Melting Snow and Coconuts

Hello, Family--

Just looking outside at the 'almost-melted' snow! We had a week of above-freezing temperatures, and it rained a little in there, too. I can see most of the yard now, and only patches of snow.

boat shot

SPRING IS COMING. In 3 more days, in fact! Friday was one of those "teaser" days, where it actually got up to 61, or something wonderful like that! I went outside after school and took a long walk. Beautiful, beautiful.

TEACHING IN PARADISE. Kara just finished her first week of teaching the local kindergarten kids in Fiji. She was going to go with a friend, then the friend backed out at the last minute.

Speaking of beautiful, it is Just. Gorgeous. There! Here are some pictures she has sent.

She landed, and then took her big suitcase on the bus to a resort for a couple of days. At that resort, there were 'coincidentally' some people -- about 10 -- from the same volunteer program she is with, there to take a vacation weekend.

bus stop

(People start and finish their volunteer experiences different weeks. These people had already been volunteering for a little while.) So she met them all and hung out with them, then they all went back to the volunteer "bunk-house" together.

view from inside the bus

VOLLEYBALL WINS. Otherwise, we've been watching the BYU Men's Volleyball team play this week. As usual, they are really good. Gymnastics was televised on Friday too. Always fun to watch them, but they don't get televised too often.

OH--speaking of gymnastics! It's crazy what these girls can do at the college level. Avery has been following Shannon Evans, a junior on the BYU gymnastics team. Avery recreated Shannon's floor routine on youtube -- it's really fun! Here's the link for Avery's routine.

Kara with some new
5-year-old friends :)

UCLA also has an amazing athlete on the team right now: Katelyn Ohashi. She has earned five scores of  "10" this year, 3 of them on floor and 2 on beam, or something like that. She's this little tiny girl, only 4 foot 10 inches, and she has so much fun doing the routine it can only make you smile. Here is Katelyn's floor routine on youtube.

CLEANING OUT. I'm still doing the Marie Kondo thing, chipping away at our bins in the garage and other places in the house.

I went to the dentist this week, too. Happily, it was uneventful :)

Have a great week, and especially this Wednesday...that day will be SPRING!

Kari

Snow, Splint and Survival Kit

beautiful snowy mountain range

Hello, All--

The weeks have slipped by a little, it seems!

Let's see if I can give a summary of the last couple of weeks...well, 3 maybe?

Kris, Mom, Me, Avery

LOOKING FOR SUN. I went to Arizona to visit the sun and warmth. Turns out they were both coincidentally out of town for a couple of days! Ugh!

So I left 40 degree weather in Boston to get to Tucson and get...40 degree weather and SNOW! Ha, can you believe it!

Trent is getting so tall :)

Mom's backyard

then a couple of days after the
snow: all gone! At 61 degrees
I could take a walk outside

It's okay though. I got over it. I still got to visit with Mom.

One day we drove to Kris's house, and we got to see Avery, Trent and Jessica :) :) :)

dice game: Tenzi

We went to Red Robin and of course I had to order Onion Rings. The perfect combination of salt and grease. And they delivered it in a tall, tall tower that reached above Avery's head.

AND, extra treat: the last day I was there, was an "overlap day" with Kim and Duane. Nice to visit with so many over the 4 days I was there.

at least her nails were painted :)

UNEXPECTED MISHAP. Of course, it was a rude awakening on Sunday morning when I was there, as Mom called me into her room because she had broken her foot. Ugh! She had dozed off in her recliner chair in her room, as she sometimes does. She did not realize her foot had fallen asleep. She woke up, and stood up, ready to go to the next place...her foot turned and she broke the outside bone, the one connected to her pinky toe. Blah.

We spent a couple of hours in the Emergency room, where they rolled in the x-ray machine and took pictures, and determined that it was a "nondisplaced fracture." They wrapped it with a splint, so she couldn't move the foot. She went to another appointment later in the week, and they said it was positioned well so they could leave the bone in the place it was, and wrap it better. 4 weeks with a heavy-duty brace. Not a very pleasant surprise!

our Games Night group

FRANK'S GAME NIGHT TURNING 50!! Frank has now 'caught up' to my decade :) He turned 50 last Sunday. We of course celebrated with a Games Night, and a good time was had by all. We pulled out Outburst -- we've had that one since we were married, believe that or not! Very comical, as the answers were so dated...referring to TV shows like Dukes of Hazard...

Kara holds the phone up for David and Teresa
to watch Frank open his gifts
(they facetimed in for gift opening)

OLD GUY'S SURVIVAL KIT. The kids pooled together to get Frank a "survival kit," now that he's 50...you know, prune juice, fiber crackers, preparation H. Kara and Angela wrapped the gifts, then Kara came back here to the house. She facetimed with both David and Teresa simultaneously, so they could see him open things.

(Their REAL gift was movie tickets for us, and a restaurant gift card. They do know how to celebrate a birthday for their pop!)

Birthday Pie before she left:
her 19th bday is actually
next week but we had
a mini-celebration
before she left

KARA'S NEXT ADVENTURE. Then last week, we sent Kara off to Fiji. She will be there for about 5 weeks, teaching English to the local kindergarteners like she did in Bali last fall. She had a friend she was going to go with, then at the last minute her friend could not go. So, she's winging it on her own. We're using WhatsApp to text and send pictures back and forth, and she texted to say that she made it to the right places and had her orientation Monday. Tuesday she started work in the schools.

hug before she left -- okay I woke her
up! I was leaving for school and
Frank would take her to the airport
a little later :)

Well that sums up the past couple of weeks! Meanwhile Massachusetts temperatures are c-r-e-e-p-i-n-g upwards. In the 40's this week, and Friday it should hit 61! Yep.

Empty-Nesting it for a few weeks

SIX MORE DAYS until spring, you know :) :) :)

Have a good week!
Kari

all her clothes laid out for the suitcase