It's been a good week! Jared took the kids to visit his cousin in St. George over the weekend while I spent a good chunk of time putting some desperately needed organizational systems in place and a few pictures on the walls. When the kids are home, it's pretty much survival mode 100% of the time, so it was very appreciated to be able to make some house progress. I will say, even if I unpack and organize 10 boxes (which is about what I did, since most of them were miscellaneous boxes, yikes), it feels discouraging to look around and still see a sea of boxes. It's going to take a few months before it feels like we're really winding down on the unpacking, and that's ok. Last time around it took a full 6 months (it's a task that is TOUGH with kids). Jared and the kids had a great time in St. George too. Jared's cousin has a 6 year old son whose energy matches Jack's impeccably. They played and played and played.
We are also making headway on our backyard plans. This is the year of exciting things that are giving me a logistical headache. Feels like each backyard decision holds a lot of weight when it's our forever house. It's also tricky because the whole backyard is on a steep slope, so leveling and retaining walls will be involved, and expensive. This year we're hoping to level and add retaining walls, plus a patio and a bit of grass. We'll see if there's room for a fence in the budget after that. If not, we will be adding the fence next year.
I ran out of cloud storage for my pictures, so today we get Jared's camera roll until I get to that!
