You all may recall that I started the summer feeling incredibly burned out. And it NEVER got better. There were little temporary reprieves, but over all I just dragged through the summer.
I'm happy to say that the burned out feeling is finally over. School starting was the biggest help. (Which is ironic because I burned out BECAUSE of school in May.) But somehow having a routine again has been really nice.
The other thing that helped was I slept A LOT on Monday. Like so much.
It was Labor Day so we were all home from work and school. And I took full advantage of that. I think I was in bed until 11:00 and then I got up and just laid on the couch. My arms felt so heavy and it was like my whole body was saying, "Nope."
I did eventually go outside and work on the garden bed in front of the house. The bed was full of chamomile which is a nice enough flower, but I was tired of it. So I pulled all of it out. I also saved seed from the poppies and flax that also grow in that bed.
And then I went back inside and laid on the couch some more.
Lydia talked me into taking her to Hobby Lobby. She drove there. She wanted to make a fall dress that she'd been envisioning. She picked out the fabric and paid for it. Then she drove home. I was more there for adult support than anything.
Charlotte had been having a much more productive day than me. She'd been working on her lego model of the McCalisters house from Home Alone.
Here it is. I love how everything opens up.
Here it is from the back. There is even a zipline to the tree house.
Here's the kitchen.
There are so many cute details all through the house.
It was worth the $300.
I think I went to bed early on Monday. I was JUST.SO.TIRED.
But guess what? I was NOT tired on Tuesday. Like at all.
Instead I was in planning mode.
Over the course of the day I would:
1. Invite a bunch of people over to our house for a fire gathering on Saturday night. (The weather was supposed to cool off and the patio was still all clean from the progressive dinner so it made perfect sense to have another party.)
2. Plan a camping trip to Bruneau Dunes with Jori - and a bunch of other people. Jori, Olyvia and I had been talking about planning a trip to Bruneau Dunes "sometime" that fall at church on Sunday. And so I RAN with that and picked a weekend that worked for us. It also worked for Jori. I booked a campsite and then told all our mutual friends to also book campsites if they wanted to. This is the image I sent out so we could try to be in the same area. My family is in site #39. Jori's family will be in #40. So far three other families are just coming out for the day/evening and not staying for the night. But there are a bunch of maybes. It's going to be really fun.
3. I bought early bird tickets for the Harry Potter Experience in Rupert. I asked my kids what they wanted to do this fall and that was one of the first things they all mentioned. So we are going back for a 4th time.
And all that was BEFORE I went to work.
Oh and I also took Veronica to the dentist at 8:30. Derrick came along and when Veronica's appointment was over we dropped him off at school and then dropped Veronica off at her school.
She was a little nervous to go to school late because she didn't know what period it was. I told her, "Kerri will tell you." I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be friends with the school attendance secretary.
Then I came home and watered my yard, and did all the planning, and did some billing stuff for Castle Therapy. Around noon I went to Aspen Grove and did a bunch there.
Here's a bee on a cosmos flower. I took this picture while I was watering.
Lydia had started working her fall dress. That meant the dress form was back in the family room. And that meant I was startled by it every time I went downstairs.
In the evening Brandon had Sweeny Todd rehearsals. I went outside and started digging into my compost ring. This is about 6 months of compost layers.
I would here it is as I dug down.
I sifted all the big clumps through a wire mesh into my wheel barrow. It was such beautiful compost.
And then I dumped it in the garden bed that had previously been overgrown with chamomile.
I was really happy with how this was turning out. I ended up super dirty.
On Wednesday I had my scripture study group at 10:00 I was cleaning the living room and then had to take Marcia outside. The weather was so nice out there I was like, "forget the house." So we had scripture study on the patio. It was really nice.
Since I'd taken Monday off I needed to go to work on Wednesday afternoon. I was about to leave when I got a notification that I was going to get a chip drop soon. I'd signed up for one about a week earlier so I was really surprised I was getting one so quick. And sure enough within a few minutes a guy with a trailer full of wood chips showed up. So I couldn't get out of my driveway until he'd dropped that off.
Then I regretfully went to work. I would have so much rather played with all those wood chips.
That afternoon Veronica had her first day of theatre this fall. She was so happy to go there. My friend Jeanette has a daughter in the same cast as Veronica. She texted me to tell me that Kate had been a little scared to go in until she saw Veronica. Then she was really excited.
When I picked Veronica up she told me, "We were supposed to find someone we didn't know to talk to, but I already know everybody."
That's not entirely true. But she does know a lot of the cast. Finn N and Finn J are in the cast. Finn J's sister Nora is too. Our friend Kylie is also there. Then there's Kate. Then some people she knows from Matilda and Willy Wonka. So she is very happy.
She asked me, "Are there any outcasts in theatre?" I told her EVERYONE in theatre is an outcast. That's why they do theatre. She didn't really understand that.
She was done at 6:00 and we had dinner. Then at 7:00 I took the girls to the church for young womens. (The young men are currently suffering from poor planning and communication so they didn't have an activity. But that's a whole different story.)
I came home and started moving wood chips. The side yard didn't have a lot of wood chips because the ones I put there last year were mixed in with the dirt when we dug the trench for the sprinkler line. Here's the before picture.
And here's the after.
Thursday was another wildly productive day. I was able to work on things for all three of my companies - Castle Therapy, Gaining Perspective, and Aspen Grove. I also watered, took a few things to DI, bought lunch stuff for the girls lunches, and met up with Brandon for lunch at Burger King.
It was my pay day so we were celebrating that I got a raise. Back in January I was given a raise with the understanding that I would get another $3 raise later in the year if the company continued to bring in a certain amount of money per month. Well we did that so I got the raise. I now make $5 more per hour than Brandon does. (I've also been with this company for 5 years longer than he's been with his company.)
Brandon was out at CSI that evening so I took care of getting Derrick from school after I picked up the twins from the high school.
That night I really really really wanted to play with the bark chip piles. But I had something just as good - bunco! We were all so busy in August that we just pushed it to the first week of September. Natalie hosted in her back yard. It was really fun to see everyone.
I wasn't very lucky until the very end when I had 6 wins in a row.
I hurried home as soon as it was over because I wasn't sure if Brandon was going straight to Sweeny Rehearsal after CSI. He had gone there, but he was back. We both made sure the kids went to bed.
Ever since I got the chip drop on Wednesday I'd been thinking about taking Friday morning off from work to move wood chips while it was still cool outside. But then I remembered that Charlotte and Lydia had dentist appointments at 8:00 so that was a never mind.
It was quite a production to get their dentist appointments to work out. Kaymie took Veronica to school so I didn't have to worry about her. But Derrick came with to the appointment (again.) When it was over we took the girls to the High School and dropped them off. They were only about 40 minutes late. Then I took Derrick to his school. He was only about 10 minutes late.
And then I went to work. I made myself stay there for 3 hours. There was a lot of little odd billing things to take care of. Most of our billing goes through insurance companies, but there are some 3rd parties that we also go through. One is a local organization that covers the cost of therapy for people that need it. So I sent them invoices.
Another 3rd party payer is Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare. We don't bill Medicaid at Aspen Grove, but occasionally we contract directly with Health and Welfare for specific cases. So they need invoices.
Another 3rd party payer is what's called Idaho Crime Victim Compensation. They will cover therapy for victims of crimes. The claims are sent to insurance first and then Idaho crimes covers what's left after that. I have to send them copies of the Insurance Explanation of Benefits and a copy of the claim. And then they take their sweet time paying. It's kind of a paperwork nightmare, but I love that it's an option for clients so I deal with the paperwork.
So that's the kind of stuff I was working on on Friday.
Afterwork I came home and took a wonderful nap. Then I got up and went to Winco and did the grocery shopping. I put all the frozen stuff into my make shift cooler (AKA a tote with blankets.) I picked up the twins on the way home from the store.
We hurried to put everything away and then I folded down the back seat of the van and drove over to the middle school to pick up Veronica and her string bass. I went in to help her get it. The band teacher was helping her pack it up in the case. The band teacher used to be the music teacher at the elementary school when the kids were all there. He taught Veronica in Kindergarten. And now he was helping her pack up her instrument in 6th grade.
I helped her get it out to the car and we drove it home. Then we left it in the car because Veronica still needed to clean her room to make room for it. Brandon helped take out the small arm chair that has been in her room. There was a ton of junk under it so it's probably good that Veronica wanted it out of her room. She got everything cleaned up and could bring the bass in. 
She got it out so she could play it in the front room. This made me so happy. I truly loved playing the string bass and so to have Veronica decide to play it too is really special. 
Charlotte and Lydia had also brought home their instruments so they got theirs out too. We got another rare Lydia smile in this picture.
It was so fun to hear them all playing. (Not together, just playing whatever they each wanted.)
On Sunday afternoon when Brandon took the twins driving Veronica and I had some actual practice time. I went over the names of the strings with her and showed her finger positions on the D and G strings. She was like, "I'm so glad you know all this!" It was fun to teach her.
Back to Friday night. We were having home made pizza so I picked some of our green peppers from the garden. They look so good! I've never had luck with peppers before so I'm loving that they worked this year.
And here's a fun sunflower plant. It fell over but put out a bunch of little flowers. I love it.
I spent the evening moving wood chips. When it got too dark for that I went inside and just watched silly videos on my phone. I got sucked down a rabbit hole of watching the little songs and dances that the Savannah Banana's baseball team does. They are so fun and so joyful. I was smiling all evening.
I basically spent all Saturday outside and it was lovely. First I sifted the last of the compost. When I was done with that I put a bunch of bark chips down in this area. The compost ring will be in this spot all fall and winter. One reason I moved it and took a bunch of compost out is so there will be room to dump fall leaves in it. Then in the spring I'll take the black ring off and move it back to the open area. I'll sift out the fine compost and put the bigger pieces back in to break down some more. There's probably a more efficient process to do this, but right now moving it twice a year works really well for me.
I also moved bark chips into the front flower bed that I'd been working on all week.
It looks so good!
And here's one of the established beds. I love that black eyed susan.
Here's the other bed. It has the most color right now.
And here's the remaining chips. I still need to fill in some other paths, but I had other projects to do so that had to wait.
Lydia had been working on her fall dress. Here it is. (I'm told it's not done yet so she wouldn't let me put this one instagram.)
Jori had a baby shower at 1:00 and her husband had to work so she bought her kids over. They had fun helping me in the garden for a minute. (I'd promised one of them she could pull an onion when it was ready and she was so happy to finally do that.)
They also helped with a few little patio things in preparation for the party. Then they went and watched K-Pop Demon Hunters and I went back to bigger jobs. I planted spinach in a garden bed where the peas hadn't done well. My theory is that there is too much nitrogen in the soil from growing peas there like 3 years in a row. So hopefully the spinach will like that nitrogen.
At 2:00 I had to be done with the garden because my feet needed a break. I took a quick shower and then sat on the couch until 3:00. Then I made corn bread for that night. We were doing chili and corn bread and everything else would be pot luck.
At 4:00 Jori was back and we took her girls and Derrick and Veronica to Mary Alice Park. I felt like a bad friend because I'd never taken Jori or her kids there. The park was celebrating it's 19th anniversary. So there was a big reception of sorts. There were a lot of older people from the Magic Valley Arts Council. They liked seeing Jori's cute little girls run around and enjoy the park.
Jori was in HEAVEN. There is a colorful piano set up right at the entrance and Jori didn't even make it past that. She had her camera out and was taking pictures of it from every angle. Then she walked around the rest of the park and admired the heck out of everything.
Derrick and Veronica played chess with the big chess set.
Here they are from another angle.
Then I played with one of Jori's girls. After that Derrick was ready to go so we went home to get ready for the party. Jori and her girls stayed and ended up getting cake and ice cream.
Brandon had started getting the patio ready by the time I was home. But I helped with a lot of last minute stuff too. Here's the patio.
And the garden. I put blankets out in case anyone wanted to sit on them while they ate.
Here's Brandon lighting the fire. I hadn't planned on lighting it until about 7:30, but Derrick said he wanted to cook hot dogs for his dinner. So we lit it at about 5:45. It was so HOT. And then Derrick changed his mind and said he wasn't hungry.
Here's Lydia's almost finished mural. She'd finished the mountains on Tuesday evening. It's so pretty. And as the evening got darker it really felt like we were looking at mountains.
Jori and her kids arrived again around 6:00. Then Rachel and Ethan and their son came. After that we had more people streaming in. Cort and Chandler were their with their 4 kids. Brad came with his four. (His wife was out of town.) Jeff and Lindsey were there with their four kids. (I sometimes refer to our group of friends as the 4 kids club because so many have four kids.) Carol didn't have her kids this weekend but she still came and hung out. Tim came when he was done with work.
Here's a bunch of the adults down in the fire pit.
Here it is from a different angle. This was such a fun group.
And here are the roving bands of unsupervised kids having the time of their life in the backyard.
We all had a great time. Some people started leaving as it got dark around 8:30, but we were still going really strong around 9:15. Then more left to put their kids to bed. Most of Jori's kids ended up in the house watching a movie with Derrick. Jori's oldest girl played Ghost in the Graveyard with all three of my girls.
Jori and Tim left around 9:40 and my girls pulled Derrick outside and played Ghost in the Graveyard until 10:30.
One of my friends sent me this text later: "Hey I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am for you. I now it might not seem like much to you, but I've been really struggling lately. I have felt very, very lonely and depressed. I am so grateful for your friendship and for providing somewhere for me to go where I can feel a part of something and just not be alone. A lot of wards I have been in the past I didn't really feel like I fit in anywhere. And I really struggle to be outgoing and make friends. Thank you so much I really appreciate you."
This really made my day because I'm always trying to be the person to reach out to the people that seem on the sidelines and pull them in.
As everyone left I reminded them that we will be doing a Halloween Party to. It's fun to already have that to look forward to.
And now we've made it to Sunday. I'm so glad our church starts at noon. There was plenty of time to sleep in and then still have time to work on Exponent Guest post things.
We recently had a few permablogger spots open up so I'd mass emailed all the guest post authors from the last few months to see if anyone was interested. This might have been a mistake.
Twelve people got back to me. Twelve! And at best we had room for three.
Fortunately, 5 of them were people saying they were interested but couldn't commit at the moment.
Five more were people that had only submitted one guest post so far. The rule is they have to have two published before they are considered for a permablogger position. So I emailed them and said we could talk more after their second post was published.
And that left 2 that were ready for the next step.
Although later in the day I checked the email and there were two more who had already submitted two posts who were interested.
So yeah, I'm not sure what we are doing about that. But worst case scenario is that I give up my regular morning posting slot for someone. I have a plan for a blog series that I want to do next year, but it might be more appropriate for an afternoon slot anyway. So I think we'll have room for four more permabloggers.
And actually this growth and interest is WONDERFUL. About 2 years ago it felt like the blog was in a state of entropy. But my bloggy friend Abby was convinced the problem was that we didn't have an presence on Instagram. I agreed with her, but I didn't have time to take the steps she did. She hunted down the person who last had access to the blog's instagram account and got access and then started posting twice a day every day. Every blog post went up as an instagram post a day later. She posted comments. She posted videos. And gradually the account grew. It now has 5000 followers.
And those followers are engaging with the website. And they are starting to write guest posts. Last year we would get like one guest post a month. This year it's more like three a week. The lady who had the guest post coordinator position was so overwhelmed that she asked for help and that's when I stepped in. Then she became the co-editor of freaking Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and I told her that she didn't need to worry about Exponent guest posts while doing that.
So now I spend my Sunday mornings coordinating guest posts and loving every minute of it. I think of it as my Sabbath Devotional time.
Church was okay. I spent most of it in the foyer. Derrick was in a weird mood and didn't want to pass the sacrament or really be at church. So we spent Sacrament meeting in the foyer. And then Sunday School too.
Back at home I took a nap. Then I cleaned the kitchen and cooked baked potatoes for dinner. (We had them with leftover chili.)
I had a bunch of jalopenio peppers in the garden. So I cut them up and mixed them with cheese and 4 oz of cream cheese and rolled the filling up in tortillas to make little jalopeno pinwheels. They were good.
The other 4 oz of cream cheese went toward making raspberry danishs. I'd bought puff pastry dough and then added sweetened cream cheese and raspberries. These turned out super cute. But I think next time I need to roll the raspberries in sugar because they were a little tart.
And that gets us caught up again. And I know I've been promising this for weeks. But this week really might be the week I go back and write about the North Idaho Trip. Or at least a day of that trip.
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