Summer 2022 - Week 4 - Art and other stuff

We are still a little behind on these recaps so this post is about the week of Sunday June 12 to Saturday June 18.

We left off with my family finishing a whole 12 hour day at Lagoon on Saturday.  

We woke up on Sunday at Brandon's parents house and slooooooooowwwwwwwwly got up and going for the day. We watched church with Jacque on her laptop. 

I wanted us to leave before noon. The air-conditioning in the Honda had not worked on our way down to Utah and I was not looking forward to another hot afternoon drive.  But it seemed really hard for anyone else to understand that.  

Finally around 12:30 I was like, "K, if we are going to stay here for another 3 hours let's actually plan on that and I can find something to do.  Otherwise I'd really like to get going."

That did the trick.  We were in the car and backing out of the driveway within a few minutes. 

The kids agreed that it was pointless to try to watch a movie while the windows were down so we didn't worry about a movie.  We drove with the windows down and it was very loud and hot.  And also windy.  A couple times I had to roll up my window because the wind was blowing on me so hard. 

A little after we crossed the Idaho border there was a sudden change in the temperature outside the car.  Brandon had his hand out the window and said, "Wow, that just dropped 10 degrees. My guess is it's like 68 out there now. "   68 degrees seemed crazy to be, but I watched as the temperature reading on our dashboard caught up to the new temperature.  It's highest had been around 80 and had dropped to about 77 right before we felt the big drop..  Over the next 10 or so minutes the reading dropped steadily down to 68 degrees. Then it kept falling. I think it finally bottomed out around 59 degrees. 

I thought that maybe this was some strange weather fluke that we'd drive out of within a few minutes.  But the lower temperature held steady for the next 90 minutes all the way to Twin Falls.  And it really stayed that way for about the next week.  I literally wore a long sleeve shirt and sweat pants to bed one night because I was so cold. 

When we got home I immediately went around and checked on my garden.  Here's the yellow rosebush.  Normally it blooms in the first week of June, but the weather had been so odd lately it was about 10 days late. 

Here's a blackberry blossom.

Charlotte started harvesting strawberries.  I'd picked all the ripe ones before we'd left on Friday, but there were tons more ripe ones again.

Over the next 10 days we'd pick at least 4 cups of strawberries every other day.  I made A LOT of jam. 

Here's another view of the rose bush.  It's stunning. 

I love this time of year. 

Brandon cooked dinner and we ate it out on the patio.  I'd expected to come home to a hot house and we'd have to turn on the air conditioner to cool everything off.  But instead everything was already so cool.  This was such a nice surprise. 

I took more pictures after dinner. 

In the front yard the white Irises had bloomed.

And the small rosebush up there was blooming too. 

The peony's were also finally open. This one was as big as my hand. 

This is a terrible picture of me, but look, the Catalpa is taller than me now!!!!

The Hollyhock is coming back nicely. 

And look the locust. It has little flowers that make the air around it smell so sweet.  It's honestly like a rosebush.  My mom called locusts, "Trees of Heaven" and I never really understood why until last year when I figured out how good they smelled. 

Here's a view of the whole tree. It's hard to remember that this wasn't always in our yard.  It looks so good. 

At some point rain moved in and we had a nice storm.  Afterward there was a pretty rainbow. 

And a cool sunset. 

Monday was a busy day.  I'd signed Charlotte and Lydia up for an Art Camp at CSI called Camp Master Piece.  This was the first day.  They weren't to sure about this and were not happy about having to be there at 8:45 (which meant getting up at 8:00.)  But when I picked them up at 11:30 they said they'd liked the class.  They didn't let me see anything they were working on so I don't have pictures, but there will be plenty at the end of the week.

We went home and had lunch and then I took them to the orthodontist.  We are getting ready for braces in a few months. Step One was to install some tongue spurs on the back of their front teeth.  I'm not supposed to tell you what these are for, so let's just say that certain girls still have certain thumbs that are absentmindedly finding their way into certain mouths. The spikes are supposed to help them be more mindful of when that's happening and help them remember to stop.  

When that was over it was about time for me to go to work. I picked Brandon up from work, dropped him off at home, and then went to work. 

After work and after dinner I told Brandon and the kids, "Okay, I haven't done any school stuff since Thursday. I'm behind where I want to be for this class.  So I'm going to disappear and get caught up." So I went down to the basement and did lots of reading.  

I was able to get caught up. I also looked at the schedule I'd set up for myself. I realized that if I did a lot of reading this week it was possible I could take the final test and finish the class on Saturday the 18, instead of Friday the 24th.  I didn't want to push myself too hard so I was still fine with finishing on the 24th, but I decided to try to finish on the 18th if it wasn't too painful.   

So for a lot of the week I was studying and studying and studying. 

On Tuesday I dropped the Twins off at the college for art camp and when I got home Veronica wanted to do her own art camp. Her Bestemor had given her a wooden bird house on Sunday and Veronica wanted to paint it.  so we got out the paint and she went to work on it.   

It turned out really cute. 

Oh and here's her back tooth that was super wiggly.  This is the tooth that I'd taken her into the dentist about at the beginning of June.  It had been hurting her and I worried it was had an abscess.  Turns out it had a tooth growing underneath it already. The dentist made an appt for an extraction in 3 weeks if it didn't fall out on it's own. But he was pretty certain it would come out on it's own. 

Veronica started wiggling it and wiggling it.  But it didn't come out.  Meanwhile, Charlotte and Derrick each lost a tooth and Lydia lost two.  But Veronica's tooth didn't come out.  It got super wiggly though and I wasn't sure how it was staying it.  It eventually came out on like Thursday. (It involved an oddly timed sneeze.)

On Tuesday night Derrick disappeared around bed time.  I found him in the basement looking through the big notebook full of his kindergarten papers and projects.  He'd found this mask and put it on. We looked through the book and talked about kindergarten. There were things he remembered and things he didn't.  I can't believe he's going into 5th grade in just a few months. 

Wednesday was another day of me taking Brandon to work at 6:00 then coming home and studying/falling asleep (it was a boring text book.) At 7:30 I got ready for the day and at 8:00 I woke the girls up.  I took them to the college at 8:45.  Derrick's therapist had a death in the family so she didn't do therapy on Tuesday or Wednesday.  I put Derrick and Veronica in front of a movie downstairs and then logged into a zoom meeting with the Idaho Small Business Development Center. 

I was participating in the "Doing Business in Idaho" webinar as kind of a pre-curser to the part time RV business that Brandon and I were planning to start when I was done with school. I was pretty solid on the idea of starting a business.  But I just didn't feel ready to actually do it. 

I sat down with my notebook and was ready to take all sorts of notes. But about 5 minutes into the class I realized, "I already know all this."

I thought back over the past few years and realized I've already taken this class in similar forms MULTIPLE times.  I took a small business class at the Logan Employment Resource Center back in like 2009, I took a small business/excel class at the Small Business Center in Enterprise, Alabama in 2015, I took the small business class through my stake in 2020, to say nothing of the fact that I earned  a Bachelors degree in Economics in 2007 and nearly have one in Accounting.  

Plus, thanks to changing our PTA to a PTO, I already had a crash course in things like registering with the secretary of state and getting a Tax ID number with the IRS.

The class was good, but the thing it taught me the most is that I'm READY to do this. It reminded me of when we were getting ready to buy a house.  I took a class through Neighborworks in Pocatello and it was similar to a class I'd taken in Fort Rucker, Alabama.

I'm REALLY good at preparing for things. But sometimes I just need to actually do the thing.

That's where I'm at with this business.  It's time to stop worrying that I don't know enough and to just start it. 

Since I didn't have to actually take notes I realized I could do something else with my hands.  A day earlier I'd picked a bunch of rhubarb from my neighbors giant plant.  I hadn't had time to cut up the stalks yet.  So I cut them up while listening to the class. 

When the class was over I started making strawberry-rhubarb jam.  The recipe said that it would take about an hour for the rhubarb to cook down and that I should stir occasionally. 

This turned out to be the BEST activity to go with studying a boring textbook.  I'd read for about 3 minutes.  Get bored. Stir the jam. Then read for another 3 minutes. Get bored again. And repeat. 

And look at how well the rhubarb cooked down.  This was kind of a new thing to me. My mom made rhubarb pie when I was a kid, but all her recipes directed her to just chop the rhubarb and cook it that way.  I was aware that rhubarb cooked down, but I'd never actually seen it happen. 

I didn't taste the jam until I licked the spoon at the very end.  It tasted delicious.  Later in the week I went back to my neighbor's and picked a lot of rhubarb and made a double batch. 

When I picked Charlotte and Lydia up from art camp they showed me the sidewalk chalk drawings they'd done during a break.   Here's Charlotte's. 

And Lydia's.  

Veronica had also been hard at work with creativity.  She had an elaborate set up going on in her room that changed daily.  (At one point I'd seen her little bear sitting at a desk in what appeared to be a fancy office. She didn't let me take a picture of that one.)  This was the vault that protected what she called "The Most Dangerous Gem."  I didn't get a lot of the story, but she sure had a lot of fun playing in her room this week.

There are two things that needed to happen before we really get this business off the ground. 1. I needed to finish school. 2. Was Brandon needed to put the jeep back together.  So I was very happy when I went into the garage one day and saw the engine was nearly back together.  Progress!

On Thursday Derrick had therapy with Mr Kelly for the first time since February? March? I can't remember exactly, but it's been a while.  Mr Kelly had texted me that he was planning to take Derrick fishing and Derrick was so excited.  He talked about it all week and was ready to go with all his gear as soon as Mr Kelly showed up. 

When I picked Charlotte and Lydia up from Art Camp I was able to see them finishing one of their projects. 

When we got home from Art Camp we had an hour until Derrick would be home.  So I told the girls we'd work on Brandon's Father's Day gift.  I'd gone grocery shopping that morning after dropping Brandon off at work and I'd picked up about 15 candy bars to make a candy gram card.

The girls and I went through the candy bars and came up with a sentence for each one.  Then we put them on a poster board that Veronica and I had bought at the dollar store.

It turned out so fun. 

Here's what it says:

MR GOOD[DAD], We are just a bunch of NERDS, but we give you a perfect SCOR because you LOOK at something and U-NO how to fix it. Sometimes life is a ROCKY ROAD but today is your PAYDAY. You deserve a FAST BREAK so TAKE 5. You're not a DUD you're a MEGA dad. Mom things you're an IDAHO S[T]UD and a BIG HUNK of love. You make us SNICKER and bring us lots of JOY. You are such a GOOD dad. Love your SOUR PATCH KIDS. 

We finished the poster about 5 minutes before Derrick got home.  I'm so glad he has a therapist that can keep him busy for hours again.  Miss Brittani has been okay, but she hadn't been able to keep him going and I've missed that.  

Thursday was actually a kind of warm day. According to the weather report it was going to be one of the only warmish days for the next few days so after dinner we went to the pool.  

Brandon and I wore our swimming suits, but when we got there decided that we'd rather not freeze.  So we sat on the side and the kids swam until 8:00.

On Friday I took the girls to their last class and then went to work for just a little bit.  (I usually only work about 60-90 minutes on Friday.  It's nice.  

I came home and took the Pre-Assessment for my Auditing Course.  If the Pre-Assessment went well I was planning to take the Objective Assessment that afternoon or Saturday morning.  

I ended up passing the PA, but there were a lot of questions where I'd been like, "What are they even talking about?"  And when I got the breakdown of the results there were about 3 areas where I was only "approaching competent."  I decided that I was just fine shelving the whole thing for the weekend and working on it again on Monday. I thought, "I can either stress myself out and try to get this done now. Or I can just relax, I obviously have enough time."  

So I chose to relax. 

I wanted Derrick and Veronica to go to the Art Show with me when I picked up the girls, but they weren't interested.  So I just went by myself.  I took a lot of pictures because Brandon couldn't be there.  

Here's Lydia with her art work.  As you can see, this was a very dessert heavy curriculum. 

They did a stained glass look with thick black paint and then water colors. 

Here's a collage that she didn't quite finish, but it still looks amazing. 

This was done with oil pastels. 

And they made these cool mobile type things from sticks and flowers and other things they found on the college campus. 

Here's Charlotte with most of her art work. 

Here's Lydia's paper mache sculpture.  I love the melting ice cream. 

Here's Charlotte's. 

Here's Charlotte's oil pastel.

And her stained glass looking piece. 

And her collage.

Here mobile was so heavy they had to put it up on the bulletin board. 

It was really cool. 

They had also done Shrinky dink art to hang on their name tags.  They were so proud of them that both girls wore their name tags for the next two days. 

That afternoon we watched Star Wars Episode IV. I forgot to write that the previous Friday we'd watched Rouge One. I'd warned the kids that it ended sad and some chose not to watch it.  But Derrick watched it the whole time and kept asking, "Where's R2?" I told him R2 wasn't in the movie.  Then R2 and 3PO made a 2 second cameo and Derrick said, "I TOLD you mom. There's R2."

When the movie was over we watched the How It Should Have Ended video for it. The kids all watched that.  The girls liked it better, but Derrick got mad and said, "That's NOT what happened."

Anyway, so this week we watched Episode IV.  The kids have seen this one before, and they all really liked watching it again. All four of them watched intently.  When it was over Lydia said, "It's over already! It was so short!"  Yes, quality writing makes a 2 hour movie seem to go by quickly.  

Months ago I'd tentatively penciled in the "Poky Paddle" on our calendar for that Friday evening.  The Poky Paddle was when Pocatello had a big community event and people floated the Portneuf River near our old house.  The first year they did it was also our last year in Pocatello.  We've wanted to go back but it just hasn't worked out.  

Well this year didn't work out either. Gas was now over $5 a gallon and going to Utah for our Lagoon trip had taken our entire gas budget plus part of our recreation budget for that pay period. There was nothing left for a trip to Pocatello.  

Plus we were tired. 

So we just stayed in Twin Falls. 

After dinner I suggested we watch a movie, but Derrick (who had been watching movies all day) said, "No, let's do something else."  This was so out of character for Derrick I immediately started trying to think of something fun to do.  

We decided to go on a hike.  I wanted to try out a section of the Rock Creek Trail that we've never done before. So we drove over to the trailhead near Shoshone Street. 

Things got off to a rough start when Veronica fell on gravel and had two giant bleeding holes in her knees before we even started.  But I got her patched up with the first aid kit in the car and we all started walking down to the trail. 

The trail was really cool.  Here are the three older kids. 

And me and Veronica. She was not happy about her knee, but by the end of the hike she'd mostly forgot about it. 

There is a bridge that takes Shoshone Street over Rock Creek.  From above it looks small, but from down below it was really big.  I never got a great picture of the bridge.  But you can see one of the footings in this picture. 

Here's another section of Rock Creek.

I knew that this trail eventually met up with another section of Rock Creek that we've been to a bunch.  So when we saw this weeping willow the kids were like, "I KNOW WHERE WE ARE."  They were really excited to be back here. 

We played around for a while and then headed back. We made it back to the car just before dark. It had been a great evening activity. 

On Saturday I went around and took more garden pictures. 

The kids and Brandon had mowed the back lawn while I was at work on Thursday. (It had turned into quite the jungle during the cooler weather.) It looked so good with everything trimmed and edged. .

Here are some random poppies that are basically growing in the cement along our driveway.  

Here's the front garden area. 

The rose bush is in full bloom.

And look at this little transplanted rosebush.  It definitely survived. 

Some other wild flowers were starting to bloom. 

Veronica had planted some marigold seeds in a cup in her second grade class.  It was finally time to plant those. 

On Saturday afternoon I took Derrick and Veronica to a Stake Primary Activity. It was just for the Activity aged kids and they'd even split it further than that.  The 8 and 9 year olds went in the morning and the 10 and 11 year olds went in the afternoon.  I didn't feel like going twice so I just took Derrick and Veronica together.  (Veronica's so tall she fit right in with the 10-11 year old group.)

They went through 4 rotations for Spiritual, Social, Physical, and Intellectual Growth.  At the spiritual rotation they made painted hand prints and talked about a "5 Finger Testimony."  Then the kids were invited to share their testimony.  Derrick raised his hand and said, "Jesus Christ prayed and he helped him."  This was the most church based thing I've ever heard Derrick say. (He also told everyone that he was going into 5th grade and that is 4th grade teacher was his best friend.)

At the social rotation the kids played with a parachute and worked together to make a big mushroom. 

At the physical rotation the kids did an obstacle course. Here's Derrick running it. 

And Veronica doing it. 

At the intellectual station the kids made little visual aids for sunbeam kids to use during singing time.  (I wasn't sure how this one related.) Veronica colored a lot.  Derrick helped for a bout 5 seconds and lots interest.  So he and I sat in the foyer until it was done.  I was so impressed he'd made it through the nearly 3 hour activity. 

When it was all done they took a picture and then we had water and cookies. 

That evening Brandon and I had tickets to see "The Play that Goes Wrong" at the Orpheum Theater on Main Street in Twin Falls. I heard about this play like 5 years ago.  It's original run was produced by JJ Abrams and I think I heard about it as kind of a "What's JJ doing now that he's not working on the Force Awakens?"  I also saw this interview about it on Jimmy Fallon at some point. 

So it's always been in my brain as something I'd like to see one day.  When I found out the Orpheum was putting it on I immediately put it on my calendar (in pen). 

We left the kids home to babysit themselves. (I promised them each $2 if they didn't fight.)  And we drove over to the theater.  This was the first time we've been to a play there.  It was really fancy looking.

Here we are in front of the sign for the play. 

The concept of the play is so clever.  Basically it's a local acting group putting on a production of "The Murder at Havershire Manor."  But right from the beginning things are going wrong. 

Even before the play started we were clued into some of the problems.  The "stage hands" we walking around telling audience members, "We have a situation, our dog has got loose and we can't find him."

Another stage hand pulled an audience member up onto stage to help her hold a shelf up while she got it into place. She left him standing there for a long time before she came back with tap to try to put the shelf up.

When the play started things just kept getting sillier.  The "murder victim" had his hand laying on the floor and actors kept stepping on it. He started moving it out of the way. 

Lots of little funny things happened, but one of the best gags was when the leading lady was knocked unconscious.  Stage hands had to pull her off the set.  In the next scene she was replaced with a stage hand who was holding the script book. Hilarity ensued. 

By the end of the play the set is falling apart. The actors are completely flustered. And the audience is laughing so hard no one was following the plot of the "real" play as the actors explained who the real murderer was. 

I don't know when I've laughed so hard. It was such a fun production.  If you ever get a chance to see "The Play that Goes Wrong" you definitely should do it. 

The play ended at 9:00 and Brandon and I were so surprised to see it was still light outside when we walked out.  (I love summer.)  We walked around Main Street for a while and then went and got ice cream.  

We went home around 10:00 and the kids were all fine.  I love having older kids.  

We all went to bed.  And that was the end of our 4th week of summer vacation.  

Thanks for reading. 

 

Summer 2022 - Week 3 - Playing

This post covers from Sunday June 5th to Saturday June 11th. This week was full of lots of little playing things. 

Here we are having Sunday dinner on the patio.  It's so fun to eat out there. 

Brandon had to rush off from dinner and go to his last Business Class.  He had to do a presentation on the business that he'd been working on during the 12 weeks of the class.  He talked about the book he's been writing since that's been his biggest project lately. But he did say, "Well I finally got my wife on board about starting a business so things will start happening with that."

Monday was a Bible Study day so I took Brandon to work at 6:00 and then headed to Kayla's house for Bible Study.  We've left Bibliology and have moved onto Theology Proper. Which is the Study of God.  Theology basically means the Study of God, so it's called Theology Proper when you are specifically studying theology about God. 

Since it's summer nobody is really worried about rushing off from Bible Study to help kids get ready for the day. So we talked until about 8:00. It was so nice to sit with other women and discuss religious things for over 90 minutes. Bible Study is always worth getting up early. 

I went back home and I think everyone was still asleep. 

Later that morning I went to work for Admin Meeting.  It ended up being just me and my boss at the meeting.  We had a good discussion about a few things. 

Then I went back home we had lunch. Then I took the kids to the library so we could pick up more book.  After that I worked on school stuff, and worked on school stuff, and worked on school stuff. (I probably also took a nap at some point.)

After dinner I sat at the kitchen table and worked on school stuff. Derrick and Veronica were outside playing on the mattresses. (The mattresses that we were going to take to the dump months ago, but the kids turned into the greatest outdoor toys ever.)

They were pretending the mattresses were rafts and were playing out so many scenarios.

I ended up taking a long video.  It's so fun to see both these kids pretending. 

On Tuesday I worked on my blog in the morning before the kids woke up.  Miss Brittani picked up Derrick at 9:00 and I got on a zoom call. The call was with Liberty, the company that does assessments to determine Derrick's eligibility for Behavioral Intervention Services. We went through a whole vineland questionnaire. It took us over 2 hours.  I hate these assessments, but they are important.  

Before I got on the call I'd found out old homeschool supply box. I was looking for things to give to my sister Emily for a pre-school she's going to be doing next year. What ended up happening was the kids remembered how much fun some of the learning toys were.  So Veronica spent most of the time I was on the phone call playing with some of the toys. 

Charlotte and Lydia went outside and playing in their garden. They have quite an elaborate system of rivers, lakes, and dams. 

I filmed a whole tour of the area. 

And speaking of gardens, here's an update on mine. 

My irises bloomed. 

So did the little transplanted lilac. 

Another view. 

The catalpa is growing well.

And look at the strawberries.  

A few strawberries were starting to ripen. 

Later that evening all the kids ended up playing on the mattresses. They made them into a pirate ship and pretended to be pirates. (This is when they were pretending to sleep for the night.) 

Charlotte was the captain. (And the chief boat builder.)

Here's the full boat. 

Another view of it. 

I ended up taking a video of their playing. 

I weeded the garden on Tuesday night and then took more pictures.  Here's the spinach, carrots, and onion bed. 

The strawberries.

More Strawberries, with Raspberries in the back. 

Black berries. 

They are starting to have little blossoms. 

The yellow rosebush was also developing blossoms. 

Here are the kids playing on Wednesday. They had the sprinkler on and then put up umbrellas to try to keep dry. 

Our backyard is so fun! 

Here's a creation one of the girls made with the newly discovered shape toys.  We've been reading Fable haven and I think she made it while I was reading. 

Charlotte worked for a long time to remodel the pirate ship. I took this picture of her while I was studying. 

Thursday was a busy day. It was Brandon's payday and so one of us was going to need to go grocery shopping.  After thinking about various possibilities, I realized the best time to go to shopping would be at 6:00 AM. So I dropped Brandon off at work and then went straight to Winco.  I should have been shopping at 6:00 AM all along.  It was such a relaxing shopping trip.

Brandon had mentioned that the Honda needed an oil change soon.  I wanted to get that taken care of before we went to Utah for the weekend.  So later that morning I told the kids to hop in the car so we could take care of that. Derrick didn't really want to go, so I reminded him that last time we went to Jiffy Lube they'd had free popcorn and little sodas.  Derrick immediately got in the car.  

But when we drove over to Jiffy Lube we found out they had a 50 minute wait!  That was not going to work. 

I was trying to salvage the morning.  I told the kids that I had ice cream sandwiches back at home.  We could pick those up and then go to a park to eat them.  Everyone (except Derrick) liked that idea.  Charlotte and Lydia had looked at a map of Twin Falls on Wednesday and noticed a dog park on the map.  So they suggested we go there with Marcia.  So we ran home and got the ice cream sandwiches and got a leash for Marcia.  (She was already in the car.)  Then we went to the Dog Park which was on the other side of town. 

Marcia was never socialized very well (thanks COVID) so I was worried about taking her to the dog park.  But she actually did pretty well around the other dogs. 

Derrick was still in a bad mood so he mostly stayed in the car. But everyone else had a good time. 

When we were done at the park we started driving home.  We saw a car on a side street that had it's hazard lights on.  A mom was standing next to the car and she had her baby carrier sitting on the side walk.  It was the baby carrier that had me concerned.  I didn't know if I could really help with anything, but I didn't want to leave a new mom and her baby stranded if I could help it. 

So I told the kids we were going to circle around the see if we could help the mom. While we were trying to get back to that side road we drove by another Jiffy Lube.  I forgot that there was one over there.  There was an empty bay at that Jiffy Lube. 

We found our way back to the mom and I rolled down the window to ask her if she needed help.  She laughed and said, "There was a HUGE spider on me."  I pulled over really fast and now I'm trying to find it to kill it."  She'd taken the baby out so the spider wouldn't get on the baby. 

I was happy to hear it was just a spider.  I offered her a water bottle. She declined, but said thank you.  

With that taken care of we could go back to the Jiffy Lube. The third bay was still empty and we were directed right in.  

When the techs started working on the car they mentioned that their system recommended we have the radiator flushed.  I declined at first, but then a little alarm bell went off in my head.  I know NOTHING about radiators, but I do know that the radiator is what cracked on the Jeep last year and kicked off the whole engine overhaul.  I did NOT want anything happening to the Honda's radiator. So I told the techs to do the radiator too.  

I'm glad we did that. Like I said, I don't know anything about radiators, but I could see them sucking things out of the radiator.  There were a lot of big chunks of gunk. It seemed like a good thing to get those out of there and put in new fluid. 

Derrick had been looking forward to free popcorn and soda.  But this Jiffy Lube didn't have any. He was not happy about that as you can see from this picture.   

I eventually gave him my phone to play with. That calmed him down enough for us to get through the rest of the oil change. 

Soon after we got home it was time for me to pick up Brandon from work.  I picked him up and then he dropped me off at work. 

While I was at work Brandon took care of taking Derrick to Speech and Occupational Therapy. I'm so glad he can take care of things while I'm at work. 

That night I read more Fablehaven to the kids. Here are more shape creations.  Veronica said this was a hot dog. 

Friday was a busy busy day.  We were planning to leave for Utah as soon as Brandon was done with work at 2:00.  So I spent a lot of the morning getting ready to go.  In fact, I realized that I liked getting up at 6:00 so much that it was just easiest to take Brandon to work and then go to work as soon as I dropped him off. 

So I went to work at 6:00 and was there until 9:00. I got so much done.  Normally going in at that time doesn't work but this time it did. 

I went home and the kids helped me clean out the car and get things packed.  I went out to the garden and picked strawberries.  These were the first ripe strawberries to make it into the house. 

We were ready to go at 2:00.  I picked Brandon up from work and he came home and took a quick shower.  The kids and I put the last few things into the car. 

We were on our way around 2:30.  In my head the plan for the weekend was perfect.  We were going down for another Lagoon trip.  We planned to drive to Lagoon and spend the evening in the park.  Then we'd stay the night at Brandon's parents and then go back for full day at Lagoon on Saturday.  

It was a perfect plan, but I forgot about an important detail.  Our car's air-conditioning wasn't working reliably.  May had been so unseasonably cold that I'd forgot that the air-conditioning was having problems back on our Nevada vacation in March. 

Normally the kids watch a movie while we drive to Utah.  They'd brought a Harry Potter movie from the library to watch.  But with the air-conditioning not working we had to roll down the windows.  And that made it hard to hear the movie.  Still the kids were determined to try.  So we drove the whole way to Utah with the windows partially down and the movie playing.  It wasn't idea, but the kids didn't complain. 

We were planning to stop at a McDonalds for dinner. We'd planned to just go through the drive through, but we liked the idea of going in and enjoying some air-conditioning. Since the kids had been so patient with the hot car I decided they deserved a treat.  I bought them all blue raspberry slushies.  

They all enjoyed the slushies and the food. 

We made it to Lagoon around 6:00.  We headed straight for the back of the park to wait in line for Rattle Snake Rapids.  This was a good plan. The line area for that ride is very shady. That helped cool us off. Derrick was playing with his hair and got it all spiky. 

While we were in line I got a text from Derrick's behavioral therapy company.  The text was telling me that Mr Kelly would be working with Derrick in addition to Miss Brittani.  I was so happy about this text.  Mr Kelly had been Derrick's last Behavioral Therapist when we were with A New Hope.  When ANH dissolved their Twin Falls office Mr Kelly had interviewed with the company we switched to, but he decided to take a job with another office.  I guess that job hadn't worked out because now he was with our company.  

Miss Britani has been an okay therapist. But Mr Kelly and Derrick had a good bond.  Plus Mr Kelly knows how to really motivate Derrick.  They are a really good match for each other.  

So I spent most of the time in line texting to coordinate things with Mr Kelly.  We decided he'd take Derrick on Thursday mornings.  I told Derrick and he was super happy too. 

We rode on Rattle Snake Rapids and got soaked!  That kept us all cool for the rest of the evening.  

We had such a fun time at Lagoon that evening. We rode lots of rides. At one point Brandon and the three oldest kids went on Cannibal.  It was Brandon's first time.  Veronica is still not ready for Cannibal so she and I went around and rode some things together.  Here are some selfies we took while hanging out. 

She's always doing something funny in pictures. 

Here she is wiggling her tooth. I was expecting the tooth to come out at some point that weekend.  But it stayed in until the next Thursday. 

At one point Veronica and I went on Air Race.  It's some airplanes that spin you around. You go upside down and sideways.  It's probably one of our favorite rides.  Right as we sat in the chairs the in park sound system started playing Philip Philip's song Home.  You all know how much I love that song.  It was so perfect to hear that song while riding such a fun ride. 

Let's look at the lyrics again shall we. It's such a simple song and yet so comforting. 

Hold on to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along

Just know you're not alone
'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble, it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Lagoon isn't my home, but it's a place I love to visit with my family so it's kind of a home. 

We went on the Bat and the line was really short so the kids asked if they could run around and do it again.  I said yes and they took off.  By the time Brandon and I made it back to where we could see the kids in line I realized that I couldn't see Derrick.  Charlotte yelled to us and told us that Derrick hadn't got in line with them. She showed me the last place she'd seen him.  

I looked around and realized there were three possible directions Derrick could have gone.  By this point the evening was getting dark and it was hard to see very far.  Plus I'd been wearing my prescription sunglasses all day.  I didn't have my regular glasses with me.  So I couldn't see very well anyway.  

Brandon and I tried walking a little ways to see if we could find Derrick, but we didn't have any luck.  I wasn't too worried because Derrick can talk and could ask for help if he got lost.  But did he know he was lost? Was he just on a fabulous solo adventure and wouldn't notice that the rest of us weren't there?

I didn't really know what to do so I decided to just stand at the spot where Charlotte had last seen Derrick.  Brandon kept walking around looking for Derrick. The other kids were still on the Bat. I figured we'd come up with a plan if we hadn't spotted Derrick by the time they got off. 

Just as the kids were almost done with their ride I saw Derrick running up to me.  He said, "I went on the octopus ride!"  It was only a little ways away from the Bat. He'd run over there because it was a water ride and he wanted to get wet again. 

I gave him a talk about how he needed to TELL me where he was going. But I wasn't too mad. I was just happy we found him without too much fuss. 

We went over to Bombora and rode that. The kids got off it and immediately got in line again.  I'd been on the rollercoaster feeling like I was done with G-Forces for the day so I stayed off.  

After the second ride the ride opperator said that ride was closed.  It was 9:55 and the park closed at 10:00.  This was the first time I'd ever stayed at Lagoon until the 10:00 closing time.  I took a picture to celebrate. 

We drove by my sister Emily's house and stopped by to drop off the pre-school supplies.  We could have stayed at Emily's that night, but they were getting ready for a trip to Logan to visit our Aunt Karen on Saturday. I didn't want to add my family to her stress.  But I should have known better.  When I dropped the things off Emily and her family were deep into party mode.  My sister Hillary was staying over with her husband and kids.  The younger kids were asleep, but the adults and kids were just starting a 3 hour board game. 

We all came inside to say hi.  My kids ate leftover homemade pizza and eyed the Dr Pepper that Hillary had brought. We could have stayed for a long time, but we were tired so we only stayed a bit and then drove up to Brandon's parents house. 

The kids were so tired by the time we got there.  I'm not sure they even changed into pajamas. We had a good night's sleep at Brandon's parents and then had breakfast. I put together hoagie sandwiches and packed our cooler for the day. 

Then we drove back to Lagoon. We arrived right at 10:00. Our first stop was the season pass office.  We've used our electronic IDs to get into the park on our other visits, but we were planning to go to Lagoon-a-beach this time and I figured physical ID's would be more convenient around all that water. 

The kids were really excited to see their pictures on the printed ID's.  They all proudly held their ID's as we were scanned into the park. 

I took the older three kids over to Cannibal where the line wasn't very long (or hot) yet.  We rode that.  I was still a little scared of the elevator part, but I did open my eyes more for that part. 

We were done pretty fast.  While I called Brandon to figure out where he and Veronica were, the kids jumped into line for another ride.  I love this picture of the three of them together. 

We met back up with Brandon and Veronica and then rode a bunch of rides together.  The park wasn't very crowded yet so we were able to ride a bunch of roller coasters.  I think we went on Cannibal, Spider, Colossus, the Wooden Roller Coaster, and Wild Mouse all before noon. 

Here are the kids getting off the Wildmouse. 

We decided to head back to the picnic area to eat some lunch, but on our way the kids wanted to go on the swings. 

The swings scare me so I stayed off. 

I took a video of the kids (and everyone else.) You can see it here. 

We had a lunch break. I'd made pasta salad back in Idaho and it was so delicious. (Also huge shout out to the $15 cooler bags at Winco.  They kept everything cold on the way to Utah on Friday and in the parking lot on Friday night.  Everything had gone back into the fridge/freezer at my in-laws and then back into the cooler on Saturday morning. I'd been a little worried about this new freezer bag, but it proved itself on this trip.)

After lunch we went into Lagoon-a-beach. I'd been worried about this part of the trip. I've only ever been to Lagoon-a-beach one time.  And that was 15 years ago with Brandon.  I had no idea what it would be like with kids. 

I discovered it's one of the 7 levels of Parent Hell. Right around the level of Chucky Cheese.  Brandon and I immediately lost track of the kids.  Between someone needing to go to the bathroom, other kids going in the lazy river, and another kid disappearing in the mass of little kids playing in that play area.   

It took us about 30 minutes just to round everyone up again. Once we were together we decided to try out the water slides.  I liked this part. We decided to go try the speed slides on the top level of the waterslide tower.  

Veronica was really worried about that slide.  I was like, "come on, you've gone on all the waterslides at Lava Hot Springs."  And then I was like, "Oh wait, you didn't." Veronica had always spent all her time at Lava playing on the little kid slide that was like 10 feet tall.  She'd maybe gone on the serpentine slides.  But never the big fast ones. 

So then I changed my tactics to telling her, "You are older than Charlotte and Lydia were when they first went to Lava and did the slides.  You can do this. You'll be just fine."

I'm not sure if that helped.  But as we got closer to the slides Veronica's attitude changed.  She didn't seem as scared.  She picked out which of the two slides she wanted to go on and when it was her turn she confidently went over to the slide and slid down.  She did great!

I went after her and wow, that slide was fast, fun, and DARK. I screamed when it shot me down into the water.  The kids were all cheering for me at the bottom. 

We went back up and tried the serpentine slides. They were fun too. Then it was back into the lazy river/insanity pool. 

Things did not go well. Veronica was crying because we didn't have tubes. I didn't want to pay $2 per tube on this trip because I thought we'd be leaving Lagoon-a-beach within an hour.  Charlotte and Lydia went into the lazy river and Derrick went who knows where.  I never once found Derrick.  He always just seemed to find me at random times. 

I was about to pull the abort cord when some lady saw Veronica crying and found it was because the she wanted a tube.  She said, "We are about to leave.  Do you want our tubes?"  That was super nice.  So we got those three tubes.  I decided to go buy one more tube so we could have 4.  

What I didn't realize was that to go on the other set of waterslides you needed to have wristbands to prove you bought tubes. And so even though we had tubes we didn't have wristbands.  So we could use the tubes in the lazy river, but we couldn't go on the waterslide.  Derrick was disappointed about that.  

Meanwhile, Brandon was still trying to track down the kids who had scattered to who knows where.  He was just standing on the side of the lazy river baking in the sun.  This was not a recipe for a happy dad. He was pretty mad about the whole ordeal.  (And Brandon rarely gets mad.)

Eventually the 6 of us were together again, Brandon got in the water, and we all went around the lazy river twice. I'm too "Type A" to actually float in a lazy river.  So I was standing and walking and at some points pulling the rest of the family on their tubes.  Derrick liked to swim in the water so I was trying to keep us up with him.   But we actually had FUN in the lazy river.  

And then we left because we were just done with that place. We didn't even go back to the changing rooms. We just put clothes on over our swimming suits and left. (And the physical ID's did come in handy when we left the park because I just had to wave the plastic baggie they were in and the staff re-stamped all our hands.  I'm glad we didn't have to dig out Brandon's cell phone.)

On our way back to the picnic area we talked about ways to have a better time in Lagoon-a-beach.  One strategy was to visit on a week day. Another one was to establish a meeting spot where the parents would be and the kids could check in with US instead of us trying to track THEM down. 

We went back to our picnic area and found a shady grassy area to eat.  We had our hoagies and other treats. I'd packed Gatorade and we guzzled that. We took turns running over to the bathrooms to change various parts of our clothes.  My swimming trunks were giving me a rash so I changed back into my shorts.  But I left my swim suit top under the clothes.  

Brandon and I laid down on our towels and took short naps while the kids played.  I must have told them that we'd get going again at 5:00 because right at 5:00 Derrick said, "MOM IT'S FIVE!!!"  That kid is very serious about time. 

Lydia told me that we were out of sunblock.  She also suggested we go to the gift store outside Lagoon-a-beach because they'd probably have sunscreen there.  So we did that.  We bought sunscreen and it was only after that I realized. "I paid SIXTEEN DOLLARS for that!"  But hey, that's how prices are in the park. And we definitely needed that sunscreen.  We still had hours of daylight left and the kids showed no signs of slowing down. 

I honestly could have left the park then and had no regrets.  But the kids wanted to stay. So I went into energy saving mode to get through the next few hours.  I knew if I took it slow for a while, I'd have fun again when things started cooling off around 8:00.  Plus I really liked being at the park with the lights on the night before and I wanted to do it again. 

Derrick had wanted to ride the train with us all day.  Sitting on a slow moving ride sounded PERFECT at the moment so we went and did that. 

Then we went to a spiny ride.  The kids did that while Brandon and I sat off to the side.  Derrick was the first one off and he took this picture with me. 

There were a lot more spinning rides and I sat out during those.  When the kids wanted to ride on the sky ride I said I would ride on it because I wasn't interested in walking across the park. Brandon rode with me and laughed at how much that ride scares me. 

Brandon and the older kids went on Cannibal, and Veronica and I went on Oddysea.  Cannibal's line went so fast they were done with their ride before we were done with ours. 

Then there were some more spiny rides.  

Here are the kids and Brandon in line while I sat off to the side. 

We hadn't been on the rocket for a while so we went on that.  Veronica wasn't interested in that ride so she sat off to the side. Brandon and I got in line for Re-Entry.  The three other kids went on Blast Off.  We all made it to the rides at about the same time.  As Brandon and I went up high I kept saying, "Oh, I don't like this ride, I don't like this ride." When we were hanging at the top I still was saying, "Oh I don't like this."  But as soon as the ride dropped I said, "Oh yeah, I do like this."

By this time the sun was lower in the sky and the lights were turning on in the park. All my energy conservation paid off and I perked back up.  We went and rode a couple more rides.  Derrick really wanted to ride the Terror Ride with me, so we waited in line for that.  

I'm not sure what Derrick's plan was with that ride.  He covered his ears the whole time and I shut my eyes the whole time. We were like those see no evil hear no evil speak no evil monkeys.  

At the very end of the night Derrick wanted to ride the Colossus with me.  This has been a dream of mine since I was 12. That was when my family went to Lagoon and stayed overnight at the campground.  The campground is next to the Colossus.  We went back to the campground before the park closed and I could hear people riding on the Colossus in the dark. It seemed so fun. I've always wanted to ride Colossus at night.  

So we did that.  It was great!  It felt like a whole new ride.  Here's Derrick's hair when we were done. 

We met up with Brandon and the girls who had picked up the cooler.  It was 10:00 at night at we'd successfully made it through 12 hours in the park. Whew!

We got in the car and drove back up to Brandon's parents house. The kids were so tired.  Here's Lydia. 

The kids dropped into bed again when we got to the house.  I took a shower to get all the sweat, sunscreen, and dirt off my from the day.  Then I dropped into bed too.  

What a day it had been. 

And that's the end of the Third week of Summer Vacation.