Last week of August / Second week of school

I wanted to say that this week has been a very simple week. But if it truly had been a simple week I probably would have had time to get around to writing about our trip to North Idaho. And that didn't happen. So was it really simple?  Probably not.

There were two things that dominated this week. They were both enjoyable so I don't really think of them as "work" or "hard" but they did take a lot of time. 

The first was that I was hosting the dessert stop of our wards Progressive Dinner on Thursday. So I spent a lot of the week weeding and making the yard look nice.

The second thing was that Brandon and I were asked to speak in church so I spent a lot of time working on my talk. 

It's actually really funny how we were asked to speak. Brandon has been THE GUY at church the last few months. It's like anytime they need somebody to step up and take care of something his name comes up. 

He helped with boys camp. 

He has substituted Sunday School - Twice.

He helped with the ward party. 

He said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting last week.   

So it wasn't too much of a surprise when one of the bishopric counselors texted him and asked if he would be willing to speak in church on Sunday. 

Brandon showed me the text and said, "What do you think?"

I was like, "Say yes and tell him that I love public speaking too."

And he said, "Okay, I'll do that."

And I said, "I'll just do it now." So I took his phone and wrote, "Yeah, and Valerie likes public speaking too."

So it wasn't a huge surprise when the counselor texted me the next day and asked if I would like to speak in church too. My response was, "Heck Yes, What is the topic?"

And then he told me the topic was Agency and gave me the scripture to go with it and I was like, "ughhhh" because I just kind of get squeamish when agency comes up. (I feel like it gets weaponized a lot.) But I was determined to write a good talk about it and actually had a good experience with the topic. 

I'm kind of hanging onto the text of the talk as a potential Exponent Blog Post for October. So if I do that I'll link to it. 

Anyway, here are pictures of other happenings on Sunday.

I've been trying to get a good picture of a humming bird at the feeder. This is the best so far. 

Bandon took the girls driving on Sunday morning. I thought all these bugs on his car were from that drive. But they were really from when he was driving back from Burley on Thursday. 

I did a facebook post about the fairy door log in our front yard. I love how the plants have grown up around it.  

This whole bed is so fun. 

Look how pretty these zinnias are. 

On Monday we were all back to the school and work grind. I was actually really liking being on something of the same schedule as the kids. I think one of the things that made summer hard was we were just on separate schedules. I was getting up early to go to work or to take care of garden things. And the kids were rolling out of bed at 11:00. Then I was going to bed around 9:00 because I was tired and they were staying up late. We were just so out of sync. But now we are all getting up together again. That's nice.

Veronica has rediscovered our lincoln logs and spent a lot of time playing with them.  

I really like this cabin. 

Brandon had Sweeny Todd rehearsal. I can't remember what night it was, but one night they got done with rehearsal at like 9:45 and then about 8 of them stood around in the parking lot talking until almost Midnight. Brandon is mostly in these plays for the friendship opportunities so he was really happy about that. 

Tuesday

I'm trying to remember anything spectacular about Tuesday. Nothing is coming to mind so we'll just say it was like monday and I spent time working on my talk and weeding my garden. 

On Wednesday morning Derrick surprised me by showing me his list of dinosaurs. He'd told me he was going to work on this after I put him to bed on Tuesday, but I hadn't fully understood the scale of this project. He'd looked up a whole list of dinosaurs that are in a Jurassic World game. And he wrote them all down. 

I think this is more words than I ever seen Derrick write in his whole live. I was very impressed by his hand writing. And his organization. This lists all the carnivores.  

The list continued onto this page. 

Then he did a full two pages of Herbivores. He ran out of room so he'd cut out and then taped another piece of paper. He also wrote down what time he ended at. It was 11:24 PM. He'd been put to bed around 9:15 so this was over 2 hours of work. 

I was so impressed. 

That morning I hosted the second week of the Faith After Doubt Scripture study group. And in the afternoon I worked on Auditing the Exponent's financial documents. This was something that I never had time for over the summer. So I did the May documents and then started on June's. But there were errors in June so I didn't finish those. 

Charlotte and Lydia stayed after school for an Art Club so I didn't have to pick them up until later. That was really nice because then traffic wasn't bad. 

Oh and I need to talk about how I'm dropping them off for school now. For most of the time that we lived in Twin I assumed that the front of the school faced Locust Street. Even after we figured out that the front of the school was closer to Madrona and Filer Streets I still considered the school to be "on Locust."  So when I drove the girls to school the first week of school we drove to Locust and then to the school. 

But traffic was kind of terrible on Locust so I tried a different route this week. This time I crossed Addison closer to our house and then went through the neighborhood to Filer Street and then to Madrona and dropped the girls off at the one way street by the Roper Auditorium.  And all of a sudden that high school seems much closer to our house than it ever did. Like almost within walking distance. Google maps says it's only 1.2 miles away that way. 

But there is still the issue of the busy road and the no sidewalks and the fact that walking means getting up early. So I'm still driving the girls. And that is fine. 

In other road news, North Bound Eastland opened up on Monday and that is WONDERFUL. Getting to Castle Therapy is almost easy again. There's still construction and so Eastland is just two lanes of traffic separated by cones, but at least we can go north again. North bound had been closed for at least a mile all summer and it was a major detour to get around that block. So yeah, this is a really big deal. 

Okay, what else was happening . . . Veronica had her second to last day of Physical Therapy. That was nice. I brought I book I was reading for my talk and sped read through that while she did her exercises. 

None of the kids were interested in the youth activity that evening so they all stayed home and it was nice to not go anywhere. I spent the evening cleaning off the patio and making it nice for the progressive dinner the next day. 

The weather had been really cool and rainy all week so my grass and plants all looked amazing. Thursday wasn't supposed to have any rain (thank goodness) but the high would only be 73. It was going to be such good weather for the progressive dinner. 

On Thursday Jori brought over some peach scraps for the chickens. I fed them and sent her pictures of the happy chickens. 

(You can also see the chickens standing on all the weeds I'd been dumping in their run all week. They eat some weeds and they leave other alone. They like to scratch the weeds so even if they don't eat them it gives them something to do.) 

When I was at work at Aspen Grove I got a call on my cell phone from Veronica's middle school. At first I thought it was her calling home. But when I answered it there was a lady calling. She was the SPED reading teacher. She was helping co-teach in Veronica's hybrid reading class. She was calling to tell me that she was noticing Veronica struggling in the class and when she checked her IEP she realized that Veronica was in the wrong class. She wasn't supposed to be in the hybrid class. She was supposed to be in the SPED reading class. 

So she was calling to explain that to me and to let me know she was changing Veronica's schedule. And I was like, "Yeah I tried to tell so many people she was in the wrong classes. Will you check her math class because I know that is wrong too."  And sure enough, the teacher agreed with me and was like, "Yeah, she shouldn't be in this math class either."

And inside I was like, "VINDICATED!!!!!"

Her counselor and another SPED person had tried to convince me she was in the right classes, but I doubt they actually read her IEP. I think this was the first person at the middle school who actually read her IEP.

So that lady went to work trying to figure out how to switch things around. The reading class was easy, but math is trickier for some reason. I'm happy someone finally figured out the class issues, but I really wish someone had listened to me three weeks ago because then Veronica wouldn't have to learn a new schedule two weeks into the school year. I knew her schedule was wrong the minute I saw it back on registration day. UHG!

Normally after all the kids are home from school I try to do "couch hours" for about an hour. This is like "office hours" like what college professors do. I sit on the couch and I tell the kids, "Okay, I'm here for the next hour. What do you need signed? What do you need to tell me? What homework do you need help with?"  It's been a good system. 

But on Thursday the kids didn't get much attention. I was working on last minute things from basically the minute we all got home until 6:30 when I went to my neighbors house for the first leg of the progressive dinner. 

Usually the progressive dinner has three stops, Appetizers, Dinner, and Dessert. But this year we only had two - dinner and dessert. Jennifer is my next door neighbor and she was hosting dinner. It was pot luck style and lots of people brought food. 

After we were at her house for about an hour we moved over to my house. It was kind of funny because I'd spent so much time on the yard, but most people put their chairs on the patio and stayed there. I was like "GO LOOK AT THE YARD!"  Some people did, but most were content on the boring patio.  

But they had a good time talking so I guess that was the main point. 

The people who did make it back to the other part of the yard were very happy they did so. They were so impressed by Charlotte's chickens, Lydia's mural, my raspberries, the fire pit, and the garden. A lot of people said, "You have a really cool yard."

My friend Justine later texted me and said, "I just want you to know that I absolutely love your back yard! It is such a fun escape and absolutely beautiful. I'm so excited to see Lydia's mural as it keeps going. You are the coolest mom for letting her beautify your house!"

Justine is the best!

After the main party died down there was a bit of an after party. Kori, Jori, Olyvia, Skye, and Chandler stayed and we all moved to the fire pit and had a fun time talking. Brandon came home from CSI and joined us. Cort came to "pick up Chandler" but really just wanted to hang out too. We were out there talking until 10:00 it was really fun. 

I LOVED hosting, but on Friday I was dragging big time. I was so tired when I woke up. Veronica was talking about how she wasn't feeling well and might call home if she didn't feel well at school. And I'll admit while I was at work I was thinking, "Gosh it would be nice if Veronica called me and I had to leave work to pick her up."

But she didn't call and I stayed at work and pushed through it. 

The school district always schedules an early out for the Friday before Labor Day so at 12:40 I went to pick up the twins from their school. Technically the high school ended at like 1:10. But lunch started at 12:40 and the general feeling was, "why would you stay here. Please leave."

I took the girls home and then we went to the bank to cash their last pay checks from Tubbs Berry Farm. 

Then I dropped the girls off at home and went across town to get Derrick from school. Veronica was home by the time we got back. 

At 2:30 Veronica had her last Physical Therapy appointment. She "graduated" so she got a shirt. Then we came home and I took a very long nap. When I got up I said something like, "I think I died."

Brandon made pizza for dinner and then the kids watched a movie while I puttered around the yard. 

I picked these raspberries. 

Around 9:00 Brandon and I went to the grocery store to buy food for a hike we were all doing the next day. I'd been hoping to do our full grocery shopping that afternoon - but that wasn't happening because I'd been so busy and then tired. 

So we just went and got what we needed and I did the full shopping on Saturday night. 

Charlotte had been saving up her money for a $300 lego set of the McCallister's House from Home Alone. I'd ordered the set from Amazon and paid for it with my bank account. Then Charlotte paid me with her cash and I used that for grocery shopping. 

Here she is with her money before she turned it over to me. She was really proud that it was all 20s. 

On Saturday we got up at 7:00 to be on the road by 8:00. We were going out to Teakettle Cave with our friends Jori and Tim. We've been talking about doing this hike with them for like 18 months. But there have been sick kids, or bad weather, or just no time. A week earlier I'd asked Brandon what he wanted to do for Labor Day weekend and he suggested Tea Kettle Cave. So I asked Jori what day worked for them and she said Saturday and suddenly this was the plan. 

They met us at our house around 8:00 and then followed our car out Wendel and then onto the dirt road that seemed to go no where. We'd done this road in our mini van before so I knew it was okay. But I was still worried that maybe the road would be rougher this time. But it was fine. 

Soon we were parking near a cave called Thief cave or something like that. (I literally can't remember.) 

This was a good test of Jori's kids comfort levels. Brandon had been worried that they would be scared of the dark in Tea Kettle Cave. But we could tell that wouldn't be an issue because all four girls were fine going into this dark cave. 

It was pretty creepy in there. 

We came to a dead end and turned around and went back out. Then the kids wanted to look at some over lava tub openings so they explored those for a bit. 

And then finally I got everyone to come over to the real trail and put their energy into heading toward Tea Kettle Cave. 

There were lots of sun flowers blooming all over the place. They were really pretty against the lava rock. 

The walk to the cave felt so much faster this time. I think there were three reasons. 

1. We actually knew where it was this time. Last time we'd been relying on Google Maps and hadn't been sure where we were going until we were there. 

2. It was really fun to just walk and talk with Jori. 

3. There was NOBODY else around. Last time there had been a lot of ATV's going around making us kind of self conscious about walking. This time it was just us out for a nice walk. 

Soon we were too the hill and climbing up to the top. Teakettle cave was formed from a lava bubble. The rock hardened around the bubble and was hollow inside. At some point the roof of the bubble collapsed making a hole. This is the lid area of the "Teakettle." 

The way into the cave is through the "spout." It's a narrow tube like cave. Marcia was afraid to go into it, so we basically had to life her down there. But once she was inside she was like, "This is FUN."

Here's Derrick in the opening to the spout. 

The spout slants down and eventually opens up to the big area inside the Teapot. Brandon was very good at helping everyone through the tricky parts. 


The coolest part of Teakettle cave are the ferns. Somehow this cave has the perfect combination of temperature, sunlight, and water to allow these ferns to grow. It's feels very magical. 

Here's Brandon in his adventurer pose. 

We took a selfie together with the ferns. 

And Tim took our picture silhouetted.

then I took one of the kids. 

And Tim took one of us all together. This is so fun. 

We all had snacks and spent time admiring the cave. 

These ferns really are just super cool.

Derrick wanted me to take a picture of him up high. 

And Veronica wanted one with this rock. 

Here's Lydia hanging out with Marcia. I never want Marcia to go on these adventures, and Lydia always wants her to go. Lydia usually convinces me by telling me that she'd take care of Marcia the whole time. And she does. 

Here's another one of Lydia and Marcia. Marcia is everyone's dog, but I think she likes Lydia the best. 

Eventually we started heading back out of the cave.  Here's a view looking back. 

The hike back was almost as quick as the hike to the cave. When we got to the cars we had sandwiches for lunch. I spread our picnic blankets out on the dirt by the cars and it felt so good to sit. 

Then we drove home. Brandon, Charlotte, and Lydia too showers first. Then they put on costumes and went to the Renaissance Faire out in Burley. All the pictures are on Brandon's phone so I'll have to get those uploaded later. 

Derrick, Veronica, and I stayed home. I took a nap. I was so tired from that adventure - and really from the whole week. 

Later in the evening Veronica and I went grocery shopping. 

And here we are to Sunday.  

Brandon and I both finished our talks in the morning. (Brandon was literally working on his until about 11:15 and our church starts at 12:00.)

He spoke first and did a really good job talking about Grace and Truth. I'd joked about his talk needing to be a three part lecture series so he started his talk off by saying, "I was assigned to give a 10 minute talk, but after reviewing the material I've decided this will now be a three part lecture series."  That got a lot of good laughs. 

He took closer to 20 minutes but did AMAZING. It might have been the best talk he's ever given. Then the ward choir sang and then it was my turn. I had about 10 minutes left and ended up running to about 15. But I don't think anyone cared. It was a good talk. 

It's been 6 years since I spoke in church so I was a little worried I'd be rusty at it, but I got right back into it just fine. Before the meeting started I'd been talking to my friend Megan and her daughter Addy. I mentioned that I loved public speaking. Addy said, "I think you are the first person I've ever heard say that."

After sacrament meeting was over we both got so many complements. The bishop, the first counselor, a billion people from the congregation. Even later in the afternoon we both got texts from people complementing us. So that was great. 

Charlotte's lego set wasn't supposed to show up until Monday. But Amazon delivered it today. Here she is with the big package.

And here's the box. 

Here's the back. There are a lot of fun details to this set. 

She worked on it most of the afternoon and got the bottom level done. 

Brandon took Lydia driving. They were gone for 2 hours. 

I helped Veronica with some homework that was really stressing her out. Then I took a nap. And then I made dinner. 

In the evening our friend Brad came over for some Yellowstone tips. His family has been there a lot and they've seen all the main touristy things. He wanted tips the less known stuff. So we were the right people to ask. 

And that pretty much sums up our week. 

I made my usual list of thing going on for the month for September. It's so much less busy than August was. We still have things, but they are more of the "Brandon has Sweeny Rehearsals every Monday -thursday" and "Veronica has theatre twice a week."  And "Youth Activities are every Wednesday"  rather than the "every week is COMPLETELY different nonsense that was happening all summer. 

So I'm looking forward to a rather low key September. Maybe I'll actually have time to write about the North Idaho Trip.

Thanks for reading. 

First Week of school

No you are not crazy, you didn't miss a post about our last week of Summer Vacation. I haven't written that post yet. 

That post will be all about our trip to North Idaho with Brandon's family. I started working on that post, but just uploading the pictures wore me out. I'm hoping to find time (and energy) to write about that trip in a few days. In the meantime I don't want to get behind on the blog by too much. So I'm going to do this post about school starting. 

[Guess what, it took 7 months for me to finally get around to writing that post. You can read it here.]

I'm not sure if any of us were truly ready for school to start again. We got back from North Idaho on Friday night. We spent Saturday buying school supplies for Veronica, picking out school shoes for the twins and Veronica, and resting. Sunday was also a resting day. (Not counting the part where we helped take down the set at the Orpheum.)

And then on Monday we jumped right into the school routine. I'd looked up all the school start times online and worked backwards from there to figure out when we needed to leave and get up.

First up were the twins. They are starting 9th grade which is at the High School here. They had to be up at 7:00 and at the school by 8:00. They were pretty nervous. 

Here's Charlotte. 

And here is Lydia. 

I drove them to the high school. Technically it is close enough they could walk, but it's just far enough away that it seems like too far to walk. They would have to cross a busy street and then walk down a road without great sidewalks. And if they walked they would have to get up even earlier than 7:00 which is a hard sell. 

So I'm driving them. In January they will be able to get their drivers licenses and we are talking about getting them their own car. (Or rather, getting a newer car for me or Brandon and the twins get one of the old Hondas.) So I probably won't be driving them to school for very long. 

The drop off went well - even though we weren't sure where the best place for a drop off was. And soon I was back home for round two. 

I'd woken Derrick and Veronica up at 7:30. Both their schools start at 8:40, but since they go to different Middle Schools we had to leave at 7:20 to drop off Veronica and then race across town to drop off Derrick. 

Here's Derrick. He's the only one of the kids who wasn't going to a new school. He was doing a second year at the other middle school. 

And here is Veronica. She was nervous. We'd gone over her schedule the night before and I'd written out the important things like classroom numbers on a paper she kept in her pocket. 

Actually she really only had to find one classroom to start. I really like how the Middle School handles the first day. They have the kids go to their Prime Time classes for most of the day. They get a lot of the things explained to them in there and the 6th graders get taken on a tour. Then after lunch they rotate through their other classes with like 20 minutes spent in each class. It's a good way to get eased into the routine. 

The High School did something similar. The freshmen all went to an assembly at the Roper and had a presentation there. The upper classmen didn't even show up until like 10:30. Then they all rotated through a shorter version of the daily schedule. 

Derrick and I dropped Veronica off. She's been saying that she's excited for middle school because she will no longer be the tallest in the school. But when she got out of the car and started walking among the other students I could tell that she still is one of the tallest. 

Derrick and I drove across town . . . eventually. Eastland is still under construction and it's still screwing everything up. Northbound is STILL closed so everyone has to either turn right or left. And it seemed like EVERYONE wanted to turn Left. So we were stuck there for a while. But we eventually made it to his school and I met his new ERC teacher. She seems really on top of things this year. 

Derrick told me that he doesn't want to be in the ERC all day this year which is GREAT because we already planned to have him push out to a lot of resourse and gen ed classes. But on this first day he was in the ERC all day because the schedule was weird. 

After I dropped Derrick off I went to work. I'd been gone since the previous Monday. I'd worked remotely from the vacation home on Thursday so I wasn't as behind as I could have been. But I still had a lot to catch up on. 

I was trying to take a picture of myself to commemorate the first day. 

Here's one with my hair down. 

On Monday's the school day is always an hour shorter. This is so the teachers can have meetings after school. So what that meant for me was that I was at work for 5 hours and then went directly to the high school to pick up Charlotte and Lydia. 

I wasn't quite sure where to pick them up so I went into the big parking lot where there were still a lot of extra parking spaces. I was like, "Oh this is nice."  

The girls found me, but we soon found that this was not a great place to be after school. EVERYONE was trying to leave at the same time. The parking lot was basically a big traffic jam. We were stuck in there for 20 minutes. Which maybe wouldn't have been so bad but I needed to pick up Derrick. Brandon can normally get him after school, but on Monday's Derrick gets out too early for that. 

Thankfully things cleared up eventually and we were able to get to Derrick's school only a few minutes late. 

Veronica walked home and was home when we got there. Everyone had had a good first day. They were all a little overwhelmed and tired, but so far everyone liked their teachers and was feeling good about the whole thing. 

I knew that Monday would pretty much wipe us all out so I had nothing planned for that afternoon. Everyone just kind of did their own thing and decompressed. I signed a bunch of papers and ordered school supplies for the twins. 

That night Brandon went to rehearsal for Sweeny Todd. He'd gone to the read through the Monday before, but then had been out the rest of the week. So this was only his second rehearsal. He is the only bass in the ensemble and feels way in over his head. But he's also really happy to be part of the cast. A lot of his friends are in this play so he's having a good time.   

Tuesday was very similar to Monday - just with less nerves. After I dropped everyone off at school I worked on things for Castle Therapy. The big billing mess has mostly been resolved, now I'm just tying off loose ends. 

In the afternoon I went to Aspen Grove and continued to catch up on things there. 

After Aspen Grove I went to the high school to get the twins. Back when we moved to the new office I'd been sad to no longer work across the street from the Middle School, but I'd realized that I would be close to the high school and that would be convenient. And so far I've been right about that. It's really easy to get the girls after school. I figured out that the little one way street that runs between the Roper Auditorium and the High School is a perfect place to pick the girls up. So I texted them that they would find me there. And it worked perfect. 

Brandon was able to get Derrick so we didn't have to worry about that. But traffic going home was still kind of a joke because of the construction on Eastland. There is a south bound traffic lane on Eastland. But it's not accessable from the neighborhoods because the construction people have dug up the real South Bound lane and it's a giant trench. You can't cross that trench to reach the temporary southbound lane. So that means the neighborhood roads are full of cars trying to make it to the two roads that do cross Eastland. 

I'll be so happy when this construction is over. 

When Brandon and Derrick came home Derrick told me how hard his day had been. They had his new schedule, but it had some last minute changes and guess who HATES last minute schedule changes?

Derrick had ended up having a meltdown. I was sorry that happened, but also kind of glad it happened. There were two reasons. 

1. I think that some of Derrick's teachers and paras might have been looking at him and wondering, "What is this kid doing in the ERC? He seems fine."  The meltdown showed them that he does need extra support in order to function well at school.

2. Derrick TOLD me about what frustrated him and how hard it was. This was a big deal. Derrick has been able to talk a for a while. But he's struggled with talking about things that happened in the past. He also struggles describing what frustrates him. So to have him talk about something that frustrated him earlier in the day was some pretty big progress.  

I'd purposely kept Tuesday afternoon pretty chill too. The biggest thing was that it was the 6 year anniversary of buying our house. I made a Frosting Pie (no bake cheesecake) to celebrate. 

When we had been at Emily's I'd made this and everyone got one piece. There were leftovers, but not enough for everyone to have a second so I just left the extras with Emily's family to eat after everyone else had left. My kids had been super sad so I'd told them we'd have our own pie with extras later. 

Then two weeks ago when we'd celebrated our friend Tim's birthday, Brandon had made key lime pie. Again there were leftovers but not enough for everyone to have seconds so we sent the pie home with Tim's family. And again my kids were sad about that. 

So this time I made two pies and told the kids it was finally our turn to keep the leftovers. They were happy about that. 

Brandon had Sweeny rehearsals again that night. 

Wednesday was similar to Monday and Tuesday. When I dropped Derrick off I went in and talked with his teacher. Derrick and I had come up with two things we wanted to talk about. 1. Was that he didn't want a crazy schedule. And 2 was that he wanted a calm down room.  And both those things were very doable. (I found out that he had gone to the calm down room on Tuesday. He just didn't realize that's what it had been.)

I went back home and cleaned up my house real quick and at 10:00 it was time for the first scripture study group of this fall. We are reading the book Faith After Doubt. My friends Jori, Rachel, and Shaylee came. 

Rachel and Jori both said they hadn't been sure about this book based on it's title. One of them was like, "Yeah I felt a little called out like this book was supposed to help me find my faith after going through a lot of doubt. But then I read the preface and introduction and realized this book is about how doubt is normal."

I told them I felt like the title is wrong. It should be called Faith WITH Doubt. 

I'm really excited for this study. I read this book about 3 years ago and ever since then I've dreamed of leading a discussion group centered on this book. My ideal scenario is that I could do it as a Sunday School class. But that will never happen. So my little home based scripture study group will have to do. 

After everyone went home I went back to work on Castle Therapy stuff. I had entered two payments with lots of line items and was somehow off by about $50 on one payment and $0.02 on another. So I was going over them with fresh eyes to try to find the errors. I found both of them and that felt really good. 

Then I took a nap.

I went to get the girls after school and when Brandon came home he wanted some help with the bass line for Sweeny Todd. He can't read music, but I can. Specifically I can read bass clef. (Which gets really messy because I can't read treble clef and all my brain wants to do is sing the melody.)

So we sat down at the keyboard and tried to get his giant script/music book to stay balanced. Finally he went and got the big clamps from the garage. 

I had a lot of fun plunking out the base line for him. I also went over some basic things about reading music. This is his third musical so a lot of things he's picked up along the way, but other things he was like, "what does this mean?" It made me feel like my 10 years as a mildly talented bass player were not for nothing. 

At 5:07 the lesson was cut short when I got a phone call from Veronica's physical therapy office. I was like, "Oh shoot!" I'd completely forgot about her 5:00 appointment. I'd remembered it earlier in the day, but it had slipped my mind because I was having so much fun with Brandon. 

I told them we'd be there in 10 minutes and Veronica and I rushed out the door. While we were at the appointment we ran into one of the 5th grade teachers from the elementary school. Mrs Loya had taught Lydia. She'd also been Veronica's math teacher last year. She asked about all the kids and then told me, "Veronica is incredible. I was so happy to see her today. She learned so much last year and was doing stuff completely on her own with math by the end of last year." That made me really happy to hear. 

All the Youth Activities were cancelled for two reasons. One there was a ward party on Saturday. And Two, no one could access the church building. Our church building is on Eastland. For a month we've had access via a little dirt mound that lead from the road to the parking lot. But the construction guys were pouring cement this week and so there was absolutely no access. 

Brandon didn't have rehearsal either. So we all stayed home and did yard stuff. The kids picked up Dog Poop, Veronica mowed the lawn, Lydia worked on paining the mural, and I pulled weeds. 

That night I finished reading a book I'd been working through for a few weeks. It was Demon Copperhead. Billy recommended it to me, and if I've learned anything it's that I should read books that Billy recommends. 

It's a modern retelling of David Copperfield set in Lee County Virginia. The Opioid epidemic plays a prominent role in this book.  I actually had been reading this book before we went to North Idaho, but I decided to leave it home because I was entering some pretty heavy sections and didn't want to be dwelling on those while hanging out with Brandon's family. So I took a book about the musical group ABBA on the trip and had a great time with that book. (And then spent this whole week listening to ABBA music at work. I really hope we do the Momma Mia musical at the Orpheum some time.)

Anyway, that got a little side tracked, but I really liked this book and highly recommend it. And now I'm working my way through David Copperfield to see how they compare. 

On Thursday Brandon got up to go to work and discovered Veronica on the couch. She'd been up sick since like 2:00. So Veronica stayed home from school that day. 

I worked for Castle Therapy from home in the morning and then did a little bit of Aspen work at home too. I finally went into the office around 1:00 and stayed there until it was time to pick up the twins. Brandon was working at CSI that evening so I had to get Derrick. But we were on time this time. 

Veronica was feeling better so I took her to her audition for High School Musical. This is the play the teenage group is doing this fall/winter. The little kid group does their auditions in class, but the teenage group does them ahead of time. That way when they start class everyone already knows their part and they can get to work. Auditions are optional since everyone is already signed up for the class. You are still in the play even if you don't audition - you just get an ensemble part. 

We'd watched the movie a few weeks ago and Veronica wasn't really interested in playing any of the characters. But I still wanted her to have a chance at a main part. So I talked her into auditioning. She did really well. 

After that I took Lydia to Lowes because she needed more green paint for the mural. While we were waiting for the paint to be mixed we went to the garden section. They had mums on sale for 2 for $8 and I've always wanted to buy mums so I grabbed two. Lydia got really into the cactus plants. Just look at this girl. She hasn't willingly smiled for a picture ALL SUMMER and here she is head over heals in love with the spiky plants. 

She was so happy. 

She picked one out and put it between the mums. 

And then she ended up picking out two more. Here's her whole collection at home. The three on the left are her new ones. 

We came home and she went to work painting. 

I took a picture of "bird paradise." In the mornings and evenings there are tons of birds all over these sunflowers. Usually it's finches and sparrows, but one day this week I saw like 8 pidgins. It's been really fun to watch them all - even if they did eat all my plums. 

We were all pretty tired by Friday. I'd wished that we'd started on a Wednesday. But we'd made it to Friday. I dropped everyone off and then went to Aspen Grove and spent the morning "solving mysteries."  That's what I call it when there are billing issues that prevent a claim from getting paid. It's kind of fun to get to the bottom of things and its even more fun when one of those stuck claims gets paid. 

I was done with work around 1:30 and then went grocery shopping. I bought the groceries home and put away the perishable stuff. Then I picked up the twins and all the kids put away the rest of the groceries when they were all home. 

When Derrick came home with Brandon I asked him how his day was. He said something like "It was incredible!"  His schedule was all worked out and he was loving it. I checked his schedule online and he is in Boys Choir, a Math Class and and Language class with the resource teacher, Social Studies, and Science. I think this is going to be a really good year for him. 

At 5:00 Veronica had physical therapy again. She doesn't have a lot of pain in her knee anymore and her therapist says her quad muscles have gained a lot of strength. She only has two more appointments and they are going to work on balance. (Which was basically what her last stint in physical therapy boiled down to as well. That girl really struggles to know where her body is in physical space.)

When she was done we picked up three pizzas that I'd ordered from Little Caesars. Then we went to Dierkies Lake and met up with everyone else. We had a great pizza dinner on the grass.

Veronica changed into her swimming suit and swam with Derrick and Lydia. Charlotte swam later, but she spent most of the time fishing with Brandon. 

I laid on the blanket and read David Copperfield and also did nothing. I'd considered inviting friends to meet up at the lake, but I'd known I'd be pretty burned out from the week. So it was nice to just be alone and not have responsibilities. 

On Saturday I spent a lot of time weeding. I'm hosting a Relief Society activity next week so I'm trying to get the yard spruced up a bit. 

I also pulled up this lovely onion. This was grown from an onion set instead of a bulb. Much better results!

I also tried to get a picture of a humming bird at the feeder. A couple months ago Derrick told me we should get a humming bird feeder and I completely agreed. So I bought this on Amazon and it is the greatest thing EVER. We have three hummingbirds in our neighborhood. ( I know because my neighbor had all three in her yard one night.) The most I've had at my feeder is two at a time. But when even just one is at the feeder it's so exciting. It's like, "WE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN!"  

Brandon spent a lot of the day prepping for the ward party that night. He picked up the building key, he bought drink mixes and paper products and candy, he tested out the candy cannon, he made potato salad, he helped Veronica make cookies, and he probably did a few other things. 

Around 4:00 we drove over to the church with the pavilion and started getting things set up. Brandon still needed ice for the three drink coolers so Lydia and I went to get that. 

At 5:00 the party started. There was a bounce house like usual. Our friend Cort recently bought a carnival style spinning ride. He brought that. He was like, "Hey, you said bring lawn games, this is mine."  That was a big hit. (I don't know why I didn't take a picture.)

The Elders Quorum President had taken care of cooking a whole bunch of pulled pork so that was the main dish. Everyone else brought side dishes and salads. There was a ton of food. People ate and talked. 

This whole pavilion was packed at one point. 

I knew it would be full so I brought blankets for people to sit on if there wasn't room in the pavilion.

Lots of people complemented Brandon on the party. The ward RS president was especially grateful. This party was kind of thrown together last minute-ish. Brandon didn't even know the Elders Quorum was in charge of it until two weeks ago. I'd been texting the RS president to find out which organization was in charge and she was pretty skeptical the party would turn out. I told her, "Well now that Brandon knows about it you can rest a little easier. He'd been helping with this activity for like 3 years."

And he delivered once again. 

He and I say that even though the church doesn't have activity committees anymore - we basically are the ward activity committee.

After about an hour Brandon got out the candy cannon.  Here are the kids eagerly waiting. 

And here they are running for the candy.

At lot of people left, but some stuck around for a while. I was able to talk to a few people that I don't normally talk with. Around 7:00 we started cleaning up. The bounce house was deflated and we started figuring out what to do with the left over food. 

At 8:00 we were done with that and we were the last to leave. It had been a great party. We drove both cars so each of the twins drove a car home. 

Brandon and the twins got up early this morning to go driving for several hours. Back when they started drivers ed we kind of had the agreement that I would take care of the paperwork and Brandon would take care of the actual driving. But he has been so busy that the twins have ended up driving with me quite a bit more than any of us expected. Still they wanted to get some long driving time and do some driving in the dark so they went driving at like 4:00 this morning and didn't come home until 10:00. 

Anyway, that gets us caught up to today. I'm hoping to find time to work on the North Idaho post this week. 

Thanks for reading.  

Summer Vacation 2025 - Week 11 - The Set: Part 2

Like I said in the last post. The Set for Much Ado About Nothing DOMINATED our lives for two weeks. 

Brandon took the day off of work and spent the whole day putting the set together. He was there from 8:00 AM until about 6:00 PM. 

I went to Aspen Grove in the morning, but left around 10:00. Our fridge was FINALLY getting delivered at 10:30. Yes, we'd lived without a fridge for like 2 weeks. It was supposed to come on the Tuesday that Brandon went to Boys Camp. But Monday night he got a message saying it wouldn't come until Saturday. And with everything else going on there really wasn't a chance to do anything about that. No one was home to get the fridge on Saturday morning so the drop off time was bumped to Monday morning. 

When the delivery guys did show up they were super quick. One guy took our side door off the hinges while the other unpacked the fridge from the box. Then they put on this strap harness thing and walked it into our house together. One guy plugged it in and the other put the door back on. I signed a thing and they took the old fridge away. They were in an out in under 15 minutes. 

I finished the deposit and took it to the bank. While I was at the bank I happened to look down and see the milage on my van. I'm at 292900. 7100 away from my goal of 300,000.

I'd completely overbooked myself for the afternoon. All four kids had a dentist appt at 12:00. Charlotte and Lydia had a retainer check at the orthodontist at 1:00. And Derrick had his well check at 3:00. 

And then I had to make it more complicated by somehow forgetting to pay our dental premium and having our coverage paused. Thankfully I figure that out BEFORE the dentist appointment. So none of the girls could be seen until we get their coverage restored. (I'm still not sure what happened. I was pretty certain I'd paid it each month, but my bank records and the insurance records say otherwise.) Derrick is still on Katie Beckett Medicaid so he was still able to have his appointment as scheduled. Everyone else got re-scheduled for September. The insurance customer service lady was super nice and we had a good laugh over how I work with insurance every day and even I can't stay on top of this stuff. 

So I took Derrick to the dentist. Then took him home and picked up the twins and took them to their orthodontist appointment in the same office complex as the dentist. Driving back and forth would be a theme for this week. 

Then I took Derrick to his well check. When they measured him they said he was 6 feet 3 inches!

After all those appointments were taken care of I checked in with Brandon. I brought the girls over to help with some painting and things. Veronica painted the prison bars black. 

Lydia was done with the garden panels. There were still four panels to go. A door, and three rooms. 

We came home and had BLT's for dinner because we had so many ripe tomatoes. 

On Tuesday Charlotte was picking up another shift of trimming garlic at the berry farm. So I took her there and then went to work. I picked her up at 10:00. 

At noon we took Marcia to the dog park so we could meet up with our friend Heather who is going to watch her while we are out of town. We wanted to make sure Marcia got along with Heather's two tiny dogs. They did so that was great. 

Then we went home and I picked up Derrick and took him basically right back to the area where the dog park is. We were a few streets away at his Middle School for registration. He is really excited for school this year. 

Brandon was at CSI that evening. I took Lydia to the Orpheum so she could paint. She was able to get one of the rooms roughed out and finished the door. I painted a lot of random things like a floor panel that was pink because it was used in Matilda. I also painted a wall in one of the room scenes. 

We'd been hoping that Jori could come. Charlotte and Veronica were going to stay home and watch her kids. But she couldn't make it. 

Back at home Charlotte harvested some carrots. 

Lydia picked a bunch of raspberries and tomatoes. 

Here's Charlotte by the tomatoes. 

I took a picture of our harvest on Wednesday.

It was the twins last day at the berry farm. They got their pay checks when they were done. Charlotte's was $115 for July. We took them to the bank and got them cashed. Our teller was Tracy who has worked there forever. She remembers the girls from when they were in 5th grade and I'd bring one kid along each time I had a PTO deposit. 

Veronica had registration at her middle school. We picked up her schedule and then walked around and found all her classrooms. But I wasn't sure how accurate her schedule was. I didn't see SPED on her schedule. So when we got home I emailed her counselor about that. I also emailed Derrick's teacher about adding Gen Ed classes to his schedule. So one kid needed SPED and the other needed less SPED. My life is not simple. 

Veronica also had Physical Therapy that afternoon. 

When that was over I took Charlotte and Lydia to the Orpheum for what I was hoping was the last work day. Brandon came there right after work and changed into his building clothes. 

I'd promised Lydia that we would get ice cream at the Cloverleaf Creamery when the set was complete. So she was pretty motivated to get it done. Here she is working on one of the room panels. 

I went up and down the stairs to the basement so many times. First I was looking for more brown. Then I needed a different brown because that was too marron. Then I went to get some gold that I'd seen down there so Lydia could use it to paint a mirror frame. Later I was going up and down the stairs to put away supplies. I kept thinking, "I wore the wrong shoes for this."

Here are Charlotte and Lydia each working on a panel.  Charlotte was mostly there to help with all the extra things. She helped Brandon with a lot.  

It's kind of hard to tell, but the panels are the same size, and somehow Lydia had made the rooms painted on them look different sizes. I was blown away by her skill at every step of the way in this, but this was probably the most impressive thing. I was like, "How are you doing this?"

Here are both bedroom panels. I love that sunlight streaming in through the window. 

The paint is stored in the basement along with all the costumes. So I decided to take some pictures during my many trips to the paint closet. Here are the Shakespeare Abridged Costumes and the HadesTown Costumes. 

And here is Hades super cool hat. This thing should be permanently on display somewhere. It's so cool!

Here's the costume storage area. 

And here is the main brush Lydia used to paint most of the set. I wasn't going to take a picture of it, but I had to go back down one last time and I was like, "Yeah, I need a picture of that."

I was super hungry and my blood sugar was crashing. So I took Charlotte home and Brandon and Lydia came home a little after that. We had dinner. Then Derrick had mini golf for Young Mens. I dropped him off for that. And then drove down town and met up with Brandon and the girls at Cloverleaf. Since everyone had worked on the set we all got ice cream, but Lydia got two scoops.  

Thursday was a big billing day for me. Ivan's medicaid stuff has been a mess for a few weeks. Things were better, but I had a lot of work to do to get everything straightened out. I started at 6:45 and worked until 9:30. UUUUHHHHHHHH. But I was determined to have it all cleaned up before I went on vacation this week. 

Then I took the girls to the high school for their registration. We got their schedules and they have three classes together. Orchestra, Algebra, and Freshman Foundations. We walked all over the school and figured out where all their classes are. 

Then I went to work at Aspen Grove and took care of a bunch of stuff there. 

That night the girls and I went to see the dress rehearsal for Much Ado About Nothing. It was so great to see the set come to life. 

For Act II we moved up to the balcony and watched from there. I took this picture before Act II started. 

The play was good, but I'm so glad I took the girls when it was free because they were pretty bored for a lot of it. Veronica was like, "What is going on?"

I plan to see it again for real with Brandon so I'll talk about it in depth when we do that. (Also I'm still feeling a lot of stress when I think about this play so I want some space before write a lot about it.)

Brandon was at CSI again. That's why he wasn't there. 

Friday was an amazing day because for the first time in forever I didn't have to think about Much Ado About Nothing. (though I still went to the Orpheum to take paint rollers back after I'd washed them out at home.)

I texted Jori and was like, "Hey I have my life back. Do you want to hang out this weekend?"  We came up with the tentative plan to get our families together and watch K-Pop Demon Hunters. Later Tim was able to get the day off work which was good because IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY!  So then it turned into the family coming over and Brandon making Tim a Key Lime Pie for his birthday. 

I had an amazing day at work on Friday where I was able to look into a lot of old claims and move them closer to getting paid. 

Oh and Lydia painted another painting because she was no where near burned out. 

That afternoon Veronica had Physical Therapy. then we went out to Jerome and did some school clothes shopping at a thrift store where everything is a dollar. We got so much good stuff for only $30.  

And then we came home and Brandon made pizza and we watched the Mine Craft Movie and it was so nice to be DONE. 

The DONENESS spread into Saturday. I didn't get out of bed until Noon. And then I didn't really do much. My body was doing that finish line thing where it is like, "We made it and I am RESTING now!"

Brandon and the kids deep cleaned the family room. They found so many spoons under the couch. 

We had nothing planned for Saturday because for most of the summer I thought we'd be out of town this weekend. We are going to Northern Idaho for a family reunion with Brandon's family next week and I kind of planned on going up early. But we didn't do that. So we were home deep cleaning the house and relaxing. 

Saturday morning I got up early and worked on exponent guest posts for hours on the patio. It was wonderful. Derrick and I had refilled the humming bird feeder and a humming bird came over a few times. 

Church was okay. 

After church we deep cleaned the bathrooms and ran a few more loads of laundry through. 

Jori's family came over and brought everything to make dinner. Tim hadn't wanted to host a party on his birthday, and somehow cooking at our house was easier. The logic doesn't add up, but I'm not complaining. They made this yummy cabbage goodness. I could feel all my eastern European ancestors rejoicing as I ate it. 

Then we watched K-Pop demon hunters and EVERYONE loved it. I've been telling Jori to watch it ever since I first saw it. They don't have netflix right now so that's why they had to come to our house to watch it. 

And then we had the key lime pie. It was so good and I don't know why I didn't take a picture. Brandon is really good at making birthdays a big deal for people. So he was so happy to do that for Tim. 

We talked and all the sudden it was almost 10:00 and bedtime.

And that gets us through another week. And now I'm caught up on this blog - just in time to go on another trip. 

This summer started with a road trip and it's ending with one too. But this time we have a rental van so hopefully there is a whole lot less car drama on this trip. 

Thanks for reading.