There's a pretty big hill (mountain?) in back of our house, and Aani has been wanting to hike to the top since we moved in. Since we had virtually no winter in January and February, we took advantage of one of the freakishly warm afternoons and hiked to the top after school.
It started out with Aani, Ava and me, since Anders and Addie had chess club (nerds) that day after school. We got a ways up and waited until we could see them walking home from school. Then we yelled as loud as we could to get their attention. They made their way up, and we all got to the very top together. On the way, we saw some jackrabbits and a BALD EAGLE! WHAT? Pretty fun!
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| Ava looks waaaaay too old in this picture. |
What a view! Saratoga Springs...I love you.
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| Our house is at the bottom of the street, on the right, all by its lonesome. C'mon, neighbors! |
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| Addie, contemplating life in the cave at the top of the mountain. |
In other fun adventures... our yard. It's large and in charge, and the prospect of putting it together has been stressing me out. On President's Day, we worked for a few hours getting all the huge tumbleweeds dug out of the ground, and we were left with this massive pile. We didn't know how to dispose of it.
So we decided to burn it. I texted my firefighter brother to see if we would get arrested for having a bonfire without a permit, and he suggested we go for it, and plead ignorace if the FD showed up. That made us happy.
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| SAFETY FIRST! Blow torch and fire extinguisher working together for the good of mankind. |
Uhhuhuhuhuhuhhhh....FIRE! FIRE!
This is our huge side yard. Our backyard is mostly a slope. We have a decent amount of flatness in the back, but this side yard is ginormous and a little intimidating.
What to do with this yard? We had about 62 tons of topsoil delivered this week. Apparently the soil here in the 'toga NO ES BUENO, so we gotsta till the earth and all that. Humph. As luck would have it, it started snowing the day they delivered said 62 tons of topsoil, so they couldn't spread it out. Thus, we have a mountain of topsoil in the middle of the road in front of our house until it stops snowing. Hooray for no neighbors to hate us!
We're feeling a little more settled here, and feel like we know a few people and are getting our bearings around the neighborhood. Last Sunday, I noticed as we walked into sacrament meeting that it didn't feel like we were in a sea of strangers anymore, so that's good. There are lots of very nice people, and I'm trying hard to have my filter turned on so I don't scare them away. Hehehe.
