Rock Climbing Accident - Ankle Injury

Before we were a week into 2023, I had an ankle injury from a rock climbing accident! 

We got a family rock climbing membership in the summer and it turned out to be an excellent family activity- both for exercise and for building camaraderie!  We decided to pause our membership & reactivate it in the new year to use rock climbing as an indoor activity during the part of the year when weather is not so nice for spending time outside.

So we reactivated the first week of January, and that week during one of our visits, the accident occurred. Here's what happened:

If you want the whole detailed story, watch the video above. For a summary, read on:

We're Moving!

We have big news- we're moving!

The last time I wrote a personal "life update" type of post was near the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, a lot has been going on with us!

The First 2 Weeks of the 2020 Pandemic

Allow me to take you back into my journal for a few snippets from early March- specifically, the first 2 weeks of isolating at home, due to the pandemic of 2020!

Wednesday, March 11th

The World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

Nature Inspires Creativity!

It was interesting to sit back and observe the way that being in nature brought out creativity in our girls while we were living by the lake. We didn't have a good Internet connection while living there, so screen time was easily avoided. The girls were homeschooling during that time, so they had more free time than they typically would, and we didn't have any friends in the area. With all of those factors combined, they needed to find things to do with their time and the backyard was one of the best places to do that. They found so much to do out there, and all of it exercised their creativity.

It was common for me to be busy in the cottage and to glance out the window to see a scene that looked something like this:

We're Back!

Well this is possibly the longest break I've ever taken from blogging...

Details on what's in the background can be found in the Cottage Instagram stories (linked below).

I wasn't able to blog during our road trip from Utah to Canada because I was relying on hotel WiFi and had little free time. When we arrived back in Canada and were living at the cottage, we were relying on our cellphone plans for internet access and since we were out in the country, that wasn't the best connection and creating a hot spot was extremely ineffective.

Cottage Life

My best way to document our time at the cottage was through Instagram and mainly Instagram stories. If you're interested in looking back through my cottage story posts, I'll link them for you right here. I recommend it- it brings back great memories for me to watch this little series of posts. :)

Road Trip from Utah to Canada

I also have a story feature for our moving trip from Utah to Canada, so you can check that out if you'd like to get a glimpse of our road trip.  I would like to share some of these memories in blog form if I can get to it, but I'm not sure when that will happen, so these stories are your best bet if you'd like to catch up on what we've been up to.

For now I just wanted to make an appearance back here on the blog, to say a quick hello and let you know that I haven't disappeared! I hope you're still here too because there's lots more to come!

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An Announcement...

Lest you see the photo at the top of this post and assume that I'm writing a throwback post about "that time we moved to Utah", I'll encourage you to look closely at the photo to see what has changed since I posted it in April 2018 (I did a little photoshopping). That's right, the arrow is pointing the other way! We're moving again, and this time we're leaving Utah and heading back to Ontario, Canada!

When I wrote about our move to Utah I said, "We don't know how long we'll be in Utah but I guess we're getting used to not being able to see too far into our future."

When Life Doesn't Go the Way You Planned

I wrote this blog post in July. Then I chickened out and left it as an unpublished draft.
It's exactly 19 weeks later (many Thursdays since) and I thought of this post, re-read it, and decided to go ahead and post it. Maybe some of you will be able to relate to it. Maybe you'll have something to share from your own experience. Either way, I guess I just felt ready to share it, so here it is:

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If you've been following my blog for a long time, you might remember when I used to post "Thursday Thoughts". It's been a long time since I wrote a post, just sharing my thoughts, and it seemed about time.

It's weird.
It's like our Disney trip separates our life now from our life before it.
Everything before Disney seems so far away.
Everything after Disney has been very difficult. (Well, not everything, but many things)

August Month-in-Review

It's September!! How did this happen?!!

I've pulled together a post about our August and I have a few thoughts to share at the end of it... I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject & then get into it further in the future, so hang in to the end if you think you might like to weigh in!

Near the beginning of the month Talia and a couple of her older cousins had the opportunity to go to a special youth event for a day. While they were there we met with 2 of my sisters-in-law (& a bunch of cousins) at a park. Katrina brought a treat she had created for everybody.

June (Month-in-Review)

Here's a quick review of some of the highlights from our month of June.

June 1st

The girls & I went park hopping...

Driving from Ontario to Utah!

After a whirlwind one week to pack up our life and prepare for a move from Canada to the United States, we were finally ready, all 4 visas in hand, to start driving to Utah!

We left later than planned and we didn't have a plan for where we would stop each night (beyond the 1st two nights), but we figured it out as we went & had some good adventures along the way!

A Week to Pack & Move to A New Country!

It's time to catch up on these week-in-review posts!  Today's post is all about the week between visiting Utah to find a home, and leaving Canada to move to Utah!

Talk about a whirlwind!

Utah Home Hunt

In the middle of April, Ken & I flew out to Utah together to look for a home for our family. We planned a week-long trip so that we'd have plenty of time to visit the University and get some paperwork done for his new job, get some other legal things started for moving to the USA, and spend time looking at different rentals. We expected to fly out on April 14th & fly home on the 21st but things didn't go as planned! We ended up with some unexpected detours but got the most important things done in the end.  Here's the story of our Utah Home Hunt!

It all began with an ice storm...

1st Week of April Journal

We've been so occupied with our move (driving across the continent & getting settled in a new country) that it's been 2 weeks since I've published on the blog! I'm happy to be back and ready to wrap up the "Smoke Saga" and get on with sharing the adventures that have come to us since then, with travelling from Ontario, Canada to Utah in the U.S.A., what it's been like for us to settle in a bit here, and at some point I'll go back in time and share our Disney experience with you!

Picking up where I left off last in the smoke saga...

Smoke Saga - Part 5

I'm getting more & more behind with each part of the "Smoke Saga" and I really want to catch up to the present! So, I'm going to do a quick summary of week 4 of dealing with the smoke damage, to try and catch up a bit!

Smoke Saga - Part 4

It's time for another installment of the Smoke Saga. If you're following my Instagram Stories, you know that we were busy last week, visiting Utah to find ourselves a place to live when we move. Now that we're back, we have one week to pack and then start the drive out there! I found a few minutes yesterday to get this 4th "Smoke Saga" post completed- it's all about what we did during the 3rd week of dealing with the smoke damage.

It was the last full week of Ken being home, before he headed out to Utah to see if the job he was looking into was what he wanted to pursue. Here's how it all went down...

We Have News...

Amidst all of the chaos of the smoke saga in March & April, Ken was offered a job in Utah. After flying out there to visit and check it out, he is accepting the job and expects to start in May! So that means that while we just barely got back into our house (and are still basically camping inside our home), we're transitioning from unpacking to re-packing!

The Packing Craziness

Unfortunately we can't just keep everything packed from when we moved out of our house for the smoke/soot cleaning because it all happened so quickly that;

a) it wasn't all packed efficiently and
b) we didn't have time to clean everything before we moved it out

...so we still have work to do!

This means we're unpacking all of the boxes, cleaning what still needs to be cleaned, throwing more things out, and trying to sell some things that survived the smoke but we don't want to bring across the continent with us! Then we'll re-pack and make an itemized list of what we've packed in each box for when we cross the border.

Why We're Excited About Utah

Smoke Saga - Part 3

It's time for part 3 of this crazy smoke saga! If you're not up to date, check out my first post about finding our house filled with smoke and my second post about the first week of this smoky adventure. I'll pick up where I left off last time, with a daily account of what we went through during week 2.

As you can see from the photo below, week 2 involved a lot of purging of smoky belongings.

As I look back on this week, I remember being in a bit of a fog as we kept our heads down and just did what we had to do. During the previous week I don't think any of our friends (beyond our parents & our sisters & brothers in law, and a few friends who follow me on Instagram) had heard what was going on. We hadn't even had a spare moment to think to tell anyone.

Thankfully this week, the word started to spread and we were so grateful for all of the help we received! We had friends come to wash and move furniture, several who took laundry home to wash (3 times, with vinegar, & hang to dry) and a couple even came and took me out for cheesecake in the middle of the day- what a relief to get away for a bit!

Smoke Saga - Part 2

I've finally found time to get down some of what's been going on with the Smoke Saga I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Today marks exactly one month since we came home to find our house filled with smoke and we are still living at Ken's parents' house. If you haven't read my first post, you can catch up on what's been going on here.

Here is what happened during the first week after "The Incident":

Smoke Saga - Part 1, The Discovery

The first two weeks of March have been like nothing I've ever experienced before. As a result of chicken left simmering unattended, we came home one evening to fire alarms blaring and a house full of smoke. That evening I held my breath as I hurried through the house gathering pajamas and a change of clothes for each of us so we could spend the night at Ken's parents' house. It hadn't occurred to us that we might be moving out of our home for weeks or that we would soon lose many of our belongings to the smoke and soot from this protein fire (without flames).

It's been a full month since I've posted here (if you don't count the link party). The last 2 weeks of February we were in Florida for the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. I have plenty to share with you from that experience, but haven't had any time to write about it yet. Today I have another story to tell you.

1st Week of February Journal

Our first week of February was a good one. We were quite busy, but it was with lots of good things.  I'm glad I'm doing this journal on the blog because I'll have all of it documented and because I've been a bit better about getting photos of things, for this purpose. I think the 2nd week of February is going to be pretty busy with trip prep. and getting things wrapped up for the blog before our trip, so we don't really have any events planned. I can't wait for the last 2 weeks of the month!

February 4th

Today was Talia's first day in Young Women at church. She went to Primary (for kids up to age 11) as usual and the Young Women (girls aged 12-17) came to "steal her away". The Primary kids & Young Women all sang a happy birthday song and the YW gave her a bouquet of flowers and a little Beehive mug gift (the classes in Young Women have names and the class she's entering is called Beehives). I'm so glad she has a good group of girls and leaders to welcome her into YW!