Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday I was doing some cleanup in the yard, and noticed our first flowers of the season!

Unfortunately these little pretties are a bit too soon. It snowed later in the day. Then today it snowed again. And tomorrow the forecast calls for snow. And actually throughout the week, we’re expecting snow every day. I’m not sure if they’ll make it through a week-long snap of cold and snow. It sure would be nice if spring came and stuck, though…

A few weeks ago, some friends came over for dinner. Their son had an Oculus Quest VR headset, and I asked if I could give it a whirl. He showed me a few demos and games, and I tried my hand (well, hands) at Beat Saber. It’s akin to the old-school Dance Dance Revolution music game, but instead of moving your feet on a pad you’re slashing flying cubes with lightsabers.

After two minutes of that, I was hooked. I ordered a Quest that very night, and a few days later I was in my little VR world, flailing my arms as I sabered with the beat.

I brought the Quest to the Villa for our family get-together, and we all had a good time… everyone gave it a go, even Mom and Dad!

Zack used a technique where he mostly just flexed his wrists, making him look a lot like a symphony conductor.

I’ve figured out how to hack the Quest and install custom songs (if you ask me, that should be a built-in feature of the software), and even make my own songs to play. It’s a blast, and one of these days I should probably see what else virtual reality has to offer. But for now, it’s all Beat Saber.

Today Pepper and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. It’s been a while now– over half my life! But apparently we’re still not tired of one another, because we continue to hang out. Tonight we splurged a bit on a fancy steak restaurant in town. I’m not usually one to take pictures of my food, but this dinner was exquisite.

It was a great way to celebrate a score and six years together.

This year in seminary, we’re studying the Old Testament. I love the stories in this dusty old book, and I’m excited to teach it. Today we hit Exodus, where we talked about Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. Always looking for ways to liven up our high-school class at 6:30 in the morning, Pepper and I decided to put together a little Passover meal.

According to the scriptures, the Israelites were told to make unleavened bread and eat it with lamb and “bitter herbs”. I found a recipe for matzah, which is the unleavened bread Jewish people eat when they celebrate the Passover. It’s super easy to make, and was actually kind of fun.

We opted for some “lamb jerky” and olive oil with Italian seasoning to represent the bitter herbs.

It turned out to be pretty cool, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Bringing food to seminary is often hit-or-miss; sometimes they’re in the mood to eat and other times they just pass on it and we’re left with a bunch of cookies or doughnuts or whatever. But several of them asked for second helpings of bread, and we had a good discussion about what the Passover meal represents. In seminary, any time we can go home and say to each other, “I think the kids learned something today” is a good day…

Ollie is lucky to have some great great-grandparents!

It’s still weird to think of myself as a grandpa, but hey, here we are. Little Ollie turned one today! He’s a quiet, introspective little lad.

He loves helping Grandma Pepper with her board games (or maybe he’s just after some grapes and a Triscuit).

For his birthday, we hosted a party at The Villa. I say “hosted” because honestly we didn’t do anything more than provide a place for everything to happen. Kaitlyn’s family showed up in droves, and they brought food and chairs and tables and treats and piles of gifts. We had a full house, and a grand party. Frankly, once he discovered the ball pit (!) his mom and dad bought him, he was pretty content there and didn’t have much interest in the other gifts.

Eventually he worked through the other gifts, and I’m sure he’s going to enjoy them for a long time.

One really cool thing: we posed for a big group photo before the party broke up, and in it are three of Ollie’s four pairs of great-grandparents.

That’s not something every kid can say! I’m not sure if he’ll remember it– heck, in the picture he’s just staring longingly at his toys in the corner– but this will be a good picture to show him someday. I’m glad Mom and Dad could come out to celebrate with us, and that Kaitlyn’s family was able to drive up from their various Utah homes.

Happy birthday, little guy.

Finally, after a year and a half, a terrible contractor who took our money and disappeared, and a complete restart, we have solar power! Thirty panels sit on our roof, and yesterday the final inspections were completed and the electric company switched the meter so we can feed power back into the grid. I flipped the switch (actually I turned a large black knob) and the electrons started to flow.

It ain’t much, but it’s a cloudy winter day so we can’t expect much. In the next few months we should really start cranking out some power. And we’ll add another 20 or 30 panels to the roof to nearly double our production.

Will we ever recoup the cost of this system? Not a chance. I can thank a dishonest contractor for that, since we basically paid for the system twice. But it’s kind of cool to be making our own power…

Mmm… tax season again…

As we were driving home tonight, we came down into the Flathead Valley near St Ignatius, and wow was the sunset amazing.

Here’s the view of the Mission Mountains, on the east side of the valley:

And here are the Salish Mountains, on the west side:

Epic.

So it’s time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my 25th birthday. About a week from now, Pepper will hit another prime-number milestone birthday. Both of us struggle with gifts to give one another (and what to ask each other for), so we decided to celebrate this milestone with a slightly bigger gift than usual.

We bought a house.

Well, okay, technically it’s a townhouse, meaning we don’t have to do anything outside. With all three kids living in the same city in Utah while they attend college, we agree it’s important we visit them as often as we can, before they graduate and scatter wherever their jobs and families take them. It’s tricky to spend a lot of time in their apartments, since they’re cramped and have roommates everywhere. Staying at short-term rentals for Thanksgiving and Christmas worked well, but it’s a hassle and frankly kind of expensive for what you get. Why not just buy a little townhouse where we can stay when we visit, and have the kids come over and join us?

Unfortunately, the housing market is kind of nightmarish right now, so “little townhouse” doesn’t really work. We were hoping for something with a bedroom or two and a nice family room where we could all gather. From what I can tell, such a thing doesn’t exist. In this area, you can either buy a dumpy college apartment (complete with student tenants locked into contracts that don’t expire for another six months), or a huge single-family home on a postage-stamp lawn. I finally tracked down a few townhouses, and although they were all larger than we’d intended, we felt like we had to take what was on offer. After a few failed attempts to buy something, we landed this one. The whole process was lightning-quick– at least by real-estate standards– and we went from offer to closing in about three weeks.

Now we have a nice “little” place near the kids! There’s a decent kitchen…

… and Alex has already settled into the front room.

We celebrated my birthday by driving from Montana to Utah, then hung out with the gang. For Pepper’s birthday, we’re going to drive back up to Montana. Fair’s fair… if we had to drive on my birthday, we should certainly drive on hers as well.

All in all, it’s been kind of a crazy few weeks, and I admit there were a couple of times I said to myself, are we really doing this? But I think The Villa (as we call it, because it’s part of a development called Tuscan Villas) is going to prove to be a lot of fun and a great way to spend some quality family time together.