Monday I decided to be superwoman and make bread (sans mixer) for the first time, plus sugar cookies (also for the first time?), spend two hours at my mom's helping her organize photos on her computer, clean my house, and host a group FHE that was a total blast. This was all in addition to the normal bathing, dressing, feeding and napping routine around here, which usually looks something like this:
Yep, that's my mascara.
Tuesday I spent the morning recovering. Superwoman stuff is exhausting, yo. I don't know how the rest of you do it. Then after 4:00 I had scouts and HAB and a Relief Society activity which required me to make another batch of cookies, and Slice got home from work late and my oven had a power failure (!!) so I got to the activity just before they started cleaning up. At least some of them got to taste the goodness of the soft almond sugar cookie.
Wednesday I went to Angie's house and helped make tamales. It was my mom's Valentine's present to my dad (surprise!), so Mom, Angie and I spent almost 6 hours mixing and spreading and rolling and steaming tamales. I'm no expert, but if you need help making your own, you know who to call.
Then I had piano lessons all afternoon and into the evening, and after the kids were in bed Slice and I watched Netflix while we folded laundry. Phew.
Thursday we packed and ran errands and, much later than we planned, left for Cedar City. Slice wanted to help his dad with the house and I wanted to leave Roosevelt. Cedar seemed like a good solution.
He worked for two days while I sat around, fretting about the noises that could wake up my sleeping babes.
Last night we skipped down to St. George for dinner and a little shopping, like the naive Basinites we are. President's Day weekend in St. George? NIGHTMARE. We couldn't get anywhere, and when we did, there was an hour-long wait for a table. I sat next to a white-haired lady who told me (as she shivered in her coat) that the weather was colder than she and her husband had expected. I tried not to roll my eyes ... the temperature was in the 40s and we had been so warm we rolled down our car windows. When you're used to negative and single digits, 40 degrees feels like heaven. But it's all relative.
This afternoon we began the long drive back and, as I always do on long drives, I got to thinking. We passed through all the little towns down the center of Utah - some quaint, some not so quaint. Every little town on that interstate has a history, and people that live and work and die there, people with their own histories. Do they love their home? Are they proud of their heritage? Or are they ashamed? I wonder.
I started thinking about the Big Move that took my family from the Wasatch Front to little Roosevelt, and how that move changed my life. I feel a kinship with the people in all those small towns, because I am one of them. And I like it.
I like living five minutes from my church, my grocery store, my library, my mom. (And five Redboxes.) I like not shopping my life away. I like knowing the people behind the counter at the pharmacy. I like sitting on a pool project committee with my doctor, my brother-in-law, my piano students' dad, my former boss, an old hometeacher .... I like being with people who love living here, too.
I've been in big cities and loved them. I get excited to go for shopping trips/restaurants/concerts. But at the end of the day, I am always glad to return to my smaller, simpler life. And my homemade bread.
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