrey hit it off right away. While she was here, she experienced Walmart, Zion National Park and Las Vegas, the mall, Target, Del Taco, Park City, Logan, Cedar Fort, Red Dot shooting range, the spiral jetty, junior prom, bagels, general conference, high school, school buses, Dr. Strange, Hot Topic, and so much more. She left for Germany last Friday, and we are all still recovering, but we have plans to meet for lunch in Paris for a grand reunion.

I have tons more pictures of all of the many adventures that happened, but we must pace ourselves on this the first day of blogging in so long.  Suffice it to say we really liked our German.

 We all bawled when it was time to see her off. I'm getting kind of tired of taking people to the airport and telling them goodbye. I'm going to look forward to picking people up at the airport. Or better yet, being the one to leave.

Which leads me right into  a nice segue of our next trip to California, planned for a few weeks from now, in which we will go to Alisa's graduation and then pack her and Erwann and two cats up and move them to Utah! Yeehaw!