Summer 2024 - Week 7 - Heatwave

Last Sunday I took this picture of all the kids staring out the window. They were all intently watching a giant bumble bee fly around to different flowers. They named him Fuzzy and watched him for something like 5 minutes. 

That's the level of excitement we had this week. 

This was the first week in like a month that I knew what day it was each day. It was the first week we were back on a regular schedule. It was the first week I truly cleaned the living room. I've literally had my Easter/Spring wreath sitting between the couch and the bookcase since I took it down at the end of May. I finally took the wreath downstairs. (It's still not really "put away" but we are getting closer.)

This week was also a heat wave. Temperatures were at or above 99 degrees all week long. I've been scurrying out to take care of yard work in the mornings and then spending the rest of the day inside. (Hence why I finally noticed that the living room could use some attention.)

Let's take a quick look at some of the other things happening this week. 

Monday morning I went to work like usual - well sort of. I actually went in at 7:00 rather than 8:00 or 9:00. I wanted to go in early for two reasons. 1. I knew I'd have a lot of catch up on since I'd taken Thursday and Friday off. And 2. The AC in our office is broken and I wanted to get all my work done before my office heated up. 

I was write on both counts. There was a lot of mail that had come in on Friday and Saturday that needed to be processed. And the office did heat up around 11:00.

Normally when I come home the kids are all watching TV in the basement. So this time I was super surprised by what I saw when I walked in the door. Lydia was making cookies and Derrick was reading to her from a shark book.  

Derrick had also drawn a picture of himself scuba diving. He's been talking non-stop about scuba diving so I think Lydia was finally like, "Derrick, why don't you draw a picture about it!"  So he drew himself. He also drew Lydia getting chased by an squid. After I took this picture he added Charlotte getting chased by a Megalodon. 

With the heat wave our lawn was really struggling. I've been watering it as best I can, but honestly, watering Kentucky Blue Grass is kind of pointless in hot weather. It's a cool season grass so it's TRYING to go dormant in July and August. Also this time of year I kind of get to the point where I'm like, "We live in a dessert. Why am I using so much water on all this grass?"

So this time of year I'm basically playing survivor with my lawn. If parts of it start to die I'm like, "Well you must not deserve to be here anyway."

The latest casually was the area behind the garage. In all fairness, this area has been struggling without a heatwave. But this is the week I decided that trying to grow grass over here was pointless. I have plans for redoing this as a gathering space with a large fire ring. It will still have plants (including two trees!) But trying to do lawn over here is just dumb. 

So consider this the "before" picture for the transformation project I plan to start this fall. 

Derrick and I even took a can of spray paint and drew lines in the grass for where we are going to stop trying to grow the grass. Derrick had fun spraying it. We even marked where I want the trees and the firepit. I like to go out here and just stare at it and envision things. I can't wait for things to cool off so I can start digging. 

That afternoon Charlotte and Lydia had an orthodontist appointment. It was just a quick wire change. Every month they are like, "I think this is the month we get them off!"  And every month they are disappointed. I'm like, "Um I think the staff would give me a heads up if they are planning to remove them." But the girls still have their hopes. 

At home Veronica was working on a lego pyramid. 

Here's the final result. 

That evening we had Payton over again. Her dad is playing King Arthur in Spamalot with Brandon. Her mom is in The Importance of Being Ernest. The rehearsals will only overlap for about a month, but that's still a long time for Payton to be hanging out at the theatre during rehearsals. So I let Kerri know that Payton is welcome over here anytime. 

We were already planning to go to the pool when we decided to have Payton come over on Monday. So Payton came with us to the pool. She loves to swim and had a great time. 

When we got back from the pool we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kids really enjoyed that book. I didn't realize how faithful the Tim Burton movie version was to the dialog from the book. In some cases Derrick was able to recite the movie lines and it matched the book.

Tuesday was my morning off from work. I spent a lot of time in the morning weeding and watering. 

Later in the morning when Veronica woke up we worked on sewing a pillow. She's a little jealous of all the things Charlotte and Lydia can do on the sewing machine so I wanted to do a project with her so she could get used to all the little operations like putting the presser foot up and down and using the pedal. 

I'd bought a bunch of fat quarters at the beginning of the summer so we'd have supplies for projects. We took two of those and cut them into fourths. Then we sewed them together. 

Veronica did about 5 seams and needed a break. So I took care of the rest of the seams. But she was back when it was time to sew everything together. 

I'd promised Derrick that I'd take him to the Mall at 10:00 on Tuesday. (He's missing all the little adventures that he'd go on around town with his therapists.) So at 10:00 he was reminding me of that. 

Veronica wanted to come to. So we drove over to the mall and walked around. The kids had fun at the arcade, just sitting in the games and pretending to play. 

Maybe we'll come back and do it for real sometime. 

When we were all done with window shopping we went to Hobby Lobby and bought stuffing for the pillow and a glue gun because the girls had burned out the other two with all their crafts. 

We came home and stuffed the pillow. Here it is on the patio. It's so cute!

And speaking of the patio. Here's the door that Brandon made last week for my garden shed. It's also super cute. There's supposed to be a top half. But considering the bottom half took over a year to put in, I'm just happy with what I have right now. 

And check out all the Barbie clothes Lydia has been making lately. She's had a lot of fun with these. 

I went to work in the afternoon and that was kind of a mistake. It was so HOT!

I was prepared with the fan from Veronica's room. And I worked with my lights off, but oh it was still hot. Still I wanted to be there so I could use my two computer monitors. I didn't want to stay home and try to do everything on my laptop. 

I had a big to do list with lots of things on it. I was really hoping to get caught up on lots of back burner projects this week. But I lasted about 2 hours. It was just too hot. 

That evening we went swimming again while Brandon was at rehearsal.

Oh and speaking of rehearsal. Brandon has been not so secretly hoping to also get the role of the French Taunter. It was between him and another guy. Well the other guy didn't show up a few times so Brandon got the role. He is so excited. He was doing the lines for us and we were all laughing so hard. 

And if you need a refresher here's who the French Taunter is. 

And here's is other big role - Galahad's Mother.

He also has a handful of other small roles throughout the play. They are all having such a fun time putting it all together. 

Wednesday I went into Ivan's office for a while and worked on some things there. I'm nearly caught up on the difficult claims. That's a good feeling. 

When I came home I was surprised to see Brandon's car in the drive way. I went into the house and tried to find him. I kept thinking, "did it finally happen?"  His company has a TERRIBLE retention rate. In the nearly 2 and half years that he's worked there, there have been something like 80 people who have left or been fired - and there are about 75 employees. It's kind of a wonder that Brandon still works there. He's always secretly wishing to be fired and he's often talking about when to quit. There are two things that are keeping him there. 1. The pay is decent. 2. He LOVES the schedule. Going in at 5:30 is a little tough, but getting off at 1:30 is incredible. And I guess there's a 3rd reason. Morbid curiosity. He's been sticking around just to see what happens next.

I found him asleep in our bed. He hadn't been fired. He just had a random sickness. He was cold and achy and just decided he'd rather be in bed. So he came home and slept for something like 4 hours. 

At 10:00 I had Scripture Study. We are on Mosiah 18 which is kind of crazy to me. It felt like we were in the low teens for a long time and now we are solidly down to the second half of this whole thing. 

The kids and I counted and realized that the chicks were now 12 weeks old. So I took a picture of them. 

I wanted everyone to go swimming that afternoon. I'd hoped we could bring Brandon along, but obviously he wasn't feeling well. But I still wanted all the kids to go. Charlotte and Lydia were a little unenthusiastic about it. But I was like, "let's just go for an hour."  This was the only way we can get out of the house in this heat. 

So we went and as soon as they got there they saw the other set of twins there with their day care. (The twins are now old enough to be "helpers" with the day care so it's not really daycare for them, but I don't really know what else to call it.) So suddenly Charlotte and Lydia were so happy to be there. They hung out with Aurora and Gwen for almost 2 hours. 

That evening at 6:00 we went to my friend Uli's house to help with her move. We'd been told that the Elder's Quorum should be there at 6:00 and the youth should be there at 7:00. This was the youth activity for the week. Uli still had a lot to do in the house so Brandon helped take apart her bed and I went to work in her office. There was so much to do in the office - it was a little overwhelming. But I started putting things in boxes and gradually the shelves were getting emptied. 

Brandon had to leave for rehearsal at 7:00, but that's when all the youth and their leaders showed up and things really started happening. There was a whole group of people wrapping pictures. All the men started taking furniture down and loading it into the van. Other people started carrying boxes. My kids were really good about taking boxes from the house down to the moving truck. I was still packing the office. My friend Jenny came into the office and went to town on the closet. Uli had been kind of micromanaging my packing, but with all the things happening at the truck she stopped paying attention to the office. So we REALLY started packing. 

Remember this was the hottest day of the heat wave. It was something like 103 degrees that day. We were all drinking water like crazy. I had to keep taking breaks from the stuffy office to at least get some fresh air. 

At 8:00 I could tell that my kids were losing steam. The office was probably 2/3rd cleaned out, but I was pretty over it. Jenny was still hard at work and Natalie had joined us. So I handed off the baton and took my kids home. First we stopped at Smiths because I'd promised the kids a creamy if they would help for an hour. We all went into the store because no one wanted to wait in the hot car - even with the car's air conditioner on. As the five of us walked into the store I was like, "When was the last time I took all of you into a store?"  Normally I just take one or two with me. It was strange to walk in with these FOUR big kids. 

We ended up buying two packages of creamies so everyone could get two. I figured that I'd promised them 1 creamy for 1 hour of work. So 2 hours of work equaled 2 creamies. 

On Thursday I spent a lot of time getting everything watered really well. Then I went to work. I was not interested in trying to work in the afternoon again. So even though I normally work in the afternoon on Thursdays I changed things around and worked in the morning. 

That afternoon Veronica had girls activity. They were meet at the science museum on the college campus. So I took her there and dropped her off. Derrick was with me and we went to the grocery store while Veronica was at the activity. 

I'd meant to bring a cooler for our milk and other cold things. But I'd forgot. So when we got out of the store I made a makeshift cooler with one of my pink totes and a blanket. I lined the tote with the blanket and then put the milk and other things in there. It worked really well. 

We picked up Veronica and went home. Brandon had been on his own shopping trip with Charlotte and Lydia they were getting things for their backpacking trip that would start on Friday. 

We thought about going swimming, but we were kind of done with that of the week. We'd finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and so we watched the Tim Burton version of the movie. It was funny. 

Friday was kind of a strange day for me. I woke up feeling kind of depressed. It was mostly due to hormones. But knowing that didn't really make it better. 

I forced myself to go outside and weed a garden bed for about 30 minutes. I hoped that would make me feel better, but it didn't help. 

Then I came inside and realized that the living room was in need of a lot of help. Like sure the floor was picked up, but it was really cluttered on all the surfaces and edges. So I set a timer for 30 minutes and worked on tidying up the living room. I got all the books straightened on the book case. I swept under one of the couches. (I was looking for a library book, but only found shoes and a bunch of dust bunnies.) I'm not sure what else I did, but it all took 30 minutes. 

That helped me feel a little better. Maybe just a little bit more in control. 

Then I got ready for work. I left a note for the kids to clean a few things while I was gone. Usually I just have them do one thing, but this time I had them do four things. 1. Clean up the family room. (A lot of craft projects had exploded over the floor.) 2. Vacuum the living room. 3. Sweep the stairs. And 4. Rake up the dog hair on the living room rug. 

I was at work until 11:00. It was so nice to walk into the house and find all the jobs done when I got home. 

At 1:30 Brandon came home from work and he and Charlotte and Lydia did the last few things they needed to do before their camping trip. Then they left. They drove north to the Sawtooths. They went to a place called Fourth of July Lake. 

Derrick, Veronica, and I made pizza and then watched the first Mission Impossible. They've seen it before and especially liked all the Black Vault stuff. But when it was over Veronica was like, "Um, I didn't understand a lot of that."  I told her she wasn't alone. I said, "I didn't understand that movie until I was an adult." 

Here's our pizza and candy party. 

At 8:00 we went to the Stake Center and helped set up some rooms for a Singles Conference that my neighbor was in charge of. She was at another church for the Friday night portion of the event. We were at this church with a whole team of people to get things ready for the Saturday part of the conference. Derrick and Veronica helped me get the Relief Society Room ready for "Speed Mingling." And then the Primary room set up for games. Then we went to the gym and helped all the people in there with tables and chairs. 

We stopped at Smiths and bought ice cream to cool down after all that work. 

That night Derrick and Veronica stayed up late watching movies and fell asleep on the couch. 

On Saturday I woke up and took care of watering everything. Then I went to the Orton Botanical Garden for a Waterwise landscaping class that I'd signed up for. It's a three part class with one class per month for the next three months. This one was all about soil. Some of it was a review for me, but other things were new.

I got home a little bit after Derrick and Veronica woke up. We had plans to go to the Zoological Center in the mall for an activity. My body had decided to trade in depression for anxiety. My heart was racing and my arms felt all electric. I was okay enough to go to the zoo though so we went. 

The place was kind of overpriced, but hey when the forecast is 101 and you've already been swimming 3 times that week you sometimes have to pay a little extra for things to do.

Derrick LOVED seeing all the animals.  

There were so many fish and turtles. 

There were a lot of cool displays. Mostly there were reptiles and amphibians. 

And fish.

We all loved the tank with little fish that sucked on our hands.  

Here are a bunch of bugs. 

This display was fun. It had Jurassic Park models. 

And a squishy looking frog. 

Here's an alligator.

And snapping turtles.

Here are two tortoises "getting busy" as one patron put it.

Later, when the turtles were done we were able to pet them. 

The zoological center was interesting, but after 30 minutes we were done. 

We went and walked around the rest of the mall. We weren't the only people with the idea to go to the mall to get out of the heat. It was the busiest I've ever seen that mall. It kind of felt like we were back in the 90's. Derrick and Veronica had brought quarters for the gum ball machines so we went to those. 

Then we went to the library and picked up Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the move from 1971.) We came home and watched that. 

Well the kids did. I fell asleep. When I woke up I felt so much better! No more depression or anxiety. I guess my hormones just needed a long nap to reset. 

I made tuna noodle casserole for dinner. We played Picwits while it cooked. We all tied with 8 card each. That was funny. 

Around 7:00 Brandon and the twins came home. They'd had a great trip. Here are some pictures Brandon took. 

I think this is them starting out. The hike was about a mile. 

Here's Lydia. And look at Marcia. She's wearing a little saddle bag that Lydia sewed for her. 

After they made it to their campsite they also went hiking to another lake called Washington Lake. 

Here they are fishing. 

Here they are eating. 

They had such a good time. 

These girls love camping so much. They are already talking about doing a much longer trip with Brandon next year. 

And that basically sums up our week. Next week is pretty much the same. We don't have much going on during the week and then we are finishing off the week with another camping trip. 

Thanks for reading. 

Summer 2024 - Week 6 - Fourth of July Festivities

Most of this post is about the 4th of July weekend. But first we have to talk about June 30th.

I finished my last blog post a little after midnight on Sunday June 30th. That was kind of a dumb idea considering I was going to get up at 5:30 to get ready for yet another drive to Utah. But I wanted to be all caught up. 

Plus I'd had a bunch of naps and had been taking it easy all weekend. I was feeling ready for the drive even if I hadn't had a lot of sleep that night.

This would be the 4th time I drove to Utah in a 15 day period. I'd gone down on Saturday June 15th for a family reunion/Father's Day luncheon with my family. I'd driven down on Monday June 17th to join my sister on a drive to see Anastasia in St George. And I'd driven to the Utah side of Bear Lake on Sunday June 23rd for Cousin Camp. 

This fourth time was to go to the Mission Farewell for Brandon's nephew Weston. 

To be perfectly honest, at first I wasn't sure we'd make it to this one. But several weeks earlier Veronica had been very interested in it. And when Charlotte and Lydia skipped out on the Family Reunion for Brandon's Mom's side of the family they'd said, "It's okay, because we'll see everyone at Weston's Farewell."

So I felt a lot of obligation to make sure the kids went to their cousin's farewell. 

Besides, at this point, what was one more trip to Utah? I'd just kind of accepted the fact that June was full of driving and this was our las hurrah. 

And like I'd said, I'd spent a lot of the weekend just resting and stuff. So I finished the blog post, went to sleep, and then got up at 5:30 to take a shower. 

I woke all the kids up at 6:00. We'd already laid out their Sunday clothes and packed their changes of clothes. They ate quickly and we were able to get on the road by 6:30. 

Brandon was already in Utah. He'd taken another nephew camping over the weekend. They'd gone to Brandon's parents house on Saturday night. We were going to meet up with Brandon at the Farewell. 

The kids slept and I drove. It was a nice drive. 

We were trying to make it to a Sacrament meeting that started at 9:00. We'd left a little too late to have hope of making it right on time. But I was hoping we'd be there by the time the Sacrament was over. 

We were making good time. 

Until we'd just passed Tremonton and the car started making a concerning noise. 

I stared to pull over. The kids were like, "What's wrong?"

I said, "I think we have a flat tire."

When we were on the shoulder of the road I looked out the window and sure enough the back drivers side tire was flat. Like completely flat. 

In all my years driving, in all the miles I've crisscrossed this country, I've NEVER had a flat tire. 

And I'm a little ashamed to say that I honestly had no idea what to do.

Like I know the theory behind changing a flat tire. And given a quiet road and enough time I probably could figure it out. 

But this was the side of I-15 outside of Brigham City. And I was wearing a skirt. 

This was not the scenario to learn how to change a tire. 

So I called Brandon. I'm not sure what my thought process was. Did I want him to come help me? Did I want him to talk me through the process? I don't really remember. 

I'm not even sure I asked him. He was just like, "Where are you? I'm coming?"

I thought we were closer to his parents house than we were. I thought we were only about 30 minutes away. But it was almost an hour before Brandon came. The kids and I were surprisingly chill. I was at the point where I was like, "Well this is happening." and I didn't really have any strong emotional reactions. 

Derrick kept saying he was sad that we were missing Weston's Speech. And he kept saying, "We shouldn't have come. This is a disaster."  

After about 30 minutes we all started to get hot. So I found the backpack full of our non church clothes and we all changed. So when Brandon showed up I was wearing shorts. I guess maybe I could have changed into those and worked on the tire by myself. But with Brandon coming there was no point in trying to mess with it. I've learned many times that Brandon is just so much quicker at these types of things. There's really no point in me wasting my time with something that will take me 2 hours when he can do it in 30 minutes. 

Brandon showed up and went right to work. He took the spare "donut" tire out of a panel in the back of the van. I tried not to show my surprise that that's where the donut has been all this time. I really thought it was under the car. Then he pulled a little jack out of that same panel. I was like, "Okay, I don't know this car AT ALL."

He loosened the lugnuts which were on very tightly - even for him. This is where I would have needed help if I'd tried to do it on my own. Then he jacked up the car. Took the tire off, put the donut on, put on the lug nuts, and removed the jack. He made it all look so easy. 

There was a chunk about the side of a dime missing from the tire. I have no idea what caused that. 

We put the tire in the back of the van. ( I was so glad this was happening when we were traveling for a day trip. I don't know where we would have put a tire if we were packed the way we were on our way to or from Bear Lake. 

Brandon drove the van and I drove the pilot about 15 minutes down the road to the Walmart in Brigham City. I would have liked to have taken the tire to Les Schwab since that's where we always go for our tires. But they were closed. So Walmart it was.

When I started driving I realized that this "rescue mission" almost was it's own disaster. The Pilot was so low on gas that the warning light came on almost as soon as I started driving. As soon as we got to Walmart I pulled into the gas station and filled it up.  

This was the third time Brandon has been "stranded" at this Walmart. Time #1 was when he was in college. He'd flown his airplane on his first long solo cross county to Cedar City. On the way back there was a winter storm over Logan so he'd been unable to go into Cache Valley. He'd had to land in Brigham City and then get a ride home from his friends Brent and Laurie. He'd waited for them at that Walmart. 

Time #2 was two years ago when the Jeep died on the way to Utah. He'd had the Jeep towed to Brigham City and then had his parents pick him up from the Walmart. 

And now was time #3. But we had the Pilot (which was now full of gas) so we weren't exactly stranded. Brandon had them start working on the tire, but we didn't stick around. We all got in the Pilot and drove to Brandon's sister's house. We were too late for the Farewell, but we weren't too late for the after party. We were able to have lunch and hang out at the house. 

I talked for a little bit, but after a while I found a nice reclining chair in the family room and fell asleep. That morning had been A LOT. 

Charlotte and Lydia were trying to plan a trip to stay with Brandon's parents for a few days. I was like, "Let me get home from this trip before we plan another trip."

Walmart had called me and let me know the tire wasn't salvageable. So they replaced it. They also sent me texts with updates about the job. It was done well before we were ready to leave the party. 

Eventually the party wound down and we left to get the van. When I paid for the tire I told the lady at the counter, "Thank you for helping to make this day less of a disaster."

Brandon and I split up on the way home. He took the van with the kids and drove toward Twin Falls. I took the Pilot by myself and headed toward Pocatello. The reason I was going there was because I needed to get fabric for Charlotte and Lydia's dragon project. We'd literally bought the last yard and a half at Joanns in Twin Falls. The girls had needed more fabric so I'd searched for more online. At first I'd figured we could get some in Ogden while we were in Utah on Sunday. But it was sold out up and down the Wasatch Front. I'd briefly thought there was some at the Taylorsville store, and enlisted my mom to pick that up for me. But then the order was cancelled because they were sold out too. 

So then I'd looked closer at the Idaho stores and found some in Pocatello. After all the driving we'd done all month I really didn't think that driving too Pocatello would matter in the grand scheme of things. (That was before we got the flat tire.) So I'd ordered it and planned to swing through Pocatello and pick it up on the way home.  

The drive went well and was unremarkable. I found the store and picked up the fabric. Then I walked out to the Pilot and realized with horror that I'd LOCKED THE CAR!!!!!

The Pilot is 20 years old and all the locks on the car are messed up. None of them actually work with the key. The only way to unlock the car is with the clicker - which was on Brandon's key chain. 

I just kind of stared at the car for a minute. 

And then I called Brandon. I really didn't think he could save me this time. But I wanted him to know that this day was just kind of cursed. 

He was stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway near the Twin Falls exit. It would be a long time before he could even get off and turn around to get me. And even if there wasn't a traffic jam, there was no sense in him driving to Pocatello. So we agreed that I'd call a lock smith. 

The lock smith came out and kind of laughed when he asked where the keys were and I held them up. He said, "I might have a trick to help those locks." He sprayed WD-40 into the lock and then put the key in. It turned! I was like, "What the heck, that key hasn't worked in that lock for years!"

And then he charged me $60 for the service. I wasn't exactly sure if that was worth $60. I could have found my own WE-40 for way less than that. But really I just wanted to get home. 

The locksmith gave me some really good knowledge that was worth $60. He told me that my insurance might reimburse for the service. He said that if I had towing then my insurance probably also covered things like lock outs. I REALLY wish I'd known this sooner in my life because I've had to pay a locksmith two other times. 

So he wrote out an invoice for me to send to my insurance. I filed that claim a few days later and was in fact remimbursed. So that was a good lesson in Adulting. 

Anyway, at this point I was over this whole trip. So I got in the car and drove home. By the time I got to Twin Falls the traffic was moving so I didn't have to deal with a traffic jam. I made it home and Brandon and the kids had dinner waiting for me. 

It was so good to get home. I vowed that we were done driving anywhere far away for the rest of the summer. 

And I meant it. I'd had a friend offer to sell me two tickets to Hamilton that she couldn't use in August. I told her I'd get back to her. Well that night I texted her and said that she could find someone else to buy the tickets. I wasn't interested in driving to Utah any more this summer. 

Anyway, after all that excitement on Sunday the next three days were downright boring. I worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My Scripture Study Group restarted on Wednesday. We went to the pool a few times. Brandon took the kids on a little fishing trip one afternoon. Just real basic stuff. 

The most noteworthy thing was that Brandon started rehearsals for Spamalot. He had everyone laughing super hard at his accents. His biggest role is Galihads mother. She's supposed to be really ugly and is written to be played by a man. He's also trying to get the role of the French Taunter. 

The cast has a lot of really funny people in it and Brandon says there's lots of funny things happening in rehearsals every night. He comes home in such a good mood. There's a joke that everyone does theatre because they can't afford therapy. And well, it's kind of true. This play has been especially good for Brandon because he can be silly and have a good time. 

Oh I lied. The play is not the most noteworthy thing to happen. The most noteworthy thing was Charlotte and Lydia finished their dragon. 

This is Phoenix. 

The level of detail on this thing is incredible. They even made sure he has a tongue and the roof of his mouth was painted. 

He's made to look like he's perched on Lydia's shoulders. 

He's very cool looking and all of that would be impressive enough on it's own.

But he's also a puppet. Look at how cool he looks when he is moving. 

I really don't know how they made this. I know there was a lot of heavy duty poster board and air drying clay involved in the face. They used stuffing and upholstery foam for the body. And of course a lot of hot glue. But the actual technical skill escapes me. Like they just watched videos of how to do this and then just . . . did it.  

Okay, now we can switch gears and talk about the Fourth of July --- or more accurately the 4th of July Weekend. Brandon and I had the 4th and the 5th off of work so basically we had three Saturdays in a row. It was lovely!

Saturday #1 was Thursday July 4th. We didn't have any big travel plans for the 4th. There were two reasons for that. 1. Our June was stacked and I'd had the sense that we'd be done with traveling by July. (Boy was I right about that.) The other reason was that our friends Candice and Bryan were having a 4th of July Party and I wanted to go. 

Bryan is a veterinarian and owns his own clinic. It's really hard for him to take time off and for a lot of reasons he decided he didn't want to make any of his employees be on call for him over the 4th. So that meant they never go out of town for the 4th. Candice said that for a while she was kind of resentful of that. But when they moved to their new house in Filer she had a change of heart. She decided that they would begin hosting a big 4th of July party every year. That way they'd have something fun to do while Bryan was on call for work. 

Last year was the first year they did the party. We were in Pocatello so we couldn't attend, but I heard it went well and I vowed we'd go this year.

So in the morning Brandon and I worked on various projects. I pulled a bunch of weeds that had grown while I was off galivanting the second half of June.   

Then in the afternoon we piled into the car and drove out to Filer. Derrick was so excited. As we got close to the house he said, "I see it!"

We've been to a few parties here, and they've all be good, but this one was on a whole other level. There were a lot of people and a lot of food. I spent hours talking. 

I forgot to take any pictures until later in the evening so I didn't get pictures of the kids in the pool or the hot tub, but they swam for hours. They would go in the hot tub for a while and then do a "polar plunge" in the pool. (Which wasn't that cold because it was like 82 degrees outside.) There were two trampolines. One was by the above ground pool so the kids would jump from the trampoline into the pool. 

In the evening -- when I finally remembered I owned a phone that could take pictures -- I took this one of the fire rings and some of the other fun. 

Here's Lydia on the trampoline that wasn't by the pool.

Here's Derrick running around. You can see the hot tub and the bounce house behind him.

I liked this sunset picture. 

And this view of the driveway. 

After the sun went down it was time for sparklers. Derrick was so excited. 

We've done sparklers before - but not like this. There was basically an unlimited supply.

I was basically following Derrick around and documenting his joy.

Here's a video of the happy ambiance. 

As the evening got darker it was soon time for the bigger fireworks. This is what Derrick had been looking forward to the very most. We've never bought our own fireworks. We usually go to firework shows. But Derrick has always wanted to do his own. So he was very happy when he found out we could bring fireworks to the party. I'd sent Brandon to go buy fireworks with Derrick on Wednesday. They'd picked out 6 and Derrick and I read every word on the packaging. 

So Derrick was eagerly waiting for his turn. 

But first the guys wanted to start the evening with a big bang. The three dads walked to the edge of the large gravel area and set up some aerial fireworks. They got everything set up and then came back to get the blowtorch/lighter. 

They were walking back just as someone put Dolly Parton's "When Jonny Comes Marching Home" on the playlist. It was really cool to watch the guys walk back with the sun setting behind them and that song playing. They looked like they were marching in time to the music. 

They picked up the blowtorch and went back out to the fireworks. They lit off a big aerial and got everyone's attention. They shot off one or two more and then came back to do smaller fireworks closer to all of us who had formed a line of camp chairs. 

Now it was Derrick's turn. He got his fireworks and was so excited to light them. (With a normal sized kitchen lighter.) Here's the video I took. 

Then Bryan took over with more of the fireworks he bought. There were some small ones, but there were also some amazing ones that went on for a few minutes. 

The most memorable one had quite a big finale. It was sending out a lot of sparks and was so loud and so bright that Derrick took off running away. He'd watched enough fireworks gone wrong videos to know when to Nope right out of there. 

After that one the guys went back out and lit off a few more aerials.  

Here are Charlotte and Lydia sharing a camp chair and a blanket while they watched. 

And me and Veronica sharing a sleeping bag. She liked the show, but she was also kind of done for the night. Some of the firework cinders were landing on us and she said it hurt her sun burn. 

Here's Derrick in heaven. He loved every second of the show. 

Here's one of the last pictures 

The show ended, but there were more sparklers. Derrick and Charlotte found those.

We said thank you to Bryan and Canadice and drove home. We could see fireworks going off the whole way home. When we got home there were lots of fireworks going off all around us. It was 11:00 PM and I was exhausted. So I went straight to bed. There were explosions and sirens all over the place as I fell asleep. I told Brandon, "Its like we celebrate our freedom by pretending we live in a war zone."

Saturday #2 was Friday July 5th. We slept in for a while and then got up and did more projects. I spent some time cleaning off the patio and then more time cleaning out my garden shed. Here's my sunflowers along the back fence. I can't believe it took me almost 5 years to figure out to put sunflowers back here. 

My garden shed hasn't had a door in like 2 years. Brandon's been meaning to make me one and was even about half way through, but then EVERYTHING else happened and it hasn't been a priority. But he finally started working on it again. It's a dutch style door so he did the lower half. I forgot to take a picture, but I'll take one next week. 

In the afternoon we went to Dierkies Lake - along with the rest of Twin Falls. I've never seen it so crowded. In fact, as we inched our way to the payment booth we kept seeing signs that said the parking lot was full. I was seriously considering other plans like going home and filling up the kiddie pool. But we got there just as they let a bunch of cars into the parking lot and we were able to find a spot. 

We all went out and swam/floated for a while and then went up to our spot and had sandwiches for dinner. 

And look!!!! Brandon was there!!!!! It was so nice to have him along. 

The kids went back out and swam for a long time. I took a few pictures when they were close to the dock. 

The obliged me and lined up for this one. 

Here's a video of a game they were playing. 

Here's also just some random picture of the view. 

This lake is so fun. We are so lucky that it's so close to our house. 

We stayed for a long time. Around 7:30 Derrick and Brandon went fishing. Then around 8:30 we all left. We all took showers and went to bed. 

Saturday #3 was actually Saturday. We slept in LATE. Then Brandon went to help a friend with an RV and I took Lydia grocery shopping. Earlier in the week Veronica and I had gone and bought enough food to get us through Thursday and Friday. But this was the real shopping trip. We bought a lot and everyone at home helped us bring it in and put it away. 

Then we just kind of did whatever the rest of the afternoon. I was kind of grumpy, but I found that I felt better outside. But it was really hot so I couldn't do much out there. I ended up turning on our patio mister and laying on the patio while reading a book. That was nice. 

Brandon had spent a lot of the weekend trying to figure out the circuitry to install a push button start on the van. I don't even want to tell you how I've been starting it. At one point he took out the . . . . I don't even know what to call it . . . part of the ignition? And then forgot to put it back in. When we were getting ready to go to Dirkies Lake the day before Lydia had joked, "Oh we can't go, we forgot our ignition."  Anyway, he spent a lot of time on Saturday getting things installed. Currently there are a lot of loose wires and he assures me they wont shock me and that it will all be put back together soon. 

That night we went on a date to 9 Beans and a Burrito which was like a fast food Mexican place. It was probably over priced, but I was happy I didn't have to cook. I also realized it was the first time in a long time I was away for the kids for a reason besides work or grocery shopping. That realization made me relax a little deeper than I had for a long time. 

Then we went to Lowes and wandered around (and Brandon bought more things for the vans ignition.)

Back at home we had homemade icecream that Brandon and the kids had put together earlier. It was chocolate icecream with butter finger mix ins. It was so good. 

After that the kids wanted me to read to them. I'd ordered Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from the library with the intention of starting to read it to them next week when we "got back to normal." But they wanted to start it now. So I read to them for like 90 minutes. It was really nice. 

And that brings us to today. It was the first time we went to church in three weeks. (Four for Veronica because she'd been sick one week.) It was good to be back. 

And that's the end of our weekend. Next week we have a nice and normal week. Nothing out of the ordinary. No mid week trips to Utah. I might even get back to knowing what day of the week it is. 

Anyway, thanks for reading.