Summer Vacation 2025 - Week 4 - The Camps Continue

This week was a continuation of last week in a lot of ways. Charlotte and Lydia continued drivers ed, Derrick attended a camp, Veronica continued with rehearsals for Matilda, and Brandon and I saw another community theatre play. 

But first we have a back up and talk a little bit more about the play we saw last Saturday. I was rushing at the end of my last post and I did not give that play the recognition it deserved. So let's go back and talk about She Loves Me. 

The play is set in something like 1920 in a perfume shop called Maraczek's. The play revolved around two employee's there who hate eachother. What they don't know is that they are each other's secret love letter pen pals. Buy the end of the play they have both figured it out and are happlily in love. There are also some small subplots about the other employees of the perfume shop. 

The leads of the play were Mathieu and Brittany. Mathieu played Charlotte and Lydia's dad in Music Man. He was also the Assistant Director of Cinderella. Brittany is the drama teacher at Twin Falls High School. Both of them had AMAZING singing voices. They were delightful to listen to. 

We had a lot of friends in the play. Makeesa was one of the ensemble members who played customers at the shop and the restaurant. She had so many fabulous costumes. Here she is testing a sample that Crayon is giving her. Crayson was one of the other salesmen. 

My friend Kerri is the lady with the purse in this picture. I don't know the lady who is next to her. Kerri was also in the ensemble and had a lot of lovely outfits too. My friend Eva from Cinderella had costumed this play. She did a really great job. 

This picture has Breeana who was Marian in Music Man. She was a salesgirl in this play. Next to her is Tyler who played the owner of the shop. He'd been Captain Smullet in Treasure Island. In front is Mathieu and Rachel. Rachel played Cinderella. In this she was just in the ensemble. 

But she did have an AMAZING tango number during the restaurant scene. 

I wish I had a picture of the employees at the restaurant. Kaden who had been the Prince in Cinderella played the owner of the restaurant. He was hilarious with a ridiculous French accent. Riley who had been the Fairy Godmother played a really nervous employee who kept dropping things. She and Kaden were so funny together. 

The whole cast was fabulous and currently my first choice for "Best Ensemble" for when I vote for the Curtain Call Awards. 

It was a delightful play and I'm so glad we went to see it. 

Okay, now we can talk in depth about Sunday. 

With the help of many ladies from my ward, I'd coordinated a surprise for the men in our ward for Father's Day. Everyone gave their husband the same blue tie for Fathers Day. When the men got to church they realized they were matching. 

My family got to church about 10 minutes early. We usually come about 20 minutes early so this wasn't too unusual for us. I sat down at our usual bench and started listening to the conversations around me. It was so funny to see guys walk in and notice that they were wearing the same tie as their friends. It was like, "Oh our wives must have coordinated our ties." And then they would look around and notice other people wearing the same tie and be like, "What?"

Shaylee's kids were two rows in front of me and they kept saying "There's another blue tie!"  They were like, "Where did these ties come from!"  I loved hearing their reactions. 

For about 10 minutes I just sat and watched all the men walk in and gradually realize they were wearing the same ties. It was so funny. And I kept thinking, "You guys have no idea it was ME!"

My friend Cindy sat in front of me. She said it had been VERY hard to get her University of Utah loving husband to put on a blue tie. Even though it was sky blue he did not want to be associated with the color blue AT ALL. When he did wear it, he made sure to put a University of Utah tie pin on it to balance it out. 

When church started we had only one member of the bishopric at church that day. Our bishop is a helicopter pilot for the hospital so he was at work. And our first counselor was in Italy on vacation with his wife. So the second counselor was the only one at church. The ward chorister is a man so he was also wearing a matching tie so you could kind of see some coordination in the front of the building. 

The second counselor got up and said, "I might be very alone up here, but I feel very supported by all of you. We are all very coordinated today and I think its safe to say that none of the men had anything to do with this. This is all our wives doing. I was told that Sister Illguth coordinated this."

I smiled and ducked my head when he said my name. Yes, I'd been responsible for this, but so many other people had helped. It felt weird to take the credit. 

Chandler had given him a note saying that there would be a Father's Day picture in the gym after sacrament meeting. He either mis read it or mis understood it because he said there would be "Father's Day pictures" in the gym which gave the impression that it was individual pictures of father's with their children. So as soon as Sacrament Meeting was over a few of us women started trying to herd all the men into the gym. 

I think some snuck off, but we got the majority of the men. I had extra ties and handed one out to Jordan who is a 36 year old autistic man in our ward. Somehow we'd missed him and his dad. (I'd tried to contact the wife/mom, but she'd never got back to me.) Someone else had given their tie to his dad. (I'm not sure who that was because I still had extras.)  Anyway, Jordan was happy to have a tie and join in the picture. He ended up front and center in his wheel chair. 

I'd been trying to find someone else to take the picture, but it ended up being me. Everyone posed nicely and I took it. This was a great payoff for all the work!

There are only 35 people in this picture and by my math I gave out 55 so there are about 20 missing. Like I said, some people snuck off, and I know that some people who had ties couldn't come. (Like our bishop! His teenage son was wearing his tie for him. But he didn't get in the picture.) 

It turned out really fun and I'm so glad I did this. It was a unique way to build unity in the ward. Plus it was highly entertaining. 

My friend Amanda's family owns Orange Leaf so they'd brought little individual bowls of frozen yogurt for all the men. She and her husband brought in a big cooler and gave out ice cream to all the men. Then people went to their classes. 

Brandon and I went to Charlotte and Lydia's class. They were learning about the parable of the talents. Their teacher is my friend Megan and she'd asked us to come in and talk about our talents. I talked about my garden. Brandon talked about doing plays. Our friend Cort was there too and he talked about bee keeping. When he was done Charlotte and Lydia were like, "hey he made us like the idea of having bees."  I was like, "FINALLY!" because I really want bees, but the kids are scared of having them in our yard. 

After church we were all pooped. Brandon and I took naps and who knows what the kids did - but they were quiet. In the evening we watched Sweet Tooth. 

Monday was a busy day. I had work in the morning. I went before any of the kids were awake. In the afternoon Veronica had her 3 hour Matilda rehearsal. I dropped her off for that and then picked up Derrick and took him to his camp for the week. He was doing a "Social Skills Camp" offered through a Speech and Occupational therapy office near my work. 

He was really excited for it. He liked that it was only 90 minutes long. I dropped him off and then walked on the trail at CSI for about an hour. That was nice, but it was HOT and despite drinking tons of water I still got a dehydration headache. 

When I picked up Derrick he was so excited about the camp. They had learned about non verbal cues like body language. They had watched some Pixar shorts that didn't have any talking. They paused to discuss what the characters had been feeling or thinking. They also had some pipe cleaners in the shape of people and used them to act out different body language. Derrick was engaged the whole time. When it was over he told me, "It's like Kindergarten." That means it was fun and not too hard. 

He looked forward to every day of camp. On Tuesday they talked about being flexible. On Wednesday they talked about working as a team and planned a party together for Thursday. And on Thursday they had a pizza party and practiced having conversations where they took turns asking each other questions instead of just dominating the conversation. 

It was the perfect little camp and really filled a need for us. Derrick has done a lot of individual therapy, but he doesn't really need that now. What is does need is this more group based therapy where he is learning to work in a group. 

Later in the summer he's going to do a pirate themed camp and an outdoor camp with the same company.

When I got home I went outside and laid on the patio to try to get my headache to go away. My sister Lindsey called and we had a fun time talking. My van used to belong to her Mother in Law. Lindsey was so surprised when I told her it was almost to 300,000 miles. Later I took a picture to prove that we are within 10,000 miles of my goal of making it to 300,000 miles.

Brandon picked up Veronica from rehearsal. She'd had a great time as always. She went into her room and finished working on the q-tip creation she'd been working on for about 5 days.

That evening I took the kids swimming at the pool. I was still fighting my headache and I was hoping the cool pool water would help. Usually I hate putting my head underwater, but this time I dunked my head in right away. It did help my headache a little. 

Brandon stayed home and practiced his audition song for Sweeny Todd. He'd had one final lesson with Jared earlier that evening. Then he practiced, practiced, and practiced. He was auditioning for the part of Judge Turpin who is one of the most evil characters in this very macabre play. The audition song was not exactly child friendly so he didn't feel comfortable singing it when the kids were around. This was his opportunity to practice while the kids were gone.

They've started doing audition time slots to avoid having 30 people waiting hours for auditions so Brandon's time was at 8:30.  He went over for the audition around 8:15. 

Our friend Suzy is the director. So she was there along with our friend Cami who is the music director. Alexandra was there too (I think she's the Assistant Director, but I'm not sure.) And even Britt who is costuming was there. Britt is super hard to get ahold of so it was a big deal that she was there. 

They all LOVE Brandon so he was happy to be auditioning for friends, but it was still scary. They joked a bit and then he sang his song. Jared had suggested he whip himself during the song so Brandon had made a cat-of-nine tails out of 550 cord. He used that during the song and the ladies were like, "Uh thanks for making that way more gruesome than we expected."

He read from the script and talked with them a bit more and then he was DONE. 

We knew he would hear back about the part for a few days. They were still doing auditions on Tuesday evening. And call backs were scheduled for Saturday. Turns out it would be TWO weeks before he heard back. Call backs had to be rescheduled for June 30th. That meant no one would find out their part until after that. Brandon didn't get contacted about call backs though so that means one of two things. 1. He did so well that they aren't even considering anyone else for the role. 2. There were much more talented other people who auditioned for Judge Turpin so Brandon isn't even in the running. 

We think option 2 is the more likely option. Which is a relief. Brandon would have to start practicing NOW in order to be even close to ready knowing his lines in time for the October play. (He has many talents, but memorization isn't one of them.)

But it's still crazy that he won't even know if he's in the play until July. (Though we are pretty certain he's in the play. Brandon is the type of ensemble member that directors love. He shows up, he does his part, he doesn't cause any drama, and he encourages everyone. Plus the creative team is full of ladies who LOVE him.) 

That night Veronica finished her q-tip village and brought it into my room so I could (finally) take a picture. 

She'd carefully made six little houses, four trees, side walks, lamp posts, the street, and even a car.

She'd put so much time and effort into this. 

It turned out so cute. 

She said the car was the hardest part.

Tuesday morning I had to wake Derrick up at like 7:30 for an orthodontist appt at 8:00. He was like, "this feels like school." He'd broken the thingy that his rubber bands hook into so we had to get that fixed. 

That day ended up being a more chill day than expected. Charlotte and Lydia were signed up to go volunteer at the horse therapy camp. But when we got there at 10:00 we were told that they were scheduled for Wednesdays. That wouldn't work because they worked at Tubb's Berry Farm on Wednesdays. 

Neither twins were really excited about the whole thing anyway so I ended up tell the coordinator that they just didn't have room for it this summer. Maybe it will work better next summer when they don't have drivers ed. 

So we had a lot more time on Tuesday morning than we'd expected. 

Here's Lydia playing with all the tops she'd made during the CNC unit at camp last week. 

Since she was already up she went outside and worked some more on the mural. She painted Saturn and a dragon. 

That afternoon I took Veronica to theatre and brought Derrick along as well. I took him to my work for about 20 minutes and then we drove over to the place for Social Skills Camp. I dropped him off and went back to work for about 80 minutes. Then I picked him up and we went home. 

That evening Brandon and Charlotte worked on a Ferris wheel that Charlotte has been dreaming of making. 

And Lydia painted some more. She did some shading to what she had done that morning. 

I worked on planting the last of the bulbed I'd divided. 

On Wednesday I woke the girls up at 6:00 so they could be at Tubbs Berry Farm at 7:00. The novelty of the job is kind of starting to wear off, but they still like it.

I went to walmart to grab a few things and then I went to Castle Therapy for 2 hours. We've had some problems with two insurance companies so I spent a lot of time trying to wrap my head around the problems and figuring out next steps. One was a better situation than I thought. The other was still really confusing. 

Then I went and picked up the girls. 

Veronica and I went grocery shopping. 

At 12:00 I took all the kids to the park for Lunch in the park. They were serving hamburgers so we didn't want to miss that. It was fun to see a couple friends there. 

Then I took Veronica to theatre. She was still having fun, but she was also getting really tired. Three hour rehearsals were taking their toll. 

I went back home and picked up Derrick. I took him to Social Skills camp and went into work while he was there. I don't usually work on Wednesdays, but this was a good opportunity since I was right there anyway. Then I picked him up and we went home. 

Brandon brought Veronica home around 4:00. We had just enough time for all the kids to have a snack and then it was time for them to get into swimming suits. They were going boating for the youth activity that night. We'd drop them off at the church at 5:15 and the kids would come home around 9:30. 

They were going out to Murtaugh lake. They'd have hamburgers and hot dogs on the beach. Four people in the ward were bringing their boats. The kids were all super excited. 

 Brandon and I were excited to have the evening to ourselves. He worked on finishing installing the counter for my outdoor sink. It's so fun! We found this sink on the floor in our basement when we moved in. We've always talked about putting it up in front of my potting shed. And now it's finally up. 

At 6:30 we went over to the Roper Auditorium for Jump Company's production of Crazy for You. And if that sounds like the exact same play we already saw, you are not alone. 

I've had the HARDEST time keeping "She Loves Me" and "Crazy for You" straight. They were like the exact same title in my brain.  

To keep them straight I've been thinking of them as "The You've Got Mail One" and the "Gershwin One." Crazy for You is full of Gershwin songs like "I've Got Rhythm." and  . . . . um I can't think of a single other name of a song. But you'd recognize them. 

Crazy For You was put on by Jump Company which is one of the Youth Theatre groups in Twin Falls. (Because why wouldn't a town this size have more than one youth theatre group?) I think the cast was for 14 to 18 year olds. Most of the leads were newly graduated high school seniors. 

And since it was summer time they had hours and hours to practice. They were literally doing two rehearsals a day for the last week and a half. And all the hard work paid off because this production was incredible. 

The singing and dancing was impeccable. The show had a bunch of performers from New York coming out to do a show in Nevada. There were showgirls, there were singing cowboys, there was tap dancing. There was even a whole song revolving around a string bass. And the kids blew it all away. Later I said it was kind of like when you watch the Olympics and you see some 22 year old just killing it at their sport and you're like, "well I wasted my life." 

The only downside is they weren't very good at putting pictures up on social media. I wish I could show you the costumes and the sets, but they don't have much to work with.

Oh wait, I just remembered my friend Candace put some up because her daughter was in the show. Let me go steal those real quick.

Here's one of her daughter Kylie. That's Kylie in the knee length dress on the left. 

 

This is from the "I've got Rhythm" song at the end of the first Act. It's sung by the girl in the blue. Her name is Haven and she was so talented. The guy in the suit next to her was the other lead. I don't know his real name. His character name was Bobby. He was a tap dancer. The guy who played him had never tap danced before being cast in the show. But he sure learned. 

And this is from a scene in Act II when the cast decides to go ahead with their show against all odds. Brandon was like, "This looks a lot like the barricade from last year." Last year Jump Company put on Les Mis so I wondered if this was their homage to that show. But I think its really written to be like this. A character even says a line like, "And clean this up, it looks like the French Revolution in here."  That got a big laugh because most of the audience knew that Les Mis had been last year's show. 

The play was over at 9:30. We'd already asked if someone else could give the kids a ride home so we didn't miss picking the kids up if the play went long. Brandon and I spent some time talking to people we knew. Cami had been the music director for this play so we went and talked to her. I also met and congratulated the choreographer Kiah on how great the chorography was. 

The kids were dropped off around 9:45. They were super tired, but had had a great time. They told us all about being dragged around the water on big floaties. They talked about falling off. They'd had so much fun. They all went to bed really fast that night. 

Later I told Brandon that our ward is pretty cool. It's affluent enough that some people have boats, but no one is snobby about it. 

Thursday morning I would have liked to have let everyone sleep in. But I'd made a doctors appt for Veronica for like 8:30. She'd been having knee pain for a few months. I'd told her that if it still hurt after school was out I'd take her to the doctor. During the play it had started hurting her again. So I made the appointment. 

She was not happy about getting up early, but she went to the appointment with me. The doctor was really cool and asked a lot of questions. I was kind of expecting her to be like, "well it's probably just nothing. Here's some stretches to try." But she actually came up with a diagnosis. She said Veronica probably has Osgood-Schlatter condition. 

It occurs when kids are growing and the tendon that connects the shin bone to the knee cap gets irritated by exercise. Veronica fits this perfectly because she has been growing like crazy, her knee hurt usually after running around at recess, and the pain was right under the kneecap. 

The doctor recommended some physical therapy and possibly a visit to a sports medicine doctor. 
It was a very productive visit. 

(And I have to tell this funny story. I completely forgot the name of what she said Veronica had. I was jokingly calling it "something like Guggenheimer syndrome" whenever I talked about it with Brandon. I figured I should try to figure out the correct name as I wrote this post so I literally googled "gugenhimer knee sydrom" and believe it or not the first result was Osgood-Schlatter. Good job Google.)

Before I took Veronica to the doctor I'd watered my garden. I realized I haven't taken pictures of the area around the fire pit in a while. Here are the sun flowers growing along the fence. They all survived the transplant and so far are okay with how hot this fence gets in the afternoon. 

The Texas Sage was starting to bloom. 

And here are the sun flowers on the other side of the fire pit. They also all survived the transplant. 

When I was home from the doctors appointment I worked from home for Castle Therapy and then for Gaining Perspective. I hadn't been sure how long Veronica's appt would take so it was just easier to do them both from home. 

Later I went out and picked cherries from the tree. 

Look at this beautiful bowl of Rainier Cherries. It's a lot of work to save $20 at the grocery store. But I love it. 

That afternoon Veronica had her last Matilda rehearsal for the week and Derrick had his last day of social skills camp. I worked while Derrick was at camp. I picked him up and then brought him back to my office. At 3:30 Brandon came and picked him up before going to get Veronica. I had him do that because I thought I'd be in the office until like 4:30. But like 8 minutes after they left I finished what I was doing and realized I had no desire to start anything else. So I went home. I was home before they were. 

At 5:00 Charlotte and Lydia had their second driving time. They are signed up as each other's driving buddies so that's why they always drive together. They did a lot of things, but the main thing I heard about was U-turns on Pole Line road. Later I told them, "That's impressive. I only dare do U-turns on that road at Midnight after the 4th wall night is over."

That night I had a Relief Society activity. It was about Family History and despite many efforts, I just can't ever get into Family History. I thought about skipping it. But they said there would be cheesecake. So I went for the cheese cake. 

The family history part was ehhhh. There were several people sharing some rather horrifying polygamy stories without realizing how horrifying they sounded. (Um no its not funny that your great-great-great grandfather married a second wife that was as old as his daughter.) But once we were over the family history part of the night everyone had a really nice time talking. 

The activity officially ended at 8:00, but a bunch of us stayed until 9:00. And then Jori and I talked in my car until 11:30. And the cheese cake was divine!  So it was worth it. 

Friday morning I was back at work at like 7:30 because I had a busy day and wanted to get a lot done at work. I was planning to stay 3 hours, but it was a struggle. I realized I was nearly back to burn out mode. So when I'd finished everything I had to do at the 2 hour mark I called it a day. 

At home the kids were waking up. I reminded them that there was free rock climbing at Gemstone for teenagers that day. So the three older kids got dressed and ready. I offered to pay for Veronica to climb too, but she was like, "I've been at rehearsal all week. I just want to stay home and relax!" She was perfectly content to have the empty house to herself.  

Gemstone only advertised this free day of climbing like two days earlier so not many people had heard about it. So the gym was mostly empty. 

Here are the kids on the bouldering wall. 

I sat on the couch and let the kids climb mostly unsupervised. They spent a lot of time in the room I was in though. 

Here's Charlotte.

and Lydia. 

Lydia and Derrick. 

All three. 

Charlotte. 

Derrick and Lydia again. 

And all three on one wall. 

We were there for about an hour and then went home. We picked up Veronica and went to the park for Lunch in the park. They had uncrustable sandwiches and the kids like those. 

A bunch of families from the ward were there. Everyone had picnic blankets all set up next to each other. It was really fun to sit and chat while the little kids ran around. Charlotte and Lydia laid on Jori's blanket. Derrick and Veronica walked home. 

After about an hour I took the twins home. I took a nap and then it was time for the next fun thing. 

We'd planned a party for the twins' friends at Dierkies Lake. Only one friend could end up making it, but I was still looking forward to a long afternoon a the lake. We bought the canopy, the camp chairs, lots of snacks, and Brandon would bring pizza after he got off of work. 

We got there at 3:00. I told the kids they needed to spend 15 minutes helping me set up and then they were free to swim for 6 hours. 

Here's the set up.

It was a really lovely afternoon. I sat in a chair and read. I'd been planning to float, but the weather had cooled down that day and would only get up to 75. That wasn't warm enough for me to get in the water. 

The girls' friend Lily came with her friend Katelynn. All the kids had fun swimming for about an hour. They they took a break and had snacks. Katelynn had to go after a while, but she'd had fun while she was there. The other kids got back in the water. 

As the kids were swimming the wind started picking up. There was a wind advisory for the afternoon so I was watching the weather carefully. The wind got strong enough that I took the top off the canopy because I was worried it would fly away. 

Brandon came with the pizza's and the kids came to eat. They planned to get back into the water, but the weather was deteriorating quickly. Huge gusts of wind were bringing in dust from the parking lot. We knew it probably wouldn't get better. So we decided to call it a day at like 5:00. 

We packed everything up and carried it out in one trip. (It had taken two to bring it in, but this time we had Lily and Brandon to help.)

Brandon took the twins and Lily in his car. They took Lily home. I had Derrick and Veronica in mine. At one point when we were driving back to our house there was so much dust in the road the visibility was like 30 feet. It was crazy. 

Since we suddenly had a free evening we decided to watch the last three episodes of Sweet Tooth. The series ended really well and I'd enjoyed the whole thing. It was a really fun show to watch as a family. 

Saturday was a weird day. My work was supposed to have a work party. We were going to have a pot luck picnic at a park. So I'd planned on prep for that to take most of our afternoon. But the weather ended up dropping like 20 degrees. The high for Saturday was supposed to be like 59. And that was without the wind. We'd been watching the weather all week. On Friday afternoon we decided to cancel it. It would be just too cold and windy for anyone to have a good time at the park. 

So that left the day WIDE open for my family. I had ideas of some yard work I wanted to do, but my body had other plans. It's like my body saw the wide open day and went, "WE ARE TAKING THIS BREAK!!!!!!!"  

I had zero energy most of the day. I didn't even leave my room until 1:00 PM. When Brandon and the kids cleaned the rest of the house, I worked on putting away laundry and even that took a lot of time and effort. 

I knew how close to burn out I'd felt at work so I was like, "yeah, I need a day of nothing."  So I pretty much did nothing. My to do list for the day was 

1. Watch Clue with Derrick. 

2. Make the simple raspberry dessert I was going to make for the party. (Because I really really wanted to eat it.)

3. Watch Three Stooges episodes with Derrick. 

And that's what I did. 

I also took pictures of some things in my garden. Here are the Daisy's in the front yard. 

And the lilies.

And my potted plants are doing well. 

And look at the fire pit area. The sun flowers are getting so big you can't even see it from parts of the yard. 

The weather did drop and get very cold. I was wearing sweat pants and a hoodie at one point. I was glad we'd cancelled the party. 

In the evening we started watching Veronica Mars. Our Veronica has wanted to watch it forever and I said that she's finally old enough. We watched two episodes and she is hooked. 

And now it's Sunday. I'm feeling better than I did yesterday, but I'm still taking things slow. I want to rest a lot because next week we have a lot going on again. It will be Veronica's tech week and I want to make sure I'm ready to help her through that. 

Thanks for reading.