GC 24.0 APR

 As Roger said last week, he is not allowed to do anything on conference weekend. That's our pajama church time. And as he said this weekend, he didn't plan to do any chores because he didn't want to. (He still did some chores somehow). 

It was a good sports week again, although I subbed for a different co-ed volleyball team in the real leagues with much better competition and 2 of our players missing for the first game (one of whom was the person inviting me and so it took me a while to figure out what team I was on). 

Rog and I went to a Theatrikos (community theater) production of the Gods of Comedy. Rog was NOT having a good time at first, but then the gods showed up and stole the show. He had a good time after that AND we made it out in time for ice cream afterwards. 

At the theater (classy)

We also did a team shopping effort for meal prep and GC snacks. Rog loved it for the M&Ms and cheesecake and chocolate milk. And he even made some more breakfast meal prep. I made some banana bread with old bananas, broccoli chedder soup, an oatmeal apple breakfast thing (someone gave us a bunch of apples and broccoli) and we put leftovers in the freezer. 

Rog also did some work to the trailer and helped with dishes in between sessions and taking a fat nap both days. And for all of you wondering, I have some GC summations for you (minus a few thoughts that have been processing for a new writing project): 

1. CHOOSE TO TRUST THE LORD (helps with foresight, giving/getting corrected, finding joy in suffering, integrity, etc.) - He is there to help, not slow you down, and He has a plan. 
2. Russell M. knows what's up (think celestial, avoid myopic vision, God will prevail)
3. Study covenants in scriptures (including wearing garments, doctrine of Christ)
4. Be available for the spirit (pray, go to the temple)

So if you didn't watch conference, there it is. But go watch conference. Or read it. Whatever works. 

Easter Sunday

 After being released from YW, I have since been asked to still help with the fundraiser for camp (lol) which has also been planned the same day as the stake beehive activity I was planning that apparently everyone forgot about, so...

In other news, I've been gymming it up and playing some good VB. I even subbed for a co-ed team on Thursday - crushing the competition in city league. I've also been experimenting with my new high protein meal prep-style cookbook - cajun chicken mac n cheese and tomato bisque were both delicious (and have so much cheese in them, how could they not be??). 

Rog and I did our Come Follow Me study and I showed him my list for traditions we could start for Easter that bring us back to the Savior (with a clearer connection than eggs with chocolate or bunnies). Surprisingly, Roger is down to do every item on the list. I met with my study group later in the week, and they couldn't come up with any better ideas, so these are it:

1. Kill a goat/lamb. Eat it. 
2. Bread (it rises)
3. Crunching deviled eggs
4. Read the BOM resurrection story
5. Jesus sing-along

It's March Madness, and frankly we're all more interested in the women's bracket than men's. They have some ballers. And it's less like pickup. Anyways, so that's how we spent a good chunk of Easter weekend - watching games at Roger's parents house. We also ate delicious food and I got to play around with my accordion. 

The new design
(although it looks a little blurry here)

We were a little squished in the car with Stu and a bed frame we were returning (since our bed is now the couch bed to give us a little more room). We also are able to do that since our mattress topper went to the camp trailer and someone gifted us a car top storage thing. It was a nice relaxing weekend until the rest of the family arrived and then it's always stressful with kids and rules and making things work together, but luckily I don't have to really deal with that. It was fun to see Becky again and revamp the design for camp shirts. 

Turkey Banquet

The good news of the week is that my workouts are going a lot better. I played volleyball with a good crew on Monday, then went to the gym for a weightlifting session daily for the rest of the week. I'm changing up the strategy a little, but it's going well so far. I even went on a walk on Saturday in the crazy winds. 

The youth had a combined activity this week, which was indoor kickball. The YM were in charge, which means the YM leaders were in charge, which means they played and tried to dominate all the youth - most of which have never played kickball before in their lives. That's always kind of annoying to me because I feel like we're there to be facilitators and not just crush them because we know the strategy. 

Thursday, Al and I had a good study session for CFM and how it relates back to purposes of the BOM and covenants. Rog and I had a different CFM study earlier in the week. And then I also was at Bree's house for 2 hours helping her prepare for a lesson on for Sunday (that I wouldn't be at and is a point of contention between me and the other leaders, but that's besides the point). The point is that this is her 5th lesson in her YW career and the only one she's every prepared for, so I'm happy with that. 

Roger was sad because he was supposed to be on a 3 day camping trip with his BFF early in the week, but there ended up being a very sudden and huge snowstorm and he said if they hadn't left when they did (day 1), they would've been stuck out there for a few weeks at best. As it was, they had to leave by offroading as the roads were too treacherous to navigate. 

My latest meal prep investment. 

So as a consolation, I got Rog ice cream. It worked out because I had a doctor's appt and they ended up telling me that the tests they had planned for that visit didn't make it into the schedule and so I had to come back a different day and do them and it was a waste of my time to even be there. (But also since I can only see them at 3 or later, they recommended I go to a different office for scheduling and I'm not sure they take my insurance so I haven't decided if I'm going to do them or not yet. Apparently they weren't important enough to put on the schedule.)

I had a real late start on Saturday, but I did some grocery shopping and cleaning and showering (amazing). And Rog went out and looked for antlers for a bit. He's having a harder time keeping track of his location without looking at the GPS. Hopefully it's just the snow messing with him and not early onset dementia.

We had a date at the annual turkey banquet - which is both a good tax write-off and our favorite form of gambling as it goes directly towards wildlife preservation (Rog's passion). We met our friends from last year - Dorothy, Guy, and Rex, and were able to sit at their table. Rog sat next to a stranger who talked his ear off the whole time and I sat next to Guy, a mentally/physically handicapped vet who gave me his slice of cake. 

We were disappointed at food quantities this year - last year we were stuffed. This year we pre-gamed with ice cream and left hungry. But we got to put in for some raffles (which we didn't win) and play some fun games for more raffles. Rog smoked at pong - with the high score for the night. (Higher score = more raffle tickets for 0.22 rifle). He also really liked one were you get as many tickets as your wingspan. 

The turkeys. 

We didn't win anything this time, but we had fun being around good people. And with the ladies' raffle, you went home with a bottle of wine and a turkey call, so we weren't empty handed and I got to pick a bottle that might be useful for cooking rather than drinking. 

The news of Sunday is that I was released from YW. The bishopric made it sound like it was a mercy release since I've been working with the youth for a while, but the girls were upset, some of the parents were upset, and the last YW president called me because she's upset. I'm just interested to see how things play out from here. 

Spring Break

I've been kicking Roger out of the house because he's been antsy. He's hiked a lot of miles and found a couple antlers and went fishing when he wasn't successful hiking. It was harder this week because it's been snowing pretty good and it's spring break. 

He brought no fishies home.

Rog has also been holding down the fort at work with his boss on vacation for spring break all week. He also has Stu as a helper, but who knows what they're really doing all day. Our Ford Escape is finally done at the mechanic's and turns out the problem was a tiny valve, but you have to take half the engine out to get to it, so nobody would touch it except our friend Rich from church. Rog is excited to have it back, so we'll see how it does. 

Couldn't be me out there. (Everyone was ok.)

I finished Brandon Mull's Dragonwatch series (sequels to Fablehaven) and have been working on a few other projects for PT related stuff. Also going through mission journals and writing notes about good stories so I have more to pull from. 

Since all of our events were cancelled this week (including my group CFM study), we went out to eat a few times and did some shopping together. We got some ice cream and mozerella sticks at Sonic and then we got cajun food and mac and cheese and cornbread at Satchmo's (cajun & bbq). 

Rog and a few of his favorite things. 
(As illustrated by me).

 We also went to Carol's after church and watched the women's broadcast and had a potluck - enchiladas, chicken salad, a green cake for St Patty's. I'm gonna be honest that the womens' broadcasts are not my cup of tea. Everyone talks in the same whispery voices and there's not a lot of meat to the messages. And I need to be chastised more, so I'm better in PH. 

New Trailer

 So we ended up getting that trailer with a tent up top for a pretty good deal and Rog already started packing/unpacking and rearranging things. It's definitely opened a lot of space in our storage area and under the bed, but we're still consolidating. 

We also got free eggs from 2 friends - my coworker Jade and my buddy Mike (and Rog's old bishop) who just showed up on our doorstep with a shirtful of them. And the nice thing is that Rog did a bunch of freezer meal prep for breakfasts - so we have a bunch of packets of various meats and hashbrowns - just add eggs and cheese for a nice scramble. We tested them out and they're pretty good. 

Rog's little cousin Payton joined us for VB on Monday and wasn't annihilated, so that was nice. And we're still having a decent group show up mostly. 

For YW, we did a spa night with a foot bath and face masks and nail painting and hot cocoa. I assisted to my best ability with painting some nails, but it wasn't great. 

The missionaries also came over for spaghetti and salad (but I was the only one that ate the salad). The spaghetti was delicious. 

Also, after taking that new needling course, I ordered some bigger needles and caved to buy the big electrotherapy machine (costing me about $1K), but I've already used it 3x this week, so it's worth it for my job and maybe I can get a partial reimbursement. We'll see. Let me know if you need a 9cm needle in your butt. Therapeutic reasons only. 

Phoenix

We missed VB last week due to illness and every single player being out of town. That's ok. I went to the gym instead. 

We had a YW revamp and now I'm only in charge of Sundays and not activities. But still working with the younger group, which is fun because they participate. We went and heart attacked some new girls with the 3 younger kids available this week. That's a fairly typical turnout but it's always different girls. 

Rog and I went out to BW's for dinner and a show. This time it was a college ball game with one post from Michigan absolutely running the game. It was fun to watch. Then we got some Crumbl cookies on our way home. 

I had taken Friday off for part 2 of my dry needling course in Phoenix. The instructor asked us to make groups with only 1 inexperienced person in them to help things run smoother. So we had 1 newbie and 1 person who also took part 1 before. But turns out that was last week and she still didn't know what she was doing. Then randomly like 30 minutes later, this one kid didn't have a group so he joined ours and turns out he was also a newbie with the pokiest fingers known to man and zero attention span. But he didn't tell us he was new and the other lady didn't mention she took part 1 last week until they asked me to be the patient first and then none of them knew what a spinous process was. Yeesh. 

Some of these needles are 9 cm long. 

After that, I took over and we had a better time of it. But rough start. By the end, the other new girl felt confident and the other two were iffy but probably won't kill anyone, so that's good. I also had a classmate from NAU that was in the course with us, so we got to catch up for a bit. 

The other unfortunate part of this course was that the instructor was very strict on obeying the projected timelines. Which meant we didn't get out until 8pm day 1 and I was late meeting Cenita and Colton for dinner. We still ended up with the most delicious burgers, hot tubbing, and having a good chat. I like them. So much so that I didn't go to bed until midnight. 

It was a long 3 day course, but I was back home around 5 and still had some energy left to check out a trailer Rog has been investigating. I liked it. We'll see. 

Feb Notes

Catch me slacking on this because it's been a minute with the updates. We missed VDay - and I was begging Rog to go back to Stinkin' Crawfish (like we did last year) since we didn't get it right the first time and it was still good and we had to order it to go. He agreed and we ate in house with a better idea of the menu and it was delicious. I did eat all the kielbasa out of there, but Rog ate all the shrimps, so we're even. 

Stinking good.

Some friends in town wanted to do a Galentines party - so we did with a conglomeration of people who now think I never want a child, when what I said was I don't want one now and I think the Michelin Man look is a bad one for babies. Anyways, we had some yummy snacks and put together a bouquet of flowers (which is still kickin' 3 weeks later) from individual flower groups each of us brought. 

Galentines.

I reread the entire Fablehaven series and decided on a new project, which Hannah will help out with. In addition to 3 other projects I have going. And my side gig, the PT notes, which is still going, but I should probably work on again. 

Recently I did a lot of labs and took up swimming in the wintertime because I've been having weird hypotensive / low blood sugar or something symptoms and it seems to work. Volleyball is still a hit though and we've been having tons of people come, so it's been a blast. 

Rog triple booked us one night and we ended up feeding the missionaries on the go at Chipotle before we had to get to a few different places. We also decided on buying a small trailer to hold our camping gear - for some extra storage room since we can't ever afford a house. 

Spurred on by some mysterious mosquito bites, we did a deep clean and rearranging of our apartment (which isn't hard when there's 2 options for arranging). And Rog spent some time watching basketball games as part of borrowing, and then returning, a vacuum. 

Templing

We also went to the temple for some initiatories, which was something we haven't done in a minute. And we made use of the distribution center in Snowflake for some updates to our temple garb and underwear. We missed the bishop's storehouse by 2 minutes, but now we know it's there. 

Snow Days

Volleyball was a blast again - with a good variety of skill and ages. Hit up the gym a bit myself and Rog is *trying* to get a membership with his coworker at a 24h gym (but you have to meet up with the owner to sign up) because he does better with a buddy to workout with. We'll see when it happens. Not January. 

The food highlights of the week were Joy's green chili pork, homemade burrito supremes, and lots of breakfast foods. I also learned how to make my own frosted lemonade (spoiler alert - it is 90% ice cream). No complaints. I've slowly been compiling recipes I use a lot and like onto a google slides so I have easy access to them. 

We had a really nice 3-day snowstorm this week and my boss actually cancelled work for us on Wednesday (which is a nice change from stressing about it on my own). I saw 1 person on Thursday and 2 on Friday afternoon - one of which was sent to the ER for having a blood sugar over 600. She was still lucid when she got in the ambulance, but crazy. 

So cute. 

Rog and I painted our own camo shirts together for a date night on Friday. Mine isn't done, but I was tired so I fell asleep. Roger's looks really good and mine is what it is. Show you when it's done. Probably. 

I read a lot of books this week. Holly Black's first adult novel, The False Prince (that I found for cheap at Goodwill), and the Fablehaven series that I got for $15 total. Most of those are rereads, but goodies from childhood. 

Stinky pigs. 

Roger had one day to go hunt a javelina with his bro. Ryan took them down to Sedona area and they happened to find 2 javelina (think R.O.U.S.) walking opposite directions that they shot at the same time. Cute. After cleaning those stinky things and getting 6 inches of usable backstraps off them, Roger has sworn off that kind of pig hunting (we'll see).  Then he made me go to Carol's house because he wanted to hang out with me but also them. I was only a little cranky about it. 

Spontaneity

The fun news of the week is that we've been having a ton of people for volleyball - so instead of playing 4's, we've got full games with 3 subs a side. And we've got a good mix - some really good players and some newer people. I make my living diving on the ground and then hitting several times from the floor before I can get back up, which is kind of fun. 

I did our budgeting for the end of the month and we found out it'll probably way cheaper than we thought to get our Ford fixed, which is nice. And we've got a guy to do it. Meanwhile, the Rav4 has been doing well and Rog's truck is doing well enough for now. Church stuff seems to be getting better, it just takes a little more organizing on my end than I would like. And work is chilling out a little bit, but we'll see. 

We did a CPR class with the YW this week, which was a good refresher and I was kind of blown away by what the adults didn't know. I know I've taken it a bunch, but some of it is common sense. 

The highlight of the week was seeing the movie Argylle, which was pretty good aside from a few wacky fight scenes at the end that were too dramatized and Rog hating her blonde disguise. And HC's haircut. I will say Rog was a little mad that I woke up at 2am and decided to buy tickets to see this movie because if he did that, I would not be agreeable to the spontaneous date. 

We've also been watching Shadow and Bone on Netflix and Rog's new listening series is Ember in the Ashes. His favorite part of becoming a part of Booktok is understanding the hilarious memes lol.

I hung out with some local friends at a baby shower and talked to some moms in the ward. It was nice to catch up and cheer Al on to be a girl mom (her nightmare). 

Flagstaff Real Estate

The good news is that I'm feeling pretty good other than being dry from Flagstaff winter. My allergies and sinuses seem to have cleared up and my appetite is back and I'm almost sleeping through the night - I'm basically a functioning human again. I played volleyball with 2 full teams, went swimming at my gym's indoor pool (one of the few perks of changing gyms), and even hit the weights.  

Rog has been subbing for a few teams for city league since his boss - who planned on running a team - forgot to sign up in time. But he's had fun with that and one of the team captains is a mortgage lender and let him in on a house for sale, off market, in a great area. 

We went and visited the house on Thursday. It's currently owned by someone graduating from the PT program and would make an awesome rental. However, it is around 900 sq feet and costs almost $400K and they're taking the washer/dryer. The nice parts would be a ton of extra storage space in the garage and shed, a dishwasher, and more room than we have now - with a small yard even. We met with the mortgage lender on Friday just to crunch some numbers and it's probably not going to happen unless he drops the price a good chunk, but at least we know where we're at. Maybe if he's desperate enough, he'll drop it $50K. Thoughts?

Apparently the well got disturbed and I thought I was
washing my hands in my own pee for a minute. 

Normal water for reference
(in a dirty sink)

Rog is getting antsy here, but mostly because he feels weird about taking up space and doesn't have a sturdy table to hammer away on projects. And has to stop hammering when the downstairs kiddos go to bed. I have a few other ideas about how to find a little more space, but it's definitely cramped up in here. But also Flagstaff real estate is insane, so I'm not holding out hope for buying anything here.

I had another appointment this week with some blood work required. The good news on that is that the Chick fil A app offered a free 8 piece nugget box, so I picked that up on the way to give about 10 hefty vials. Yeesh. 

Rog got his truck back from the shop and was able to take it hunting and drive it to work this week. It had a few issues starting until he cleaned the battery ports off real good and we're hoping that's all it needed, but we'll see. He also was complaining all last week that he couldn't go hunting because it was in the shop, and then slept in on Saturday! I told him he had to get out and hunt because I was sick of him whining about it. 

That left me some time to do some cleaning of our fridge and pantry, put some groceries away, and collect a bunch of boxes that Rog has been keeping for no reason and expired things to get rid of. And I did laundry. And organized a bunch of papers I was collecting into the files they go in. In between all of this, I've also been working on a few book projects - 2 of my own and 1 for Hannah. Hopefully hers gets published and finalized soon because I'll need her artistic abilities for my book projects. (They always need illustrations or covers or something that I don't trust myself with). 

YW will hopefully go better now that we've had a meeting (that actually seemed to accomplish some things). And now our tasks seem more equally distributed. I would not be mad, however, if we did move and it took us to the other stake, where that house is. 

I'm Reactivating Myself

Rog had a rough week last week, and although I had the bulk of my turn over the weekend, I've still spent the last week recovering and trying to get rid of all my symptoms - my sleepiness, my congestion, and that nausea-inducing post nasal drip. Ugh. A lot of hot showers and meds and I even ordered a modernized netti pot. I haven't committed to it yet, but it's there. And I did miss church and volleyball for that mess. 

It's largely been a week of making sure leaders are leading. One of my coworkers had a spouse unexpectedly pass, so we were a bit concerned about other people stepping up. After a quick chat with some higher ups, we feel a little better about the support they will provide to make sure stuff gets done - and gets done well. 

The other side of this is church. A lot of our YW (and leaders) have been having a hard time. The last president provided so much communication and support and it's hard to replace that. But we had a meeting today, so I made sure that was addressed. And I convinced myself and Bree to attend the combined youth breakfast on Saturday. 

Which was good, because that was the only thing we did that day. I was a little antsy, but probably needed the rest. Rog was sad that his truck was still in the shop and he couldn't make it quail hunting - but we actually feel like the problem is being addressed this time, which will make it possible to do so next week. And he just wanted a lazy day. 

The other news is that we bought a new freezer that Doug is letting us keep outside his shop (since we can't fit anything else in our apt). And we have SO much room. So we made a hefty shopping trip and Rog has been meal prepping. He already has several pans of lasagna and enchiladas in there. I'm not sure what suddenly spurred this on - other than having the room to actually do it - but he says he's trying to keep me alive when he goes on his work fishing trips lol. 

I did make curry. And grilled cheese. And a few smoothies this week. I can actually access the fruit portion of my stand up freezer to do that now, which is really nice for me. 

Rog and I had a great CFM discussion this week (although Rich did spoil the surprises for us haha) and I went to a stake YW training. The irritating thing I learned there was that our SPy has banned all stake activities for kids ages 11-13. So stake primary activities are ok. Stake activities for 14+ are ok. But this group is banned. Obviously, I schemed with the YWPy's that showed up to make my own "joint ward" activities for this age group. What a freaking joke though. 

We also had Rog's parents in town, so I picked up some grub from Asia Station and we enjoyed some quality cuisine at our apartment with them and Stu. We had a good time chatting and eating and chilling. 

Down with the Sickness

Turns out the new car purchase was just in time for our first big winter storm. (We had a little one last week, and there was really only one address I couldn't get to.) Church was even cancelled. And then later that same week, the second big winter storm. 

It's been weird at work still trying to figure out a groove of things and communication being extremely poor. Jade went to do a fall screen at an ALF and was surprised to find out they expected an official hour-long presentation. Luckily, most of the people invited couldn't come due to the storm, but still. We're hoping things get running smoother soon. 

On a similar note, we had a planning meeting for YW and things should hopefully be running better soon. We'll also have a meeting next week to discuss some things that should be going differently. 

Rog has been sick all week with snot clogging up his head and a sore throat, but we got him some drugs and he's been sleeping better on the couch in a more upright position. He improved just in time for the weekend and to pass it along to me, so thanks for that. This is the first time I understand 'postnasal drip' and it is vomit-inducing frankly. 

On the one night that we were both marginally well, we spent a gift card at Texas Roadhouse on some fried pickles, salads, and shrimp. It was a good snack date, and we did some window shopping and price gauging at Sportsman's and Home Depot before going home. 

Saturday, I did our shopping and took a bath. Rog visited his parents in town, snagged some food from their family party, and went coyote hunting with Stu. They were not successful, but they had fun. 

2024 New Years

 We ended up going to Rog's friend Collin's house for New Years. They had a few other families over. We ate smoked ribs, beans, pig back strap, jalapeño poppers, applesauce, and of course our favorite deviled eggs. The guys had fun setting off little fireworks and half the kids were terrified. It was a good night, which ended early due to Sheriff schedules and kids' bedtimes - so we were in bed easily by 9.

Rog spent NY day going hunting with his dad and brother and a few other guys, shooting quail in Sedona. I finished off some YT videos, went for a jog, and read some books. These holidays off have been really nice as I've been trying to figure out my digestion again (since every 3 months everything is drastically different) so I kind of have it managed again. 

The real worry for us has been impending storms and a lack of a vehicle for me to drive. The Escape needs a new engine, Rog's truck needs some work done as well, and our little Mazda has been doing great for me as long as the roads have been clear - which, luckily, they have. We did take the Escape to a new guy with the same verdict, so now it's in limbo until we find someone to rebuild the engine. 

We've been doing a lot of research and debating about the type of new vehicle to drive and how much to spend on it. We also did our annual financial review and discussed some other goals etc for the upcoming year. New Years is a milestone, but also so is every month, week, and day, so resolutions don't seem as monumental to me as they do to some people. 

So I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday thinking that we would drive to Vegas this weekend to look at and buy a Rav4 up there. It's a little pricier than we wanted, but that was the best option we were finding. So at 2am, I switched money to different accounts knowing that it could take a few days to get there. 

When I woke up for work, I had a few moments to check one more time for vehicles and found a newly posted Rav4 right here in town at a better price. A little older, a few more miles, but it was worth looking into, so we drove through a snowstorm to check it out. Rog wasn't convinced at first, but quickly became a fan. We met up on Friday to buy it and picked up some Chick Fil A and BWW apps for a dinner in celebration. 

There she is.

2024

Flashback to Christmas time in Page. We went to the Knight's annual party and had great food, I got to catch up with Kelsey, and we played some fun games like opening wrapping with oven mitts and unwrapping gifts out of a giant ball of saran wrap. It was a good time.

We had a nice late Christmas (other than Roger nearly having an accident due to dreaming we were at home). We ate toast and hot chocolate. And we opened a few gifts. SO to the Sandalls for a nice hoodie and cast iron set, to the Hutchins for life jackets and slipper (which Rog has already stubbed his toes on a few times), to Hannah S for the painting, and to anyone that got me books. 10 days in and I've already checked 4 hefty tomes off.

We came home after lunch and brought home the extra lasagna and our new freezer. The 'sag lasted 3 days maybe. And that's mostly because Rog held off and let me eat it. 

Rog had an extra day off of work and went hunting, while I tried to cover for our other PT. Unfortunately, a lot of the patients I was scheduled to visit for her did not have ways to contact them -which she overcame by having a set day/time (which I didn't know about). So I did my best even if it was a little hairy.