How many times can I drive on Locust Street? - Summer Vacation Week 5

This is going to be a real quick mini-post. We are starting our Fourth of July Weekend Celebrations this afternoon and so I want to get the blog caught up before that. 

This post will cover Monday June 26th through Thursday June 29th. 

That's a small amount of time, but it's still been rather busy. I've actually already made a goal for next summer. That goal is to have NO THERAPY. So we are doing lots of therapies this summer with the hope that we won't need any therapies next summer. 

I'm glad I've been able to connect the kids to the resources they need. But oh my goodness I'm sick of driving them everywhere. Locust street is one of the major streets out of our neighborhood that connects us to the pool, Veronica's tutoring, Veronica's vision therapy, the music store, Winco, and a handful of other places. I drive on this street MULTIPLE times a day. I'm at the point where I get on Locust Street and then have to think really hard about where I'm actually going. 

So we are going to be recapping /counting how many times I drove on Locust street in a day

Monday:

Drove on Locust Street to take everyone to the pool. 

Actually this day was pretty low on the Locust Street count. I took everyone to the pool at 1:00 and then Charlotte and Lydia were already there when Jr Life Guard started at 1:30. 

I ran into my friends PTO Liz and Amanda. It was fun catching up with them. 

Brandon came to the pool around 2:00 so he could stay with Derrick and Veronica while I took Charlotte and Lydia to the orthodontist at 2:30. 

The orthodontist is also on Locust Street, but I saved myself a trip by just driving from the pool to the office. The girls and I changed into our regular clothes at the pool. 

And let's look at the pictures from Monday. 

Here's my pool pass math tracking chart. I made this back in 2020 and print it off every year. This was the 9th visit which is when we "break even" on the cost of the pool pass vs just paying for day passes. And actually we probably broke even earlier because this math doesn't factor in Brandon's visits. And it doesn't track that we got a discount on the Jr Life Guard class because we have the pass. 

In the evening I went down to our neighbors and picked Cherries. They were so perfectly ripe. Veronica came down and helped me for a little bit. 

I filled the sink with Cherries.  (And filled the next two days with pitting cherries.)

I stayed up pitting cherries that night. Lydia had taken a nap that day so she was up too. She made flag earing's out of palmers clay. 

Tuesday 

Tuesday started out with taking Derrick to OT which is not accessible from Locust Street - shocker!

Then I spent the morning trying to make a huge batch of cherry pie filling. It never really turned out. It was more like cherry syrup. But I canned it anyway just to be done with it. 

Then Veronica and I drove on Locust Street to get to Tutoring. 

Then I drove on Locust Street to take Charlotte and Lydia to Jr Life Guard. 

After Jr Life Guard Charlotte and I stopped at the music store to look at a violin. I'll talk about that more later. 

And later that afternoon I drove on Locust street for a bit to get to Veronica's therapy. 

So that's a Locust street score of 3.5 I think. 

Let's look at pictures:

My front flower garden is looking very festive for the 4th. 

I never planned this, but it looks so good. 

Look how tall the peas are. They are taller than me. 

And look at this peach. 

I don't know what these flowers are, but they are pretty. 

Veronica went outside and picked a whole bunch of peas. I was snacking on them while I updated my blog that evening. 

Brandon spent the evening pitting cherries and making a cherry pie. 

Wednesday

I drove on Locust Street twice - Once to take the girls to Jr Life Guard and later that evening to go to the store. 

I didn't want to drive back and forth from Jr Life Guard, but I was in the middle of cherries so I ended up bringing my cherry things with me to the pool. While the class was going on I sat in the car and pitted cherries for 40 minutes. Yes, this was getting to be a problem. 

I finished canning the cherries that afternoon. I'm SOOOO SICK OF CHERRIES.  But I'm excited about having cherries available this winter. 

That evening we went to Winco to buy things for our trip this weekend. I told the kids this was the closest thing they'd ever get to a yes day. They'd be like, "Can we get these cookies?"  and I was like, "Yeah, toss them in the cart."

When we got home we put things away and then had cherry pie. 

Thursday 

This was the day we were on Locust street the most. 

Derrick had OT in the morning. That wasn't on Locust Street, but everything else was and it was INSANE. 

First there was Veronica's tutoring. Then we went home and got the rest of the kids. 

We went to the music store to pick up Charlotte's violin. (I promise I'll talk more about that in a second.)

Then we went to Walmart to buy some last minute stuff for our camping trip. 

Then we rushed back to the pool for Jr Life Guard. (It was the last class.)

I dropped the stuff off at home and then took Veronica to vision therapy. 

So that's a Locust Street score of 5 or something. I kind of lost track there. 

There was also a lot of other stuff going on on Thursday. 

Derrick showed me his lost tooth that morning. It had been barely loose when he went to bed, but that has NEVER stopped Derrick. He had that tooth out by morning. (The dentist has assured me that it would be really hard for Derrick to pull an adult tooth, but I still worry.)

We spent most of the day prepping for our trip. It's a camping trip which should be easy for us except for one little thing - we haven't been camping as a family in almost two years. WHAT? Yeah, our last family camping trip was to Yellowstone in the fall of 2021. 

Last year we went to Nevada as our big trip and just stayed in hotels. And all our other trips were to Lagoon where we stayed with family. 

So this was a big deal. It took a lot of work to track everything down and get it organized. But we did it. By 9:00 PM the car was packed.  Oh and packing the car was actually kind of tricky because this is our first camping trip with the Shonda. We had plenty of room because the Shonda has more storage space than the Rhonda. But it was hard to know where to put things. We got it figured out on the 3rd try though. 

And now we can FINALLY talk about Charlotte's violin.  Really this is a big deal and shouldn't be tacked on like this, but there's been a lot going on. 

Sometime last year I applied for the Empowered Parent's Grant. It's made up of Covid money to help kids with school stuff to make up for falling behind during the covid years. Or something like that. I've been really fuzzy on this grant. I honestly don't even remember applying for it. I think Derrick's case worker sent me a link and told me it was a good idea to apply and so I just applied while laying in bed one morning.  I didn't put much thought into it. 

Anyway, applying for that grant has been one of the best things I did. We were approved $1000 per kid up to 3 kids - which is a fancy way of saying $3000. 

I use the money to pay for Veronica's tutoring, (She also has some sort of scholarship to help with the cost as well.) A few months ago, when I was approving an invoice for Veronica's tutoring I noticed that the local music store was now an approved vendor in the grant system. It specifically said that we could by musical instruments with the grant money. 

So I started to think about getting Charlotte a violin. She used my sister Emily's violin last year because I wanted to see how interested Charlotte was in the violin before we put any money into this hobby. She'd really enjoyed her first year of orchestra so it seemed like a good idea to buy a violin. 

So a few weeks ago I filled out the request form. And the music store got back to me right away. Then it was just a matter of finding a time to look at violins. We finally made it over there last week and looked at 2 violins. But there was another violin at another store that we were interested in.  So the store staff arranged to have it brought over. 

That violin came in, and we looked at in on Tuesday. Charlotte really liked that violin. We had to wait for the paperwork to go through. 

And finally on Thursday we could pick it up. Here's Charlotte with the violin. It's a Scherl & Roth. It will be a good violin all through high school and into college. It's beautiful. 

And that gets us caught up to today. 

Today's Locust Street Score is 1. Because I have to drive on Locust Street to take the kids to the dentist.  

But the next few days are going to have Locust Street Scores of ZERO. I'm so looking forward to this vacation. 

I'll tell you all about it when we get back. 

Thanks for reading. 

Changes of Plans - Summer Vacation Week 4

Alright here we are with my desperate attempt to get caught up before we go on vacation for the 4th of July. This is about Monday June 19 to Sunday June 25. The theme of this week was moving from Plan A to Plan B - and still having a great time. 

On Monday we were so tired. So very very very tired. We'd come home from Utah at a decent time the night before, but we were still recovering. It was really hard to wake Veronica up for Summer school. She was pretty itchy from all her mosquito bites. 

I was thankful that we'd moved Derrick's therapy to Tuesday so I didn't have to wake him up. 

I drove Veronica over to the school so that I could go to work as soon as I dropped her off. As soon as we got out of the car I realized that we'd made a huge mistake. It was FREEZING outside. Veronica was in shorts and a t-shirt. I was in pants and a t-shirt and I was cold. I couldn't imagine how she felt in shorts. Luckly the bell rang pretty soon so she was able to go inside. 

This was the Juneteenth so there wasn't going to be any mail and the bank was closed. But I went into work anyway because I knew that there would be some mail from Saturday to process. I was right, but I was so tired I just kind of stared at the remit and then was like, "I can do this tomorrow."

I got a few things done, but I was back home by 9:00.  I walked in the door and said, "Who wants to watch Catching Fire?"  And then my phone rang and it was the elementary school. I was like, "Nevermind, I think Veronica's calling me."

It was Veronica. She was so itchy she was having a hard time concentrating.  So I went to the school and picked her up. I told her I was proud of her for trying to go to school that day. 

When we got home we watched Avengers: Age of Ultron. I have a plan to watch most of the Marvel Movies leading up to Infinity War and End Game by the end of the summer. According to the schedule we should have watched Age of Ultron the week before,  but we didn't have time.  So this was us catching up. 

We had a good time with that movie. It has a lot of funny parts and the kids were really into it. Derrick really likes Iron Man so he liked everything he did. 

I tried to plan something for Charlotte and Lydia to do every week this summer.  This week they were supposed to be at their Bestemores house. But that was cancelled when she broke her leg. So we moved onto Plan B. Plan B was Jr Life Guard Camp. This is an 8 session camp held at the City Pool. The kids would learn basic water rescue skills as well as CPR and first aid.  I wanted the girls to take the course, but it was tricky to find 2 weeks when we'd be home. 

So when we had to cancel the trip to Bestemor's I was actually kind of excited because it meant that they could take the course. 

The first class was this day. I took all the kids to the pool. But I think it was the first time that we weren't super excited about being there. The temperature was only like 60 degrees. I didn't even wear my swimming suit. I brought our big picnic blanket and laid it on the grass.  I fully expected Derrick and Veronica to be shivering on that blanket before Charlotte and Lydia were done with their class. 

But I should never underestimate Derrick and Veronica's love for the water. They played in that super cold water the whole time. We even stayed until safety check at 3:00!  The kids told me the water wasn't that bad, it was the wind when the got out of the water that made them cold. 

Here's a view of my garden from that evening. It's looking so good. 

 

I laid on the couch on the patio for a long time that evening. It was nice.  Derrick likes to take the hose and flood a little part of the patio.  Then he plays with the water. 

Tuesday morning I planned to go into work so I could take care of all the things I didn't do on Monday. I even had Derricks' therapy changed from Monday to Tuesday.  But when I got to work I didn't have an office to work in. Both the intake coordinator and the office administrative assistant were there using the computers. I thought we'd worked it out so one of the computers would be free. But someone forgot.  I wasn't too disappointed though. I was like, "Oh I'll just come back this afternoon."

So I went home and watched Catching Fire with Charlotte and Lydia. 

I picked Veronica up from summer school and we went straight to tutoring. 

That afternoon was still cold and Derrick and Veronica weren't interested in going swimming.  So I took the girls to the pool for Jr Life Guard and then I went to work. Brandon picked them up. 

After work that afternoon I made all the kids go with me to pick cherries.  Our neighbors our out of town for the next few weeks and they said we could pick their cherries while they were gone. 

The kids reacted to this with various levels of enthusiasm, but the pictures are nice. Here's Veronica.

Here's Derrick. 

Charlotte

and Lydia. 

And here are the cherries.  These are bing cherries so we probably should have waited a bit longer for them to get darker, but I was anxious to get started. Actually I was probably a little obsessive. I had SO MANY things to do that week. But I was stuck on just wanting to can cherries. 

I had to run to work for a team meeting after dinner. As I was leaving Brandon and Derrick started working on replacing our garbage disposal. It had died the day before. Derrick really liked helping. 

And check out this lego amusment park the twins were working on.  That's Ferris Wheel model 3.0 or something. It would crash and break a little after this picture so they worked on making it even better, but it was pretty impressive here. 

Wednesday was another day of summer school, and therapy, and legos, and work. In the afternoon I took Charlotte and Lydia to Jr Life guard. I was so cold I literally wore my hoodie. 

When they were done they said they wanted to go back to the pool. So we went home and got Derrick. I didn't really feel like going back, but Brandon wasn't doing anything so he went to the pool with the twins and Derrick and I stayed home. 

Veronica stayed home too.  She had a big project she wanted to work on. She used her hot glue gun to glue rocks to a safe/jewelry box that she'd made out of a box. this was a HUGE project that took a lot of concentration. It was kind of the first proof that maybe her ADHD meds are working. 

Here's all the jewelry inside. 

She hot glued the back of the push pins to keep them from falling out. 

And here's what I was working on. I spent the afternoon pitting and halving cherries.  Then that night I canned them in medium syrup after the kids went to bed. 

At some point I also went grocery shopping that night with Charlotte.  So we must have done that after dinner and then I canned cherries around 9:00.

Thursday is the day I won Therapy Mom Bingo. Here are the spaces I filled in by the end of the day. 

• Veronica to Summer School
• Derrick to OT with Ivan
• Veronica to Tutoring
• All 4 kids to swimming
• Twins to Jr Life Guard
• Veronica to Vision Therapy
• And then went to work

I have NO IDEA how I did all that in one day. But here are some of the details. 

My friend/Brandon's frenemy, Ivan, was ready to take Derrick's insurance and I took care of getting a referral sent over from his doctor. So we were ready to start OT for Derrick's nighttime bed wetting. The time that fit my schedule best was 8:00 AM. So we dropped Veronica off at summer school and then went to Ivan's office.  

Ivan was so good with Derrick. He was really good at explaining to Derrick how his body worked and how that related to peeing. Then he talked about strategies to figure out when Derrick was wetting the bed and what to do next. It was all very "common sense" sounding, but it felt really revolutionary - especially since we've just been living with this problem for a long time. 

The biggest revelation came when Ivan examined Derrick's abdomen. He was kind of trying to see if Derrick might be constipated or something. He asked Derrick to take a deep breath and expand his belly.  Derrick couldn't do it!  Derrick could only breath with his chest. He had no idea how to breath into his belly. This was news to me. Ivan explained how being able to breath into your belly is really good for your pelvic floor and helps a lot with bladder control. So teaching Derrick to breath into his belly is something we'll be working on.

Back at home I watered the garden. Here are some pictures I took while doing that. 

I have a bunch of camomile in the front yard and it's kind of taking over. But I like it so it's staying. 

I love that these flax flowers are still blooming. 

Here are poppies. 

And here's my cherry tree in the back yard. 

It has CHERRIES.  These are the Rainier kind so they are supposed to be picked when they are pink. They were so good!

Veronica was pretty DONE with everything when I picked her up from school. She was not happy about going to Tutoring.  We went anyway and I told her tutor to go easy on her today.  She understood that Veronica has been juggling a lot. 

Derrick's beloved swimming mask broke after something like 3 summers. He doesn't like to swim without a big mask on his eyes so it was pretty imperative we buy him a new one. It arrived on Thursday and Derrick was eager to try it out.  

So we all went to the pool at 1:00.  Charlotte and Lydia were able to swim for half an hour before Jr Life Guard started. Derrick and Veronica also swam. It was still cold, but not as cold as it had been. I wore my swimming suit but I didn't get into the water.  Here's Derrick trying out his new mask. 

Veronica had vision therapy at 2:00. So around 1:40 she and I changed into regular clothes. We said goodbye to Derrick (who would live at the pool if he could) and waved bye to Charlotte and Lydia in their class. Brandon would come meet the kids at the pool a little later and stay with them until 3:00. 

Veronica and I went to Vision Therapy. We made it there in time which was good. But as we walked in I noticed something. Veronica wasn't wearing any shoes! Fortunately her therapist didn't care. 

We came back home and got there about the same time Brandon did. I went to work for a while. One of the things I try to do at work is to have insurance claims paid within one month of the appointment. I'm usually pretty on top of it. But over the last few months there were a bunch of claims that got stuck for various reasons. It's been really frustrating and I've done the best I could to move them along.  Well the past two weeks I've started to see some progress on all my old claims. It's been really nice to see them finally get paid/processed. 

Back at home we had dinner that Brandon made and then we all worked on cleaning up the patio and the back yard for something we had going on on Friday night. 

Oh and at some point I made strawberry rhubarb jam with strawberries from my garden and rhubarb from my next door neighbor's. I thought about canning the jam, but I was like, "Who am I kidding. This stuff will be gone in 2 weeks."  So I just did freezer jam. 

And here we are on Friday AKA the Last Day of Summer School. Veronica was so happy to be done. 

I went back home and got Derrick ready for therapy. When his therapist showed up I did a double take. She wasn't his normal Friday therapist, but I recognized her from somewhere. It dawned on me abotu 30 minutes later. She was Ivan's oldest daughter Dani. I texted Dani and let her know that her dad also worked with Derrick. Then I texted Ivan and said, "guess who Dani is working with today?"  He had a good laugh about that. 

For those of you keeping score at home here are the Illguth/Hardcastle's many overlaps. 

Brandon and Ivan both sell fish at the Living Nativity

Brandon and Ivan were in Guys and Dolls and the Music Man together

Katherine and Charlotte and Lydia were all best friends in the Music Man

Katherine and Derrick went to elementary school together this year.  

Ivan is doing OT with Derrick

Valerie is helping Ivan with billing questions

Dani is working with Derrick. 

I'm not sure we've ever been this tangled up with another family before. 

I went to work for the morning. Before I left I popped my head into the twins room. I said, "I will pay you $5 a bathroom if you clean the bathrooms while I'm gone."  They totally did it!

Afterwork I met up with Veronica at the school.  She was DONE!

We were expecting my brother Billy and his wife Becca and their kids to come visit us. They said they'd be there around 3:00. That gave us time to watch Ant Man. I totally fell asleep during most of the movie. But Derrick loved it. (I think he died of glee when the tank showed up.)

Billy and Becca and co did arrive around 3:00 as promised. We had Derrick's wooden train set up in the living room and William was in heaven right away. My kids were so excited to play with him and with Clara.  Veronica had a great time playing with William and even let him into her room to play. I think Veronica would make a great pre-school teacher because she's always so good with three year olds. 

We had dinner and then Becca wanted to go on a hike to the Perrine Coolee. She'd loved it on her last visit and wanted to see it again. 

It's been a while since I was there so it was fun to go there. 

It's crazy how close this is to our house. 

I love watching the water. 

It's so cool.

I also like these little drippy waterfalls. 

Here I am.

Its so amazing. 

We spent a long time there. 

And then we hiked back down. 

The kids had fun in the dust at the parking area. 

We had to get back home because we were hosting a campfire party. This was another Plan B. What was supposed to be happening was a Ward Campout at Nat Soo Pah. But it was cancelled because not enough people could go. I was super bummed about that because I was looking forward to hanging out with people around the campfire. So I decided to host my own campfire and invite people over. 

We were burning the last of the junky shed wood. 

Charlotte helped put together a "S'more-cuterie board" 

We had two family's come over and stay the whole night. Our neighbors also popped over for a bit. 

Everyone had a great time. One little kid ate all my ripe strawberries, peas, and some of the cherries. He told his mom, "Why did we even eat dinner before we came."  That made me pretty happy. I love to share my garden. 

Everyone left before it was fully dark, but we still had wood to burn so the rest of us stayed up into about 10:30. 

On Saturday we had a relaxing morning with Billy and Becca. Their visit was also a Plan B. They are moving to Vancouver in British Columbia. They were planning to travel up the Pacific Coast on a long camping road trip. But instead they decided to drive their more directly though Idaho. I'm sorry their amazing road trip was canceled, but I'm happy that they were able to come see us.  And, oddly enough, they are actually going to be my closest out of state siblings. (Vancouver is slightly closer than LA.)

We'd already cleaned the house in preparation for Billy and Becca coming. (I say we, but really it was Brandon and the kids while I was obsessing over jams and jellies.) So we didn't even have to worry about cleaning. 

Billy and Becca left around 10:00 and then we  . . . and then we . . . shoot. I'm not sure what we did. I know that eventually I ended up in the garage to take a break from everyone. I had a writing deadline for a Come Follow Me lesson plan for the Exponent. It was due on Monday, but I was able to get it done on Saturday. You can read it here. This is my third Come Follow Me lesson plan I've done for the Exponent and I think it's my favorite yet. I like that I can help with these. It sort of satisfies my itch to teach Gospel Doctrine. 

Brandon took the kids swimming. I was perfectly content to have a nice relaxing evening at home, but then Brandon started texting me about a birthday party we'd been invited too that evening. I was cool with going, but bringing something to share just felt really hard.  Brandon said he'd get something at the store when they were done with the pool. 

So Brandon and the kids came home from the pool. Brandon changed and then got his dessert ready. He'd bought donuts and he cut them into quarters and put them on a plate.  (They were a HIT and will be our signature party dish from now on.)

We drove out to Filer to our friends house. This family used to be in our ward, but they moved out to Filer last year. This was my first time at their house, but Brandon has been out there before to winterize their RV. 

The kids basically went from the city pool directly into the family's pool. 

The water was cold, but they had a blast!

There was also a hot tub they could get into if it was too cold. 

Veronica was also in heaven with all the animals.  Here she is with a cat named Milo. 

And all three girls loved playing with Barkley the golden retriever puppy.

Oh here's another pool picture. 

I had a great time talking with people and I'm so glad we didn't just stay home. 

We finally pulled the kids away from the pool around 9:30 and had another late bedtime at home. 

Sunday was another day at church where they kids were all super sleepy. It wasn't as bad as the week before, but you could tell that we'd had a busy weekend. 

After church we watched our Sunday school videos and then watched Apollo 13. 

In the evening after dinner we went on a hike around Dierkies Lake. 

It's been about 2 or maybe even 3 years since we did this hike. 

The lake was so pretty.

The sky started out overcast so that made the hike nice. 

Here I am. 

And guess what. I set a timer to write for an hour and I've already added another 30 minutes to it. And it's almost time to put the kids in bed.  So we are just going to stop with the narrative here and you can fill it in on your own. You know, lots of pretty stuff. Kids had so much fun. Blah Blah Blah.

Okay this does need some explination. It was raining on us for most of the hike, but the sun came out at the end. 

We finished the loop around Dierkies lake and then drove over to Shoshone Falls. They are part of the same park complex, but we are so funny about Shoshone Falls.  It's THE tourist destination of southern Idaho, but most of the time we are like, "Oh ho hum, why would we go see that."  

Well I felt like seeing it today because the flow for the next two weeks or so is supposed to be the highest all year.  

So here you have it.  Shoshone Falls. In all it's glory. (It really is a pretty waterfall. We are just spoiled living so close to it.)

And we did it.  We are caught up! All the way up! 

I'll hopefully have another post up in a few days and then we'll be on top of things before the big posts about our 4th of July weekend adventures. 

Thanks for reading!