Notes for my sister

A few years ago, I asked Norm for an umbrella for Christmas.  On grey days, I crave sunshine  and bright colors.  So I asked him for a beautiful rainbow umbrella, and of course he said yes.  I love it, and it's come in handy more than ever lately.  Amber has a rainbow umbrella too.  This happens to be one of my favorite photos of our little girl. Back in July when we were house hunting, it was super hot and we knew Texas would have a blistering summer.  But I wasn't expecting so many rainy, cloudy days.  Everybody here says this is unusual, that normally it doesn't rain this much.  But just for kicks, let's compare: In a normal year, Utah gets about 16-20 inches of rain.  The higher number includes snow on the mountain benches.  It's a desert. In Dallas, TX during the last two years they've had about 35-36" rain each year. But after I got here, between: August 11- August 31:  2.99 inches September 1-30:  12.69 inches October

Thoughts on Houses This is my first post from Texas.  The blog lives on.  August was a whirlwind, September we started settling in, and now it's October.  Most of the boxes are unpacked.  Just last week I found the box that had cookbooks in it, and that makes me pretty happy.  I still haven't made whole wheat bread or cookies since we got here, but maybe I'll do that soon. We spent a lot of time this summer thinking about houses, getting ready to sell our house in Traverse Mountain (in Lehi, on the northern edge of Utah County), and brainstorming on what we'd need in a house in Texas. On the way to Texas, we drove south through Colorado and spent the night at Mesa Verde.  We found the Far View Lodge inside the park and stayed up high on the mesa.  The night sky was pitch black away from the city lights, and the weather was at least ten degrees cooler up high.  I loved it.  The next morning we learned a lot about the Native Americans who lived there.  A man ga