Day 27 & 28: Heber City, UT

Day 27

Today is not going to be an exciting blog post. It was a housekeeping day. The kids did school (without much incident) and Jordan worked. The RV park here is requiring people to block off the laundry facilities for two hour increments so I had eight washer and dryers all to myself. I did ALL the laundry. We met an eighth-grade math teacher who teaches virtual one week and in-person the next. On the weeks she teaches virtual, she loads up her camper and goes somewhere else for the week. It’s interesting meeting so many people whose circumstances are allowing them to be more mobile. I wonder how much of this mobility will stick around when things go back to “normal.” The evening was dinner, more I Love Lucy and bedtime. This was truly a run of the mill day which are completely necessary to have on this type of trip.

Day 28

Another day starting with Zoom calls. Being completely transparent, there are days I think we should have homeschooled on this trip, but that thought is usually around 6:30 a.m. when I’m trying to get the kids on their morning Zooms. I let them skip one morning Zoom a week. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m letting myself skip the morning Zooms once a week.

The kids are doing well with school this week. Hudson has a lot of instruction, assignments and tests this week as we near the half way point through the grading period. I need to find a bookstore nearby to buy Lucy some more books, but I’m proud of how they are doing this week. During what I decided was PE, the kids wanted to practice cartwheels. I don’t remember learning how to do a cartwheel so it’s hard to explain how to do it. Thanks to I’m sure what was my stellar example and a few youtube videos on how to explain a cartwheel to kids they got a lot better. I’m sure the fellow residents of the RV park also got a chuckle watching a 39-year old mother of two cartwheeling.

After school, I told the kids we were going on a hike and you would have thought I told them they were going to watch me perform long division. They complained so much about it that in my head I was thinking, “I don’t even want to go anymore. They are going to complain the entire time and it won’t be fun at all.” But we pressed on and took a 10 minute drive to a nearby trailhead. The hike was an easy two mile loop and once they were there, the kids were fine. At the end they even said they were glad we came. This trip has been fun, but I also recognize that a lot of what we are doing is so our kids can look back and say, “Wow, I’m glad we took that trip. I’m glad I hiked in Utah. I’m glad Mom and Dad ‘made’ us do stuff we initially didn’t want to do.” The full appreciation of this trip won’t happen until they are much older and I’m ok with that.

The landscape in Utah was beautiful. There were sage bushes everywhere. While we were out, Jordan started working with Hudson on getting his Woodchip badge for scouts. They talked about knife safety, the different types of pocket knifes and perform tasks with a knife to see if Hudson was ready for his own pocketknife. The lessons continued when we got back to our campsite.

While the knife lessons were going on and I was zoning out a bit, our neighbor came out of his camper with his family and we had the following conversation:

Him: I saw a sticker on your trailer. Are y’all from Texas?
Jordan: Yeah. Are you from Texas?
Him: Yeah, we live in Austin
Jordan: I grew up in Austin.
Him: I grew up in Houston.
Me: I grew up in Houston. What part of town did you grow up in?
Him: The Cy-Fair area
Me: I went to Cy-Fair Schools.
Him: What High school did you graduate from?
Me: Cy-Creek
Him: Me, too.
Me: What? No way! What year?
Him: 1999
Me: WHAT!? SO DID I!!

How crazy is it that our camping neighbors are a guy I graduated high school with and and his family?! We didn’t know each other in high school (I think our graduating class was around 560 students), but I can’t get over what a coincidence this is. He and his wife have three kids close in age to our kids and they played well together. We are all here for the next several nights and I’m so thankful Hudson and Lucy have someone to play with when school is over and playtime starts.

The kids were up too late playing so they went to bed dirty and tired. In the grand scheme of things, a late night of carefree playing in a field with kids is just what they needed. And I (oops, I mean they) will be skipping their early morning zooms tomorrow.

Until next time…

Sarah