January 2021

 January started with a quiet New Years at home. We were invited to our annual party at the McCarney's but it was a little awkward with covid and with some of the kids Ainsley's age so we just decided to stay home this year, well, most of us. We ordered pizza and played games. Owen left us part way through the night to go to a party with Logan at Big Al's. The rest of us stayed home and watched the new Little Women that Ainsley and I went and saw at the theater the last new years eve. I think I could get on board with that tradition! I love the Little Women movies, sadly I'm lame and have never made it through the whole book which makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. 

Back to New Years, we watched the Potato and the Ball drop on TV and both were super weird and messed up. Which would in time turn out to be appropriate foreshadowing for the upcoming year. 

I started a new job in January. One day while on instagram, one of the accounts I follow for reading suggestions mentioned that Savvy Reading was hiring. So I looked into it. They were a brand new online reading company based in Provo. They were hiring certified teachers to be coaches for their platform to teach their self made curriculum to k-2 readers. I decided to apply. And then I interviewed. And I got the job! I was nervous to start, and also worried the company would go out of business after Covid, but decided to jump in anyways.  I got paid $18 an hour instead of the $11 I was getting paid at the library. So I took on one class every afternoon after I was done at the library. And I actually liked it. When I started there were 50 coaches and 200 students. Now (August 2021) there are 150 coaches, and I'm not sure how many students. So I'm all in and now I really hope they grow because I want to keep working for them! 

In January we started going back to church. With masks. and only half of us went at a time. I miss home church. And that's all I have to say about that.

During January we also started really getting things going on our remodel. Our financing was well underway, we were just waiting for the bank to finish up their end. And I was spending a lot of my time driving around picking up samples and trying to figure out who were were going to hire to do all of our work. By this point we had hired Drew Oakes to do our tile. Forest Creek Cabinetry to to our cabinets (after going to one of his houses and seeing his work). I just needed to start picking out supplies so that when we had our financing we would be ready to go.  I was spending way to much time online looking at designer blogs. Ultimately I decided to do white on white on white. It seemed to be the only thing that would be timeless. I could decorate and change all of my other colors if I stayed in whites. Sadly there are a million shades of whites, and whites are hard. And most employees of tile/quartz stores thought I was crazy for being so boring. But I started following a Canadian designer (Maria Killam) who kept reassuring me through every blog post, that hard fixtures should be in white so that textiles and every thing else that you swap out can be any color. 

I also started picking out paint colors. Owen helped me put some paint samples up in the laundry room. Sadly my laundry room still says poop.

John and I got our first doses of the covid vaccine in January. I did my research and decided I was going to get it. There is so much controversy around the vaccine. I think it's crazy. Most crazy right wing people view anyone who gets the vaccine as "sheep" who are just blindly following the government. But during my research I learned that the research behind the MRNA vaccine has been going on for years. It got clearance as a safe and viable type of vaccine in December 2019. I don't think that was a coincidence. I think that was a miracle. There is the story of the man on top of his house during a flood who prays to God to save him. Three boats came by and he refused the help saying that his god would save him. Later, after he died, he asked God why he hadn't saved him when he prayed and God told him that he sent 3 boats. To me that is the vaccine. People are so skeptical that they are refusing to see the miracle.

Ainsley also turned 17! I can't even believe it. Her birthday was on Martin Luther King day so she had the day off of school. 

January also kicked off the ski season. Ski passes were limited and in high demand this year. I was lucky and volunteered to help the Lowell Scott Ski advisor. Which meant I got a free season pass! I got extra lucky because they ended up cancelling the season so I didn't have to help with any races but they let us all keep our passes. 

I went up several times with Owen and Emmie (they both have season passes) and Emmie's soccer team went up a few times as well. 

Just a fun memory: Emmie's friend Elsie had written something on Emmie's hand that had the word poop in it. Emmie slept on that hand. And woke up the next morning with the word poop inverted across her face. It was a good look for church.