The pictures uploaded backwards again. But we've made REALLY good progress on our ridge platform this month. Chris has spent a lot of energy on this project. He goes up there and half works on BYU work stuff up there and on 'breaks' works on the platform foundation. On a Saturday we had cement day and got all the footings poured. Jared and his boys, and Todd and his boys, and both our dad's and Alec and Charlie came up to help. Grandma helped watch the younger boys. We got the bolts in place in the footings as well. A week or so later, Chris went up again for some snitches of hours across a couple of days to dig the trench for the septic outlet and electrical conduit. I don't remember all the measurements or details, but he looked up the code and worked with my dad and figured it all out. Hopefully this means we can have access to a flush toilet (in the near-by shed) and electricity from within the tent!
UGH. Our pipes struggled again! It ended up being the water softener. We were THIS close to ripping up all our concrete floors and replacing the pipes, but then the guy came to service our water softener and discovered it was broken! The valve controlling the water flow when it recycled/flushed out the water was broken so it was spewing out water at full blast for HOURS instead of minutes. But we had to upgrade our entire water softener because the part that was broken was no longer being made. UGH. House ownership problems. It was an expensive fix but way simpler and still LESS expensive than replacing all our pipes.
The kids this month have been at all their usual things. Alec builds some pretty epic engineering feats. Charlie started Fury Soccer and is loving it and doing so well. Freddy graduated to orange belt in Karate. One hard thing is that we finally took him in to get his warts taken care of. (Alec had one on his knee and Gwen had a few on her hands that we took care of at the same time... Alec was super brave but Gwen had a hard time, she tried to be brave but just couldn't stay calm the whole time) I knew Charlie had some on his hands and I've given it some time to clear up on their own, and even tried some home remedies but nothing was working. The doctor counted and he had OVER 20 between the two hands! I didn't realize it had gotten so bad. The doctor just froze one hand so he could still use his other hand. He was he tears by the 3rd round of 10 second freezing for each wart. It was so so sad. Then we also took care of a skin tag that was growing under his lip. That one proved tricky too. They first sliced it off but the bleeding wouldn't stop so they had to zap it with some cauterizing tool, but with any twitch of his lips, the zapper would hit the wrong spot! We later joked that Charlie was frozen, electrified, and sliced within a 20 minute window.
This school year I'm hosting a weekly Playschool. I start out with do-a-dot letters/pictures and then we do singing time with some stories and do a craft, have play time and then come back together for snack. It's been really fun to have Sarah come with Hazel, and Brittany come with Davis, as well as some neighborhood moms and their kids and my cousin Holly with her kids.
I hiked Mount Timpanogos with Jordan, Estefi, Estefi's dad, Jared and Ethan. We met at like 5:30am and carpooled to the Timpooneke trailhead. It was pitch black when we started and we used flashlights to see the trail. We ate breakfast while we hiked and stopped for lunch in the meadow. We made it the saddle feeling good and reached the summit shortly after that. We decided to add some extra milage in order to see Emerald Lake.. but that added a lot of extra time since it's basically boulder hopping for a mile or so. I was so so tired at the end. Total milage was 17 miles, and over 4,500 feet of elevation gain. We ate dinner at R and R BBQ and then parted ways. Chris said he had fun telling the little boys that Mommy was climbing up to the biggest mountain they could see right 'over there.' I was worried that diabetes would be tricky to manage... wasnt sure if the exercise would spike my glucose or make it drop. I wasn't sure how to dose insulin the necessary time before eating since I wasn't always sure when we would stop for a snack. But my levels were great the whole time and I never was too high or too low, so that was a real blessing. I loved chatting with my family as I hiked but I missed Chris. Next time, I want to hike it together.
Max is so independent, persistent, curious and confident. Its going to be an amazing combination one day. But now, as a toddler, it's difficult and sometimes scary! The other day, I smelled smoke and while I wandered the house to find its source I noticed Max wasn't anywhere. I checked the front porch because I knew the garbage truck had just come by and Max likes to go outside and sit on the porch to watch it. I found him AND the source of the smoke smell. He was surrounded by 10 lit matches. I couldn't really believe that he knew how to light them, he's only 3. He looked a little nervous for me to find him and so I tried to make my voice playful and casual and say, 'Max, do you know how to light matches?" and at my tone, his face relaxed and he smiled big and yes, "Yes, I do!" I asked him to show me and he proceeded to run the match on the side of the box a few times and then it burst into flames! He quickly blew it out, flung it in the pile of used ones and said proudly, "See??" oh man! I talked with him about the danger and told him never to do it by himself again. We are lucky he didn't burn down the house! Another time, he wanted the Goldfish Box opened and I told him I was busy and I would help him open it at lunch time. While I was showering, he grabbed the biggest sharpest scissors he could find and poked a hole then cut a flap in the lid. Haha. Oh, also, he was blasting Thunderstruck by AC/DC on Alexa. His favorite color is red and wants to wear as much red as he can every day. He just exhausts himself with his explorative, high-energy play and has fallen asleep in some pretty funny places: INSIDE his duvet cover on the floor in his room, and on the garage stairs!
