Winter 2025

It was a busy January and February. Here's a quick recap:

Collin

After he got his license, he started driving himself to seminary, robotics, piano, and youth activities. It's been awesome, but Grandma's advice has happened - I miss our long car talks! 

He was asked to be the grand finale in both of his piano teacher's recitals in February. He played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G Minor. It was incredible, and he did a great job.

Brennan

Brennan was busy with school track season and academic UIL in Jan and Feb. He also helps out on the high school robotics team on the days he has his math class there.

He was being silly at the dentist office, and I couldn't resist snapping this handsome pic.

At the district track meet, he placed 5th in high jump, 6th in the 300 m hurdles, 2nd in the 110 m hurdles, and 1st in the 4x400 m relay.   

At the district academic meet, he placed first in calculator and science. He placed 2nd in number sense.

Ethan

Ethan continues to practice for swim team once a week. He also went to BOA (our school district's outdoor 5th grade sleep-away camp). 

Ethan is also in YMs now with Collin and Brennan, and he is loving passing the sacrament and attending activities every week. He helped with the youth fundraiser dinner, and he is going to YMs Camp during Spring Break. 

He got new glasses too, which are super handsome.

Katelyn

Katelyn swims with Ethan is also playing club soccer. She practices twice a week for 3 hours and has games all of San Antonio on Saturdays.  

Her ball-handling skills and passing is pretty incredible. I love watching her play! We are having quite the dilemma as we try to decide what to do about soccer next year. She is aging out of her current league, but the next league plays farther away and on Sundays. We don't really want to move backward to rec (in town and on Saturdays), so pray for us to do the right thing! 

In January, her best friend Amelia had a mystery dinner party where her character was a tv star witch. Luckily, we had this costume from a Kim-hand-me-down. 

Lindsey

I really do have my dream job. It's still a job, and it is hard and I am tired and oh-so-busy, but I am so happy! I absolutely love being at school with Ethan and Katelyn.

This was on the 100th day of school in Feb. She loves to dress up with me, and it's the best.

Ryan

So busy! Ryan is still working full-time. He is the manager over large-engine on-road hydrogen research, travels a couple times a month, and is in night-school getting a second master's in data analytics. He is also teaching Katelyn's primary class.

In February, we went to see Les Miserables downtown. It was FABULOUS! It's nice to step-away from LIFE once in a while.

Buckeyes win the National Championship! 

A fellow teacher is from Dublin, so we always dress up together. A brother-sister duo in my classes have parents who graduated from Notre Dame, so we got to take some pics together too.

We had a great time dressing up and cheering our Buckeyes to another win. We even made Buckeyes twice this year (for the Michigan game in Nov, like always, but also for this game). 

Snow Day! 

By Divine intervention, the morning after the late national championship game, we had a Snow Day. It was fun to have school off, even though the quantity of snow was ridiculously small. 

We got a new tv to watch the football game, so we put the not-quote-all-the-way-broken one in the master bedroom. As the warmest room in the house, the kids had a good time on the day off piling into our bed to watch movies.

DarkSide Pizza

Ryan was gone to Germany for a week in February, so I decided to take the kids out to this fun pizza place. The owner is a retired Hollywood director, and he has collected 80s movie memorabilia. His wife is a Barbie collector, and they decorated the pizza place with their collections. The pizza was pretty good (though EXPENSIVE!) and the decor was perfect.   

Fireplace!

Before pic. This is our family room in the "for sale" pics of our house before we bought it. Ugly, builder-grade fireplace.

This is a shot from Spring of 2018. We'd already demo-ed the built-ins, built two custom entertainment centers, installed distressed hardwood throughout the main floor, painted the tile white and added barn wood ship-lap above the fireplace.

But we hated the "dry erase board" appearance of the painted tile, so we took six months selecting the perfect stacked stone.

Demo Day was the Saturday before Thanksgiving weekend

Thanksgiving Day we got the new cement board installed. Ryan wanted it perfectly square and level so the install would go smoothly, so this was a long, precise day.

Let the fun begin - Friday morning we started with our GORGEOUS gray stacked stone.

By Friday evening, we were just waiting for all the glue to dry.

Getting closer... Early Saturday morning Ryan built the foundation for the new mantel.

Almost there... Saturday afternoon. Just a few finishing touches to go.

And... Ta-da!  The finished product. We are in love with our modern farmhouse fireplace. 

Eclipse Totality

So I had thought all the media hype pre-eclipse had been super overdone. But I did get us all free glasses at the library about a month ago. Then when Ryan said none of the other "smart" guys at work were going to come in on Monday, he got a whole outing planned for us to Scottsbluff, NE - inside the band of totality.

Our plan was to get up at 5:30 and leave when the kids woke up naturally at 6:30. As we spoke with friends all weekend, we decided that leaving so late was not going to work, so as we finally went to bed about 11pm Sunday night, we set the alarm for 3am! We woke up the kids at 3:30 (Silly Ryan thought they'd go back to sleep in the car, ha!) and were on the road by 3:45.

About now is when I turned around and realized that in the chaos of waking up the kids and getting loaded, Ryan nor I grabbed Kate any shoes. So we had a little hillbilly all day with us. Oops. Maybe she'll start grabbing her own, like the boys! 

Traffic was heavy but not slow going up, and we got to the National Monument a few minutes after 6am. There was a short wait to get into the lot, but it went really smoothly. The huge disappointment was that they weren't allowing any cars to drive to the top, and they weren't letting anyone park at the bottom and hike to the top.

So... we were stuck at the bottom for the next six hours waiting for "the event." Before we even got out of the car, they had closed the lot to additional cars, and they didn't allow any people to walk/bike in. It was just us and about 80ish other cars.

But the long wait went sooo fast! They had eclipse workbooks for the kids and when they were completed, they showed the ranger and received a wood pin and badge. They had a special performance in the ampitheater about the man the area was named after.

 And we also toured the museum and watched a short movie in there too. We walked down a short trail with information about the Oregon Trail and replicas of wagons and oxen teams too.

I had read online in advance that the solar glasses were not very affective for children, since they are sized for adults. A craft was provided where the glasses are mounted to paper plates. So Ryan worked with each of the kids to make paper plate masks for their glasses and attached string so they stayed on well. They decorated them, and I think it was a great way to pass the time.

I helped them with their workbooks. 

Then at about 10:20, we started to see the first bite out of the top right corner. It was really exciting! Everyone inside this area was really into what was happening. Most were from the Denver area and had also been up since 3am. There was no alcohol allowed, so everyone was acting responsible.

One guy had his telescope set up with a mirror to reflect the image onto a screen. He explained the whole process to all the kids. The rangers also had a mega-telescope arranged, and we could even view the sun spots through it. Another family had brought a colander to view the strange shadows, and they handed out pinhole cards for each of the kids too. A group of grandparents brought aluminum foil and wrapped their hats, just to be silly. Everyone was so friendly and interesting.

And then at 11:48... Total eclipse! It really was amazing. So crazy! It was worth all the media-hype, for real. Everyone cheered, and it got cooler (84 degrees to 67 degrees, according to Ryan's special watch) and the birds stopped chirping. The rangers kept warning us that the rattlesnakes might come out and to watch our kids and the tall grass, but honestly - I forgot! But no one got bit, so I guess it was fine. ;-)

It was only as dark as it'd be at 8pm or so, but the corona was incredible! We saw Sirius and Venus too. With glasses on, it was totally black, which is why it was ok to remove the solar glasses during totality. There was a perfect black - kinda scary! - disc in the center of a brilliant perfect circle of bright, wavy light. It really was pretty creepy. And so totally amazing!

After it ended, we were hoping they'd open the road to the top so we could hike, but they said because of the numbers of people, they planned to keep it closed all day. :-( So we headed home.

Kate was one sleepy little princess by noon as we headed towards home. She fell right asleep, but only slept about 10 minutes. It was probably the longest day of her life. :-)

The first hour of the drive was fine, but when we got to Cheyenne, the traffic got really bad, and it was stop-and-go until northern FoCo. We exited the freeway then and took the country/local roads through towns to get back home.

We got home about 3:30 and even spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool to maximize Ryan's vacation day.

All in all, it was PERFECT! We hardly planned, and we were really anxiously about traffic, parking, food (I packed two meals and extra bottled water, but didn't need it), toilets (I took my camping potty, but didn't need it), gas (we had a full tank to begin at the start). It was super smooth considering the numbers of people flocking to see it.

Total eclipse awesomeness!