Thank You for Your Patience

Wow, you guys. I am so bad at blogging. I am so sorry. Truth be told, my mental health has kind of been in the toilet the last few weeks, so I haven’t been blogging. Not to worry, I’m doing better now and should have the mental bandwidth to do this more often.

Since I have yet to deliver on my weekly blog post promises and Squarepace wants to charge me extra for keeping an email list, I decided that I’m going to email everyone who is interested when there’s a new blog post. That being said, if you signed up for email notifications about the blog a few months ago, you’ll get an email directly from me now when there’s a new post. If you want to be added to the list, please leave a comment or text me or let me know somehow. If you get an email and don’t want it, I will probably not be offended if you don’t want to read my blog anymore :)

Okay, let’s see, what’s new in the last couple of weeks…

Our Home Depot Charlie Brown tree is sprouting!

I threw that little tidbit in there to break up all the text. I gotta keep things visually appealing for my readers. But our little tree is sprouting and growing quickly, which is cool because usually we unintentionally kill all of our plants. We’re on the up-and-up, people!

I just wrapped up week two of my new job. It’s a complete 180, personnel-wise, from the horse place, which I love. Everyone is so laid back, and there’s not a horse girl in sight. The company culture seems pretty healthy too. A lot of what I do is recruitment and hiring, and it’s actually proving to be more difficult than I thought. Once I get my standing desk, I’ll be golden.

A couple of weeks ago I won $15.00 in my women’s fantasy football league, which was pretty cool. Ian’s been doing it with me, but we did pretty miserably the week before, so it was nice to actually win in a game that’s so unpredictable. My family is super excited for Cincinnati to be in the Super Bowl because Katie lives there, so I guess I’m rooting for the Bengals in solidarity. Shout out to Katie’s fourth grade class for working together to write a letter to the principal petitioning to have the Monday after the Super Bowl off school and making it happen!

Let’s see, what else happened lately? Sara turned 21, which is absolutely absurd but now is not the time nor the place to have an existential crisis about time.

There’s a nasty smell coming from behind our washing machine, so we have to figure out if we want to try to unclog the pipe we suspect has a blockage ourselves or ask maintenance to do it.

I’m thinking about buying a bicycle. I’m a little afraid to ride on the road, but there are a ton of trails around here that go for miles that would be great for cycling. I’m generally a big proponent of walking, but some of these trails go for 30+ miles and are better suited for cycling. I’m not ready to fully commit yet but I am seriously considering it. I haven’t been on a bike in probably 15 years, but I think it would be a fun new challenge. I was thinking about getting some cross country skis, but it’s been so warm here (high 40s-50s) that I am mentally in springtime. Winter is dead to me, but if it snowed again I wouldn’t be mad. It is only February, after all.

In an effort to offset my casual depression, I’ve been going on a ton of hikes too. I went hiking to a waterfall with some of the girls from my snowshoe class (where we never snowshoed, by the way - not enough snow), and Ian and I did a bunch of local hikes and went to Antelope Island State Park (read on for photos). I’ve been hiking every weekend on Saturday and Sunday for the last 4-6 weeks before this weekend. That is great and fun, but makes it hard to get anything else done.

My best friend is getting married in November in Minnesota, and I’m her Matron of Honor, which comes with it’s own list of duties and responsibilities. All fun and exciting things, but it keeps you busy, that’s for sure. Not to mention planning our October wedding redo, which I keep forgetting about. I’m excited for it, but after already planning one wedding and already being married, it’s hard to get motivated to plan another one.

Ian and I have been addicted to white cheddar popcorn. Boom Chicka Pop is the best, but Skinny Pop will do in a pinch. He finally got a Play Station 5, so he’s been playing a lot of that while I watch reruns of Law & Order: SVU.

I think that’s it. You’re all up to speed now. Thank you for powering through my brain dump of life updates. Please enjoy these nature photos as a reward.

Here’s me at the waterfall I hiked to with the ladies from my snowshoe class.

The ice formed weird little bubbles.

Here’s a pretty neighborhood overrun with ducks that Ian and I walked in one weekend. For my local Howard County people, this is the Maple Lawn equivalent of Salt Lake County.

More pretty neighborhood. It has a man-made lake in the middle of it.

Antelope Island State Park is about an hour and 15 minutes from our house. There aren’t actually any antelope here, but there are bison. It has weird beach vibes in the middle of the mountains. The body of water is the Great Salt Lake.

The two blobs to the left and right of that tree in the middle are bison.

We did see a coyote walking on the frozen lake at one point, which was pretty neat.

Almost 5 miles and over 2,500 feet of elevation later, we made it to the top! The little grey box had a pen and journals in there for hikers to sign. Neat, huh?

Here is a bonus photo of Ian. Photo cred goes to his coworker who took this when they went snowboarding together a couple weeks ago.

Thank you all for your patience while I get my life together and my head together to post again. Thank you for reading! I do enjoy making the blog, and I appreciate that you enjoy reading it!

I hope you are doing well whenever and wherever you are reading this. I love and miss you!

Talk to you soon :)

Chloe