April Wrap-Up

Geoff does most of Adele's and Ceci's schooling, at least he has up until now. We've fallen into a nice rhythm and are moving forward steadily. Ceci and Adele completed and presented another 3-week project. Adele chose to explore Why a War in Yemen. It was very informative. I love Adele's natural desire to understand where refugees come from. Ceci did an overview of Van Gogh's life. Her presentation was so delightfully clever! She welcomed us to a talk show where Apple was demonstrating their new ability to call someone from the past. After a brief commercial break she came back with her travel helmet and held an interview with Van Gogh. She had recorded his responses on my phone, Dutch accent and all. We all learned a lot. Poor Van Gogh was a troubled soul!

Geoff has been busy exploring a business idea he's had for awhile. More on that as it unfolds.

I met with some friends from Seattle for lunch. It was so fun to catch up with all of these amazing women.

Left to right: Ashley Serafin, Wendy Hansen, Heidi Horlacher and Heather Parry

I think I forgot to mention that while in New Zealand I happened to be looking at Instagram and saw that Heidi and her family were one hour north of us! I reached out and they stopped by on the way to their next destination. It was so fun to spend the afternoon with them.

Geoff and Ceci went skiing a couple times, once with my sister-in-law Joann and her boys. The snow was dwindling, but hardcore skiers don't mind, I guess!

Since the girls were babies I've been saving some of their clothing to make a quilt for them when they head off to college. I started on Tennie's quilt last week. It is so fun to remember her at different stages of childhood through the patterns and textures I'm piecing together. It is a fun project.

After we left for our last months of travel, Tennie got our cat Mila back and cared for her while we were away. A few weeks ago she went into heat for the first time. That was interesting! So she was spayed last week and we're at the tail end of weeks of strange behavior and grumpiness from pain. It will be good to have our normal cat back!

Our cute friend Shelby Osmond helped organize a huge service project: creating a Birthday Box for every foster child in Utah. We got to help set things up for assembly on Saturday afternoon. In the end there were 600 boxes donated!!!

We have some good friends, Randy and Maureen Shumway, who have been buying, prepping and serving breakfast to hundreds of homeless one Saturday each month. They have been doing it for NINE years! They invited us to go a few Saturdays ago and we had a great time. Hopefully we'll be regulars! We're inspired by these friends doing so much good in the local community.

I experimented with a vegan, salted caramel cheesecake. It was pretty good! With some tweaks I think it will be delicious!

Adele, Ceci and I went to see my cousin's daughter, Callie, play Mary Poppins in a play in Provo. She is a shining light of a person. It was so fun to see her on stage, and it was so fun to see my cute cousin, Ashley! We were favorite friends as kids, always wearing matching outfits and writing letters to each other on special stationary.

My cousin Shane's daughter, Gwen, was also in the play. She was as cute as could be on stage!

Ceci got together with some school friends. They stuffed themselves with pillows and played soccer, which made the ball hard to see!

We've been on a few hikes. This past Saturday we went up Millcreek Canyon on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, although it was a bit windy! Nikki joined us too!

The top had beautiful views, but the wind in the valley was kicking up quite a bit of dust! Ceci and Tennie are leaning into the strong winds around a little ledge!

Tennie captured this adorable picture of Ceci. This kid is a piece of sunshine!

Our suitcases still haven't arrived from Cambodia. Will they ever arrive? We're not sure! But we were impatient for a recipe for Khmer Curry in that luggage, so I looked online for a recipe and we gave it a try yesterday. It called for shrimp paste, which was so nasty smelling we had to open all the windows, light candles and sometimes leave the kitchen just to move forward with cooking! The recipe was a flop, but Geoff worked his magic adding this and that until it was edible.

Last night we went to La Madeleine Cathedral for the International Children's Choir performance. I love this cathedral; the inside is painted so magnificently!

The children in the choir were absolutely adorable. We loved the costumes, singing, songs and setting. It was a perfect night.

On the last day of April, today, it snowed. A lot! It was 87 degrees last week, and 52 a few days later! Enough already!