Summer 2024 - Week 7 - Heatwave

Last Sunday I took this picture of all the kids staring out the window. They were all intently watching a giant bumble bee fly around to different flowers. They named him Fuzzy and watched him for something like 5 minutes. 

That's the level of excitement we had this week. 

This was the first week in like a month that I knew what day it was each day. It was the first week we were back on a regular schedule. It was the first week I truly cleaned the living room. I've literally had my Easter/Spring wreath sitting between the couch and the bookcase since I took it down at the end of May. I finally took the wreath downstairs. (It's still not really "put away" but we are getting closer.)

This week was also a heat wave. Temperatures were at or above 99 degrees all week long. I've been scurrying out to take care of yard work in the mornings and then spending the rest of the day inside. (Hence why I finally noticed that the living room could use some attention.)

Let's take a quick look at some of the other things happening this week. 

Monday morning I went to work like usual - well sort of. I actually went in at 7:00 rather than 8:00 or 9:00. I wanted to go in early for two reasons. 1. I knew I'd have a lot of catch up on since I'd taken Thursday and Friday off. And 2. The AC in our office is broken and I wanted to get all my work done before my office heated up. 

I was write on both counts. There was a lot of mail that had come in on Friday and Saturday that needed to be processed. And the office did heat up around 11:00.

Normally when I come home the kids are all watching TV in the basement. So this time I was super surprised by what I saw when I walked in the door. Lydia was making cookies and Derrick was reading to her from a shark book.  

Derrick had also drawn a picture of himself scuba diving. He's been talking non-stop about scuba diving so I think Lydia was finally like, "Derrick, why don't you draw a picture about it!"  So he drew himself. He also drew Lydia getting chased by an squid. After I took this picture he added Charlotte getting chased by a Megalodon. 

With the heat wave our lawn was really struggling. I've been watering it as best I can, but honestly, watering Kentucky Blue Grass is kind of pointless in hot weather. It's a cool season grass so it's TRYING to go dormant in July and August. Also this time of year I kind of get to the point where I'm like, "We live in a dessert. Why am I using so much water on all this grass?"

So this time of year I'm basically playing survivor with my lawn. If parts of it start to die I'm like, "Well you must not deserve to be here anyway."

The latest casually was the area behind the garage. In all fairness, this area has been struggling without a heatwave. But this is the week I decided that trying to grow grass over here was pointless. I have plans for redoing this as a gathering space with a large fire ring. It will still have plants (including two trees!) But trying to do lawn over here is just dumb. 

So consider this the "before" picture for the transformation project I plan to start this fall. 

Derrick and I even took a can of spray paint and drew lines in the grass for where we are going to stop trying to grow the grass. Derrick had fun spraying it. We even marked where I want the trees and the firepit. I like to go out here and just stare at it and envision things. I can't wait for things to cool off so I can start digging. 

That afternoon Charlotte and Lydia had an orthodontist appointment. It was just a quick wire change. Every month they are like, "I think this is the month we get them off!"  And every month they are disappointed. I'm like, "Um I think the staff would give me a heads up if they are planning to remove them." But the girls still have their hopes. 

At home Veronica was working on a lego pyramid. 

Here's the final result. 

That evening we had Payton over again. Her dad is playing King Arthur in Spamalot with Brandon. Her mom is in The Importance of Being Ernest. The rehearsals will only overlap for about a month, but that's still a long time for Payton to be hanging out at the theatre during rehearsals. So I let Kerri know that Payton is welcome over here anytime. 

We were already planning to go to the pool when we decided to have Payton come over on Monday. So Payton came with us to the pool. She loves to swim and had a great time. 

When we got back from the pool we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kids really enjoyed that book. I didn't realize how faithful the Tim Burton movie version was to the dialog from the book. In some cases Derrick was able to recite the movie lines and it matched the book.

Tuesday was my morning off from work. I spent a lot of time in the morning weeding and watering. 

Later in the morning when Veronica woke up we worked on sewing a pillow. She's a little jealous of all the things Charlotte and Lydia can do on the sewing machine so I wanted to do a project with her so she could get used to all the little operations like putting the presser foot up and down and using the pedal. 

I'd bought a bunch of fat quarters at the beginning of the summer so we'd have supplies for projects. We took two of those and cut them into fourths. Then we sewed them together. 

Veronica did about 5 seams and needed a break. So I took care of the rest of the seams. But she was back when it was time to sew everything together. 

I'd promised Derrick that I'd take him to the Mall at 10:00 on Tuesday. (He's missing all the little adventures that he'd go on around town with his therapists.) So at 10:00 he was reminding me of that. 

Veronica wanted to come to. So we drove over to the mall and walked around. The kids had fun at the arcade, just sitting in the games and pretending to play. 

Maybe we'll come back and do it for real sometime. 

When we were all done with window shopping we went to Hobby Lobby and bought stuffing for the pillow and a glue gun because the girls had burned out the other two with all their crafts. 

We came home and stuffed the pillow. Here it is on the patio. It's so cute!

And speaking of the patio. Here's the door that Brandon made last week for my garden shed. It's also super cute. There's supposed to be a top half. But considering the bottom half took over a year to put in, I'm just happy with what I have right now. 

And check out all the Barbie clothes Lydia has been making lately. She's had a lot of fun with these. 

I went to work in the afternoon and that was kind of a mistake. It was so HOT!

I was prepared with the fan from Veronica's room. And I worked with my lights off, but oh it was still hot. Still I wanted to be there so I could use my two computer monitors. I didn't want to stay home and try to do everything on my laptop. 

I had a big to do list with lots of things on it. I was really hoping to get caught up on lots of back burner projects this week. But I lasted about 2 hours. It was just too hot. 

That evening we went swimming again while Brandon was at rehearsal.

Oh and speaking of rehearsal. Brandon has been not so secretly hoping to also get the role of the French Taunter. It was between him and another guy. Well the other guy didn't show up a few times so Brandon got the role. He is so excited. He was doing the lines for us and we were all laughing so hard. 

And if you need a refresher here's who the French Taunter is. 

And here's is other big role - Galahad's Mother.

He also has a handful of other small roles throughout the play. They are all having such a fun time putting it all together. 

Wednesday I went into Ivan's office for a while and worked on some things there. I'm nearly caught up on the difficult claims. That's a good feeling. 

When I came home I was surprised to see Brandon's car in the drive way. I went into the house and tried to find him. I kept thinking, "did it finally happen?"  His company has a TERRIBLE retention rate. In the nearly 2 and half years that he's worked there, there have been something like 80 people who have left or been fired - and there are about 75 employees. It's kind of a wonder that Brandon still works there. He's always secretly wishing to be fired and he's often talking about when to quit. There are two things that are keeping him there. 1. The pay is decent. 2. He LOVES the schedule. Going in at 5:30 is a little tough, but getting off at 1:30 is incredible. And I guess there's a 3rd reason. Morbid curiosity. He's been sticking around just to see what happens next.

I found him asleep in our bed. He hadn't been fired. He just had a random sickness. He was cold and achy and just decided he'd rather be in bed. So he came home and slept for something like 4 hours. 

At 10:00 I had Scripture Study. We are on Mosiah 18 which is kind of crazy to me. It felt like we were in the low teens for a long time and now we are solidly down to the second half of this whole thing. 

The kids and I counted and realized that the chicks were now 12 weeks old. So I took a picture of them. 

I wanted everyone to go swimming that afternoon. I'd hoped we could bring Brandon along, but obviously he wasn't feeling well. But I still wanted all the kids to go. Charlotte and Lydia were a little unenthusiastic about it. But I was like, "let's just go for an hour."  This was the only way we can get out of the house in this heat. 

So we went and as soon as they got there they saw the other set of twins there with their day care. (The twins are now old enough to be "helpers" with the day care so it's not really daycare for them, but I don't really know what else to call it.) So suddenly Charlotte and Lydia were so happy to be there. They hung out with Aurora and Gwen for almost 2 hours. 

That evening at 6:00 we went to my friend Uli's house to help with her move. We'd been told that the Elder's Quorum should be there at 6:00 and the youth should be there at 7:00. This was the youth activity for the week. Uli still had a lot to do in the house so Brandon helped take apart her bed and I went to work in her office. There was so much to do in the office - it was a little overwhelming. But I started putting things in boxes and gradually the shelves were getting emptied. 

Brandon had to leave for rehearsal at 7:00, but that's when all the youth and their leaders showed up and things really started happening. There was a whole group of people wrapping pictures. All the men started taking furniture down and loading it into the van. Other people started carrying boxes. My kids were really good about taking boxes from the house down to the moving truck. I was still packing the office. My friend Jenny came into the office and went to town on the closet. Uli had been kind of micromanaging my packing, but with all the things happening at the truck she stopped paying attention to the office. So we REALLY started packing. 

Remember this was the hottest day of the heat wave. It was something like 103 degrees that day. We were all drinking water like crazy. I had to keep taking breaks from the stuffy office to at least get some fresh air. 

At 8:00 I could tell that my kids were losing steam. The office was probably 2/3rd cleaned out, but I was pretty over it. Jenny was still hard at work and Natalie had joined us. So I handed off the baton and took my kids home. First we stopped at Smiths because I'd promised the kids a creamy if they would help for an hour. We all went into the store because no one wanted to wait in the hot car - even with the car's air conditioner on. As the five of us walked into the store I was like, "When was the last time I took all of you into a store?"  Normally I just take one or two with me. It was strange to walk in with these FOUR big kids. 

We ended up buying two packages of creamies so everyone could get two. I figured that I'd promised them 1 creamy for 1 hour of work. So 2 hours of work equaled 2 creamies. 

On Thursday I spent a lot of time getting everything watered really well. Then I went to work. I was not interested in trying to work in the afternoon again. So even though I normally work in the afternoon on Thursdays I changed things around and worked in the morning. 

That afternoon Veronica had girls activity. They were meet at the science museum on the college campus. So I took her there and dropped her off. Derrick was with me and we went to the grocery store while Veronica was at the activity. 

I'd meant to bring a cooler for our milk and other cold things. But I'd forgot. So when we got out of the store I made a makeshift cooler with one of my pink totes and a blanket. I lined the tote with the blanket and then put the milk and other things in there. It worked really well. 

We picked up Veronica and went home. Brandon had been on his own shopping trip with Charlotte and Lydia they were getting things for their backpacking trip that would start on Friday. 

We thought about going swimming, but we were kind of done with that of the week. We'd finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and so we watched the Tim Burton version of the movie. It was funny. 

Friday was kind of a strange day for me. I woke up feeling kind of depressed. It was mostly due to hormones. But knowing that didn't really make it better. 

I forced myself to go outside and weed a garden bed for about 30 minutes. I hoped that would make me feel better, but it didn't help. 

Then I came inside and realized that the living room was in need of a lot of help. Like sure the floor was picked up, but it was really cluttered on all the surfaces and edges. So I set a timer for 30 minutes and worked on tidying up the living room. I got all the books straightened on the book case. I swept under one of the couches. (I was looking for a library book, but only found shoes and a bunch of dust bunnies.) I'm not sure what else I did, but it all took 30 minutes. 

That helped me feel a little better. Maybe just a little bit more in control. 

Then I got ready for work. I left a note for the kids to clean a few things while I was gone. Usually I just have them do one thing, but this time I had them do four things. 1. Clean up the family room. (A lot of craft projects had exploded over the floor.) 2. Vacuum the living room. 3. Sweep the stairs. And 4. Rake up the dog hair on the living room rug. 

I was at work until 11:00. It was so nice to walk into the house and find all the jobs done when I got home. 

At 1:30 Brandon came home from work and he and Charlotte and Lydia did the last few things they needed to do before their camping trip. Then they left. They drove north to the Sawtooths. They went to a place called Fourth of July Lake. 

Derrick, Veronica, and I made pizza and then watched the first Mission Impossible. They've seen it before and especially liked all the Black Vault stuff. But when it was over Veronica was like, "Um, I didn't understand a lot of that."  I told her she wasn't alone. I said, "I didn't understand that movie until I was an adult." 

Here's our pizza and candy party. 

At 8:00 we went to the Stake Center and helped set up some rooms for a Singles Conference that my neighbor was in charge of. She was at another church for the Friday night portion of the event. We were at this church with a whole team of people to get things ready for the Saturday part of the conference. Derrick and Veronica helped me get the Relief Society Room ready for "Speed Mingling." And then the Primary room set up for games. Then we went to the gym and helped all the people in there with tables and chairs. 

We stopped at Smiths and bought ice cream to cool down after all that work. 

That night Derrick and Veronica stayed up late watching movies and fell asleep on the couch. 

On Saturday I woke up and took care of watering everything. Then I went to the Orton Botanical Garden for a Waterwise landscaping class that I'd signed up for. It's a three part class with one class per month for the next three months. This one was all about soil. Some of it was a review for me, but other things were new.

I got home a little bit after Derrick and Veronica woke up. We had plans to go to the Zoological Center in the mall for an activity. My body had decided to trade in depression for anxiety. My heart was racing and my arms felt all electric. I was okay enough to go to the zoo though so we went. 

The place was kind of overpriced, but hey when the forecast is 101 and you've already been swimming 3 times that week you sometimes have to pay a little extra for things to do.

Derrick LOVED seeing all the animals.  

There were so many fish and turtles. 

There were a lot of cool displays. Mostly there were reptiles and amphibians. 

And fish.

We all loved the tank with little fish that sucked on our hands.  

Here are a bunch of bugs. 

This display was fun. It had Jurassic Park models. 

And a squishy looking frog. 

Here's an alligator.

And snapping turtles.

Here are two tortoises "getting busy" as one patron put it.

Later, when the turtles were done we were able to pet them. 

The zoological center was interesting, but after 30 minutes we were done. 

We went and walked around the rest of the mall. We weren't the only people with the idea to go to the mall to get out of the heat. It was the busiest I've ever seen that mall. It kind of felt like we were back in the 90's. Derrick and Veronica had brought quarters for the gum ball machines so we went to those. 

Then we went to the library and picked up Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the move from 1971.) We came home and watched that. 

Well the kids did. I fell asleep. When I woke up I felt so much better! No more depression or anxiety. I guess my hormones just needed a long nap to reset. 

I made tuna noodle casserole for dinner. We played Picwits while it cooked. We all tied with 8 card each. That was funny. 

Around 7:00 Brandon and the twins came home. They'd had a great trip. Here are some pictures Brandon took. 

I think this is them starting out. The hike was about a mile. 

Here's Lydia. And look at Marcia. She's wearing a little saddle bag that Lydia sewed for her. 

After they made it to their campsite they also went hiking to another lake called Washington Lake. 

Here they are fishing. 

Here they are eating. 

They had such a good time. 

These girls love camping so much. They are already talking about doing a much longer trip with Brandon next year. 

And that basically sums up our week. Next week is pretty much the same. We don't have much going on during the week and then we are finishing off the week with another camping trip. 

Thanks for reading.