Post Play Life - Including Veronica's birthday

Spamalot ended two weeks ago. Those two weeks have felt both long and short. The play is over now so we've had a lot of time with Brandon around. Also we haven't felt the unrelenting presence of the play - which is both a good and a bad thing. In a lot of ways the end of the play has felt kind of like the times when Brandon would finish big Army trainings. We've had to learn how to reintegrate him into our lives again. 

Life without the play has felt much less busy. But of course we've still done many things. In the last two weeks we've celebrated Veronica's birthday (in like 5 different ways), I've done a ton of yardwork, and Brandon's job has FINALLY come to a resolution.

So let's recap everything. 

Week One (Sept 15-21)

Sunday September 15th was Brandon's last play performance. They did a matinee at 2:00 which meant he left home around 12:00. We had Stake Conference so we were just home "watching" it on zoom. But honestly, we were all so spaced out from the busy weekend that no one was paying much attention. 

After Brandon's performance they cleaned up and then had their cast party. He was gone until about 9:00. So we didn't see much of him that day. 

I'd picked all the peaches off of my tree and had big plans to do something with them. But I couldn't even decide what I wanted to do. Did I want to make jam? Or just slice and can them? My brain was too tired to even make a decision. So I didn't do anything with the peaches. 

I ended up sleeping a lot. Derrick wanted me to watch some odd movie call ChickenHare. For some reason he's REALLY into it and has watched it like 5 times. So I was trying to stay awake and watch it, but I zonked out after about 20 minutes. I woke up and the kids had finished the movie and were watching Chicken Run. (Another one of Derrick's movie obsessions.)

I've seen Chicken Run before of course, but I'd forgot how much it borrowed from the Great Escape. I told Derrick, "We should watch the Great Escape next week."  I have the movie on DVD so I showed Derrick. He was interested. 

Charlotte and Lydia had been working on another dragon puppet over the weekend. They made a Blue Dragon named Blue Jay. They put it with their other dragons. The red one is Pheniox (I think), The little green one is the first one Lydia ever made. It's name is Needles. They have another small dragon named Pins, but I don't see that one here. 

Here's Veronica in the picture for scale.

Brandon finally came home around 9:00. They always get fun awards at the end of a play. His was the "Swiss Army Knight" because he was always so willing to take on a part or or help out in anyway. 

Here's Derrick and Veronica sitting on the couch funny. This is kind of a recreation of how they were sitting earlier. I'd been like, "Whose arm is that?" Whose legs are these?"

Monday was a very normal day. All that rest on Sunday had paid off and I was able to get back into the swing of things on Monday. 

After work I canned the peaches. Last year I'd struggled with blanching the peaches. But this year I used my big canning pot to boil the water. Then I'd use the wire rack to submerge the peaches and then pull them out again after 1 minute. I dumped them into the sink which was full of cold water with ice cubes in it. The skins slid right off. 

Then I just sat and sliced the peaches into the jars. When they were full I topped them off with sugar water. Then I canned them. 

Charlotte came home from school and then sat with me while I was working on the peaches. She likes one of my podcasts called "The Big Flop."  It goes through famous flops like Theranos, Fyre Festival, Watergate, and then lesser known ones like Ashley Simpson lip-synching on Saturday Night Live or the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Charlotte likes it because its a funny way to learn some history and/or current events. So we listened to a few episodes together. 

That night Brandon and I had our second couples dance class. We learned the two step. As far as I remember, I didn't learn this one in high school. But we both picked it up okay. The rhythm is Slow Slow Quick Quick. I counted it out while Brandon led. 

A lot of the other couples really struggle with trusting each other as partners. The girl has to go backwards and depends on her partner to lead her around the room. For some reason I don't have a problem with this. I think it's for two reasons. 1. I really trust Brandon. 2. I learned social dance in high school with a bunch of 15-18 year old boys. We rotated partners a lot in that class and so I danced with like 8 different boys each time. And they all were decent at guiding me around the room. So I guess I just got over any fear of crashing into walls or the other couples. 

On Tuesdays I don't go into work until the afternoon so I try to go on a hike every morning. This time I walked from the Pole Line Road trailhead to Evel Knievel Jump site. 

The day was cloudy and the canyon looked really cool when I made it to the rim. 

Here's Pillar Falls where Brandon and I hiked down to a few weeks ago. 

I went to the overlook where you can see Shoshone Falls. They are more like Shoshone Cliffs right now. 

Here's some views of the trail on the way back. 

It's a really pretty hike. 

I went home and took a shower and then went to work. First I stopped at Castle Therapy and did about an hour of work getting some things straightened out there. There's been a situation with some odd billing that I just haven't had time or brain space to figure out since like May. (Funny how that coincides with the start of Brandon's play this year.)  I finally felt like I had time and enough concentration to sit down and figure it out. I was able to solve about half the problems and that felt so good. 

Then I went to Aspen Grove and took care of a bunch of things there. The two companies are work for are so different. Castle Therapy is just Ivan so in some ways its easier than Aspen. But since the company is a little older than 1 year old there are still things that need to be set up or tweaked. For example I only just put one of the insurance companies on EFT's rather than paper checks. 

I've been working at Aspen for almost 5 years and so nearly everything I do is very streamlined. I have set things that I do every day, every week, and every month. But it's so much larger. We have like 15 clinicians. Some are full time, some are part time, and some are students. There are so many situations that arise with their clients. I'm kept very busy keeping track of everything and making sure that the clients are paying their copays, coinsurance, and deductibles and that the insurance companies are paying the claims that we submit. It's a lot. And I LOVE it. 

I know how lucky I am to do work that I really enjoy. I'm also very lucky to have two very flexible job schedules with bosses that trust me to do my work. All the clinicians are so grateful that they don't have to do the nitty gritty of insurance billing. I'm happy to do it so that they have time to focus on their clients. 

That evening Brandon was at his CSI job for the last time in a while. He has a break in the schedule until the end of October. That was great - but I had a couple of things to do and places to be that evening. 

Veronica had her theatre class from 4:00-5:15. 

And Charlotte had registration for the Magic Valley Youth Orchestra at 5:00. 

So that was a little tricky. But thankfully I have a ton of friends from church who also have kids in Veronica's theatre class. So I just had one of them pick her up. 

And that freed me up to take Charlotte to the orchestra thing. 

When I was a teenager I was in the Granite School District's Symphony for all the kids in the school district. I was in their Jr High one and even that one was VERY PRESTIGIOUS. (Although as kids during the summer version we got into all sorts of hijinks.)

Anyway, I wasn't sure what this Youth Orchestra was like, but its held at the CSI campus in town and is only $35 a semester. So I figured Charlotte and Lydia should give it a try. I'd signed Veronica up for Theatre AND basketball so I didn't want Charlotte and Lydia to feel like they weren't getting any activities. 

Charlotte said she was interested. (She's always willing to give things a try.) Lydia was not interested at all. (That girl is so internally motivated that she never says she wants to do anything unless she REALLY wants to do it.) 

Charlotte and I went to the registration and . . . . . . . . it was interesting. I was not impressed by how disorganized the process was. They had no real way to track the process. When the lady asked if I'd paid the fee yet I told her I'd just pay online. I was thinking, "Charlotte's not sure about this, and I'm not paying the fee until we see how this goes."

Charlotte went into a room and played scales and some music. And then they were like okay see you next week. They have a couple different groups based on skill so no matter what she was going to make it into one of them. But the whole thing felt very anti-climactic. 

But we got free pizza and cookies so that was nice. 

In the end Charlotte decided she didn't want to be part of the orchestra. She told me, "I said I'd do it BEFORE I got 5 songs I needed to learn before the October concert. She was just fine with the Middle School Orchestra. And I was just fine with that whole thing because I hadn't been very impressed by the registration day disorganization.  

The kids watched a movie while I cut up apples to make Apple Butter. I'd made a batch the week before, but I'd been very disappointed by how small it all turned out. So this time I decided to do a double batch. I diced enough apples to fill two crockpots.

The kids went outside while I was still cutting apples and they sounded like they were having so much fun. So as soon as I was done I went out there too. 

Charlotte and Lydia had decided to start harvesting the carrots. I was like, "This is GREAT!"  But inside I was like, "Oh no, I'm not prepared for this many carrots!"

Derrick, Lydia, and Veronica all got nerf guns and started having a war outside. 

I needed to move more dirt from the fire pit, but I didn't have a great place to put it yet. So I started clearing out this area behind the shed. And look I took a before picture!

This area has been Charlotte and Lydia's little mud garden for several years. They would come out here and dig tunnels and pits and build little houses. They had a whole story for this area. It was always really cute. 

But this year they didn't play in it. So sadly that era appears to be over. 

A lot of the dirt was displaced from this area so I needed to fill it in. I planned to move dirt from the fire pit into this area. But first I had to clear it out. So I moved the big dead stump, and pulled up the mass of volunteer sweet peas. 

Later in the week Brandon helped me pull up the railroad ties that were in the middle of the bed. They were very rotten so we put them in the chicken run. The chickens have loved scratching the wood and pecking at bugs. One big piece of wood was covered in spider egg sacks. Those were like treats for the chickens. 

I didn't have work on Wednesday so I was able to work on the apple butter.  

I wish I'd taken pictures of every step, but here's what it looked like after I blended all the little apple chunks in the blender. I let this sit in the crock pot for another two hours and get thicker. 

I was still on a break from my Scripture study group. But Jori was free at 10:00 and she's been wanting me to show her how I can. So she came over and hung out while I showed her. It was really fun to talk with her. 

And look we ended up with 13 little jars of apple butter. 

Jori stayed until almost 1:30. After she left Brandon came home. I'd been thinking that I'd go to work sometime that afternoon and catch up on a few things. But then I realized I'd rather hang out with Brandon.  That was a much better choice. 

That evening Charlotte and Lydia went to Young Womens. They were doing some drawing/coloring with colored pencils for the activity. I was like, "You always complain they don't do enough art things at Young Womens. So you are going when they are actually doing an art thing. 

Derrick went to Young Mens too. They were having a planning meeting. A couple weeks ago one of the leaders had casually remarked that he wanted to take the boys boating. Derrick DID NOT forget that. Every week he asked me if they were going boating. So I was like, "Derrick, go to this activity and remind them about boating."  So he did. But for some reason boating never ended up on the list of activities for the rest of the year. 

On Thursday I went grocery shopping after dropping the kids off at school. It was the small week so it didn't take long. 

When I got back home I had time to take care of some things on the computer. One of those was to try to find a way to get free wood chips. When I'd been at the last water conservation class I'd asked the instructor where to get wood chips. He'd recommended talking to tree trimming companies. 

So I Googled Arborists in the area and emailed them. I also sent an online request through Idaho Power's customer service website. And I signed up for a service called Chipdrop where you can get chips delivered to your house by arborists that need a place to drop their chips. (That service seems to work well in other areas, but doesn't have much of a presence in Twin Falls.)

Then I went to work at Castle for about 45 minutes followed by 3 hours at Aspen Grove. 

That evening Veronica and I went to the Magic Valley Mall to the Rock Shop there. We'd been there just to look around during the summer. Veronica had loved everything so I told her we'd come back and buy birthday presents.  

So that's what we were doing.  She ended up getting a small Red Egyptian glass sphere, a large crystal with black and while flecs, some polished quarts, a bead of copper, and another little polished rock that I can't remember at the moment. 

Then we went to Target to find a super soft blanket. But none of the blankets were soft enough. So we went to Fred Meyers and found a very soft one there. She was so excited about her presents. 

Back at home Charlotte and Lydia were showing off the dragon puppets. 

These are so cool looking when they move. 

I still hadn't done anything with the carrots yet. They were just in a bowl that we kept moving around the kitchen. So on Friday morning I was determined to take care of them. 

I rinsed them off really well while the kids were getting ready for school. Then I set them on the counter to dry. 

When I got home from work I started working on the carrots. Brandon showed me how to set up the food processor and after a little trial and error we figured out the best way to feed the carrots in. 

I had two huge piles of carrots to work with.  Initially I'd been thinking of buying sand and storing them whole that way, but after reading about it a little bit I decided not to try that. We just didn't have a place that was cool enough for them. 

So I just shredded them and put them in bags and froze them. 

Brandon fell asleep after helping me get started. He planned to just take a 15 minute nap, but he slept the whole 2.5 hours that I worked on these. 

That evening I wanted everyone to hang out outside. I had a lot of little outside projects that needed to be done. Derrick is normally a little reluctant about going outside, but he was like, "I want to use the pick ax."  We weren't really planning to work on digging the whole that night. But Derrick was so enthusiastic that Brandon was like, "Okay!" 

So Brandon showed him how to use it. 

And then Derrick went to work. 

He used it for a very long time. Brandon worked on shoveling out the whole. I worked on moving the dirt. 

Here's Veronica relaxing for a little bit. 

Charlotte and Lydia painted the last of the tree house floor. We'd wanted to do this sooner, but we hadn't been able to find the ladder. Brandon had taken it to the Orpheum to help with getting up to the high platform that served as the castle. During a scene change we saw them move the ladder and I was like, "Oh that's our ladder."

Anyway, it was home now and so the girls were able to finish that project. 

Here they are playing in the chicken run. They love to go sit with their chickens. 

And the chickens love to be held. They are all so social. Here's Lydia holding all three. 

Did I mention that the chickens are laying eggs now. We get about 1 or 2 eggs a day from them. That's been really nice -especially since the price of eggs has gone back up. 

Saturday was the annual Brunch with the Ladies Ministry with Twin Falls Community Church. It was a really fun event. It was held at my friend Allison's house and she had everything decorated super cute. ( I don't know why I didn't take a picture.)

It was so fun to talk with my friends and make some new friends. 

When I came home Charlotte and Lydia were gone. They were spending the day with the other set of twins. They had a blast together. 

Brandon and Veronica had frosted cupcakes for her birthday party. She loves rocks so we kind of had a rock theme going. She also wanted mini pumpkins. So the cupcakes had chocolate rock candy and mini pumpkins on them.  

They were so cute. 

Veronica was having a movie night for her birthday party. She'd invited 6 girls to come watch Corpse Bride. 

We had pizza, popcorn, chips, cupcakes, and each girl got a box of candy like they would at at movie theater. 

They played Picwits, watched the movie, and then opened presents. We'd put on the invitation that everyone should bring a cool rock or crystal as a present. Veronica really liked seeing what they brought. 

This was the easiest birthday party ever. I just kind of let the girls do their own thing in the basement. I worked on baking the cake for Veronica's real birthday on Tuesday. 

Brandon had taken Derrick on an adventure so they were gone for most of the time. But they showed up toward the end. 

Charlotte and Lydia came home at some point too. 

The party ended at 9:00. But we were wired. Lydia even got out her cello and practiced some of her Halloween songs. 

Derrick and I worked on the invitation for his movie night in a few weeks. He's actually the one that gave me the idea. He randomly told me, "Mom, I want to have boys over to watch The Meg."  So we planned that out and then I was like, "Hey we should do that for Veronica's birthday. 

Anyway, I'm a huge believer in movie nights now. It was such an easy and fun way to have friends over. 

Okay, we've made it to the second week of this recapt it was Sept 22-28.

On Sunday we went to church. In the afternoon we watched The Great Escape. Charlotte, Lydia, and Derrick loved it. Veronica got bored and went up stairs and organized her gem and crystal collection. 

The movie was really good. Derrick kept saying, "That's like in Chicken Run!"  The whole movie I was like, "This Bartlett guy is so cool. Who plays him?"

At the end when his credit came up as Richard Attenborough I was like, "NO WAY."  I could not believe that he was the same guy who played John Hammond in Jurassic Park. But we looked it up on IMDB and it was him. It's been a week and I'm still in shock. I guess that means he's a good actor. 

The movie was nearly 3 hours so I knew we needed to get out of the house and do something after sitting that long. We all went for a little walk along the canyon rim.

We stopped at the Love Lock area. 

Local people put this up for other people to put padlocks on to signify their love. It's cute. 

At some point Derrick started reciting dialog from Pooh's Heffelump Movie. He do things like this from time to time. He and Veronica once recited the movie Clue for something like 45 minutes. 

I pulled out my phone and recorded a video of part of his recitation. You can hear him doing dialog for different characters with different voice inflections. 

Monday was a really good day at work - for me. 

It was a different story for Brandon. 

Brandon's work hasn't been great for a long time. He's thought about quitting for a while. In fact I'd encouraged him to quit right before Tech week so he could have a one less thing to worry about while the play was happening. But we decided it was kind of dumb to create an emergency when we didn't need one. His job pays decent and the schedule has been great (5:30 am to 1:30 pm.) So he stuck it out. 

On Friday the 13th he got into an argument with the other maintenance guy.  They've been without a maintenance manager for months so there's really no boss in the shop. They were arguing over who was doing what work. It was bad enough that Brandon thought about quitting right then. 

But everything seemed patched over by the next Monday. Nobody talked to him about the argument. And actually nobody was talking to Brandon about much. That workplace is super toxic and passive aggressive. He's worked there 2.5 years and he's seen over 80 other people quit or get fired - and it's like a 125 person company. So he knew the signs. Brandon told me, "It's like I'm the next one to get fired."  

Both of us were super surprised when he made it through the full work day on Friday the 20th. We'd thought for sure he'd be fired. 

Brandon wasn't sure what to do about he job. So on Monday he decided to fast. And well, he got his answer. 

He made a minor safety mistake and was pretty much immediately put on "Administrative Leave."  He was told not to come back into work until Wednesday. They even walked him out of the building like they do when they fire someone. 

When he told me all this I immediately switched into Lawyer Mode. I was like, "did they have you sign anything? Is HR aware of this? You need to call HR RIGHT NOW."

And only later did I remember to actually be empathetic and ask him how he was doing. 

Anyway, long story short, Brandon decided he was going to resign. He'd actually spent the rest of his "work day" applying for jobs. There's no shortage of need for maintenance mechanics in Twin Falls. The real question is getting a type of shift he'd like. (Lots of the shifts are for overnights with rotating shifts.)

He was told he'd have to meet with HR on Wednesday morning at 8:00 before going back to work. Brandon showed up to that meeting with nice clothes on. He was wearing regular tennis shoes instead of his steel toed boots. So it was pretty obvious that he had no intention of working. He was all prepared with a letter of resignation. 

Well he didn't need that letter because he was informed he was getting fired. It was pretty clear at this point that the hire ups had just been waiting for a reason to fire him and that the safety violation was the excuse they'd been looking for. 

Brandon turned in his keys and was out of there. He immediately came home and filed for unemployment. 

And both of us laughed super hard because that company now has to find someone dependable to open the building every day at 5:30 AM. Good luck with that. 

Anyway, I'm mostly okay with this. Brandon has been talking about leaving this company for like the last 18 months so it's nice that it FINALLY happened. And it's not like it was his always his dream to work for a company that made metal washers.   

But I am a little panicky. Things are very up in the air at the moment. We have savings, but that won't last forever. Brandon is super employable, but what kind of schedule will he have next? It's all very unknown. 

And then we also have the odd situation of now he has time to work on things that we've talked about doing - and have the money for doing. But should we be saving that money?  Like the pilot needs new breaks. Brandon finally has lots of free time to fix the breaks. We have the money saved up for the breaks. And so even though he doesn't have a job, we went ahead and dropped the money to order the parts. 

The same thing is going to happen with our fire pit. Like is paver base really the best use of our money right now?  But we actually have the time to put it in so we might as well do it now.

Anyway, it's all complicated and not everything makes sense, but we are doing the best we can. 

Let's go back to talking about Monday, okay. 

Veronica came home from school and she and I worked on frosting her cake together. 

We were still going with the rock theme so we made it look like a geode with lots of crystals. 

It was really fun to do. We used crushed up life savers and jolly rancher candy. 

We had a lot of fun. (Which is the whole point of these cakes anyway right?)

I loved how it turned out. 

That night Brandon and I had dance class. We learned the cha cha. 

Tuesday was Veronica's birthday. She'd been asking for her new fuzzy blanket all weekend. I joked that I'd come lay it on her at Midnight on her birthday. She was like, "Oh that sounds perfect."  So that's what I did. 

Brandon hasn't been home in the morning for something like 2 years. So he walked Veronica to school for the first time in 2.5 years. 

I took advantage of the extra time by watering my garden. Look at these pretty raspberries. 

Oh and look at the fire pit hole.  Brandon had taken out his frustration at being put on leave by digging out the last of the dirt on Monday afternoon. We still need to clean up the edges a bit and then it's time to start building up the bottom and walls. 

After the kids were all dropped off at school Brandon and I went on a hike together. We were near the bridge. 

Here's Pillar Falls again. 

When we were close to the bridge we watched some Base Jumpers. Then we noticed some rocks falling from the North Side of the canyon. At first it seemed kind of random, but more rocks kept falling. After a while we realized there were two people pushing boulders into the canyon. 

At first I thought it was just one guy and I wasn't sure if he was stuck and trying to get people's attention. So I called 911. I was like, "Um someone is pushing rocks into the canyon. I don't know if he's stuck or just dumb, but you should come check it out."

They said they'd send someone out. Brandon and I stayed to see what would happen. I tried to take pictures as evidence, but my phone wouldn't zoom in enough to show the people. They looked like ants from all the way across the canyon. I could only see them when they moved. They blended in when they stopped moving. In fact, that's why we thought there was only one guy at first. We saw what looked like a person wearing a green hoodie sitting down. Later we realized it was a backpack. 

After I got off the phone is when Brandon and I saw the two people below the backpack. We watched them push rocks in for a long time. When they were done they started climbing out of the canyon. One of them put on the backpack. We were like, "Where is the police car?"  

Then the "Response Vehicle" showed up and parked behind us. It was a truck pulling a big trailer. this is what they bring out when people get stuck on the canyon walls and they have to save them. I thought an officer would get out of the vehicle and come talk to us, but no one ever got out. I was like, "They are getting away! Come over here so I can point them out to you."

But after a little bit we saw a police truck parked on the other side of the canyon. The rock pushers/hikers were unknowingly hiking right up to where he was waiting for them. The guy in the response vehicle on our side of the canyon was probably talking to that police officer and directing him exactly where to go.  I'd been debating leaving so I could get ready for work, but I was super invested at this point. 

We watched the unsuspecting hikers go over a ridge and then get met by the police officer.  Brandon said, "It's like watching Cops from 500 feet."

After that there really was nothing left to do but leave. We went home and I got ready for work and Brandon went back to applying for jobs. 

Veronica had a very busy birthday after school. She had theatre class and then we had a quick dinner.  (She'd picked hot dogs and chili). Then she had her first basketball practice. Thank goodness its at our elementary school. And then finally, at 7:00 she was able to open her presents. 

She was excited about all of her new crystals and rocks that I'd bought her. 

And then we had cake. Here's a link to the video of her birthday cake. 

I didn't catch this on the video, but as soon as the candles were blown out Derrick said, "Now our ages are 11, 12, and 13."  This is true. But it also highlights Derrick's belief about birthdays. In his mind you turn your new age as soon as you blow out your candles.

Veronica is 11 now. Which is just crazy. I can't believe my baby is 11!  Where did the time go?

At some point over the last few days I'd received an email reply from Idaho Power about getting free wood chips delivered to our house. The reply had the phone number I needed to call to get it all set up. Since Brandon had more free time I sent it to him. He worked the phones and by Tuesday night he had the promise of the chip delivery on Wednesday morning. 

So Wednesday morning, before the kids went to school we had a truck come and dump a whole load of wood chips. This was VERY exciting. 

I walked Veronica to school (Brandon didn't walk her because he was at work quitting/getting fired.)  When I came home I took pictures of the pile. 

I was so excited about this. You can see that it has a little bit of steam coming off of it. The wood was already starting to compose in the very center. 

I dropped the girls off at school and then came right home. Brandon was home by this point and todl me the whole story of getting fired. I listened and then was like, "Okay, I'm going to go play with my bark chips."  

I'd assumed this would be a big project for the whole family that would involve borrowing wheel barrows from neighbors. But as soon as I did the first test load of chips I was like, "OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO EASY!"  I've been digging and hauling dirt all summer. Heavy, clay filled dirt. These wood chips were so light. They were easy to scoop up, easy to push in the wheel barrow, easy to dump and easy to spread. 

In less than an hour I had the whole back path covered in wood chips. 

At 9:50 I paused on the wood chips to do my scripture study group. We studied Mosiah 25 on the 25th of September. That was good and no one minded that I was teaching in grumby clothes and still kind of sweaty. Then I went back to work and finished the path before 12:00.

This was EVERYTHING I'd been envisioning for months. 

I took a shower and then picked Veronica up from school and took her to therapy. (My plan was for theater and basketball to take the place of therapy for the year, but Veronica says she still needs it each month.)

That evening I was back outside playing with the wood chips some more. This was a little tricker work. I wanted wood chips between the garden beds. But first I had to take up the bricks that were there. Then I had to take the old tired dirt from inside the garden beds and fill in the space where the bricks had been. And then I was able to put the wood chips down. 

The kids had all planned to go to the youth activities that night. And then the found out that Inside Out 2 was finally on Disney plus. So they stayed home and watched that.

On Thursday morning I put Brandon in charge of grocery shopping so I could stay home and do more with the bark chips. He LOVES grocery shopping so he was super happy with this arrangement. (

I worked on spreading chips down the center strip between the beds. Here's the before. 

And the after (the sun also rose while I was working.)

And I did the rest of the spaces between garden beds. 

I'm so happy with this. I'd liked the bricks on the paths, but they were always covered in dirt and then weeds grew between them. It was just so hard to get the weeds out from the bricks and I was afraid to use any anti weed spray since I didn't want it getting into the garden beds. It will be much easier to keep the weeds at bay with the wood chips. 

After working all morning I took a shower and then went to work.

Here's a cute skeleton decoration Veronica made at school. 

That night I didn't work in the garden because I had Bunco. 

A friend in my ward put together a Bunco group a couple years ago. I was invited to it about 18 months ago, but I couldn't go. I wanted to be invited again, but I didn't get asked and I didn't really know who to ask. So when I got asked this time I was like YES!!!!!

I played Bunco exactly one time like 13 years ago. My sister Lindsey had shown me how. But it wasn't exactly Bunco I was interested in. I just wanted to hang out with other women. 

And it was EVERYTHING I wanted it to be. There we 12 women there. About half of them were from my ward and others were friends of the people who played. It was so fun to move around the room and talk with each woman as the game went on.  

And it didn't hurt that I had an amazing streak of beginners luck. I ended up having the most wins, the most buncos, and the second most baby buncos. It was incredible. 

And then we hung around and talked and I'm officially in the group chat now and can come every month and I'm hosting in April. So YAY for Bunco. 

Also and this is totally something I already knew, but I realized it again at Bunco - I had my kids SUPER close together. Like a lot of the women there were talking about how they don't know if they are done having kids yet and they are seeing their youngest kids get older and wondering if they really want another baby. And I was thinking, "My youngest just turned 11!" And "I knew I was done having kids when I was 28, I haven't had to think about this for over a decade."  It's just really interesting how having 4 kids in 3 years played out. 

On Friday I went to work and did all the normal things. When I got home Brandon and I were like what do we do now? It was too hot to do any yard work. Brandon was like, "Do you want to watch a movie?"  I said that sounded like a great idea. 

So we scrolled through Netflix for a bit and decided to watch Jaws. I'd never seen it and it had been like 25 years since Brandon watched it. It was really fun to watch. Richard Dreyfuss's character was so fun. 

When the kids came home from school we had them help clean up the house real quick since we would be gone on Saturday and wouldn't have time to do it. 

Brandon made hamburgers for dinner. I went outside and started moving more wood chips. 

It's hard to see in this picture, but I got them all spread out under the cherry trees by the fence. 

On Saturday we went Geode hunting as yet another way to celebrate Veronica's birthday. Also it just sounded fun. Right before we left I swept up the last of the wood chips from the driveway into a small pile. I'd moved the whole thing by myself in three days. 

We drove out past Craters of the Moon and the city of Arco. Here's the view of the lava rock near Craters of the Moon. 

Brandon had looked up where to go to find Geodes' and had two places in mind. But when we got to the first place it had a sign that said, "Government Property, no trespassing."  So we couldn't go there. We were near the small town of Howe so we turned around and went there and stopped at the park. 

The kids were so excited to get out of the car. They ran to the playground. 

They played on the merry go round. 

And these big tires. 

We had lunch on the picnic benches. 

No one wanted to leave. We were a little sad about the geodes but honestly it was just nice to be on a little day trip. We hadn't left Twin Falls as a family since July. 

Brandon had the kids get on the merry go round and he spun them around a lot. I got on there for a little while, but it made me sick. 

After a few more spins on the merry go round we decided we were ready to go. 

So we drove back to Arco and then followed Brandon's phone GPS to the other spot that was supposed to have geodes. 

This took us down a dirt road. 

That turned into a scarier dirt road. 

It was okay, but about 3 miles from our destination we came to a rut that we knew the minivan couldn't do. 

Brandon had everyone get out of the car and then he backed up the van to a spot where he could turn around. He didn't want us freaking out in the car while he did all that. 

Then he was like, "Well we might as well look for geode while we are here."

We were right next to a creek and his instructions had said the geodes would be on the creek bank. So everyone went looking for the rocks. 

Here's Veronica. 

And charlotte. 

And everyone.

Derrick and Lydia. 

And there the van safely turned around and parked. 

Brandon had a hammer, chisel, and a little pick. He cracked open the rocks. They were pretty. 

But no geodes. 

The kids had fun cracking open rocks. 

We found lots of cool ones. 

After a while we started driving back to Twin Falls. We all agreed that even though we didn't find any geodes we'd still had a good time. 

Brandon had been jokingly calling this the First Annual Illguth Rock Hunting Expodition. So we talked about other places we want to go. There's a place several hours away called Crystal Park. And the spencer opal mine is also an option. 

We'd kicked around the idea of going to Craters of the Moon, but by this time it was like 2:30 and like 85 degrees outside - not exactly a recipe for a fun time at Craters of the Moon. So we decided to do that another time. 

So we drove home. Charlotte and Lydia had been invited to hang out with the other set of twins so they were anxious to do that. Brandon took care of getting the kids where they needed to be and heating up burritos for dinner. 

I was like, "I'm already sweety and dirty I'm just going to do some yard work."

So I was inside for like 2 minutes to scarf down a couple burretos. The rest of the time I was outside. (By the way, all this solo yardwork is very fun for me. It's my "me time" after Brandon spent 5 months at play rehearsals.)

I decided it was time to move the compost. So I took the big plastic ring off the compost and moved it over to the area behind our shed. There's a lot going on in this picture. There's the dirt that I'd moved from the hole. There's the dried up sweet peas that I'd put on top of the dirt so the seeds would fall out and reseed the area. And in the shadow is the black plastic ring for the compost. 

I dug out the dirt from the old compost and sifted it through a wire mesh. Any big pieces went back into the compost ring. All the loose compost went into the garden beds. I took terrible pictures but you can see the bed in the back is full of compost. The bed in the front only had one little dump so in theory you can see that it's a different color. But it ended up kind of washed out. 

Anyway, the point is that this was A LOT of work. Like three hours of scooping, sifting, moving, dumping, and repeat repeat repeat. 

It was totally worth it to see the beautiful soil go into the beds. But oh, so much work. 

And I didn't even make it through the whole pile. Here's what's still waiting for me to sift. 

I finished a little before dark on Saturday. I put away all my tools, and then took a shower. I was in bed around 8:30. I took care of some things on my computer, talked to Veronica for a while, and read a book. I was asleep before 10:00. 

And that gets us to today. I'll save today for next weeks recap. 

I'm happy to be caught up again. And good thing too because October is going to be BUSY. I made my usual todo list of all the big things in the month. There's a lot in October. But it's going to be really fun. I'm looking forward to it. 

Thanks for reading.