The Color Red

Red Rock Canyon is just 1/2 hour from our house, and it does not disappoint. Joe recently had his car scraped up by somebody at work, so he has a rental right now - a mini cooper with a sun roof. I love this car. We drove up the canyon with the sunroof open to a beautiful blue sky, and 60 degree weather. 

It is SO pretty up there. 

We didn't do any hiking - it was just me, Joe, and May, and she wanted to stay in the car, so maybe another time. There were a LOT of hikers and rock climbers. You can't tell very well from these pictures, but these rocks are HUGE. If you zoom in, you can see little tiny specks that are people.

It's a 17 mile scenic loop, and there are lots of different great views.

I can't wait to go back and explore some more. What an amazing world we live in!

Is That Still a Thing?

I haven't been able to buy ground thyme for months. I was looking around Thanksgiving because I always use it for my turkey and my stuffing, but I couldn't find any anywhere. At the time I figured it was just because it was the holidays, and everybody else had beat me to the punch (how many people use thyme at Thanksgiving? You? Anyone? Is that a thing? I don't know). Anyway, I haven't been able to find ground thyme since then. It's gone. Thyme is gone. It's so weird. It's not even something that I need on a daily basis, like toilet paper (remember how that was a thing?), so it's not that big of a deal, but it's just weird.

Just a quick public service announcement - don't substitute thyme leaves for ground thyme. Just don't.

The other day I was asking my friends on Facebook what kinds of random things they were having problems finding. I got replies like light butter syrup, frozen potatoes/hash browns, crescent rolls, sour cream, hangers, canned dog food, and lemon juice. Very random, and it totally depends on where you live, because our Walmart has PLENTY of hangers. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen so many hangers.

Anyway, supply chain issues is NOT one of the things that I thought would be a side affect of Covid, but it is. When we went to buy our new couches, we told the furniture store we wanted them to show us ONLY the furniture that they had in stock, because otherwise we were hearing stories about people waiting for months and months to get furniture that they had ordered. One of my friends ordered a dishwasher last May, and they are still waiting for it. One of the reasons why it has taken so long for our old house in Nebraska to get fixed from the storm last summer (no, it's still not done), is lack of supplies. Sometimes not being able to find what you need is annoying, and sometimes it is infuriating. Will this ever end? Who knows, I'm not in charge.

Also, the lack of staffing everywhere is crazy. I mean, if you're in the market for a job, you're probably in a good position, but in every other way it can be frustrating. I was just talking to Cora about this today because she was trying to call someone in one of the offices at Snow College, and there was a voicemail or something that said nobody was in to answer calls, and it was in the middle of the day on a school day. Speaking of schools, they've had a lack of substitute teachers, and they had so many staff out with Covid in January that they "paused" school and gave us a 5-day weekend over Martin Luther King Jr. day, instead of just the day off. The school district has also had problems with buses being late this whole year because of lack of drivers. It's been so bad that they have decided to change up the starting/ending times for all the schools next year. I am not happy about that because high school will now be starting at 7am instead of 7:50 (who knows how this will affect Seminary time, ugh!). The school district is quick to follow CDC guidelines when it comes to Covid, but they're ignoring CDC guidelines and the research behind it about how high school students do better with later start time. But it's obviously not just schools that are short staffed, it's everywhere, and that means everything takes longer. We've all got to put our patience pants on.

In other Covid news, I got Covid. Again. Ugh! Joe got his booster at the beginning of December, and kept saying that me and the kids should get ours before we went to Utah for Christmas, and I intended to.....and I did not. And then I got sick. Not too sick though, just like a bad head cold. I isolated myself from everyone except Joe (sorry, I can't stay away from him), but nobody got sick except for me. I think what bugged me most about getting Covid was that when I posted about it on Facebook I got a couple of sarcastic comments about vaccines/boosters not working anyway. Sigh. That's all I have to say about that. Or is it? Yes, that's all.

Here in Las Vegas we still have a mask mandate, and masks must be worn indoors in public places, regardless of vaccine status. So kids are still wearing masks at school, Joe is wearing a mask at work, we wear masks to church, and so on and so forth. Whether you believe in the efficacy of masks or not, I don't think it's far fetched to say that nobody likes wearing a mask, but it is what it is. I'm not going to fight it or complain about it. I still wonder if masks will become more of a normal thing once all mask mandates are done away with (not regularly, just like during the winter, or if you're experiencing any symptoms of whatever), like the way it has been in Asia for a long time - it's just not a big deal there. I honestly think that if masks hadn't become political, than there would have been a better chance at making that transition. But who knows. I just think it's interesting to think about.

No matter what you think about Covid or vaccines or masks or any of it, I think it's safe to say that we are all capable of being resilient and adaptable. We survived 2020, we survived 2021, and we'll survive this year, whatever this year looks like. 

Dear 2022, watcha got cookin'? Should I even ask?

It's Easy to Remember

 Joe and I celebrated 22 years of marriage on Elvis' birthday. Finally, an anniversary in Las Vegas seems fitting.....except we went to celebrate in St. George. We stayed at this really cool hotel that had the most amazing view of the valley, which we got to enjoy from our own balcony.

I kind of wish that we had been able to stay there a couple of nights, and spend some more time hanging out in the are, but maybe another time. In the morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast out on their patio. We were the only ones crazy enough to eat outside, because it was a bit chilly, but we really enjoyed the sunshine, and again, the amazing view.

This is my favorite picture of Joe that I took recently. He is reading his homework out loud to Kronk.

I just love him. Joe, not Kronk.

Ketchup and Mustard

So I had the dumbest dream last night that I decided to get caught up on my blog, and I came up with what I THOUGHT was the funniest thing ever to write to start the blog post. It went something like this, "I need to ketchup (I mean catch up) on my blog. I mustard (I mean must have) your attention." I mean, in my dream, I seriously thought that was going to be my best blogging moment of all time. I woke up thinking, SERIOUSLY?! But then I figured I had to share it anyway, right. Anyway, you're welcome. 

December was a blur with decorating for Christmas, Nerf guns for FHE, Christmas lights at the Speedway with the youth, a visit from Buddy the Elf, a date with Joe to see Ka by Cirque du Soleil at the MGM, and the best winter weather ever.

We spent the Christmas weekend in Utah with family, mostly because Cora wasn't able to get enough days off from work in order to spend Christmas in Vegas with us. But we were glad to be there, and we even got a White Christmas - which was even better because we didn't have to shovel it.

This year for our traditional Christmas Eve pajamas, we ALL matched. Sizes were sketchy, but we made it work long enough to get a picture with our heads cut off.

And finally, I got my ever favorite photo of the kids with their stockings on Christmas morning.

It's so cliché, but I can't believe how grown up they all are. 

2021 was....eventful. 

First Guests

Cora came and visited us the week before Thanksgiving, and left on Thanksgiving morning. Then Marie and her kids came on Thanksgiving afternoon, and stayed for a few days. We got out of the house (which we hadn't done much of at all, since we'd been so focused on fixing the house - I'm pretty sure our neighbors must think we're hermits). We found a beautiful park with Cora, and celebrated my birthday while she was here by eating delicious Korean food (SO much food!.

We went downtown with Maria and her kids, and went to the M&M store and Coca Cola store - the soda tasting is seriously so much fun.

It was nice to show people our new home, and have them visit for a short time. It's so nice being closer to family now, and knowing that we can be a part of the things that we've been missing out on for years.

Making a House Our Home

Well, we finally got the keys to our new house at the beginning of September. I had only seen inside the house ONE time before (while the previous owner was still living there), and we knew that it was going to be a lot of work, but once the place was emptied, and we got a REALLY good look..well... maybe a little part of us died inside. It was so much worse than we had realized, and the previous owner had cleaned almost NOTHING. I mean, I am not exaggerating when I say that every surface of the entire house was revoltingly dirty. Even one swipe of a window was enough to bring you to your knees.

And we were planning to get rid of the carpets anyway, but they were so matted with dog and cat hair, and stained with cat pee, that it was quite shocking. When we started to rip them up, the smell was overwhelming. The cat pee was all the way down through the sub floor. Such a nightmare.

We just wanted to get right in and start painting, but there was so much extra work that we hadn't anticipated. On top of that, every single room in the upstairs (besides the bathrooms) was wired so that the light switches only turned on and off certain outlets (instead of actual lights), so that you could only use lamps - NO lights in the ceilings at all. We wanted to changed that, so Joe installed overhead lights with fans. He had never done that before, so he had to research it. Then he had to crawl up around the rafters, through the insulation, trying to get wiring to each room. It was a MUCH bigger job than we ever could have imagined, and took days longer than expected, but probably saved us thousands of dollars on labor. The next step was painting and flooring, but I had to clean every single wall before we could paint, and there was a TON of wall paper throughout the house that had to come down. As for flooring, after the carpets came up, we had to pull out staples (so many staples), pull out trim, and....I don't even remember what else. But it was a lot. We also did some tile work in the kitchen, on the stairs, and around the fireplace. We took great satisfaction in the completion of each step, and despaired at the amount of work that remained. But we pushed on and we pushed on, because we had a goal to have the house complete enough to be able to have guests by Thanksgiving. And gosh darn it, that's what we did! This was the family room before and after - we were so glad to see that bright yellow disappear.

I'm not going to show you people's bedrooms, and we haven't done the bathrooms yet, so that's everything upstairs, which is what we did first. Now for the downstairs. This was the kitchen before and after - they really liked apple decor, and no offense to anyone, but I don't.

It's funny that we ended up with blue cabinets, because we had blue cabinets in Nebraska and I hated them. I owe a LOT to my interior design friend, Sunshine. I consulted with her, and she really helped direct some of our decisions that made such a huge difference. At first Joe and I had picked out colors and flooring and counters, and I think it would have looked good, but there was a lot of gray, and not a lot of personality. So I told Sunshine that I wanted more color, but wasn't sure how to incorporate it, and she suggested we have colored cabinets. It really came down to the specific color of blue that made all the difference. We went through quite a few shades before I found the one that I knew was right.

Also, originally we picked out this tile for the kitchen.

I don't think the picture does it justice - it's a really pretty tile. We had them all bought, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to cut the mosaic tiles without them chipping and cracking in just the wrong way. I tried a wet tile saw, a tile scorer/cutter, and a grinder, but I just couldn't get it to work. We ended up taking them back and getting something different, which I'm really glad about. I've always loved Spanish tiles, and these were actually made in Spain, and ended up costing us less than the other tiles had.

We got those new countertops too, and Sunshine suggested the whitish color, as opposed to the darker color we were originally thinking. SO glad we went with what we did. One of the main things she suggested was doing a white oak flooring. Joe and I tend to be drawn more to darker floors, and it's what we've done before. But I am so glad we went with her flooring suggestion. It has brightened up the house in such a great way.

The great thing about working with an interior designer was that she wasn't telling us what to do, but she was helping us have a different perspective. Some of her suggestions we went with, and some we didn't, but she definitely helped us achieve the overall feel and look that we wanted. Here is the before and after of the living room.

If you look closely, you can see that we used the same tile around the fireplace that we used on our hearth in Nebraska. I guess we like what we like.

Our entryway has a vaulted ceiling, and when the previous owners had last painted, I guess they decided not to go all the way up, so it created this weird checkerboard on the wall. It was not easy, but we fixed that.

It's not easy feat to paint a vaulted ceiling without scaffolding. Anyway, now there is just an endless list of little things that need to be done/finished, but the house is livable. No, more than that. We are REALLY happy with the way things have turned out. We have made this house into our very own, and it already feels like home, both the house and Las Vegas. We are very blessed.