January 2021

With the latest round of "Stimulus" money that we received from the government (we got $600 each), Josh and I each splurged on a purchase. I bought chairs for the living room, he bought a gun. We were both happy. 

The new chairs I bought swivel, so the boys have been using them as a seat and a footstool, like so:

Josh drove the school ski bus on January 7th. He skied for about half the day, until his ankle was hurting too much (he broke it prior to Thanksgiving), and then he stopped and read a book instead. It was a beautiful day on the ski hill!

I hosted the Perkins family Christmas Zoom over Christmas break, and had a fun Kahoot contest where everyone guessed items about each other's favorite Christmas memories. As I was creating that Kahoot contest, I learned that one of Josh's favorite Christmas gifts was Grumpy Care Bear when he was a little boy. I never knew that before! I love learning new things about the person I've been married to for over 20 years! I found a little Grumpy Care Bear on an after-Christmas sale, and hung it in his Jeep at the beginning of January without him knowing. He found it a few days later, and was happily surprised!!

I went out with my dominoes friends the first week of January to celebrate Rosalba and Val's birthdays. We ate at Olive Garden, which was Rosalba's choice. We always have so much fun together!

Kanyon spends a lot of time in the car with me, driving back and forth to Mud Lake. On the rides down to Mud Lake (usually at 6am on Monday mornings), he sleeps for most of the drive, but on the drives home lately (usually Friday afternoons), he listens to music from his iphone. He puts the iphone to his ear, and spends most of the drive with his arm up to his ear holding it! It's a funny sight!

Josh and I took our friend Jen out to dinner at the Twin Peaks restaurant on the 9th (Dallin was working that night). We'd received a gift certificate for Christmas, and thought it would be fun to share the gift with someone else. We had a nice evening out!

Ammon turned 21 in January. Josh wanted to take him on a golf getaway to Mesquite or Jackpot Nevada for his birthday, but it didn't work out in Ammon's plans to do so. For the first time ever, we didn't celebrate Ammon's birthday with him, which is kind of sad, but he's officially an adult now so it will become more likely from now on that he won't be spending his special day with us! He left on New Year's Eve from Salmon to head to Boise to visit Gabbie and her family and then spent the weekend prior to his birthday celebrating with his friends before heading back to college the week of his birthday. Ammon made the Dean's List at the U of I again! He has maintained a 4.0 his entire college career so far, which has impressed us! He works hard, and we are so proud of him!

My dominoes friends got together three times in January--Val wants us to meet as much as possible now that I'll be leaving in a few months. During the second week of January, we went to Val's house and played my game "Telestrations After Dark". We laughed SO hard!!! Oh my gosh, I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time! It's our new favorite game--replacing dominoes! 

Josh drove the high school boys basketball bus to Mud Lake for a game against West J. I picked him up after he arrived at the school, got dinner for us and Kanyon at Ike's and took it to my rental to eat, and then Josh and I went back to the school and watched the JV game. West J had recently changed their attendance policy to allow 2 spectators per athlete from both teams, and since Josh drives the bus, he was allowed in. There wasn't a full representation from some of the Salmon boys, so the ticket attendant let me in, too. It was the first high school basketball game we'd both seen all season! It felt so strange to be a spectator again! I volunteered to sing the National Anthem before the Varsity game, since I felt like I was representing both the West J and Salmon teams. 

Josh took this picture outside my house after dinner.

They put up yellow tape between where the
home fans sat and the visiting spectators sat. 

We actually sat on the "Visitors" side because
I work in West J. We sat right by my friend Lidia
who's son was playing on the JV team.

Josh has loved Mini Coopers ever since he served a mission to England. He's wanted one for our entire marriage, and has been looking quite seriously for about a year now. He found one in SLC that he liked, had everything on his desire list (6-speed stick shift, under 150K miles, turbo engine, good color), and it was within his price range. Josh and I drove to SLC over MLK weekend in January to go get it. It was the first nice car that we've ever paid cash for, which was so fulfilling for us! He was beyond happy to finally obtain his life's dream!

While we were in SLC, I stopped and shopped at Trader Joe's. This is an image that is SO typical these days with COVID restrictions in effect: the grocery store has a limited capacity, and there's a greeter that lets people in the store as people leave. The waiting line requires you to stand 6 feet apart (the cones are for a winding line if it gets too long) in order to "social distance", and to wear masks, too. I had to wait 25 minutes just to get in the store! 

We stayed overnight in Layton, and after checking in to the hotel, we went and surprised Amanda and Ryan at their house in North Ogden. Josh hadn't been to their house in over a year, so he got to see all the improvements she made this summer. It was fun to surprise her for her birthday (a week late)!

On Saturday morning, we checked out of the hotel, and headed north. We stopped in Logan to surprise my parents, too, because the next day was my mom's birthday. Josh hadn't seen them for over a year, too. My parents were very surprised, and my mom was SO happy to see us!

I brought them lunch from Arby's.

After visiting my parents for about an hour, we continued on to Salmon in our separate vehicles. Josh took a couple of pictures along the drive (he was ahead of me!):

His cars match each other!

I hosted a family Zoom for my mom's birthday on Sunday the 17th. I created a trivia Kahoot of some of her favorite things, and of favorite memories my siblings and I have of her. It was so fun! 

This was the scoreboard after the Kahoot ended.
Bryce & Tawna won, Trina got 2nd place, and Tabbi got 3rd.
I couldn't compete since I knew all the answers! Unfortunately,
it started glitching out on the last 3 questions, so it affected
everyone's scores overall. 

My team (the Buccaneers) had an outstanding season this year, due to Tom Brady moving there from the New England Patriots and Gronkowski coming out of retirement to play with him on the Tampa Bay team. When they played against Josh's team, The Saints, in the playoffs, it was pretty competitive! It was fun to watch my team play against Josh's team, with two seasoned quarterbacks: Tom Brady and Drew Brees. Ultimately, my team won! I was so excited! (Josh, not so much!)

I got my first round of the COVID vaccination on January 18. I got the Moderna shot, which requires two rounds of the vaccine, four weeks apart. It was offered to the employees at our school district, and the district health nurse actually came to our district to administer the shots, which was nice. I didn't actually feel the shot, but my arm immediately started swelling and became inflamed with heat. No one else in the room had the same side effect, though. My arm was super sore for two days, and the inflammation didn't go down until 2 days later. Then one week later, I got the exact same symptoms: Swollen, inflamed, sore, tender upper arm for 2 days. Then the next week, I got a big rash all over my upper arm. Despite my reaction to the shot, I was very grateful to have the opportunity to have the vaccine, which was administered in rounds to different specified groups of people as the vaccine productions became available. 

One week after the initial shot. 

One of my student's families invited Kanyon and I over to dinner mid-January. We had so much fun! I've taught Keaton for two years now, and his mom Tiara Skidmore is an amazing baker AND cook! For dinner that night, she made two different types of soups, homemade breadsticks, and dessert! It was absolutely delicious! After dinner, we played a card game with her and her kids when her husband left to go to basketball practice. I'd never played the game before, but her kids were SO good (and competitive!) and I just loved it! Kanyon had a good time, too! I was so grateful for the invitation. I will miss the good people of Terreton.

I made a bulletin board by the office for MLK day, and I thought it turned out so well. I love how colorful it was. Truly, I love teaching about Martin Luther King, Jr. I admire him and his peaceful principles. We are blessed to live in a nation with a history of strong, good leaders. 

I worked on teaching my students the skill of writing letters using correct punctuation, and we practiced it weekly from November to January by writing Thank You notes to people who help make our school a better place. We decorated a lot of school doors with our notes, and some were hand-delivered. It was a wonderful task to talk with the students about all the things people do for us on a daily basis that sometimes we don't even recognize or see. And the response from those we thanked was overwhelming and heart-warming. We thanked the principal, secretary, custodians, P.E. and Music teachers, cafeteria crew, librarians, aides, maintenance crew, electric technicians, and finally the Superintendent and School Board. One of my students left me a random thank you note on my white board in mid-January, and it totally made me beam because I knew that he understood and took to heart the lesson of giving thanks!  

This was our final Thank You poster, given to the Superintendent

I had a fun guessing contest with my students about the results of the playoff game between Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Green Bay Packers, because several of my students are Packers fans. I called it the "Battle of the Bays". I have been a Buccaneers fan for 18 years. I liked them even when they weren't popular, and I feel like my years of loyalty FINALLY paid off this season! I was giddy during the entire game as 'my' team led the "battle", ending with the win! Because they won, they get to play in this year's SuperBowl! And on home turf, too!! What an exciting time to be a Bucs fan! P.S. I won the contest, but anybody who voted for the Buccaneers got rewarded with a fun prize ;). 

Edward and Kathy took Josh and I and Grandma out to lunch at the Twin Peaks resort at the end of January, which was so nice of them! It was a delicious meal with a gorgeous view!

We started a cards game night with the Hobbs' and the Oswalds at the end of December, and have kept the game night going once a month. We hosted it in both December and January. The Oswalds taught us how to play a new game called "Pennies", which is very competitive and fun! And of course Josh won both times we hosted! At our game nights, we play the game, snack, talk, and it's been so fun!

Craig & Wendy didn't realize they both wore matching clothes that day!

We had some pretty chilly nights/mornings in January, which produced some beautiful scenes around our home and at the golf course with the frost and snow: 

Phil and Darcy came over on the last Sunday in January. They taught us how to play Ticket to Ride Europe edition, which has some differences to the American version--we liked some of the differences, but some of the changes were hard to get used to. Afterwards, we soaked with them in the hot tub. It was such a nice evening with our friends--we love hanging out with them!  

During the last week of January, I went with my dominoes friends to a new little place in Archer called "White Sparrow". It was so cute! They serve pot pies, both savory and sweet. We looked around at their little boutique, and then sat down to dinner. I ordered the chicken pot pie, and the Nutella sweet pie. They were both so good! Except the Nutella one was SUPER messy!

When we got back to Mud Lake after our fun evening out in Archer, I noticed the moon had a giant circle around it--even though there was no clouds in the sky to reflect it in such a way. I googled it; it's called a lunar halo, and is caused by a reflection of light when there's thin ice crystals in the air. It was bitter freezing that night, but there was moisture in the air, so that made sense. It was a cool phenomenon!

I accompanied Josh on a wrestling overnight trip that he took to Kooskia. We stayed overnight in Orofino. We had a nice hotel on the river, and the weather was awesome. We soaked in the hot tub during the day, walked down to Fiesta en Jalisco for lunch, and after he brought the wrestlers back to the hotel for the evening, he and I walked down to the Chinese restaurant and got take-out for dinner. I loved having cultural food options so close again! It was such a nice, relaxing trip for me! I've really missed traveling this winter, and it was a fun getaway, especially since the weather was warm, and the hotel and gas were free!

We've missed the queso dip at Fiesta en Jalisco! There used 
to be one of their restaurants in Salmon, but it closed
over a year ago. We love their authentic Mexican food!

I love walking into hotel rooms with freshly made beds!

We had our own private deck overlooking the river

I couldn't believe my fortune from our 
Chinese fortune cookies that night!
I'd already had a soak in a hot tub during the day,
and Josh had rubbed my back earlier that day too!

Josh is a good bus driver. He's frequently requested 
to drive for athletic trips. It's not the most comfortable
ride for me, but I enjoy spending time with him!