Summer Week 2: Pajamas and Swimming Suits

This is what the majority of our week looked like. 

We set up the swimming pool on Monday afternoon and the kids basically spent the rest of the week living outside.  I'm exaggerating, but not much. We literally made them a changing area outside. That way they could change from their clothes into their swimming suits and back again without wasting time in the house. There were days they didn't wear anything besides swimming suits and pajamas.

Oh and we also started reading Harry Potter 7. Our second week of summer was spent sleeping in, swimming, and reading Harry Potter. It was amazing!

There were a few other things worth mentioning so let's get going on the rundown for the past week.

First up is the fact that I accomplished my life long goal of being published in print! My piece about Floating the Portneuf River was published in the June edition of Idaho Magazine. Here's the link the the web edition, but it only displays the first few paragraphs.  https://www.idahomagazine.com/article/the-portneuf-paddle/

We'd arbitrarily decided that June 1st was Marcia's birthday. The kids were very excited about this. We talked about going to the store to buy her a present, but in the end the pool won out.  (Later I bought her a toy that she could destroy.)

The kids were so excited to watch me blow up the pool. We'd bought a pump that plugs into our car outlet. We bought it for pumping up our air mattress when we are camping, but it turned out to be very handy for blowing up the pool. Then we pulled the pool over to the grass and started filling it with the hose. 

The kids were so excited to jump in the water.

When they got to cold they would lay on their new beach towels. I'd bought the pool and the towels a few weeks earlier.

Brandon's sister Melanie and her family were in Idaho for the weekend and they stopped by our house on Monday night. They brought pizza for everyone. It was so fun to show them our house. We sat out on our patio talking for a long time. This is the first time we've really hosted anyone in our backyard. It was so fun to do that.

Here's a visual update on my garden. The peas started producing little peas this week. The kids loved eating them right off the vine. (Which is fine with me because that's basically the reason I grow peas.)

Tomatoes. We are doing some single stemming techniques I learned from MI Gardener.

Pumpkins. I really need to figure out a way to trellis these because they are about to take over.

Green onions.

Beans which eventually will start climbing the strings.

And lettuce and onions. We have so much lettuce right now.

And the pool again.

When Derrick and I got home on Tuesday morning Derrick ran in the backyard, stripped naked, put his swimming suit on, and jumped in the water. He didn't go into the house until at least an hour later. I realized we were probably going to need some sort of private changing area.

I found an old sheet and figured out a way to hang it from the tree house to make a little screen.

I found Brandon's grommet making kit and used that to put grommets into the corners of the sheet. Then I put screws into the posts. It's super easy to hook the sheet onto the grommets. And by the way, making grommets is super satisfying. I want to put grommets into everything now.

I also was dealing with a lot of wet kids running in and out of the house. This was quickly becoming super annoying. So I made a sign and put it up by the side door. Within 5 minutes of putting up the sign I heard Charlotte and Lydia run up to the door, stop, and then say, "Oh I guess we need to get our towels first."  Success!!!

All this pool time wasn't the only thing on my mind. This week was a flex-point in American Politics.

I literally don't have energy to neatly type up my feelings about all the political events that took place this week. It's a complex situation that is further complicated by being emotional and ever changing. And I'm already so worn out from so much that has been going on this year.

But here are a few scraggly sentences that hopefully sum up a little of what I've thought over the last 10 or so days. George Floyd's death from being knelt on by a police officer was horrific and unfortunately not a singular event. I was happy when the officers involved were arrested. But that being said, I don't believe all police officers are evil or corrupt. I think a lot of them are products of a flawed system.

A system that needs to be updated. And so I support the people who are protesting. I am conflicted about the rioting. I wish that these things could be done peacefully, but honestly I'm not surprised that we've reached a point where the people are rioting. It's the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected People of Color. We are also in the middle of a deep economic downturn that has disproportionately affected People of Color. And now there is more evidence of police brutality and a flawed system that disproportionately affects People of Color. I'm not surprised people are abandoning peaceful protests.

And then there were the things that happened in front of the White House on Monday night. I've never been a Trump supporter. But the fact that he had a peaceful crowd of protesters forcibly cleared from in front of a church so that he could do a photo-op - that's just downright scary. I've been encouraged by the way that so many military and political leaders have decried this event in the days after it happened. 

With all this going on I knew I had to do something. On Tuesday night I went to a peaceful vigil in honor of George Floyd. The vigil was held at Twin Falls City Park. It lasted about 90 minutes. There were about 500 other people there. There were several speakers at the event, including the Twin Falls City Police Chief. Near the end of the vigil everyone knelt in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

I didn't take any pictures while I was at the event. It just didn't seem right to be taking a selfie there. When I got home I saw this picture on Facebook took a screen shot.  You can also see more pictures at this link.

All day I'd been finishing listening to the Malcom Gladwell book, Talking to Strangers. Here's what I posted on Facebook when I finished the book that night. 

I started listening to this book 2 or 3 weeks ago. I picked it because I always like reading books by Malcolm Gladwell. I didn't really pay attention to the subject matter.

It ended up being surprisingly relevant.

The book starts and ends with the arrest of Sandra Bland. She was black and the officer was white. A traffic stop escalated to a shouting match that ended with her arrest. Three days later she committed suicide in jail.

Throughout the book Malcolm Gladwell tries to examine the ways strangers interact with each other - and how those interactions can go terribly wrong.

At the end of the book we circle back around to Sandra Bland. And by then it's clear that there are flaws on our society. Flaws that are causing harm. Flaws that are costing lives.

This book is definitely worth reading right now.

So yeah, there was some heavy stuff going on this week. I could write more and more and more about the topic.   But that's not the point of this blog post. So let's put all that aside for a moment, and get back to the pool.

The pool continued to be the greatest thing every on Wednesday.  I have the kids clean a room each day before they can swim in the afternoon. Wednesday's room was the bedrooms. They all got their rooms picked up and vacuumed and then they headed out for more fun. 

I put my swimming suit and new cover up on and joined them outside. But the pool water was too cold for me. I don't know how they stand it.

The twins got tired of swimming (surprisingly) so we ended up laying in the shade on the picnic blanket and reading Harry Potter. We read for a long time.

And then the kids played some more. I love this picture of all the kids jumping in the pool. Veronica's pose is perfect.

Later Lydia found this giant weed. She was really excited about that.

Oh and let's check in with my irises in the front yard. They were so pretty.

And here is a beautiful sunset. 

Our little rose bushes also bloomed. It's been so fun to discover the pretty things in our house.

On Thursday I got a text from the lawn guy that I'd asked to come aerate our lawn. He said he was coming on Friday Afternoon. So we drained the pool and moved it to the patio. When we refilled it the water was too cold for most of the kids. They came inside and watched movies. But every so often I'd look out there and see one or two of the kids playing.

I don't work on Friday's and so it was nice to relax with the kids in the morning. We ran a few errands and then it was back to the pool.

The girls have a lot of squishy toys that they love to play with. Here's Charlotte showing off hers.

The lawn guy came in the afternoon and aerated the lawn. It was so compact that in some places he only was able to get about an inch out of the ground. He gave me some recommendations for what to put on the grass to help it out.

That evening we went for a walk at Deirkies Lake by Shoshone Falls. There is a loop trail around the lake that we've never been on before. The trail started out wide and level.

The lake was so pretty.

Charlotte posed with the lake.

And then Derrick said he wanted to copy her.

There were lots of big rocks along the side of the trail that all the kids wanted to climb on.

There was also a cute cave.

Here's Veronica. 

We found one of the Hidden Lakes.

It was very cool looking. 

We named it Frog Lake because we saw a big frog on the edge of the water.

Then we found another of the hidden lakes. We named this one Mirror Lake.

When we'd started the hiked I'd wondered how the hike could be a loop trail. It didn't look like there was much shoreline on the other side of the lake.  Well there isn't.  Instead the trail goes up to the top of the large cliff/outcropping that separates Dierkies Lake from the Snake River. There were several sets of stairs that made it easier to get up.

The view was great! This is the view of the lake.

And here is the Snake River on the other side.

The trail was narrow and rough.

It was almost 8:00 and it was so hot. Veronica was not happy in this picture. She was complaining about being tired and hot and the sun was in her eyes.

We dropped down a little bit and were in an area with lots of fun climbing areas. This is called the Alcove. We'll have to come back and explore this area more.

Here's Derrick checking out a little cave.

We made it back to the car. Everyone was happy to be down with the 1.7 mile hike. But we also all wanted to come back.  Good thing we'd bought the $25 season pass so we can come back whenever we want.

We were so hot when we got home that we turned on the air conditioner for the first time this year. The forecast said that Saturday would be 20 degrees colder, but that just didn't seem possible.

Well on Saturday we woke up to cold weather. We spent most of the day inside.

Saturday was a productive yet also kind of lazy day. I went to the LDS Home Storage Center and bought some bags of wheat and powdered milk. I wanted more items like dried apples and onions but those were out of stock. I ran a few other errands like picking up the stuff for the lawn. Then I came home and put the food storage on our shelves. Slowly, but surely we are stocking up on things.

We also have quite a bit of stuff in our freezer.

Brandon ran a few errands as well. The jeep has needed new shocks and he bought those as well as a good floor jack and a creeper. Those will make working on the cars so much easier.

Veronica spent a good part of Saturday making her room a "museum."  She's been saying she wants to be a scientist so she was really excited to turn her room into a museum.  Around 5:00 she gave us all little scraps of paper that were our tickets. Then she let us into her room. 

She wore some construction paper on her head that was her special hat.

She showed us a collection of things and the sketches she'd drawn of those things.

She'd carefully laid other things out on her desk. 

Her main display was this solar system that she'd cut out and glued herself. Brandon had helped her tape them to the ceiling. She'd added a stick as a rocket.

The whole thing was very impressive. Veronica was embarrased whenever I praised her hard work or her creativity.  She told me matter of factly, "Just say wow."

Lydia made lots of fun yarn dream catchers while I read to her and Charlotte. We've had a good time reading Harry Potter. We've entered the really depressing camping chapters. I told the girls, "These chapters are hard because everything seems really hopeless. But things will get better I promise."  So we are taking them a little at a time and just working our way through them.

The most exciting news on Saturday was that my sister Hillary made it to 37 weeks with her pregnancy and had her baby!  Here's baby Penelope June. Her middle name always was going to be June, but for a while there it didn't seem like her birthday would be in June. I'm glad she's made it here healthy.

During the night we heard lots of thunder and had hail pounding on our roof. I was very worried abut my garden. When I checked on it in the morning all my plants were okay. A few had some little holes, but most of them were fine. Whew.

Today was even colder than Saturday. It rained off and on all day.  It was a good day for snuggling up relaxing.

My Aunt Vera told me that she wouldn't mind a phone call from my kids. So we called her on their phone. Derrick talked to her first for about a minute. Then Charlotte for maybe five. Then Veronica took the phone and walked all over the house while talking Vera's ear off. They talked about how Veronica is 6 and suddenly I remembered being 6 and talking to Vera. When Veronica was done Lydia took the phone and talked to Vera for probably 30 minutes. I'm not sure Lydia has talked to me for 30 minutes in one day.Vera was so good at listening to all the kids and hearing about all the things that are so important to them. When the phone call had finished it had been over an hour.

We finished the evening with more Harry Potter. Then the kids went to bed.

In theory we are swimming at the city pool tomorrow. Its open to families but you have to make a reservation. I bought a summer pool pass and reserved a time for us tomorrow. But I think it's going to be too cold to swim. We'll see.

I hope you have a great week and as always thanks for reading.