April 2021 Part 12: The Rest of April

After returning from Florida, Brian had a week left of his sabbatical from work, and he went right to work on projects around the house. The one he was most excited for involved all these boxes we left unopened in the basement for the theater room. He didn't waste any time getting everything unboxed and installed. 

Here's so we remember what it was like with just the platform. 

He measured out where the screen was going to go and marked it with tape, just to make sure it was going to look right. 

[Brian: I loved the fact that I opened up the box with the screen and they included a bag of microwave popcorn. It was either the most expensive bag of popcorn I've ever bought with a free screen included or just a nice touch by the company that made the screen.]

And like magic, the screen was up! (magic for me because I wasn't involved. Michael helped him put this huge thing up).

[Brian: that's 141 glorious inches of screen. It's also acoustically transparent so the speakers can hide behind the screen, but those aren't installed yet here.]

I think he may have installed the projector first. Honestly, he should be the one writing this post, but since he's not, here we are. Once the screen was up, Brian couldn't wait to watch something on his new big screen. 

[Brian: correct, projector first. It was a beast, I almost dropped it a few times getting it up there!]

Obviously, part of it was for research purposes, making sure the projector was set up correctly and all that. 

[Brian: it was clearly for science.]

Good thing our neighbor was selling this little kids chair so he had a place to sit. 

I dragged him away from his theater to pick out trees. I'd been working with my friend Scooby for months trying to decide what kind of trees to plant and a rough idea of where to plant them, and it was finally time to go pick out which ones we wanted. It was so fun!! They gave us all these red tags that we wrote our names on, and we walked around finding the trees on our wish list and picking out which ones we wanted delivered to our house. We also grabbed a few bushes that we loaded into our car. 

Meanwhile, work continued on the theater. 

[Brian: it took me a bit to get all of the speakers installed in the walls (5 went in the walls, 2 outside of the walls at the back, and 4 in the ceiling), so I just hooked up my old speakers for a minute to be able to hear should to see what it looked like with the screen installed.]

I went bowling with the older young men and young women in our ward, and somehow, I beat everyone in my lane. (I'm the S at the bottom). It's only because none of us were very good. 

Here's one of our rough landscape planting plans. 

Something got stuck in the conduit that Brian had put in back in September of last year, and he had to jimmy rig this thing to help move things along. 

[Brian: something did get stuck - every single thing I tried to put through it. Apparently at some point I lost my mind and installed one of the conduit pieces backwards, so it kept catching on the ridge of that backwards one. I finally got sick of it and built this little cable running jig out of some scrap wood that would "hop" over the ridges in the conduit and I could put my fishing line directly into the back of it. It actually worked too.]

But also, he could have just been bored down there and made a funny, useless thing. I really have no idea. Most of his big plans for the theater room went over my head. Again, he should probably be writing this blog entry. All I know is that eventually, he got everything working. 

[Brian: yup, completely bored. I practically had no interest in this project at all. Said the liar.]

Michael had used this hat for his school play the day we left for Florida. It was still sitting out, so naturally I had to model it for you. It's one of my favorite Halloween purchases. 

Michael took a ...wait a minute!

Not Michael. Just his shoes. Phew!

Our theater chairs finally got delivered (we ordered them clear back in January), and Brian was so excited! I was too, but I was honestly more excited about...

our trees getting delivered! The trees and chairs both got delivered the same day. It was like Christmas in April. 

[Brian: except for the fact that they delivered them to the road on the side of our house and not in our yard. Those trees were HEAVY. After working hard for 4 days straight though without sleep, I got them in the gate. It might have been 2 hours, it's hard to remember at this point.]

Through all this, normal routines were also taking place, at least for the kids. They had school, after all, and probably lots to make up for after missing two weeks. 

We all love our new theater chairs. They were worth the wait! 

Gabe had a crash that really scuffed up his nose. 

We had family over for Sunday dinner to celebrate Gabe's birthday. 

Brian was so excited to show them his theater room. 

And as mentioned in a previous post, we had Costa Vida enchiladas and yummy cake. 

After everyone left and we got kids in bed, Brian showed off the whole thing to just me. I'm pretty special that way. 

We finally decided on at least one set of patio furniture. We ordered a dining table from Ashley and found these chairs at Home Depot, of all places. Gabe helped Brian and I put them together. 

Here's our nearly completed theater room: 

We ate lunch, 

and we enjoyed watching somebody else plant all of our trees. 

We bought the biggest ones they had and bought over 20. It was so nice being able to hire someone to plant them all. 

Gabe went with me to scout a location for a photo shoot. 

We ended the month by having our friends Dustin & Serene over for a movie night. We were already missing them. We're pretty much addicted to their company, especially after Florida. 

And then it was May.
 

April 2021 Part 11: Gators and Flying Home

On Saturday, April 17, we packed all our stuff back up, cleaned out the fridge, loaded our cars, and said goodbye to our little temporary home on Storey Lake in Kissimmee and headed off to two more adventures before catching our flight back to Utah. First stop, Boggy Creek Boat Tours. We loved seeing the live oaks dripping with Spanish Moss. 

We got to take a half hour airboat ride, and we got the whole boat to just ourselves. 

It was awesome! 

I thought it was really funny that these cows were just standing out in the middle of the swamp. 

And we did see some alligators!

And these huge snails. 

If you look closely in these pictures, you can see a little gator. 

It was so fun to go flying over the water so quickly. 

We took advantage of this photo opp

and checked out some of the gators they had in this big enclosure, courtesy of Gatorland. 

Next, we went to Gatorland. We all took turns feeding the Alligators. We took lots of videos of feeding the alligators and apparently no pictures. Brian and I helped put the fish onto the poles, and no matter how many times we washed our hands, they still smelled like fish. 

There were so many alligators at Gatorland. At first, I was kind of sad that they kept so many in captivity just to make money, but then we learned that they were all rescued from neighborhoods throughout Florida, so even though they were in captivity, they were still being spared from death, and they did have lots of grounds to roam in. 

They had tortoises

and albino gators. 

They had birds

And a really grumpy gator that didn't play well with others. 

This guy showed us some cool tricks with his gator buddy, and we learned some more cool things about alligators. 

We took a little walk around a natural Florida swamp and it felt quite legit, thanks to the humidity, and looked legit, thanks to this wild snake. 

We saw Flamingos!

And we got to try feeding these little birds. 

They were kind of full by the time we got there though. 

But where there's a will, there's a way

After that, it was time to say goodbye to Gatorland

And Florida. 

Brian and I tried scratching orange peels to get the fish smell out from under our nails. It mostly worked. 

On the way home, we have a non-stop flight, and somehow, I got to sit by these two girls. Easiest flight ever, well easiest flight with kids. 

Gabe wanted to sit by Haven and we all said, "Nope, sorry." These two were more frenemies than friends during this trip. There was a bit of a mishap with Michael and Luke and Asher as well, and Michael ended up not sitting with his friends either. 

When Hunter got fussy, I had Serene pass him over. I'm still not his favorite person, even though I totally got him a toy car in Epcot and took him on all kinds of fun rides. It didn't even matter. He tried to hide from me the best he could by ducking his head into my shoulder

which led to him falling asleep. 

I got to read a book and feel helpful all at the same time. 

Finally, we made it back to Salt Lake and Taryn and David met us at the airport to return our car and our dog. It was so good to be back! 

Also, Taryn and David were amazing dog and van sitters. They practically detailed our car, taught Gracie a new trick, AND gave Gracie a bath. Best boarding and shuttle service ever. 6 out of 5 stars!

After getting the kids in bed, we showered and tried to get the fish smell off of us. I even rubbed comet over my hands to try to bleach the smell out. The smell finally left by the next day.  

It was an amazing trip, and even though it didn't take us very long to start missing Disney World again, we were so incredibly happy to be home and back in our own beds, in our own rooms, in our nice neighborhood again, even if that meant it was a little chilly out again.