March

March was eventful. But first a quick flashback to February when I got to snuggle with these two cuties. Scrumptious.

At the very end of February Ceci and I joined Ingrid and Taeya on a 3-day weekend with Emily and Bailey to St. George to celebrate Bailey's 16th birthday. Em and Mike just purchased a vacation home there (right near where I grew up!) and it fit all of us comfortably. We went on the Red Cliffs hike, a favorite.

Emily, Ingrid and I went on a casual bike ride along the amazing trail system in St. George. At one point we were riding along a golf driving range, where a net separated the range from the trail. A gust of wind blew the net into the trail space and the net caught Ingrid's handlebars. I looked up and saw her tangled, a millisecond later saw her going down, a millisecond later she was laying across the path in front of me. I had the next millisecond to decide if I would hit her straight on or try to swerve and felt to hit her straight on. I hit her backside at full speed (although I had suspended pedaling when I saw her going down). Next thing I knew I was getting up from the ground, unable to breathe. Em was there to help me (had I swerved I would have hit Em who was just behind me and all three of us would have been tangled up). I fell smack flat on the ground, knocking the air out of myself and scratching the center of my face. My wrist hurt a little and I was dizzy so I sat down. Got up a moment later and was still dizzy, so I sat for awhile. Meanwhile Ink lay across the path laughing out of shock. Her helmet was broken in two places, but other than that she was ok (although the bruises of her hitting the ground and my impact on her rear end would surface a short time later!) It seemed miraculous that we didn't get more hurt. We got on our bikes and rode the 6 miles back to the car, realizing as we rode that maybe we were more beaten up than we previously thought.

Turns out I fractured my elbow. I went to Urgent Care the next morning to rule it out, but there it was. I stayed behind in St. George for a few days to enjoy the sunshine and relax. I planned to stay with my mom but she had been around my brother and his family who all had Covid at the time. I was told I didn't have to have a cast or even a brace, but to not lift anything heavier than a glass of water, to not even cut an apple. The muscles around my arm have been quite sore until about a week ago, and I'm one week away from clearance to resume normal activities. Geoff and Ceci have stepped up with cooking and cleaning and carrying for the remainder of March. But back to the St. George trip, despite the tangle of bodies and bikes we had a great time.

A few days after I returned from St. George I had a suspicious mole removed on my back, which resulted in 13 stitches. That was fun to add to my broken arm. But life went on and we all headed to New York for a week for Adele's spring break! Even Tennie joined us for the first 3 days! Ceci had classes and Geoff had to work, so we didn't have wide open days, but we still loved every minute.

It was so fun to see how much Adele has become familiar with her area of NY. She guided us around, shared some favorite spots, and took us to a collection of restaurants she had been eyeing. 

Our first morning we got bagels at Tomkins Square Bagels and ate them at Tomkins Square Park.

We saw her dorm. We hit the New Museum, Fotografiska (neither of which we would recommend), and the MET (highly recommend), and walked through Central Park, and WOW was it cold! We browsed some great bookstores and shops.

It was great to see Adele forging a life in NY, and it was hard to leave her behind going home, but we were so grateful to all be together for a few days.

I had lunch with my Seattle friends, which is always so fun, and I had a lunch with my foot zone instructor, Kristi, my fellow student, Miriam, and my good friend Shelby who is also a foot zone practitioner. It was so great to see these friends after so much time together last year.

Ceci finished up a 10-week film class from Columbia University (for high school students), culminating in a film festival with the students films. She LOVED the whole process of making the film and produced a really great little short. Geoff was her main character and they spent several hours over several days getting just the right shots that Ceci had carefully crafted. It was fun to see so many of her gifts come together in film.

Geoff and I spoke to a group of people on a zoom class (through Wells Fargo Bank) on how we taught our kids about money. It was a fun challenge to remember the small things we've tried over the years, and a fun experience to talk publicly together.

We headed to St. George for a week over Ceci's spring break and stayed with my mom. I mostly stayed with my mom, which was SOOO great after not seeing her for a year. We went on long walks, to lunch with my aunt, and visited my brother and his family, seeing their new home for the first time. The weather was perfect and invited us outdoors. Geoff had to work full-time but squeezed in fun when he could. Emily and her family were there all week as well, and Ceci spent a lot of time with Bailey driving around (Bailey just got her license) and staying up very late. Erica and her family came for a portion of the week and we all met up at Glitter Mountain, an old gypsum mine with a lot of gypsum to take home.

Em and kids, and we, off-roaded to a petroglyph site (with Ceci driving, which she loved).

Later in the week Britt and Hunter and babies came. Hunter arranged for some motorcycles and Ceci and Bailey learned how to ride for the first time, picking it up like naturals. Hunter taught safety and Geoff taught how to work the gears. They made a great teaching team!

One day I joined my sister-in-law Joann and some friends to hike the Subway hike in Zion, from the bottom. I had done this 8-mile hike in college and remembered the very end being steep, but other than that pretty easy. I was 20. Now I'm 50. With a bum knee. And a right arm I'm not supposed to use. I didn't remember how much bouldering and scrambling there is, and where I would normally use my arms to assist with my bum knee, I didn't have two arms, so I consistently landed and relied on my left leg, which felt so noodlish I wasn't sure I would make it up the steep part at the end. But bless my legs, they pulled through. Today is day four after the hike and I'm just able to put weight on it! Probably the most sore I've ever been! But oh my was that hike worth it. So beautiful.

Now we move into SPRING!

January and February

January was pretty uneventful once I returned from getting Adele settled in New York. All of us just spent our days in regular life, and thankfully our regular lives are good! February was pretty much the same, except for a few highlights that I'll post about separately.

Geoff continues to work from home. He is learning a lot from his leadership role in his current job. It is a good mix of challenges to overcome and opportunities to pursue. It keeps him very busy. He has worked through several weekends and mourns the loss of fully experiencing a ski season, but it was a dry winter until mid-February. He and C still fit in a few days on the slopes.

After a busy year in school and studying, and working through some health issues, I am finally getting some household systems in place and continue to work on projects around the house. It feels good. Life is pretty slow. Some days I long for more engagement, and other days I'm grateful for this momentary season of peace. I say momentary, because it is hard to anticipate what is around the corner these days! I continue to study and explore foot zoning and energy work, in general. Not too many opportunities to interact with people these days to actually get some practice, though.

Tennie is plugging away with online classes at BYU. She started a new TA job for a Women's Studies class, which is a well-paying, flexible job. It is a great set-up for her. She is taking a lighter load this semester, trying to take a breather after consecutive hard semesters.

Adele is adjusting well in New York. She and her roommates are out exploring when not in class. Her second semester is more demanding than her first, but she is working hard and playing hard.

Ceci continues classes at home and online. The option came up to go part-time in person, but she opted for staying at home on Zoom. She doodles during class, and I happened across some of them and was blown away! These are not your average doodles!

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One day we sat down to draw each other. Mine was a pretty basic sketch, she thought she would experiment with charcoal for hers. My experiments don't usually look like this... And she claims my scowl was because I was looking down at my drawing and concentrating. Mhmmm.

And she whipped out some mountains while I was finishing.

Ceci also has very vivid dreams and remembers them all. After telling me one day, I encouraged her to draw it out. It was about a bunch of dolphins with square, pinch-splotched heads wearing long, leather jackets. We were on nearby life rafts. There are many more details to her dreams, but we'll just keep with what was in her drawing. I think she should really draw them out and create a Wall of Dreams. It would be so colorful and fantastical!

She is doing her best to embrace life without Adele around. They hangout on Facetime often, but it isn't the same. She continues to go to the climbing gym a few times a week, which is making her very strong! She is also taking a 10-week film-making class from Columbia University and LOVES it. It is good to see her enthusiasm for the entire process of telling a story through film. Geoff is her main character and they will be filming early next month. Hopefully I can get some photos!

We had a few Davis birthdays that we made the most of from a good social distance (since Geoff's youngest sister and her husband AND their 4-month old baby twins got Covid. (Those poor parents. No rest for the weary and sick!) For Geoff's dad we all raided our costume boxes and showed up to the Zoom party decked out. I wish I could have captured everyone's costumes. It was fun. We stayed on the Zoom call for a couple hours joking around and hanging out. I did get a picture of us...

Em had a birthday and we had a surprise drive-by parade with decorated cars. We all got out and had a dance party in front of her house and hung out in wide circle of family love and support. It was fun, and she was surprised and delighted. She loves parades!

Nikki came to town and a few family members met at a park to visit and skate around on some frozen pond water.

All things considered we've had a great start to 2021. We count our blessings for health, freedom and people we love.

A Week of Love and Valentine's Day

I'm making Valentine's Day, and the week leading up to it, its own post to capture all the love. Given we are spreading out as a family, and wanting to keep our unity and love, we tried to make it a little extra special. 

We've always shared love notes the week leading up to Valentine's Day, but as the girl's got older those notes moved to texts, and I was mainly the one leaving them. That hasn't changed, but it is still a good tradition! There were good things shared about the members of our family, a little glimpse into how we see each other. So I took screen shots of those love-posts and will share them here for the family record.

Geoff wrote letters to Tennie, Adele and Ceci telling them what he loved about them and sent them all beautiful bouquets of flowers. I gave them all a sparkly prism to hang in their windows, symbolizing the color they add to the world with their bright light souls.

Ceci heart-attacked my bedroom door with little bits of love, and I heart-attacked Geoff's work space throughout the week.

And other than a heart garland, some Valentine's dish towels and this little mouse, Valentine's Day around here is decorated with love.

The BIG MOVE to New York!

These last few weeks were a blur. Adele changed her flight to NY to a week earlier once she found out she had to quarantine upon arrival. She went through every item in her room creating piles to give away, sell, and take with her. She had one bin to fill with stuff to keep at home, so this was a full-on life move for her. It takes a lot of emotional work to let so many things representing childhood and home go, and she courageously pulled it off in less than a week (with her faithful friend Ceci by her side, who would not miss a moment of Adele's presence).

We found a video of Adele at about age 6 talking about New York, and we found this t-shirt in her old clothes. She has always had her eyes on this moment in her life!

 

Saying goodbye was really hard. Adele is a bright light and so lovable, so we knew she would be missed. She left us this little note (with a little French thrown in).

We sent her off in the new Salt Lake airport:

But we all made it through those first days. Adele was by herself in a dorm room with very little food or belongings, and it made for a hard transition!

I was going to go with Adele, but canceled my ticket once we understood the Covid guidelines for New York. It didn't make sense for me to spend money on a New York hotel to just sit there. But when Adele arrived she was told by the dorm to get tested immediately so she could get in her permanent dorm room. Assuming this was accurate, she got tested the day after arrival, and I booked a ticket to arrive right about the time she would finish up - 5-7 days after her test. Oh! There is so much back and forth and conflicting information to this move and the quarantining restrictions, it would take a long time to tell all the drama. I'll simply say it was a hot mess. When I arrived Adele was given the go-ahead to move in. She came to my hotel to meet me and while there, just a couple hours after being told she was free to leave quarantine, she was told she didn't wait three days upon arrival and her test was considered invalid by the dorm. She had to be retested and quarantine while waiting for the results. Lots of frustration and anxiety later, she got her results a couple days later than she thought and we were able to get everything done we wanted to to get her settled in.

I'll tell you what, getting settled in New York is a whole different ball game! We walked a bazillion miles, lugged heavy bags of STUFF, froze when not lugging, burned up when lugging, all while wearing a mask inside and out. Every store was out of something we needed which required more searching. It was a lot of work, but in there we squeezed in some trips to good bagel shops, restaurants, and quaint book and record stores. She is right in the heart of New York's action with endless neighborhoods to explore. She is going to have an amazing time!

We celebrated her 19th birthday exploring at our own pace. We ended up in a fun, college-age hangout neighborhood near her dorm eating pho soup. As with all dining in New York, the dining is outside, either open air, in homemade shelters with heaters, or one time we ate in a green house! And yeah, it was cold! (But could have been much worse!)

We met up with one of Geoff's old Washington D.C. roommates, Blake, who we were both friends with before we got married. Crazy enough, he is the single's ward bishop! We met his cute wife Estee for the first time. They treated us to delicious Thai food! I also snuck away the night Adele went out with her new roommates and had dinner with more old D.C. friends, Jason and Nichole. It was so fun to see their lives there. (Below is Blake and Estee)

Adele was assigned a dorm and was praying she would get good windows and light. Due to Covid, what is normally a shared room is her own private room. Turns out she was assigned the 16th floor and the end room, which naturally gave her her own bathroom. And the views of the Hudson River are closer than they appear in pictures, and the windows are large and bright! She couldn't have asked for a better space.

I got to meet her two roommates who seem like they are ready to explore and discover the city just like she is. I only got a picture of one when we were out shopping. Her name is Sera, and she is from Turkey.

It was hard to leave a piece of my heart behind when I flew home, but her wings were already stretching and she is ready to fly.

Christmas in McCall

Christmas for our family is now associated with McCall. Geoff's sister Ingrid invited us to stay at her home, so we all got tested for Covid before loading up our cars, and we met up in that winter wonderland that never fails to be perfect.

It was just us, Geoff's sister Ingrid and her family, and Britt and Hunter, with their adorable little babies, who stayed nearby in Trent's mom's tiny condo right on the lake. It was very low key all around. We ate, played games, played in the snow, skied, played with babies, celebrated my FIFTIETH birthday(!!!) and enjoyed a peaceful Christmas.

BABIES! (These two find any occasion to be nuts...)

It felt nice to get away, be with family and be outdoors so much. Until summer, McCall!