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My husband and I splurged a little bit this weekend. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but this weekend, the stars aligned, and we purchased a hot tub for our backyard. It will be delivered in three weeks. I’m so excited for the joy it will bring into our lives. You might be thinking, It’s just a hot tub. What’s the big deal? To me, it is a lot more than that.

When I was a kid, my parents put a hot tub in our backyard. This was a big splurge for them and not something they would have purchased if it had not been for the fact that our backyard neighbors, the ones with whom we shared a chain-link fence on one side of our yard, purchased one first. They bought a wood heated, cedar hot tub. My parents saw how much they enjoyed theirs and decided to purchase one for our family. The fact that it was wood heated and wouldn’t cause an increase in the electric bill probably sealed the deal. They had a porch built for it in the yard with a lattice privacy fence around it. They also had a wooden walkway built from the hot tub to the back door of our house.

We got so much joy out of that hot tub. I remember the cedar smell. I remember my mom building a fire in the wood stove that was behind a fence divider inside the hot tub. I remember waiting for the water to heat up so we could go in, and I remember putting hose water in it when it got too hot, and we had to cool it down.

It felt like such a luxury. We could be outside in the middle of a Montana winter in our bathing suits. We would be so warm that we would get out and roll around in the snow, and then get back in the tub and laugh and laugh. When it was extremely cold outside, we would get our hair wet, hang our heads upside down over the side of the tub, and then take pictures of our frozen hair standing straight up on our heads.

When I was preparing to write this blog post, I had a picture in mind from those days of my sister and my cousin (I think it was my cousin. It’s hard to tell with all the hair in her face). They had come in from the hot tub when it was ice cold out and had done the trick with the frozen hair, and someone took a picture. I knew it would be a long shot to find that old photo. I have thousands of pictures in my craft room closet, my pictures, my mom’s pictures, and pictures from my husband’s family. It’s a disorganized mess. If I could put my hands on that picture, it would be a miracle! It must have been meant to be because I found it in the first box I searched. We had so many fun memories from that cedar hot tub.

As an adult, I have had hot tubs on the back porches of two homes I have owned. When my daughter was young, she had fun memories of having a hot tub on her back porch. I have pictures of 12 little kids crowding into that four-person tub. They had so much fun, and I can still hear the laughter.

My husband Hank and I have been married for almost 14 years. The house we first lived in together was under 1000 square feet and really didn’t have space for a hot tub, and we didn’t have the budget for one. We bought a bigger house in 2019, and since then, we’ve dreamed of a hot tub in the backyard, but we’ve been busy paying college expenses for our daughter, so it still wasn’t in the budget.

Now, our daughter is in her last year of college doing her student teaching. We recently received an inheritance that gives us a little more space in the budget. We don’t want to waste that money, and we want to be responsible with it, so we’ve only spent it on necessities so far like tuition, car repairs, and removing a dangerous tree in our yard. But this weekend, we bought something for us. We already have a concrete patio in the yard where it can go. We just have to upgrade the electrical in the backyard, and our new hot tub will be delivered in three weeks.

Our daughter will be home for Thanksgiving from school. She’s been nagging us to buy a hot tub for years. It just wasn’t in the cards before now. She’s so excited to get to use it when she’s home.

I know I will use the hot tub a lot, probably every day. Every February we spend about five nights in a cabin near Glacier Park. That cabin has a hot tub on the front porch, and I spend at least an hour out there every morning. I love to drink my coffee out there (or mimosas) and just enjoy the beauty and peace and quiet of that place. I also like to read my book out there. I’m usually back in that hot tub again at night. It’s a great spot for no screens and good conversations.

I have a particular aversion to cold. I have Raynaud syndrome (self-diagnosed). When I get too cold, the tips of my fingers from my middle knuckle up turn pure white, kind of like a dead hand. The bottom lower part of my fingers looks red, and the tips turn pure white. Then as it goes away, it gets all tingly and painful. I’ve read that there’s nothing really to do about it but to avoid getting too cold. That’s sometimes hard to do in Montana in the winter. This syndrome is also connected to arthritis which runs in my family as well. I already take hot baths often, so having this hot tub will be helpful in keeping my core body temperature warm even when it’s freezing outside.

I also work in a school building that does not have a good heating system. If one side of the large building (my side) is warm, then the other side of the building is 90 degrees. This has gone on for years now. Usually what ends up happening is that the heat gets turned off, so the other side of the building doesn’t have to be miserable, meaning my room and those in my area are freezing. I’ve purchased a space heater for my room, and some months I teach in my winter coat, but those measures don’t help much when it gets really cold. I come home every day exhausted from just trying to keep my body warm all day. A hot tub will be nice for those days, and I can always hope that this will be the year that the heating system gets fixed.

Another perk of having a hot tub in Montana is that it gets dark here for many months. We don’t see the sunshine much, but when it is sunny, now I’ll have another way to enjoy being out in it, even when it’s cold outside. Soaking up Vitamin D, even in the wintertime, is something I’m looking forward to as well.

So, as you can probably tell, I’m a little excited about our new hot tub. I’m looking forward to opportunities for good conversations, relaxation, and more outdoor time because of this purchase. I’m excited for my daughter and her friends to enjoy it when she’s at home visiting. It’s more than just a hot tub. It’s an opportunity for more happy memories for my family. That is the real value.