Early Morning Awake Up Call

 My heart still beats a bit erractically even thinking about it. The shock of coming out of a deep sleep to a blaring alarm screeching Fire! Fire! Fire! is never how you want to wake up. Especially at 1:30 am. My first thought was I couldn't smell smoke, but I was also still half asleep, my brain groggy. Greg jumped out of bed, quicker on the uptake than me. He rushed out of our room to find Kate standing right there. That girl is quick! She made it upstairs in seconds!

A few moments later, Enoch was standing in the kitchen asking what was going on. Greg was rushing around the house looking for a fire, Enoch and Kate were trying to find the detector that was going off (turns out it was all of them since they are connected), and I was running down to Guard's room because we hadn't seem him yet. He was curled up in bed, the blankets pulled over his head, and his hands covering his ears. Yeah, afterward we had the talk about what to do when the fire alarm goes off!

Soon we all gathered in the kitchen, realizing that there wasn't a fire, but a faulty battery. It did take us quite awile to figure out how to turn on the alarm. We finally realized it was the detector just outside the master bedroom and we had to rip it off the ceiling and forcably remove the battery. It wasn't easy. The next day, Greg replaced all the batteries in the dectactors with fresh ones. Hopefully, we have another seven years before we go through that again!

Ice Skating In Lehi

 Lehi is really coming up in the world - we now have an ice skating rink! It's small, it's temporary, it's full of divets, but it's ours and we couldn't wait to try it out. Thankfully we had a friend who organize a skate party with a bunch of homeschool friends. I didn't know that this party was on the last day the rink was open, so we were doubly blessed to snag a spot and go.

Kate loves ice skating and has been a decent amount. It showed. She glided over the ice and built up some speed (not a lot, it really was small and crowded). But, she always had a smile on her face.

Guard had never been ice skating before and it showed. In the beginning, he hugged the edges with his hand always on the fence. It didn't take long before he ventured out into the rink and had a great time. Before we left, he was pretty comfortable on the skates and was quite steady.

It was such a fun afternoon! We are hoping that Lehi has an ice skating rink next year!

New Shocks for the Jeep

 We love our Jeep! Greg loves his Jeep! Our family loves our Jeep!

But man, they are money pits!

That's okay; it has given us so many fun times together as a family. Plus, Greg never asks for much, so I'm coming to terms with the money being spent on this car.

For Christmas, Greg got new shocks for the Jeep. He and Gavin decided they could tackle this project on their own. I'm not sure in the beginning they realized what it would involve, but they did it! It took about seven hours longer than they thought, a few new tools midway through, and having to make adjustments to the instructions for it to work on our specific Jeep, but they did it!

Saturday morning, they started and completed the back and some of the front by midnight. They were hardy, working in the cold garage and dealing with frustrating setbacks.

Monday afternoon, Gavin came back down and they finished the front. Greg and Gavin both enjoy cars, but they haven't really taken on big projects with repairs and improvements. This was a pretty big project. Greg watched a lot of YouTube videos and they tweaked and adjusted when bars needed to be shaved off and things didn't fit quite right. They were happy to be done and I hope they are proud of their work. I'm proud of them! 

We can't wait for some awesome off-roading this spring!