January ended up being a busy month for us. 2018 started slow with us staying home for New Years Day because the boys were a little sick. We just relaxed and decorated the Christmas cookies we never got to during the break. But then school started and so did orthodontist, dentist and doctors appointments and music lessons and practicing and homework and meetings at school. I was definitely missing our take-it-easy Christmas break.
Mark was raring to go on the master bedroom demo for remodel so I needed to move and organize everything that was in there. This included all our bedroom furniture, clothes, bathroom items, and all the extra random stuff I had stored in those weird master closets. It was a much larger task than I anticipated as much of that stuff had been stashed there from our move three years ago. I was a mess and finding places for everything is still a work in progress.
Little by little the rooms became more and more empty.
I didn't even get everything out before Mark went to town busting out the fireplace.
But finally it was all cleaned out and ready for demo. Here are our beautiful master bedroom/s in all their brown glory!
I think I might miss that sink.
Timmy discovered how to get Pip to play tug-o-war with him.
Because we missed our traditional Near Year's Eve with my family, my mom decided to have a Three Kings/late new years party the next weekend. So we went up to the ranch for a little fun.
And my mom cut everyone a slice (in Timmy's case many slices) of Rosca de Reyes. Just look at his face in that picture! Most of the kids will eat a small bit of the cake/bread but Timmy just loves it.
This kid was beyond happy to "find" the baby even though it may have been secretly planted in his fifth piece of bread.
The next day was a busy busy Saturday. I was completely out of hay so we scheduled to get a trailer full from a guy way up past Ogden at 9:00 am. Then right as we arrived home Mark scheduled some guys to help him demo the bedroom and I scheduled the farrier to trim the horses. On top of that it rained/snowed all morning. But these guys did some pretty impressive demolition for one day and no one got hurt.
The next weekend was a long weekend for the the boys. They had Friday off for end of term and Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I decided to use this weekend as a ski vacation to get these boys better on those skis.
Several days in a row did wonders and they were ready for the lift and some bigger hills!
That weekend we got this crazy idea that we needed another dog and that Pip would go outside without me more often if she had a friend out there with her. So we looked for dogs and found this adorable good sized mix named Stella. She was so cute and a sweet personality so we went for it and brought her home.
She loved Mark and was a really great dog, but she was loud and if you see Pip hiding back there behind Mark you might get an idea of how she felt about the whole thing. In the end Pip was not happy and Stella was intent on eating the chickens and much louder than I hoped and caused me so much more stress than I imagined, so I decided to find her a good home.
It took about a week but I found her a young active guy that was super excited to take her and he did not have any chickens. So we said goodbye to Stella and Pip was happy again. We have since determined that Pip is better off alone and I am too.
We also went swimming with cousins at the condo.
Brian makes a lot of different Lego contraptions. Here is a gun that actually shoots Lego bullets he made.
The first real snow storm of the season came the next Saturday in January. Mark finally got to use his tractor he got all set up for winter.
Brian went on a field trip at school to the University of Utah and he and his buddies at school insisted on wearing all their BYU apparel. He thought it was so funny.
I had a bunch of Airbnb turnovers through all of this but cleaning the floors got a whole lot easier when Mark got me this new Dyson vacuum! Oh I love that thing.
I started a new chore system with the boys in the hopes they will learn what they need to do on their own instead of me telling them all the time.
Brian and Timmy have gotten good an cleaning the fish tank.
They though it was so cool that they made a snow chair in the backyard.
Mark had a work trip to Boston for a week.
I decided miss Jojo needed to go. She was such a cute and awesome pony but the kids just had no interest in riding her or helping to train her. She was a little piggy and it was hard to keep her weight down while trying to keep Ahab's weight up. I posted her on ksl and got quiet a bit of interest, ultimately selling her the first of February.
