Choosing Our Adventure

  All of our kids have birthdays within just over 2 months, so we have come to call this time of year "birthday season."  The Bear starts things off, and for his birthday this year he wanted to go to a place called Boondocks with his siblings.  They have laser tag, go-karts, bumper boats, mini-golf, a 4D theater, bowling, and arcade, etc.  We got the kids each a day pass and they tried nearly everything Boondocks has to offer.   Bear also asked to have a giant sub from Subway for dinner, (and Cheetos- every year he asks for those) and we invited some extended family and our new neighbors to join us.   He had wanted a birthday cake shaped like a hoagie as well, but it was my first time baking in our new home and I didn't account for the high elevation, and my cake totally flopped.  So instead he picked out an Oreo cake (and cupcake) at the local grocery store.   Happy birthday Bear!  We sure love your giggles, cuddles, ...

We looked at a ton of rental houses online, but we had very specific hopes for good schools nearby, 4+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, nice yard, reasonably large kitchen, and all at a relatively (to Utah) affordable price tag.  In the end we only looked at two houses.  This one won out because the landlords seemed super nice, there were kids to play with next door, a bigger yard with a garden space, and there was central air (the other house had an evaporative cooler, aka swamp cooler.)   That said, it wasn't our dream home. The landlords allowed us to borrow this couch, a chair, and a dining table while we waited for our shipment which made camping out a lot more comfortable though.   The main thing that bothered me were the bathrooms.  The wallpaper was kinda ancient... like 1980s ancient.  And there is no tub in the house, which was such a bummer.  But our kids are all old enough to shower, and with 2 full bathrooms, that didn't seem like...

After blogging for nearly 13 years, I stopped in May, for a few reasons.  Firstly, I had begun to be more concerned about our family's privacy. As the kids get older, they will want to have more of a say in what is "out there" on the internet, and there was quite a lot on our previous family blog. Secondly, for the first time, I was beginning to see visits to the blog coming from websites that made me uncomfortable, and even more concerned about personal information that I had been sharing fairly openly. And finally, we were preparing for an international move, and it seemed like a good time to put blogging on hold, and to focus my energy on the move and the more immediate needs of our family.  So, I changed the blog status to private, and really haven't touched it since. Now that we are settled in (somewhat) to our new home, and new routines, I have found myself missing our blog space to record and share memories, events, and thoughts.  I talked it over with the fa...