Summer Vacation 2025 - Week 6 - 4th of July

When we came home from our Memorial Day Weekend in Yellowstone I was surprised that I didn't come home feeling relaxed. We'd had our crazy car trouble and so it kind of made sense that I hadn't felt like the weekend was relaxing. But still, I'd expected at least some sort of feeling of stress relief from spending time in one of my favorite places on earth. Instead, I still felt really burned out. 

So I vowed that we wouldn't go anywhere for the 4th of July. I wanted to sleep in my own bed, sleep in if I wanted, putter around the house and yard getting little projects done, and basically just relax at home. 

It was a little sad to not plan anything because the weekend was really begging for a long trip. The 4th of July was on a Friday so it was the perfect three day weekend. We really could have had a lot of fun going somewhere. 

But it was also really great to stay home. For one, the kids earned a lot of money. I told everyone on our ward Facebook group that we were going to be around during the whole weekend. If anyone needed someone to water plants or check in on pets my kids would be happy to do it. In our ward we don't do one big fundraiser for camp fees. The kids just advertise what they are good at and the adults hire them for different things throughout the summer.

Veronica ended up with two little jobs over the weekend. She checked on some birds and a fish and watered plants at my friend Megan's house. She also helped with a dog, a cat, and a turtle at my friend Shaylee's house. She was really proud of all the responsibility. 

Charlotte and Lydia spent the week in charge of watering two yards. One for my friend Rachel from theatre who happens to live like 3 blocks away. (She would be in our ward, if our ward boundaries weren't so skinny.) She was going to Colorado for a family reunion on her husband's side. Her mother-in-law lives about a mile away and was also going to the family reunion. So she had Charlotte and Lydia water her yard too. She was just far enough away that it was best if I drove them. So every day I'd drive them over to water. Then I'd sit in the car and play on my phone while they watered. I took this terrible photo to remember all that. 

Anyway, let's start recapping the week of the 4th of July. 

Monday was June 30, but it really felt like the beginning of July. I went to work in the morning. When I came home Derrick, Veronica, and I went grocery shopping. Derrick was hosting a double feature movie night that afternoon/evening so we bought treats for that. 

At home we all cleaned the basement and the basement bathroom really fast. Then Derrick and I went to pick up pizza. And then it was time for his party. 

He was showing "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" at 3:00. Then Godzilla vs Kong at 6:00. I'm not exactly sure why we had the idea to do two movies in one day, but it worked out really well. 

Finn J and Cayson came and stayed for both movies. Mahonri and his dad were there for the first one, but they had other plans that night so they didn't stay for the second one. Weston and McCrea came for the second one. 

We severed pizza during the first movie and home made hamburgers during the second. The boys had a lot of fun. 

At 7:30 I left Brandon in charge of the kids and I went over to Jori's for Bunco. Brandon had been making a peach pie for the boys at the movie night. (A few weeks ago in Charlotte and Lydia's Sunday School class I mentioned I grew peaches and the boys had been like so if we came to your house we could have peaches? I told them all the peaches I had right now were frozen, but yeah they could have them in a pie or something if they ever came over. The boys had been like, "What about Derrick's movie night?")

But Tyler, the kid who was most excited about the peaches, didn't come. (We later found out he broke his nose.) And the pie wasn't really done by the time the movie ended. 

So about 45 minutes into Bunco, Jori looks out the window and says, "Valerie, Brandon is here."  I was like, "Why?"  And then he knocked on the door and dropped off a hot peach pie and EVERYONE was like, "Did he MAKE this pie?"  And I was like, "Yeah, I might have the best husband in the world."

My friend Sami said that she didn't really like pie, but she really liked this one. Chandler was like, "Did he do that lattice crust!"  The pie was a hit. 

Bunco was really fun. I could NOT keep the rounds straight, and felt kind of detatched from the game, but I had fun talking to everyone. As you win or lose you move to different tables so you end up sitting and talking with different people all during the night. I always say that Bunco is really just an excuse to talk to your friends. 

On Tuesday I had an appt right at 8:00 with the Idaho Skin Institute. (Which Brandon says really missed an opportunity not calling them selves the Skinstitute.) For the last 4 years I've noticed that my skin is loosing pigment. It started in my armpits in 2022 and then was on my hands in 2023. The patches were bigger in 2024 and I even noticed some loss of pigment around my eyes. This summer the patches are really noticeable. 

I self diagnosed myself with vitiligo a while ago. It's an autoimmune disease where your body just stops producing melanin. As far as autoimmune diseases go its not a big deal. I joke, "At least I got the good one." But it is caused in part by stress so that's one reason I had a "no new projects" rule in 2023.    

I've been meaning to see a dermatologist about it for a while, but I got serious about it this summer when the patches became more noticeable. People are saying things like, "Maybe it's not vitiligo. I say on TikTok that someone had this and it was just yeast." Or "I heard you can clear that up with ____." 

So I figured it was time to 1. Get an actual diagnosis and 2. Learn how to take care of the depigmented skin.

Anyway, the doctor basically took one look at my hands and was like, "Yep, it's vitiligo."  He and his assistant took me into a dark room and shined a black light on me so they could identify the patches. There was so much!  I joked, "You're going to give me a complex."  He was like, "It's okay, don't get self conscious about it." But it was hard not to - especially when he shinned it on my face and I could see that it's all around both eyes, on my chin, and all over my forehead. 

The good news is that there is medicine that will reverse it!  I didn't know that. I was just doing body acceptance and learning to be okay with my patchy skin. 

The bad news is that insurance usually won't cover that medicine unless you can show that other things don't work. 

So for the next three months I'm going to be using two creams. My doctor said, "Occasionally they work for people. But they probably wont work. After they don't work we can show that to insurance and then get you the other medicine."  So we took lots of "before" pictures. And that was that. 

I hung out with the kids at home in the morning and then went to work around 11:00. In the evening I took Charlotte and Lydia to their watering jobs. Charlotte had a butterfly land on her.  

Then I took Veronica over to Megan and Shaylee's houses so she could meet their pets and learn things like where they kept their food. 

At 7:00 we all went swimming at the pool. It had been a really hot day so getting in the water felt so good. I think it was the first time all summer that I actually wanted to get into the pool.

On Wednesday I dropped the twins and Addy off at Tubbs Berry Farm at 7:00. Each of the kids were assigned a long row of raspberry plants to be their responsibility this summer. 

I went to work at Aspen Grove because there were things I hadn't finished on Tuesday. And then I went to Castle Therapy. 

I went home for a bit and then picked the girls up at 10:00. I took Derrick with me because he'll be old enough to work here next summer and I want to get that seed planted in his brain early. He was kind of unimpressed at first. But then the girls got into the car with their first paychecks and started saying how much they had been paid. Derrick immediately was like, "I want to work here!"

A little later in the day I took Charlotte and Lydia over to the bank to cash their checks. We went to the branch that is by our house. I used to go here all the time when my office was nearby. But ever since my office moved I usually go to the one by my office. It's been like 18 months since I've been to this branch. My friend Tracy helped get the checks cashed. She was like, "I haven't seen you in forever."  The branch  manager, who is my friend Donna, came over too. She is retiring soon. When I ended up on a first name basis with all these people is when I knew I'd lived in Twin Falls longer than I'd lived anywhere else as an adult. 

Charlotte and Lydia were so happy to have money. They each had nearly $100. We'd talked about maybe opening a bank account, but since this is just a summer job where they don't make that much money it felt like a better plan to just cash the checks. We can worry about a bank account when they have a more steady income stream.

That evening we went to Walmart to buy a couple things. They each picked out purses so they can put their wallets and keys in them. 

The girls didn't have a Young Women activity, but the boys did. They are getting ready for camp. They went to a park and practiced putting up tents. Derrick brought our tiny one. He had a lot of fun. 

Veronica and Brandon stayed home and Veronica mowed the lawn. 

Oh another thing that happened on Wednesday is that Brandon went to a funeral for an older man in our ward. Bob Potts was one of Brandon's friends. He worked for the VA as a nurse or something and was always on Brandon's case about getting into the VA for physicals and to see if he qualified for any sort of disability. Brandon finally did it and didn't qualify for anything - not even hearing loss which apparently EVERYONE qualifies for. But he was grateful for Bob for pushing him to do it. 

Bob was getting older and was on oxygen, but he'd seemed fine. He'd been at church on Father's Day and one of my favorite memories is watching him slowly realize that everyone was wearing the same tie as him. 

So it was really shocking when we heard that he'd had a stroke and died. Brandon wanted to make sure he was there for the funeral. He helped set up chairs on Tuesday night and then he took a longer lunch from work on Wednesday so he could go to the funeral. We have a lot of older people in the ward so there are funerals fairly often. But usually they are for people that are much older and haven't been at church lately. This was the second funeral in about two months for someone that Brandon and I consider to be our friends. 

On Thursday morning I met with Ivan at 7:30. There's a problem with one of the insurance companies and we were weighing the pros and cons of the ways to fix it. I was like, "I'm not afraid of the work. I'm afraid of making the wrong choice." We ended up deciding to think it over during the weekend. (And on Monday we made a decision and it ended up being really easy to do so hopefully it all works out.)

At 8:45 I woke all the kids up. I'd volunteered us all to help a family move in that morning. Earlier in the week our Elders Quorum President had put up an announcement on our ward Facebook page that a family was moving in on Thursday morning. He knew it was a weird time so he asked if anyone with teenagers could get their kids there. I was like, "Well, I have four teenagers so we should help with that."

My kids weren't exactly thrilled about getting up, but they all came to help with the move. There were three guys from our ward there and my friend Lindsey came too. The family moving in had two adult sons so thankfully there were enough strong people there to help with the furniture. My kids and I were mostly in charge of boxes. 

We got the moving truck unpacked in under an hour and then we all had donuts so the kids were happy. 

Derrick had noticed a free desk on the side of the road on Wednesday. Actually we all had noticed it because that's the type of people we are. But I couldn't think of anywhere to put it. Derrick was like, "What about my room."  So we picked it up on Wednesday afternoon and that night Brandon helped Derrick move it downstairs. On Thursday Derrick and Veronica moved all of Derrick's models onto it. (And on Thursday night Brandon helped stabilize some of those shelves.)

On Thursday afternoon Charlotte and Lydia had their first class for the Production Academy at the Orpheum. They are making props and the set for the teenage production of Hadestown. (Which according to Jori is the most amazing play ever and I'm really excited to see it.)  They worked on designing lamps. 

At some point I went to work on Thursday. I was so happy when I came home because it was a THREE DAY WEEKEND. I wasn't going to worry about work at all. 

I took this picture at some point when I was watering. There is a bee on that onion flower.

Every evening Charlotte goes outside and lets the "little chicks" out of their area under the coop. She's trying to get them socialized with the "big chicks."  Here are all 7 chickens running around. (Also it's become very obvious that one of the new chicks, Lilly, is actually a rooster. So now Lilly is Billy. Technically we aren't supposed to have a rooster in city limits. But the only way code enforcement will find out is if one of the neighbors complains. So hopefully that doesn't happen. But Billy likes to crow a lot in the morning so somebody might get annoyed at some point. 

Friday was The 4th of July. A rain storm had come in during the night and brought cooler weather. I think the high was only like 80 which was so nice. 

I slept in and then spent a lot of the morning outside doing little projects around the yard. 

At 9:00 I took Veronica over to Shaylee's house to check on her dog. Shaylee had said that Veronica could use her hot tub. So Veronica brought her towel and hung out there. She was supposed to text me when she was done, but the phone wasn't quite working. So she just walked home - good thing it was close.

One of the things I did was clean up the last of the rubble pile. It was a mess of broken bricks, mortar, leaves and saw dust. (Brandon always plugs his table saw into the outlet by the house and the saw dust went into the brick pile. I shoveled most of it into the garbage can. There was slightly too much to put in the garbage can without it bottoming out so I stacked the last of the broken bricks in two piles. I'll throw them away over the next few weeks. I keep walking by here and thinking, "That looks so good!"

I also cleaned out my garden shed. This place was a disaster. Charlotte and I are sharing it right now. It was such a mess that she had to keep her chicken stuff right in front of the door. Neither of us could walk into it. So I pulled everything out and threw away a lot of stuff. It was so great to be able to walk into it again. 

I even got all the shovels hung up. 

Here's another view. I love this little shed so much. It's really handy. 

And here are the shelves. Charlotte has her own shelves for chicken stuff now. 

I started out the day listening to an old episode of Baconsale where they create a playlist of 4th of July songs. Then I spent the rest of that time listening to the play list on Spotify. 

We got out the pressure washer and Derrick and Veronica washed the cars off. 

Charlotte had fun burning things with the magnifying glass. She burned her initials. 

Here she is doing that. 

At 2:00 I took a shower and at 2:30 we went out to our friends the Johnson's house in Filer. They weren't doing as big of a party as in years past, but they said we could still go. Charlotte immediately went to the baby goats. 

She was so happy. 

She'd made some red, white, and blue cookies for the holiday. We brought those as our contribution to the party. 

Derrick had a blast on the trampoline. He and Veronica also swam in the pool and hung out in the hot tub. 

Here's Charlotte with the goats. 

Lydia was with her for a long time too. 

Here they are sitting with the goats on them. Bryan Johnson is a vet. He was like, "Wow that girl loves goats."

At the very end Bryan let the girls drive his 4 by 4. 

We went home and I drove the kids around so they could do their pet and plant jobs. Brandon made shredded chicken sandwiches for us to have for dinner. 

We ate kind of late and then at 9:00 we went over to the college and met up with some families from the ward to watch fireworks. 

All the kids played around in the grassy area of the amphitheater. Derrick brought his airplane glider and threw that around a lot. 

It was fun to see them all playing together. Cayson had these big foam bats and the kids were having a war. 

Charlotte bought an LED light flower crown from somebody who was walking around selling them. 

I was so tired by the time the show started. All the girls were leaning on Brandon during the show. I ended up laying my head on Charlotte's body and just kind of zoning out during the fireworks. I'm not a huge fan of the CSI fireworks. They don't play music so they always feel like they are missing something. But it's a decent show anyway. 

When it was over Derrick said, "Mom, the fireworks told me to go to Idaho Falls."  I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but now we are planning a trip to Idaho Falls. (We've been over due anyway.)

We waited for traffic to ease up and then we went home. We were home around 11:00. Derrick and Brandon had bought a few fireworks. The kids had fun with those. I was just kind of there. 

It was fun to watch the kids. 

They were all so excited. 

We've never really done our own fireworks on the 4th before. 

Brandon and Derrick had bought one fountain. They lit that last. It was way cooler than we expected. Here's a link to the short. 

As soon as that firework was over I went to bed. I was so tired. Brandon and the kids hung out in the backyard. They watched all the aerial fireworks the neighbors were shooting off. 

On Saturday I'd been hoping to do some more little projects, but instead I spent a lot of the day sleeping. The best part was the nap I took on the patio couch. 

Brandon took the kids on a bike ride down at Auger Falls. I stayed home and read. 

In the evening we hung out in the fire pit area. I really didn't think we'd light it up again until September, but the weather was mild enough that a fire didn't feel ridiculous. We cooked corn on the cob in tinfoil in the fire. We also roasted hot dogs. 

One thing that made the firepit nice is that it's shadier now. The sunflowers have grown a ton and provide a lot of shade.  Here they are behind me and Derrick. 

 

And here is the shade on Charlotte and Lydia.

I would have taken more pictures, but I ended up feeling really grumpy. So far turning 40 hasn't been that bad physically, but emotionally it has been a roller coaster. My body is like, "Hey how about some completely unexplained depression?"  It's not fun at all. So after trying to force myself to enjoy the fire for about an hour I gave up and went inside for a shower and an early bed time. 

But this story has a happy ending because Sunday was a good day. 

After church the kids talked us into watching "K-Pop Demon Hunters" on Netflix. It sounds kind of stupid, but it was a really good movie. The music was fun and the story was really empowering too. I loved it. 

Then at 5:00 we drove out to Box Canyon to hike down into it to see the waterfall. We've been to Box Canyon before, but we've only ever looked over the edge. You used to have to walk in from the parking lot by the road and by the time we made that trek the kids were never interested in going farther. But I knew there was supposed to be a waterfall down in the canyon so we were going to see that. 

It starts out all barren. 

Here's the overlook. 

And the view of the spring at the bottom. 

Then we walked along a trail.

We could see into the canyon. 

We came to the part of the trail where we started going down into the canyon. It was a little steep and had big rocks, but everyone - including me - did really well. 

We followed the trail and came to the waterfall. 

It was really cool. 

We kept going along the trail and came to a beautiful lake area. The water was calm here and several people were swimming in it. 

The kids and Brandon got in. I put my feet in, but since we hadn't brought swimming suits I didn't want to get in and then have to hike out with wet shorts. That would not be fun for my legs. Also the water was COLD. IT was probably in the 50s. 

Look how clear the water is!

Derrick was in the water for a long time. Then he got cold and came and sat by me. But I think he got in again after this picture. 

Here's proof I was there. 

Charlotte swam across the lake. I took a video of her swimming back. 

I just have to say I have NEVER seen pictures of this swimming lake before. And I know many people who have been to Box Canyon. I think it's one of those things that everyone had agreed to keep secret. So that's why I'm putting these pictures here, but not on my Facebook page. 

After a while the kids were freezing so we decided it was time to go. Here's a cool picture of Charlotte on the trail. 

I was really worried about going back up the trail, but I made it just fine. And my feet NEVER hurt after all the crazy hiking. That was really encouraging. Here we are back on top. 

We made it home around 9:00.  I'd cooked baked potatoes in the crock pot. I'd also bought stakes for dinner because they were actually cheaper than a roast. Brandon hurried and cooked those. It was a really good dinner. And to top it all off we also had home made ice cream!  It was such a good way to end our 4th of July weekend. 

And that gets us caught up again. Thanks for reading.