February: church stuff

Sometimes I accidentally click on cool Mormon fashion instagram ladies and realize literally the only difference between me and them is... wait for it... the background of our pictures. I mean, why they aren't photographed in their driveways with tire marks and a weird dirt lot behind them is totally beyond me ;).

But here we have my amazing Sunday-before-Valentine's Day picture. Fun fact: it was also the day I was sustained as Relief Society 2nd Counselor, aka my most grown up sounding calling to date. I asked Chuck a couple days prior if I could still wear my red and white striped tights to church as a member of the RS presidency and he (as patiently/kindly as possible) rolled his eyes and assured me that I could still be Jana in this new calling to which I breathed a hearty sigh of relief ;).

And here's Carma's Sunday-before-Valentine's Day outfit, for the record I chose the clothes and she selected the large flower on top hahahaha:

 

Another random Sunday I was trying to get a picture of her outfit because I LOVED it and she opted for a quick tree climbing attempt... is that a popular fashion blogger pose? Mid arboreal ascension?? 

Okay, this day Carma wasn't really having it but I persisted because I was soososososo happy about this dress:

SO CUTE, RIGHT? And familiar?? Yes, because little baby Carma had the same one!!:

 And a quick side by side. Seriously probably my favorite dress ever. The littler version was a Savers find while I was pregnant with Carma, and the larger version was a... D.I. find this time? I think? Holding out on finding even bigger sizes in the next few years ;).

Moving beyond the Sunday fashion portion of this post, February = Blue and Gold Banquet for Cub Scouts! The boys started off with a cute skit:

and then had a fun meeting with awards for the boys, yummy food, and a fun storytelling activity. 

Melissa gave us this puzzle when we were in Utah and we spent a few days doing it. Such a beautiful picture:

Made it to the temple with some awesome ladies!

February 6th marked the anniversary of when I was baptized! Here's my instagram caption: Once upon a time on February 6th I was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and while I'm still working on laying aside all those pesky besetting sins 😳🙈, I can testify of a loving God who is willing to listen and forgive as many times as I go to him to repent ❤️😅☺️🙌🏼. (jokes I considered for this caption: ... "it wasn't a decision I entered into blindly"... or... "and I've never looked back" 😂😂😂 So glad Heavenly Father blessed me which such a sharp sense of humor 😉😎💅🏼💃🏻😂)

Ohhh I love this. Carma loves her friend Brother Volkert, and this particular sacrament meeting she ventured over enough to sit with him for a bit so naturally I had to bend the rules a bit and take a picture. We are so blessed with wonderful people in our ward who indulge this little nutty girl and her wanderings and spinning and craziness every Sunday!!

Oh, and here's Carma at our Relief Society activity - she sneaked into Bishop Swenson's office and came out with a candy and picture of Jesus, both of which she cherished and reverently explained came from "Bee-shup Swenson" when asked. Carma might have a slight crush on Bee-shup Swenson ;).

 Aaaand Chuck and I made it to the temple together, but apparently the good Lord chose to bless us for our service a way that was not making us photogenic hahahaha.

january: the snow. ALL the snow

Back in my History Day years, I was allll about primary sources. Primary sources were golden. That meant you had a firsthand account of the historical event you were studying and creating a paper/project/performance about - so a diary entry, or an interview, or any kind of personal account. Much more reliable than secondary sources.

Which is why I'm thrilled to think about someone stumbling upon my blog in a hundred years whilst studying about the snowstorm of January 2017 in Nampa, Idaho when it SNOWED A MILLION INCHES. Literally. I was there:

At one point, we were like, whoops, we probably should have put our table away for the winter... and then we were like, WAIT, that's a fabulous way to tell how much dang snow has accumulated at any given time. 

The snowfall also allowed us to capture this goony moment with Will and Clyde THAT MATCHED A PICTURE FROM BACK IN THE DAY and y'all know how much I love when that happens :).

This was another funny moment that I merrily shared on instagram and facebook: one of us married up in the looks department ;). But seriously, how hot is Chuck out there with the snow shovel? Fun fact: he just stood there and all the snow on the driveway melted away like magic 😍 🔥

Oh, this was another funny moment provided by the snow! Most of the time when you saw someone pushing a vehicle (which was allllll the time) it was because they were stuck. This yahoo neighbor from down the street was showing off on his four wheeler and ran out of gas. Is it bad that I laughed? Because I did.

Aaaaand one more funny moment - whenever I had VERY negative thoughts about the snow, I thought of this passage from one of my favorite books, Enduring Light and how Paul felt about the snow. I could def commiserate (you know, with a fictional character ;) ).

Okay, the crazy snow fall wasn't ALL fun and games. There's a thing called ice dams that happen on your roof and they're no joke. Luckily that hot snow shoveler from a couple pictures ago also turned out to be pretty good at roof clearing too! 

Um, yeah, he was also quite the trench creator. Times like this I'm extra glad Chuck knows stuff about the world and water and flooding - it legit wouldn't have dawned on me at all that since we live at the base of a culdesac, and because there was SO much snow that was allll starting to melt at once some days, we needed to make sure the gutters were clear down to the storm drain (spoiler alert: they weren't). Some awesome neighbors at the top of the culdesac did a great job up there and Chuck and I took care the street as it came down by us and I only had the annoying song from Frozen stuck in my head a few times as I chipped at the ice ;).

This corner by our house is a pretty regular flood zone when it rains heavily - except that last summer the city redid a storm drain area near it (where there was actually an even worse flood zone). Alas, it was still no match for this much snow and slush and ice and it became a lake once more: 

It's also the site of one of the only rescue operations I have a picture of - I think every person in Nampa could regale you with about twenty stories of cars that they helped push/pull/dig out/etc. It was insane. We'd be driving along, see a stuck car, hop out, dig them out, get back in our car, and hope we hadn't just gotten stuck too!

Anyways, here's some of the trench digging we did from that little lake to its storm drain. It was SO exhilarating to dig and break up ice and then watch the water flow and flow and flow down and the lake sloooowly recede. Almost made up for the lack of feeling in one's fingers ;).

Okay, so I get that people in Utah and like Minnesota weren't that impressed with the Treasure Valley and our collective freaking out about alllll the snow. But y'all have to understand, this is loads unusual for us and our streets and neighborhoods weren't laid out and designed for this kind of snowfall. We have a gazillion culdesacs. And we don't have those fancy high, straight curbs. And we park on the street ALLL THE DAYS OF WINTER. And the snow wasn't the main problem - it was the crazy high frozen ruts. Most cars that were stuck were high-centered on them.

Things got a wee bit tense in Nampa as the city scrambled to provide plows and replacement parts and contractors to destroy the aforementioned ruts. I reallllly struggle when people sit at their computers and whine so I countered as often as possible on city facebook posts with a whole lotta sucking up and cheerleading ;). But seriously people - if in 2016 our city leaders said, "Hey guys, what if one of these winters we get the most snow in like over a hundred years? That would be crazy... but we want to raise property taxes and spend tens of thousands of dollars on some shiny plows to store in a city shed somewhere just in case" WE WOULD HAVE ALL LOST OUR MINDS. Instead we just lost our minds when they said, "Yeah, we have like four plows. We'll do our best!!!"

More random shoveling pictures. 

THE PLOWS!!!! So beautiful. We cheered and waved. I had friends who greeted them with food and water offerings. So cool. Aren't those flat, driveable streets SO pretty??

And again, allll the credit to my amazing husband. He was so dedicated (and thus inspired me to be dedicated as well) in making sure our sidewalk and driveway were always clear, as well as the area around our fire hydrant. This helped a ton. He also made sure to smooth out the area between our driveway and the street - sooo many cars were getting stuck just trying to pull in or out of their houses. Stuff like that was not on my radar at all. Good thing we're a team ;).

Okay, we'll switch gears to more fun stuff about the snow: sleddddding! I think we ended up breaking like five of those disc sleds during our sledding adventures, these yellow ones were courtesy of my dad, thanks! We grabbed our favorite Andrew and all had a great time:

One snow day found Chuck and the kids outside making the requisite snowmen... although it may have turned into a snowball fight pretty early on. We ended up with... nine snow days? Ten? And a number of them fell on Chuck's normal days off from work which was a-mazing.

More cute kiddos outside in the snow!

And more random pictures of our front yard, heavily featuring our truck that we love despite its decidedly inconvenient two wheel drive. If you've never driven a two wheel drive stick shift big truck in the snow... we have something in common; I haven't either! Sounds terrible though :).

And that's our comprehensive report about Snowmaggedon/Snowpacalypse/whatever trendy names they came up with that I can't spell and am too lazy to google! Remember, young scholars, you heard it hear first: ONE MILLION INCHES OF SNOW FELL IN NAMPA, IDAHO IN JANUARY 2017. SIGNED, SOMEONE WHO LIVED THROUGH IT.

january: combatting cabin fever

So last January's crazy snow in Nampa left us all home together a lot during the month... which had the potential for disastrous results... but luckily we devised many a way to entertain ourselves against the cabin fever that threatened to settle in and upon us on a daily basis!

Starting with snuggling for warmth as the temperature dropped outside, aka Jack's favorite pastime hahahaha. Please enjoy the picture of Chuck and Jack and Carma in the top left... and then realize that I'm in there too. Chuck and I were cuddled on the chair together when those two buttmunches piled on as well. 

By the third snow day or so, Chuck and I came up with the Snow Day Fairy. We made the kids do a crazy Snow Day dance and then surprised them with something to do that day - this time it was Pokemon legos. It helped immmmmmmensely.

We played games. Lots of games. Board games. Card games. Computer games. 

There's a chance our kids had never played Monopoly, whoops! This was a gift from the Snow Day Fairy (aka I had grabbed it for like $3 a few years ago on clearance and it had stayed in our closet every since, just waiting for the perfect moment!).

We sneaked out one day for dinner and fun at Grandma Pam's with Uncle Cody - and discovered that Will LOVES Who What Where. Like, a lot. And he's good at it - that's his picture:

 

Clyde and Will handled the time home pretty well, considering how much they love school and their friends. Legos, piano practice, time at the library, and some pretty intense games of Hide and Seek helped, like this one where Chuck put my baby boy Clyde ON THE PLANT SHELF and it took me like twenty panicked minutes to find him. Grrrrr. 

Carma and Jack did a lot of coloring, like in Carma's room and at the library

AND ON THE WALL AND BASEBOARDS IN THE LIVING ROOM. She is lucky that came off pretty easy, grrrr again.

There were also lots of opportunities to take a quick cat nap, often with a buddy:

So vain, but I love this picture. Carma was asleep, I was clearly faking but whatev. Look at how snuggly she is! Her hand on my neck! Even though I often feel like she's slowly suffocating me I know Imma miss this.

More Carma adventures: learning to drive (JK!!!), changing clothes a million times a day, working on her selfie smile:

We were pretty committed to eating our way through January: breakfast for dinner (including green pancakes apparently...), Jack is obsessed with banana bread, Jack is the cutest little sandwich maker ever, I made brownies the day that they warned we might lose power hahaha, and Carma's Nutella face/Hanson hair. Doesn't she look like a wee MMMbopper?! No?

Blessedly we did escape the house a few times throughout the month. I literally have no idea where we were going this day, although that looks delightfully like a fast food bag next to Clyde...

 Alllll the Costco trips! Don't think I could love that place more. Also Carma can find every mirror in Target to twirl in front of. It's a gift.

GIRLS NIGHT. Our first one without Nicole Daniels, who moved to Utah the first week of January which I honestly can't talk (or type!) about without getting emotional. I love Nicole. Like, a lot. She is as generous and loving and fun as she is blunt and take charge - so very ;). Some friends in her ward held a going away party for her and another gal who was moving and at one point they went around sharing memories about Nicole. I told Nicole I could have shared a million emotional thoughts but instead I went for my favorite funny memory with Nic - the time I thought she asked me to nurse Beckam and I was like, "Suuuuure?" Turns out, when she said, "Will you feed Beckam for me?" she meant like baby food hahahahahaha. Oh it still kills me (especially since a couple years later I did nurse a baby for a friend!)

 The group def won't be the same without Nicole (Melinda also had to miss this night..) but luckily she's still committed to our retreats and manages to come back every now and then for girls nights when she's in town. 

 Our final effort at combatting the delirium of cabin fever in January was delirious laughter instead! Like this Clyde classic that I promptly texted Chuck:

Or this twitter find! Let's face it, I just went along with the delirium during the whole ridiculous of the inauguration. It helped me pretend it wasn't real ;). 

Okay, this one still makes me laugh sosososososososososo hard. I don't even know why. It just kills me:

And this is the most Clyde thing ever: 

Okay, so that's how we dealt with the snow insanity of January... which will be chronicled for everyone's enjoyment/boredom in the next post. I might have 100+ pictures! It will be great! And then onto February so Chuck can stop saying I'm "a year behind" GRRRRRR.