Thursday, March 20, 2014

Magical Kingdoms, Magical phones

I know it seems as though it has been forever since the last post here at the corner. It has. The reason for that delay is that everyone here at the house has gotten new phones, and now everyone is too preoccupied to get anything done. Alixa managed to keep her iPhone 4s for 2 years without breaking it, and rewarded herself with a new 5s. She chose the gold color, and just keeps rambling about how amazing it is to have an extra row of apps on her screen. Jarom on the other hand threw in the towel on his fight against progress. As many of you know, Jarom hasn’t ever had a smartphone. In fact, he didn’t even have text messaging enabled on his dumb phone. He claims that this was in order to save money, but deep down it was really because he was afraid that nobody would text him and he would have to face the reality of what a big loser he is. But a great guy at work offered to give him an old iPhone 4 for no charge, and he hooked himself up with a prepaid plan that only costs $25 a month, so his inner cheapskate left his behind in the past and has leapt into the world of emojis and pinterest and Instagram. Ironically, he now has unlimited texts and limited voice minutes, so he has become a prolific texter. He is like the Saul of Tarsus of text messaging.


When I last wrote to you all the crew was headed off to Orlando for a memorable week at Disneyworld. It already seems like ages ago, but it was an amazing trip. All of Jarom’s family was there, which is a lot of people. They were able to spend a day at Epcot, a day at the Magic Kingdom, another at Hollywood Studios and the last one at Animal Kingdom. Epcot and Magic Kingdom were the favorites, although the best single ride may have been the car stunt show at Hollywood Studios that came complete with a visit from Lightning McQueen. Bo was sobbing at the end because he didn’t want to leave. As anyone who has been to Disney knows, the rides are okay but the real treat is the general experience and the details. Every facet of that place is meticulously planned and designed to create a memorable experience. From the shows to the rides to the lines and the characters, it was one cool thing after another. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.







 









After a wonderful week at Disney Jarom had to come back to Dallas for work. Alixa decided to take full advantage of still having no job and no kids in school and headed up to Delaware for another 10 days. She and the kids were rewarded with snowfall after snowfall, which they turned into fun days sledding and making all manner of snow creatures. She got to see her east coast friends that we don’t get to see nearly as often as we would like, and a few new houses that some people have recently purchased. All that new house seeing only served to ramp up her normal level of house hunting and she has been in overdrive lately trying to get Jarom to approve the purchase of a new home. As she said at dinner last night, “I just can’t see how we are going to be able to fit in our house. It just won’t work.” Oh boy.





Upon her return to Texas Alixa was greeted with the news that we would once again be heading to a new ward. This time the stake redrew the boundaries of 3 units to make 4, and we are in the entirely new ward. The first week the only callings were the bishopric. The next week there were all the presidents, followed by the complete presidencies, and now we even have teachers and piano players and the like. It has been interesting. Alixa has handled this transition much better than the last one, which was famously terrible. When the announcement came down everyone immediately came to her to see how she was holding up. Alixa is apparently known across several wards as “the girl who cries when ward boundaries get changed.” She was asked to put together a meet and greet style activity the first week and it was a big success, and has now been called to run activity days for the 9-year old girls. We will miss the folks that we left, and we will be sad that we won’t be seeing them as much as we did, but we’ll be okay. The new ward is much smaller, which has been nice. Jarom and the kids showed up about 2 minutes late last Sunday and were still able to get a seat on a pew. That never happened before.



Jenna is playing soccer, and it is going as well as you could hope for a 4-year old playing soccer. She hops and dances and skips around the field. Sometimes she kicks the ball, and sometimes she even kicks it in the right direction. Her games are pretty fun to watch, not because any of the girls can play but because they are all about 60% clueless about what they are supposed to be doing. Bo goes to all her practices and plays with Jarom, and I think he is actually better at soccer than his sister. Emmy is crawling everywhere and seems to be very interested in walking, which she’ll probably be doing soon. She can go up the stairs, but hasn’t quite mastered going down, which is dangerous, especially because she is quick and can vanish instantly. She is as smiley and happy as ever, even though she spent a good part of February with the flu and an ear infection. Alixa is playing in a rec volleyball league, which she loves. Jarom hasn’t had a chance to go watch her yet, but you better believe there will be some video as soon as he does. Way to go, new old iPhone.

Kids eating limes. Always funny.