BUILDING BL(ayl)OCKS: Trying and Succeeding

The past couple of weeks we've been trying some new things, succeeding at some, and trying again. I've been reading the book "Mindset" slowly, and whenever I pick it up I realize that when you try new things you learn. You learn maybe a new skill, and you also learn a lot about yourself. You learn how to deal with failure and setbacks and you learn how to deal with success, both essential aspects of life. I don't know of anyone who really enjoys spending time with someone who deals with success poorly (we all know those winners who we hate losing to) or failure poorly. We've been really enjoying our quarantine time, we get to be home, venture out on walks and runs, have time together, and it's making us be more creative with how we spend our time.

On Wednesday's, we sometimes try to do our workouts together. One of our favorite activities recently has been spikeball. After playing a few times against each other, me losing mostly every time, we decided that playing together is much more fun. We get a better workout, and I don't leave the end of the match upset because M always wins.

Rollerblading was one of our first dates. M used Andrew's old rollerblades and about a mile or so from my house the front wheel popped off. We found the parts and tried to screw it back on, but it was only a temporary fix and M ended up running home holding his blades. It was such a funny memory, and we've now gotten M some really nice blades. We took Jay on his first rollerblading adventure last Saturday. He loved it, and we loved being outside. The path we go on is South Provo and usually has hardly anyone on it.

We had a fun Cinco de Mayo Date. M planned it all and again we had some of this trial and error stuff happening. First, we made dulce de leche. I really wanted to try it in the InstantPot, so we did. I didn't do it long enough the first time, did it again for a little longer, still not totally right, and the last time we put it in it didn't come out until like 10 at night...so, M woke up at like 2 in the morning and transferred it to the fridge. Next time, we'll be doing it just for longer under pressure and see if that works. We also decided to get nachos from Cafe Rio. We were both so excited because they just started to do them with chile con queso. We ordered at the window for that to be on them instead of regular shredded cheese. We got our order and excitedly headed home. When we got home, we pulled out the nachos and the container was corn chips with some sweet pork on top, NOTHING else. What?! We couldn't believe it, but we were too tired and hungry to go back, plus we had to do drive through, so how do you fix it...you don't. We just ate our meat and chips and split the salad we ordered. We also tried to learn a simple salsa dance that night. M and I really aren't much of the dancing type, and it showed. We tried, never fully caught on...so we wrapped up our date with an episode of Hogan's and called it a night!

Our queso-less nachos

Jay trying Cereal

Right before everything shut down, they asked me to be the RS Activity Leader. I haven't done anything because we couldn't meet, and one day I got a call from the RS counselor and she asked me to do a FaceBook week of posts in the ward group. I hesitantly agreed, I am not even much of a user myself and no one in the ward knows me because for the past year I've been in Primary or not at church because of Jay/COVID. Every other morning, I posted some thought, then would comment on the post. For example one of them was do something physical, so I commented something like I went for a run in the morning. One person besides a member of the presidency commented on any of the four posts. So awkward, and I tried, and I need to come up with something different...especially because I think they might want to do it again.

Mother's Day was such a fun day. M made me breakfast, we had a wonderful Sabbath meeting at home, and then we did an outdoor brunch with Aunt GayLynn, Uncle David, Lisa and her family, and Spencer and Bekah. The weather was absolutely perfect, we all stayed outside the whole time, used hand sanitizer before going through line to serve up, and didn't give any hugs. Jay loved being outside, laying on the grass on his blanket and playing with his toys. In the afternoon we enjoyed our time together, and M gave me a defuzzer for my clothes that pill and a paper cutter.

Sadly we didn't quite get in the photo...too many lovely people.

Another date M planned was a fort date. We have enjoyed building forts in our living room, dragging our bed out to be the base and watching movies and spending the night in the living room. This time, we watched Cheaper by the Dozen, and we went to Brusters to get ice cream. It was such a fun evening and I love spending time with M.

Us with our finished fort!

Yummy ice cream!

The last date I'll mention in this post is the double date BBQ we had with Tabitha and Dan. We invited them over and we all stayed outside. We played Kubb, M and I were ahead by a landslide, but they came back and won. We decided sometimes it's good to let people you invite over win so they want to come back and play. It's along the same lines as what Grandpa told me when I was dating M, he said, "Kitt, you're letting him win sometimes, right? Men need to win occasionally."

Super happy Kubb buddies! I have the cutest teammates.

In other random news, M's cap and gown still haven't arrived, we've been waiting and waiting. They cancelled the order, then said they were shipping, and then said it would take 28 days, etc. It's been a ride waiting for that thing to come, hopefully it comes soon! I really want to celebrate M's big accomplishments. We also found a townhome to rent in Colorado and we're excited to move mid-July! The rent is even lower than we anticipated, it's close to my work and M can walk to the station to ride into downtown. We feel super blessed. I also got this little surprise box in the mail from my HR leadership team at work. I thought it was super thoughtful and nice. The skittles are totally gone, and the scrunchie I use, we'll see about the other things.

Happy Box

Jay is kind of rolling, maybe. He only rolls when he really wants to, or when you can distract him by a toy. He's also started to eat rice cereal and oatmeal. It's been a journey. Probably two weeks or more of more of the cereal coming out than staying in. Also, we had one BBQ I mentioned as a double date and the weekend before that we had Nathan and Michela over for one. Both times, as soon as we stepped outside with Jay, he started screaming. I would try for a while to calm him, then M had to step in and got him to calm down. One time, he was calm and in the stroller, I decided to pick him up so he could play before we put him back in so the adults could play, and as soon as I touched him, the screaming started again. So strange, Jay is normally so mild, we don't really know what happened those days. Also, he's 5 months which is so exciting!