Well folks, we're reaching the one year anniversary of all things Covid. For a lot of people, spring break was the last normal week before things came to a halt. Last year for spring break we were definitely concerned about Covid, but we went camping with our friends. It was once we got back into cell service that we heard lots of announcements about things closing down. I've documented this year pretty well, so no need to digress.
Here we are a year later and there does seem to be a bit of hope on the horizon. With vaccines in full swing, case numbers have dropped a lot across the country. It's the kind of hope that leaves you a little leery, because we felt that way over the summer and it took a good 7 months to recover from that second wave of infections. Our state removed its mask mandate and opened businesses to 100%, which some people hate and some people love. I think the only thing I hate about it is that a state-wide mandate took some of the pressure off the individual businesses to deal with uncooperative customers. Now it's up to each business to set their protocols, and it can be really hard to enforce when the state no longer requires it. There have already been too many violent altercations over not wearing a mask in a store.
As we move forward, it is nice to feel good about traveling and being a bit more at ease about everything. For our Spring Break we decided to travel to another national park that was in the opposite direction of Big Bend. You can see our Big Bend blog post here. This time we headed East to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas!
Just like Big Bend, we rented an RV from Lackland AFB and had ourselves another awesome camping adventure. I can totally see us buying an RV in the future. I'm getting too old to tent camp, lol.
Driving to and from Arkansas was only meant to be an 8 hour drive, but when you're trailing an RV with Dan's Nissan Xterra, plan on it taking 12 hours at least. We had to get gas, a lot, and we couldn't drive all that fast. That leaves lots of audiobook time!
Traditional "we're on the road" picture
The boys love it when Carson falls asleep on them
A little arm wrestling while waiting for dinner
Cade has grown significantly since we were in this same type of RV for the big bend trip!
First, I want to tell you about our RV site. We decided to stay at Treasure Isle RV park, and picked a waterfront property. It may have cost a little more than the other sites, but it was definitely worth it. Our RV park in big bend was basically packing the RVs together like sardines. Here in Arkansas we could spread out a bit, have room to wander, have our own fire pit, picnic table and pier, and even had enough room to play cornhole! It was a little piece of heaven. Who knew Arkansas could be so pretty!
Alex spotted a crawfish!
The boys somehow always ended up on our bed...
One evening we played Uno the way the teenagers play it these days, and it lasted for like an hour! Glad to say I was the one to win and end the torture ;)
Can't be family time without games! This one is Space Park. We also played another new favorite called Sequoia
Living the RV life!
On our first full day in Arkansas we decided to explore the national park and go to a bath house. This national park isn't like any other one we've been to. It's basically part of the downtown area in Hot Springs. Like literally, across the street from the National park sign is a whole main street of shops and restaurants. You can drive through the park for free, and go up in an observation tower for a fee. There are multiple gift shops and visitor centers/museums with so much national park merch, it's kind of crazy. Some bigger parks we've been to have had way less! We like to collect a magnet, a postcard, a sticker for dan's suitcase, and a smashed penny. Exploring this national park was more like a scenic drive and some downtown shopping. There's one place in the national park that you can actually feel the hot springs without paying. Other than that you can choose from a number of bath houses on bath house row!
Here's the one spot open to the public to feel the hot springs
Can you spot the steam coming off the rocks?
Always climbing
Hot Springs, AK has a rich gangster history, with a massive museum dedicated to just that. We settled for a photo-op with Al Capone.
Ok, I know this is random, but in this gift shop, the bedazzled picture frames were filled with old pictures of Hillary Duff. What the what?
Behind the row of bath houses is this really nice promenade
Observation tower at the height of the National Park. It allowed for spectacular views of Hot Springs, AK, and served as a form of exercise for Dan and Cade who raced on the stairs both up and back down!
Alex insisted I include this picture because his favorite video game is called Earthbound.
We chose to go to the Quapaw bath house because it was the only one that allows the family to experience it together. The other bath houses offer individual treatments that seem pretty cool, but we wouldn't really get to hang out. The Quapaw has four thermal pools that are each a different temperature, ranging from 96-104. We spent a few hours moving from pool to pool and getting the long day of driving off the body. :)
We thought we had spotted Ted Cruz on another vacation from his job!
Reluctantly including this so you can see the cool knee rest that comes up on these chairs
Our second day in Arkansas we spent at Crater of Diamonds State Park. This was about an hour and fifteen minutes from Hot springs, and is a really neat place where you can dig/mine for diamonds. Anything you find you get to keep! As you can expect there is a whole community of people who are really into this and have all the special tools and tricks to make this successful. We knew going into that we wouldn't likely find a diamond, but what a cool experience! Dan and Alex did all the hard work, as I knew I wouldn't be up for it, and Cade was being a true teenager about this activity. I wasn't going to force him to dig in the mud, so the two of us hung out with the puppy, did some surface searching, chatted and Cade listened to his audiobook. I neglected to take very many pictures, but we rented some tools to try our best at following the process. After digging, dry sifting and wet sifting, we left with a whole bunch of 'gravel' that is drying out in our back yard to be sorted and searched for any treasure!
Pictures of mom sleeping might become a new thing, lol. Actually I think Cade was more interested in the spider on my hat.
One the way home we snapped a few roadside pics. Man, if we had stopped at all the weird/unusual things we saw on the roadside of this trip, we'd probably still be there! Here's alex with two of his favorite characters that were outside a motel for some reason. And then on the way to the diamond place I saw this fire truck sticking out of the ground, so I caught a picture of it on our way back home. They even had a mailbox that matched their fire truck but we didn't notice that until we had passed it.
Alex took this pic. I thought it was a pretty typical Cade look these days
And here's our haul! It's drying and about ready to be examined much closer.
Our third day in Arkansas we headed to Ouachita National Forest for some off-roading. This too was about an hour and a half away, and we explored the forest with Dan's Xterra. Unfortunately, the trails he had researched and decided to go to were actually ATV trails, not meant for commercial sized vehicles. So from where we were in the national forest we attempted to find a couple of other neat landmarks. I'm actually really glad we found Little Missouri Falls. It was a really short hike with a beautiful reward at the end. I really miss hiking. So to be out in nature without it draining me was really nice. Dan, Alex and I headed down to the water while Cade decided to climb some big boulders and then head the rest of the way up the mountain. (don't worry it wasn't too big) I loved being surrounded by the noise of the waterfall and the weather was just perfect. Dan and Alex had fun skipping and collecting rocks to skip later back at our RV site. Dan handed me a bunch of 'coin rocks' that I made a little cairn out of. I know these are illegal in some places, but i promise, these were about the size of a dime in thickness and the whole thing was maybe an inch and half high. It was not going to keep someone from going the right way on a trail, or distract from the beauty. It was off to the side, and fun activity in stacking, and it is now my favorite picture on my phone. I even made it my lock screen.
Oh! And Cade got some practice driving a manual too! He did way better than I did while first learning!
Yup, that's a picture of an ATV... no cars allowed
This is what happens when you make your own path to the top of a mountain. The next few pictures are from Cade's adventure to the top
This is Dan's crocodile, Wags, and he loves to off road
On our last full day in Arkansas we stayed close and explored more in Hot Springs. We spent the morning looking at a few shops that hadn't been open our first day there, and got a second round of cupcakes from Fat Bottomed Girls Cupcakes. They were obviously good if we had to get more of them just a few days later! We returned to the RV for lunch (and to drop off the dog), and then headed back downtown for our last big activity- an escape room! I am so glad we chose the company we did. They were great to work with, offered us a military discount, and had lots of other fun things to do on site while waiting for your room to be ready. We ended up doing two rooms because the story lines went together. The puzzles in each room were very different that ones we had encountered as a family before. They were challenging, unique, and fun. We escaped both rooms, even though it was pretty close on the second room. Yay! How fun!
We finished the first escape room with 21 minutes left! I think the second room was more like 10 minutes...?
This was a game called Human Zoo. We were locked in a cage and each had 4 buttons in front of us. The computer assumed humans were too stupid to work together and escape, so we had to solve a bunch of riddles. If you got too many wrong, you lost. We escaped! It was really fun.
They even had a huge arena and different robots you could battle with. How cool is that?
I loved the pacing of our trip and that we had a good mix of nature and touristy stuff. Every evening we had time to relax, shower, make dinner and enjoy a treat. Sometimes we had a fire, sometimes not. Not all of our meals required it. Dan will maybe disagree with relaxing in the evenings because of how much work he put into our fires. The first day we tried a fire it turned out the wood we brought from home was still wet enough that it wouldn't ever catch. Of course that was the night we needed a fire for dinner, so dan worked hard to get it hot enough to create some coals that would cook our meal. I even ran to the store to get some different firewood and it still wouldn't catch. At first we thought it was because the new and the old wood had gotten mixed up. So the next night for s'mores we made sure we only used the new wood and it still wouldn't catch!! Dan was beyond frustrated, having never worked so hard for a fire in his life. One of our RV neighbors had had a roaring fire going all night, and to my shock, dan went over to them and asked them if they had any wood they'd be willing to spare. Turns out it was their last night and they did have extra wood that they didn't want to haul back with them. Dan offered to pay them, or exchange our wet wood that could dry out by the next time they needed it, but they just let us have it. It made all the difference and we had a HUGE fire the rest of the night. I loved just sitting out there all evening. We told stories, did some truth or dare, made s'mores and then watched the coals glow until it was time to go to bed.
And a few last pics from our drive home. We stopped at Texarkana, a city that straddles the border of Texas and Arkansas. That post office behind us in the picture below is actually in both states!
If this isn't a result of Covid, I don't know what is. RVs cant go through the drive through, and the dining room was closed. Here's dan walking through the drive through, lol
If you were looking for Fate, I found it!
What a weird and awesome dog we have
Before we knew it, it was time to head back to San Antonio. Seemed like the perfect length of trip and allowed for a few days to recover before going back to work and school. Daylight Savings Time messed that up a bit though, darn time change.
Lastly I just want to document the ways that this trip was different for me because of my health. The week leading up to our trip was terrible for me fatigue wise. I'm usually the one to shop and pack and gather, but I couldn't do any of that. I made lists and tried to oversee things and keep myself from overdoing. Other notable differences;
Loading up the RV looked more like me sitting in the RV telling the boys where to put stuff.
Lists can only do so much, because my brain fog can be quite substantial at times, there were a good amount of things we forgot to bring. Like the whole carton of eggs, and the ground beef for tacos. I know for a fact if I was more like the Laura from before, that wouldn't have happened
Driving to and from Arkansas, i slept a lot in the car. I used to be a better helper with driving!
First day doing the bath house was great! Walking around the downtown, not as easy. After two shops I could feel that fatigue setting in. That's never a good sign when you're still in the middle of an activity and you feel it. I stubbornly and slowly walked the promenade all the way back to the car, but was totally unable to help with dinner when we got back to the RV.
Second day diamond digging I would've totally been up in the mud and participating!
A hike would definitely have been planned- it was so pretty there
I hated needing to sleep so much and missing out on things like games of cornhole and helping cook and chatting/relaxing
Walking to and from the bathrooms from the RV wouldn't be such a chore.
Getting home and unpacking, cleaning the RV, laundry, and all that jazz- holy crap. I may be recovering for a week or so! Sunday I was pretty much toast. I fell asleep soon after waking up on Sunday and slept in the afternoon after church. Sigh. So much ZzZzZzZzZz- mentally and physically!
It's hard for me to accept this as my new norm. I am glad that we were able to go on the trip. We can still create memories as a family. My boys can learn to be much more involved with helping, and I'm learning a different level of patience. Patience with myself. If I push it or force it, I pay for it later, and that means I'm basically out for a whole day. I'm still learning just how much to push and pull to feel productive, like i'm contributing, without lowering my overall baseline of activity. Even after taking a bit to write this, (haven't done the pictures yet) I'm feeling totally wiped. I appreciate all the prayers that have been said for me. Keep them coming, I may be on the verge of an explanation to this all.
I miss the good old days of just updating you on the quiet meanderings of our family. Lately it just seems like one 'unprecedented' thing is happening after another. As you can imagine, Texas really doesn't ever get much snow. In the 3 years we've lived here it has gotten cold enough for a few flurries but that's about it. They started reporting a major cold front coming through and the potential of snow. Then it was no longer a matter of if, but when and how much. The ENTIRE state of Texas was under a Winter Storm Warning (along with Oklahoma and Louisiana)! That's a lot of parts of the country that aren't used to getting that kind of weather.
At first it was really pretty. Us Coloradans weren't terribly concerned with any sort of emergencies because we're seasoned winter road drivers and even though 6 inches of snow was uncommon for Texas, it wasn't uncommon for us. But we quickly started to realize that the 'unprecedented' amount of snow, plus the wind-chill plummeting into negative temperatures was about to be a major problem. Did you know it had NEVER been that cold here before? Millions of Texans were without power, pipes burst due to homes not meant for this type of weather, and there were abysmal road conditions since the infrastructure isn't set up for good road clearance. I guess the power grid for the state of Texas was minutes and seconds away from a complete blackout which would have led to weeks and months without power.
We had a pipe burst in our garage wall near the exterior hose. We were able to shut off the main water to the house (a task in and of itself), and we went without water for 2 full days before getting approval to fix it ourselves. If we hadn't done that we'd still be waiting until Friday the 26th for our plumber to come. Even after the water came back on the whole of San Antonio was on a boil water notice for a few more days. We were lucky enough to keep our power the whole time except for about an hour. We did our best to conserve energy when we had power so as not to contribute to the overloading of the power grid. We kept our house at 64 and cuddled under blankets. School and work ended up being cancelled for the entire week as well due to the lack of water and power.
It quickly turned into a week-long staycation! I'm sure the boys enjoyed not going to school and sleeping in. But they didn't much enjoy living off of beans and spare ribs since the grocery stores were closed and then wiped of their supply quickly. We're still struggling to find some items, but hopefully now that the weather has returned to TX normal, so will the panic buyers.
Oh! And I forgot. This is what happened to our HVAC on Sunday as the bitter cold was settling in to San Antonio. I guess since our HVAC functions as AC and Heat, it was working as a heat pump and not able to keep up with the cold, of course. Thanks to the Facebook hive mind we learned that if we put it on an Emergency Heat setting it would solve the problem. Didn't know it existed because it had never been cold enough to use it! I was so worried our heater was about to break, it sure sounded like it might.
Dan got the first early morning pics of the snow. This was monday morning
Piled up against the front door
Yay! My weeds are gone!
Icicles in Texas? Yup. Lots of snow AND freezing rain!
Funnily enough, for awhile the boys had been working towards earning an Oculus Quest 2 and we awarded it to them for Valentine's Day. Perfect timing as they ended up having the whole week off to play it!
And, surprisingly, it wasn't just one storm that came through and stopped the whole state. Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning was all freezing rain. Wednesday warmed up enough to melt everything in the afternoon (causing more of people's pipes to burst), and then freeze that evening. Thursday it snowed ALL day! We basically replenished all the snow that had just melted.
This was Thursday afternoon the snow was back!
What a week. That week felt like a month, I swear. We are back to regular temps and recovering. I feel lucky that it wasn't any worse for us, because it definitely was worse for some of my friends and many other people in TX and surrounding states. In fact, my sister in Iowa had wind chills in the -40s. That's just plain dangerous. My dad in Chicago has had an 'unprecedented' amount of snow this winter. Each storm is dumping 10-12 inches each time, it's hard to keep up! I want life to calm down a bit, but I have a feeling we're living in the end times and these extremes will be more of the norm.
Oh! And a few alex updates to share. The first weekend in February alex wanted to try making his own pie crust and pie that everyone would enjoy. We found a recipe on Pinterest for a French Silk Pie from scratch and it was so delicious! Alex did the decorating himself. Awesome, right?
Also, Alex has continued with piano lessons this year despite the pandemic. He does an in-person lesson twice a month and a virtual lesson twice a month. This year the big competition was also held virtually. Alex had to record his two solo pieces back to back and submit them to the judges. He should have his results this week, but I thought I'd share the video with you :) I love how he plays! He so good at memorizing and performing!
How has the beginning of your year been? For me personally, I've had to accept that I can't be nearly as active as I once was. Determined to not waste my days away in front of the TV, I knew I needed some hobbies to keep my mind engaged.
Goal #1: Read more! I've never been much of a reader, especially with paper books. I decided to follow my husband's example and make more use of my time by listening to audio books. I'm proud to say I listened to 7 books in the month of January! It helped that the first one was during our road trip home, but truthfully this is more books than I've read in two years combined, so.... yay!
Goal #2: Spend less time on TV. I've already shared a lot of puzzle pictures with you, but I've found that working on puzzles while listening to my audiobooks is a great way to spend my time. Not all hobbies go with listening to books because I can find myself not focusing on what's being said. Here are the 3 puzzles I've finished this month.
Dan got me this one for Christmas as a memory of the boys trip he did back while we were living in Colorado. They had a great time visiting Devil's Tower, Badlands, Wind Cave nat'l monument, Wall Drug, Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore!
Have you seen my metal sign collection? This puzzle was perfect for me! I even have a few of these!
This puzzle I decided to complete without looking at the box to help! I enjoyed the challenge.
Alex attempted to pick the puzzle up and he was able to hold it long enough for me to take a picture and then even lay it back down on the table!
Goal #3: Church service. It was hard, but in late summer last year I asked to be released from my calling as Primary President while I focus on this shift in my life. I still want to find ways to serve in my church that may not be the way I'm used to. The first way is that I have a letter writing route instead of a physical assignment of sisters that I befriend and serve as needed. I've never had this assignment, and I have 4 sisters in our congregation that I write letters to. It would be awesome to hear back from them and form a friendship, but for now I share some of my life experiences and a spiritual message with them.
The other way I've found to serve in our church is to do family history. I'm particularly good with data entry, so the Indexing program is a great way to help. You look for different projects like WWII discharge records, land transactions or immigration records and you enter in the vital information to a database that becomes searchable for those looking to find connections to their ancestors! I attempt to index a little bit every day so I made a habit tracker in my journal to help motivate.
Goal #4: Learn something new! I saw a quote online that said something to the effect of- be brave enough to fail at something new. The first new thing I tried was with Alex. He wanted to try making a cheesecake and I had never made one either! He found a purely evil recipe that was chock full of oreos! Topped off with a white chocolate ganache and homemade whipped cream, we had quite the adventure making this delicious treat. It was rich and decadent.
The other 'something new' is a hobby I had no idea I'd love as much I do! I asked for a few things for Christmas to start down the path of brush lettering and calligraphy! My sister had already paid for and taken some online courses so she gave me access to those, along with some pens and tracing paper. I quickly fell in love and have been working at it every day (and buying more pens and paper)! I find it quite relaxing and challenging and interesting enough to keep me wanting to learning more. Who knows, maybe it's something I can turn into a business somehow so I can still help earn some money for our family. Here's a few things I've been up to this month with my lettering!
Drills and practices to hone your up and down strokes
Slowly learning how to add flourishes the 'right way'!
Alex has loved my lettering, so I made him a Spiderman quote
I hope to be able to keep my days full of these things to keep me going. I am thankful that we are in a position that I don't have to work and I've been able to let things go so that I can rest and recuperate as needed. I have plenty of days that the fatigue is too much and only a little of these things gets done, but it will always be there the next time to greet me and keep me feeling productive and sharp. What are your goals for this year?
