She's Legal

Cora turned 21. TWENTY ONE!, in case you didn't catch that. I don't think she plans on starting to drink at bars, but I guess she could if she wanted to. 

The month before her birthday she found out that she had been accepted into the Disney College Program, which was probably better than any birthday present she could ever have. She's wanted to do it for years now. If you don't know what the Disney College Program is, I will tell you, because if you Google it then you will get ads for it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Basically the DCP is a highly competitive paid internship for college students at both Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California. Cora will be going to Florida. She leaves at the end of this month (which was a very long time to wait), and she'll be there for 5 months. She will soon be finding out where she'll be working, whether that's in merchandise, rides, customer relations, or anything else that they do. I'll tell you more about her experience when she gets into it, but we are very excited for her. 

Also, Cora has been working at Old Navy as a shipping manager. She's made good money, and has been able to save enough money to finish college with. She loved it at first, but after a few months it was more stressful than not. For some strange reason, their particular store gets more returns per day than any other store in the country - and these are not just returns from things bought at that store, but things purchased at other stores too, as well as online. The regional management does not take into consideration the amount of time that it takes to process all of these returns, and does not allow extra hours/employees to take care of it, so their store is usually in chaos. Also, customers can be horrible, and I'm not talking about the occasional bad customer, I'm talking about multiple rude customers every single day. I don't know if this is just a Utah thing, or just a customer service thing, but it's crazy. I would be willing to bet that these people aren't normally rude to others in their every day life, but you get them in a store where they feel entitled to be there past closing, or they feel entitled to a discount that doesn't apply to what they're buying, or they feel entitled to a refund for something that they don't have a receipt for, etc. etc. etc., and then the monster comes out. I can't imagine ever treating someone the way she gets treated EVERY single day. I told her she should start making TikToks about her experiences, but she's not interested. On top of all of that, as soon as she announced that she would be leaving in the summer for DCP, they started treating her differently, not respecting her schedule, not including her in manager meetings, etc. She was very glad to finally be done with it all.

And finally, I'm not going to go into too many details right now, but Cora started dating someone in February, and it's still going strong. Living in Utah has made this a little challenging, because everyone thinks they should already be married, or at least engaged by now, which is ridiculous. And this is coming from adults, not just her peers. Luckily, they both have their head screwed on straight, and he is very supportive of her going to Forida, even though long distance relationships can be hard. If they can get through this, I think it will only benefit their relationship, and THEN people can start asking them if they're going to get married....maybe.

Anyway, this was supposed to be about Cora's birthday, but I guess a good update never hurt anybody. Happy Birthday Cora! 

Senior No More

Joseph actually graduated from high school in December of 2020. The plan was to take him on a trip that next summer, but then we moved, and the rest is history. We finally got around to his way-past-due trip at the end of February. We went to California Adventure for a day, and it was a lot of fun to be able to spend that time just with Joseph. 

Highlights included riding the new Spiderman ride, which made our arms sore for hours afterwards (You get out of it what you put into it, hahaha). It was the first time we had been to Avenger's Campus, so that was fun. It was also the first time we decided to try the swinging side of the Pixar Pal-A-Round (if you know, you know), which was hilariously disconcerting. Joseph went on the Monster's Inc. ride by himself because he didn't want to go on Guardians of the Galaxy with me and Joe (which is our favorite ride), and once he got on the ride he felt very awkward about being a 19 year old young man all alone on the Monster's Inc. ride, lol! At the end of the ride there's a Roz animatronic that talks to the guests, and it said to Joseph, "Nice glasses. Wanna switch?" He replied no, and then she called him disrespectful. Hahahaha! Also, we loved this random mosaic wall art we found, and spent quite a bit of time standing in front of it and contemplating the meaning of life.

Just kidding. We were just trying to find any kind of meaning in the wall. We left confused and intrigued. We would have loved to turn out ticket into a park hopper, but with the reservation system as it is right now, we weren't able to . Oh well, it was still a fun trip.

It was on Fire!

It's been entirely too long since I posted, so here I go again, trying to catch up on everything...starting 5 months ago (how time flies). We were very happy to discover the Valley of Fire State Park, just outside of Las Vegas. I mean, discover might be the wrong word, since everybody already knew it was there, but you know what I mean. We liked it so much that we went 3 times in 2 weeks. Cora was lucky enough to be visiting us for two of those times. February was a great month to go, because there is a lot of hiking/walks, and the weather was perfect for it. 

The formations of the rocks created a lot of fun places to take pictures.

We saw some wildlife while we were there.

And best of all, there are a bunch of petroglyphs.

Oh, and did I mention that I peed my pants while we were there? It's a tale as old as time - 40 something year old woman with a weak bladder from childbirth underestimates the jolting nature of jumping off the rocks. But the slow-mo jump shot was pretty cool, so I guess it was worth it???

We still haven't seen it all, including one trail that we really wanted to see, but was closed because they were searching for a missing hiker in the area (I hope they were found). We probably won't get there again until the weather starts to cool off, so for now we'll just have to enjoy the pictures and video. Next time we go though, there will be no jumping. I'm officially too old for that.

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.