Planned Power Outage That We Didn't Know Was Planned Adventure

We've had adventures with unplanned power outages before. We've had adventures with planned power outages before.

In July we had an adventure with what was a planned power outage but we didn't know it was planned. I looked up on our neighborhood Facebook page after the power went out. Someone mentioned a planned power outage was scheduled in the neighborhood. We did not know this. That's okay, though. 

We still had an adventure.

It was the middle of the day so there was enough light coming in my bedroom window that people congregated in there.

Jr. brought in his guitar to serenade us. Jet brought his kazoo to join in.

I showed Jr. Jr. how he could juggle lying down.

I started reading Anne of Green Gables.

According to what people said on Facebook, the power outage could have lasted for several hours but it didn't last that long. I guess the power company got taken care of what they needed to get taken care of quickly. Woohoo. We still got our adventure.

Celebrating Our Anniversary 2024

I told you I'd talk about our anniversary. How we celebrated it the Saturday of Screen Free Week. May 11 was National Babysitter's Day so the kids watched over Jet so Jeremy and I could get out bright and early and meet with other birders to see the Provo Delta Restoration area. Special access. Woohoo. It's supposed to open toward the end of this year so I am super excited to take our kids there when it does.

See my date shirt?

 

Oh, the birds. So many birds. Different habitats so that made more of a variety of birds. There was grassland, trees, open water. We saw sparrows, warblers, ducks. It was awesome.

If you're not a birder you may not get the excitement so let me show you some pictures of that adventure. 

 

Spotted Sandpipers

Ducklings

 

 Yellow Warbler

 

Coyote (not a bird)

 

Can you spot the killdeer eggs?

How about now?

Man, killdeer nests are hard to see. I was walking along and wouldn't have noticed except Jeremy called out that there was a nest right there on the side of the path. Good thing its not open to the public yet. There was a killdeer doing its broken wing trick trying to lead us away. But that doesn't help us to avoid the nest since they lay their eggs right among the rocks where people walk and we're not trying to actually chase after the adult. Crazy.

See this picture? We're cute. I know it. This is where the delta water meets up with the lake. See those trees back there? The trail used to continue on from where we're standing through those trees. I remember walking along there years ago. Not anymore. Instead the trail currently ends at a fence a little ways back from this spot. It's been like that for a while now since they've been working on the project. This was the first time we'd been on this side of the fence. Fun. I'm pretty sure the existing trail will connect with the trail that goes along the delta when everything is finished. Yay. 

 

After we finished with our meandering in the delta area, we drove around to see a few places then drove to a spot where we ran into a birder who had been with our group earlier. She told us that several of the birders had been to see a Northern Waterthrush, an elusive bird I had seen only once before and that happened to be two years ago while Jeremy and I were celebrating our anniversary by birding. It's a thing.

We went toward the area the birder told us and met up with other birders from that morning as well as... one of our librarian friends from Orem Library. We found out that she'd just gotten into birding a year ago so she had seen the Northern Waterthrush with the other birders. Small world. They all took off and Jeremy and I went to see the bird and got a better look than ever before... and our own pictures. Love it.

We were hungry after we finished and were trying to figure out what to eat then duh, of course we remembered Winco salads. That's our traditional date food. So we got our salads and took them home to eat and rest for a couple hours before heading out again to celebrate our anniversary without the kids... but with another birding friend.

The week before, Jeremy, Nichole, and Lucky had gone out to see a new to them bird, a sagebrush sparrow. Jeremy even got a lifer dance. 

That evening, Jeremy, our birding friend, and I went back out and got to see the sagebrush sparrow, which was a lifer for our birding friend and me. We also got good looks at some other birds. It was a successful birding evening.

We saw several kinds of sparrows. Here are somewhat good pictures of a couple more (besides the sagebrush sparrow).

Black-throated Sparrow

 

Lark sparrow

We also saw...

Juniper Titmouse

 

Gray Vireo

and several other birds.

 

Man, that was such a good day. Birding with my sweetheart. What a great way to celebrate our love.

Screen Free Week 2024

I did a good job again this year and scheduled posts to be published during Screen Free Week.

Now it's time to tell you what we did during Screen Free Week, May 6-12.

 

May 6 was International No Diet Day and National Beverage Day so we had chicken nuggets, fries, and root beer floats. Lucky and Jet had fun blowing bubbles in their drinks. We gave Jet water in a cup like we used. 

It was also No Homework Day but shhh, the kids didn't need to know that.

The kids did use computers for school work. It's kind of necessary nowadays. And Jeremy and I had some work stuff to do as well. But it was nice not having the TV on and no video games. Jet didn't even ask for TV all week.   

 

Jr. Jr. had his last orchestra concert. Good job, Jr. Jr.

May 8 was Have a Coke Day. We learned that any soft drink in the South is called Coke. So we all got to pick our soda pop (I picked Caffeine Free Coca Cola) and had them in our Coca Cola cups.

 

Lucky helped out with a service project with other children in the stake. They also decorated Mother's Day cards. Awwwww.

We celebrated our anniversary. On our actual anniversary we had our traditional anniversary dinner with the kids. Another day that week, Jeremy and I celebrated our anniversary with the two of us. We didn't even have to wait three months like last year. I'll tell you about the way we celebrated in a separate post.

We love each other.

 

And the random:

Who needs screens when Bluey and Bingo can go for a ride on a dinosaur?

Making faces with Daddy.

Just a duck walking down the sidewalk at the high school. I took Jr. early one day for an AP test and there it was just waddling along.

Dinos with Daddy.

It's tradition. Jeremy has his little things he does with his kids. Jet and Daddy share a big cup each using their own straw. That's their thing. 

Spontaneous dance party.

Big helper Jet. He saw me cleaning off the table so he poured water out from his water bottle then wiped it up to help.

He also helped make buns to go with Classic Meatball Subs (with homemade meatballs) and Addictive Veggie Dip. We're still getting use out of A Season of Family Meal Plans by Jordan Page.

I also took a moment one day to drive down to the river and just relax. As soon as I turned off the van, I could hear yellow warblers. There were several and it was so nice to hear them. 

Several people saw the Northern Lights Friday of that week. We didn't realize because... Screen Free Week. We tried going out Saturday night but didn't see anything. It was cloudy but had some clear spots so we did get to see some constellations since we drove out to Bridal Veil Falls then Deer Creek Reservoir. Ah, nature.

It's the Big Dipper (try clicking on the picture to make it bigger).

We explained this trip out in the middle of the night was like birding. Sometimes you go looking for a specific bird (or atmospheric condition or celestial event) and you don't see it but you enjoy the adventure.

And family history- we were able to tell the kids about the time Jeremy and I saw the Northern Lights when we were visiting my sister in Idaho (like 20 years ago).

O.K. That's all I'm going to say about Screen Free Week in this post. I'll talk about celebrating our anniversary and Mother's Day later.

Jet's First Trip Out of State

We had the opportunity toward the beginning of the month of March to go to our niece's baby blessing in Idaho. We got up really early in the morning to make it. Because of the roads, we were worried we might not make it on time. There were areas we lost a lot of time and some we made up time and in the end it balanced out. We walked into Sacrament Meeting during the opening song. Woohoo.

Jeremy's parents had driven there from Washington so we got to spend time with them and since it was Jet's first trip out of Utah (and my first trip since before he was born), several of us got to meet my sister-in-law-in-law and niece and nephew for the first time. Jeremy and our two oldest had visited them on their way back from a fair a couple years ago and they went to Washington when they got married a few years ago.

Lucky was good at entertaining his new cousin by making faces. She loved it.

 

It was a nice trip. I told the kids stories about Winter when I lived there so many years ago. Jet had fun stomping around in the snow calling out, "Idaho! Idaho!"

This was not the deep snow.

It was cold so I hopped in the trunk to make sandwiches for lunch to eat on our way home. Jeremy spotted a tree filled with waxwings. Most of them were Bohemian Waxwings. We're used to seeing Cedar Waxwings in Utah. We've only seen one Bohemian Waxwing before. And of course we hadn't brought our birding camera or our binoculars. Sigh. But we saw them. I saw them after I was let out of the closed trunk.

Then we headed home and had an adventure. This is what Jeremy texted to my mom and my sisters as I was driving:

 

This is Jeremy. Kristin wanted me to relate a story. So we took a family trip today to Rexburg, ID to see my brother bless his baby girl. I drove the whole way up and despite the roads we made it with minutes to spare. I was exhausted from the early hour and drive though and asked Kristin to drive home. We needed to get gas and Idaho Falls Costco was suggested by my family. We got gas and Kristin followed the directions on the GPS to get us going home. Only the GPS wasn't talking aloud (something to do with a Bluetooth connection to our CD player in the van). As we traveled Jr.'s book fell to the floor of the car. Trying to reach it his seat belt locked and became uncomfortable. We promised to stop at the next rest area so he could unbuckle and rebuckle. We approached the city of Dubois, stopped at a gas station, and went back to the freeway. But the GPS wanted us to go toward Idaho Falls. We had already traveled more than an hour from Idaho Falls. That didn't make sense! Somehow we must have gotten turned around after getting gas. I can only imagine how many times the GPS was trying to say "When possible make a u-turn." We are almost back to Idaho Falls now. At least we got to see Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, and a few different types of hawks and falcons. :) Kristin wanted me to share so we could laugh together. We left Rexburg almost two hours ago, the roads are clear, no construction, and no traffic, and we have almost made it to Idaho Falls says Kristin.

 

I was not laughing about it at the time. Interestingly, the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before I had joined watching RootsTech online (family history conference). One of the speakers had talked about stories, mentioning specifically a family trip where horrible things happened on the way but they were able to laugh about it later and that became a family trait, recognizing that they might not be okay in the moment but they knew later they would be. I was thinking about that during our trip home.

By the time we got to Ogden, it was snowing in such a way in the dark that it was messing with my brain. You're all familiar with snow that is like the Millenium Falcon traveling through hyperspace. It was like that but I couldn't handle it. Luckily we were able to switch drivers and Jeremy got us the rest of the way home by 9pm. Thanks, Jeremy. So it was a longer trip than expected when we left at lunchtime but 9pm isn't too bad. And of course it was most important that we made it to the baby blessing on time.

I am laughing because this trip was to go to our niece's baby blessing but less than a month before that we went to my niece's baby's blessing. That can happen when between Jeremy and I, one of us is one of the oldest in the family and one of us is one of the youngest. Definitely some babies being born in our family and baby blessings. Jet was blessed in 2020 (in our backyard). My niece's son was blessed in 2021 (which we participated over Zoom). My nephew was blessed in 2022 (which we missed because of the weather). And my niece's daughter and my niece were both blessed in 2023.