Summer Vacation Weeks 6 and 7: Downtime

I really want to be writing about Cousin Camp that happened from July 17-21. But I still haven't written about July 5- 16th. So we are going to go back and zip through those days really fast. 

And it should be fast because they were some of the simplest days of the summer.  June had been all about doing things. July was all about resting. 

We got back home from our Bear Lake Trip at 1:30 AM on Wednesday July 5th. That meant that the actual day of Wednesday July 5th was a recovery day. 

I also called it a Lost Day. And a nothing day. I'd made sure that we had nothing planned that day. Basically it was a day dedicated to laundry and resting. 

But Brandon and I still had work so I guess it wasn't quite a nothing day. I'm not sure how Brandon got himself to work at 5:30 after getting home at 1:30 am. But he did it. 

I had high hopes of going into work at something like 6:00 AM. But in reality I didn't make it there until like 9:30. I had to check the deposits that had been done while I was gone and I had to send billing statements for the beginning of the month. Somehow I got it all done, but it was a rough morning. 

Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty much nothing. And that was nice. Here's a picture I took of sweet peas growing in the kids garden/digging area. 

 Okay no for Thursday July 6th. I got up early to water the garden and took this picture of how tall the peas were. It's kind of hard to tell what's going on here, but that board is about 6 feet high. And the peas have nearly reached it. 

Derrick had been to the animal shelter with one of his therapists and he wanted to go with me. So I'd put it on the calendar for Thursday morning. And since it was ON THE CALENDAR we couldn't just back out of that. So even though I was kind of tired and not really in the mood I took Derrick to the animal shelter. 

He LOVED showing me the kitties. He was so comfortable with them all. But this one, named Roger, was his favorite. 

Derrick played with the cats for a long time. 

And then he came home and had runny eyes and sneezed for a long time too. I knew he was a little allergic to cats, but this was next level. It was so bad that at one point he had to take a bath and we had to wash his clothes because he kept getting cat hair in his eyes. So yeah, we are not getting a cat anytime soon. 

In other news here are the peas and strawberries someone picked from the garden. 

That evening we had a Relief Society activity at the park. I brought along most of the kids and they played really well while I chatted with other ladies. I found out that the Young Women's president grew up in Georgia with my brother in law David. It really is a small world. 

Okay now for Friday July 7. The big news for Friday was that Brandon and Charlotte and Lydia were going to a family reunion camping trip for Brandon's mom's side of the family. I'd planned on all of us going to that until I found out the dates. As soon as I found out it was the weekend after our Bear Lake trip I was like, "Oh, that's not going to work."

I knew I'd be tired. Last time we went to that camping trip/family reunion was the weekend after we'd moved into our Twin Falls house. I'd spent the entire weekend trying to take naps. My main memory from that reunion was taking a nap on the sandy volleyball court at the campground. I was not interested in repeating any of that. 

So the plan was that I would stay home while Brandon took all the kids to the reunion. But then Veronica burst into tears when she heard that she was going camping again. So I said she could stay home. Derrick also stayed home, though I can't remember the exact reason why he didn't want to go. 

So anyway, Brandon and Charlotte and Lydia went to Utah for the camping family reunion and I stayed home with Derrick and Veronica and did NOTHING. 

Like NOTHING. 

We were so tired. I didn't even have it in me to make much for dinner. I'd bought French bread and we put tomato sauce and cheese and pepperoni on it and cooked it for like 10 minutes. That was dinner.  

We watched so many movies between Friday night and Sunday afternoon. I lost track of them all, but I know we watched Indiana Jones 1 then Indiana Jones 4 (It's a decent movie if you go in with -50 expectations) and then Indiana Jones 3. 

The only remotely productive thing I did was give Derrick a haircut. It ended up shorter than this, but I stopped here so I could take a picture and show him that he looked like his cousin Knoxx. 

Oh and I watered my garden because of course. Look how pretty these daisies are. 

Meanwhile Brandon and the twins were on more of an adventure than they bargained for.  On their way down to Utah Brandon got a call from his mom. She was telling him that her brother had just found out that their campground had been closed by an avalanche earlier in the spring. No one had let them know so it was quite a shock when he went to get the campsite ready and found everything closed. 

This obviously messed up the plans.  The camping trip was cancelled. But they were able to put together a dinner for Saturday night at a park near Brandon's parents house. 

Brandon and the twins ended up going to his parents house and sleeping out on the brand new deck. And then they went hiking on Saturday and then had a great time with family at the dinner on Saturday. 

I was so happy I'd followed my instincts and stayed home. I would have been absolutely miserable with those changes of plans.  

On Sunday I took Derrick and Veronica to church. Sacrament meeting went fine, but we ran into problems with Primary. Brandon normally goes to Primary with Derrick because of some incidents earlier in the year. Since Brandon was out of town I needed to go with Derrick. But I normally pick up Veronica after class and take her to Relief Society with me. Since I'd be with Derrick that meant that I couldn't pick up Veronica. I figured it would be fine. We could just all sit together during Singing Time. 

Well that didn't quite work. When I came into the primary room Veronica was in tears. She was basically having a panic attack about Singing Time. Don't ask me to explain why Veronica hates Singing Time. I'm not entirely sure about it. But she hates it. And even being in there for a little bit set her off. 

So we went out into the hall to calm down and ended up just going home. 

I'd been planning on taking Derrick and Veronica with me to a social that the Choir director was doing for the choir, but Veronica was really upset from her panic attack. So we stayed home and watched more movies until Brandon and the twins got home. 

On Monday July 10th we were much more into the swing of things again. We had all the same therapies and appointments as usual, but we didn't have anything big happening that week. It was actually a really simple week. 

On Monday afternoon we all went to the pool. It was the first time all summer I actually wanted to get into the water. The week of the 4th of July had been rather cool - temperatures hadn't really gone over 90. But now they were in the high 90s and going into the 100s. So the water felt amazing. 

I ended up running into so many friends at the pool. PTO Liz was there and so were Natalie and Amanda from Bible Study. My friend Kori was also there. She's in the primary at church and she had lots of good ideas for how to help Veronica feel more at home in Singing Time. It meant a lot to me that she would spend so much time thinking about Veronica. (The Primary President had also reached out.)

That evening I went over to Ivan's office to help him with the billing for his new OT business - officially. I'd been helping as a friend, but he'd reached a point where he wanted to bring me on and pay me.  He was felling really overwhelmed and discouraged about some of the billing issues he was having. I was able to dig in and look at some of the issues and make a plan. 

On Tuesday morning I worked on Ivan's stuff first thing in the morning. I was able to make a phone call and figure out why a claim was rejected - turns out it was an easy fix. And I was able to make another phone call and figure out that things weren't as screwed up as he feared with another insurance company. 

The kids slept in until after I finished that second phone call. They'd ALL slept until 9:00.  I couldn't believe it. Veronica NEVER does that when I'm trying to work on my projects. Ivan says he's seen a lot of miracles as he's started this business.  I told him that Veronica sleeping in until 9:00 was definitely a miracle he could add to the list. (He counts my totally random interaction where I offered to help him with his billing as a bigger miracle.)

In other news let's look at pictures of what Charlotte and Lydia had been up to for the past little while. They had rearranged the basement and unceremoniously took down all three doll houses. They'd moved the lego table over to the area where the doll houses used to be and they were constructing a huge amusement park on it. 

They'd moved the two big doll houses out to the garage. The third one was returned to its original form as a shelf. Lydia painted it. Now they are keeping legos on it. 

Here's the amusement park. 

Charlotte strung up lights along the midway. 

Veronica has also been hard at work with many projects. She made herself a drum set out of tin cans. It's kind of amazing. (And also hard to see among all her other creations in her room.)

Oh and look at Lydia's drawing. I don't know why this is the only drawing I have of her's because she is ALWAYS drawing dragons and they all look way cooler than this, but I guess I was trying to show that she'd learned her art style from the Wings of Fire Graphic Novels.  You can't really tell, but her free hand drawings look just like the illustrations in the books. 

The girls bought more battery operated lights and strung them on the Ferris Wheel. 

This is Ferris Wheel attempt 8.7 or something. It's pretty amazing. 

Let's see what else was going on . . . . .oh yeah Trivia night. The library had a trivia night on Wednesday evening and I really wanted to go. 

I asked so many people to be on my team, but they all said, "Maybe next time."  So I ended up bringing Brandon. It was a fun date. There were only three teams so we all joked about how we were already the top three winning teams.  

We did well, but ended up coming in third. (We would have been second, but the lady who was in third bet all her points on the last round and vaulted to 1st place.) 

We won the card game Exploding Kittens so we were pretty happy. 

On Thursday I started a project I've been dreaming of for a while. I started digging out a flower garden bed in our side yard. I was motivated to do this for a couple reasons.  1. I wanted to plant some climbing morning glory on the side yard. And 2. the elders quorum president had dropped off some big logs from a tree branch that had fallen down in some ones yard. I'd asked for the logs for this project and when they showed up I figured it was time to get started. 

I worked on this in the early morning and in the evening for a couple days. I'm in love with how it turned out. 

I don't know the context for this picture. But I love how all the kids are together in it. 

I think everyone was just relaxing together.

Derrick had a poster that talked about how to make a solar oven. He's wanted to make the solar oven for ever, but we had to wait for the days to be hot enough.  So he was happy when I said it was finally hot enough to do it. 

He was so good about following all the instructions to put this together. But unfortunately the hotdog never actually cooked.  So that was kind of disappointing. 

On Friday afternoon Brandon and the twins went camping AGAIN. They'd wanted to go camping in the Sawtooths and had penciled in this date at the beginning of the summer. So even though this was their 3rd consecutive camping trip in as many weekends they were happy to go.  

Derrick, Veronica, and I had much more energy than we'd had the week before. We actually made pizza AND cookies.  We still watched movies, but not as many.  And I spent time on the side yard on Saturday morning. I got everything finished and planted seeds that would hopefully grow. (The jury is still out on the Morning Glory doing its thing this year.)

Here's a bunch more garden pictures. 

We started to have ripe cherry tomatoes.

Here's a long view of the garden.

This is a volunteer sunflower that is looking pretty good and so I just pretend like it was part of the plan all along. 

The cucumbers liked being trained up the trellis. 

The tomatoes like their supports too.

Here's the giant 6 foot tall pea plants. People have asked how I get them so tall. The secret is to buy pea seeds that come in packages that say they will grow 6 feet tall. 

The blackberries were starting to flower. 

They are growing so well this year. 

And the summer harvest of raspberries was starting. 

Here are some more volunteer sunflowers. 

Brandon and the girls came home that afternoon. They'd had a good trip. They'd seen two moose across the lake that morning. 

That night after we put the kids to bed, Brandon and I went to the movie theatre to watch Mission Impossible 7. I love going to see late movies with Brandon. 

We had a really good time watching that movie. At it was over before 1:00 which was better than I expected. 

On Sunday we went to church. Veronica went to her Primary class, but she made sure to come with me during Singing Time. 

After church some of the primary presidency came over and talked to her about things that she can do during Singing Time. Some ideas are to help take roll and to sit with the adults. We'll try those. 

We also packed our suitcases after church.  I'd been doing laundry all weekend so we could be ready to pack. The kids and I were headed off to "Cousin Camp" that evening. Brandon had to stay behind because he had to work.

We didn't really rush out the door though. It was like 105 degrees outside and I didn't feel like driving across southern Idaho in that heat. So we hung out as a family all afternoon. We had dinner together. 

And then around 6:30 the kids and I got everything packed up into the van and we started driving down to my sister Emily's in Utah.  But that's the beginning of another blog post. 

Thanks for reading.