Summertime

Guys!  Does anyone else feel like life kicked up the pace a notch and a half?  Or a million?  I'm realizing more and more than my decade in Fort Bragg may have been an answer to some prayers to have PEACE and quiet and rest to raise my children.  Funny to think that the one thing I complained about the most might have been just what the doctor ordered.  Sigh.  Another reason to stop complaining to Heavenly Father.  He really does know what is best for us.

The girls had their last day of co-op today.  It has been a busy but fun experience for us.  The last two months I worked with my class preparing a Shakespeare reader's theater to present (which we did today).  Those girls are seriously so cute - I love the 10-13 year old age bracket of sweet LDS girls.  Anyway, we finished co-op.  Homeschool is just about done.  I'm done, the girls are just finishing up some work that they fell behind on.  But otherwise, summer goes into full swing next week for ME.  I'm so happy.  This summer weather is GORGEOUS and I am loving every minute.

I put my three middle children in a beginner tennis class.  They love it!  It's a short four week introduction.   Logan, having somewhat more experience and being generally more coordinated than your average 7 year old, got moved up to the intermediate class and was grateful to play with the older kids.  Even in 100 degree weather they loved it!  So maybe I will have some kids who want to play tennis with me this summer!  I've always wanted to play more but I've had a hard time finding someone interested in my family.

Also - you all aren't golfers - but Jenny you can pass this on to your hubby.  Now that it FINALLY stopped raining every single day, Josh and I play about once a week - doing 2-3 holes right outside our house.  I bogeyed 2 holes last night, which is the best score I've ever gotten.  Since I started playing this spring and haven't had lessons, I'm pretty pleased with myself.  For you silly non-golfers, a bogey is 1 hole over par.  Every course has a suggested number of swings that you should take to get the ball in the hole - called par.  So a par 4 hole means from start to finish it should only take you 4 swings with the club.  A bogey means on a par 4 I did it in 5.  So that was cool.  I had one major screw-up hole where I lost a ball in the creek and got caught in a sand trap, but we won't talk about that.  ;-)

Did I tell you Faith is toilet-trained?  Night time too?  She's doing amazing.  She whined about it for three weeks and begged for diapers every day and then forgot to whine one day and hasn't looked back.  She has matured so much in the past few months.  It's been amazing...and sort of sad...my baby isn't really a baby anymore.  But I love the conversations we have.  Tonight she told me, "my feelings are feeling bad" when she was sad about something.

We had the best mother's day ever at church.  Our amazing YM president was in charge and he offered me a third hour full of socializing, musical numbers, refreshments - basically whatever I wanted.  In discussion with my presidency and the Bishop we asked for: all the women together (so the YM president found subs for every primary class/sharing/singing time that hour), a short lesson, followed by treats.  We also were offered two musical numbers that were both AMAZING.  One was four of our young men singing acapella in four part harmony - swoon - it was so lovely.  And one our of our sweet laurels put together a video for a personal progress project where she interviewed 150 of our primary/youth and had them say what they love about their mom.  Hilarious and sweet.  75% of the boys said basically, "I love my mom because she makes good food".  Since we had sign-ups going around that week for lasagnas for youth conference I told the ladies they had NO excuses - since they are all apparently incredible cooks.  ;-)  Anyway, everyone loved it.  It turned into a ward party afterwards and the families filtered in looking for mom and found cookies!  And strawberries!  And homemade caramels!  Everyone said they hope we do the same thing next year.  I don't know if we can improve on such an awesome day. The lesson that we had was short but it was so powerful and spiritual - we have an incredibly gifted teacher and it just happened to be her week to teach.  I was really happy with how it all turned out.

I think I have allergies.  Yuck.  Never had them before in my life.  I'm wondering if it's the cottonwood trees here.  But I don't know.  There were cottonwoods in Utah and I don't remember having allergies.  I'm working on it - diffuser for symptom relief, stinging nettle and local honey.  Need to find me some pollen - that's supposed to help too.  I'm hoping I can train my body to stop reacting.  hasn't been terrible, but if I can help it...I will try.

Our summer is looking busy but fun.  Rather than plan a million vacations like I did last year, we managed to convince most people to come to US!

Quick run down:
JUNE - Robisons visit, youth conference (hosting kids), Mom and Dad come?, get our summer exchange student
JULY - Smiths come twice, exchange student here this entire month, Hannah comes home, Keaton comes to visit, Vilde in Grants Pass (Hannah's Norwegian buddy), Utah friends come, Nathan and Jelaire arrive the last day - Brynne heads to EFY.
AUGUST - Nate and Jelaire here a week, family reunion @ Robisons, Josh to D.C. for wedding/Logan to AP camp

August is my slow month.  I want to have one family vacation but we have to figure out where we want to go and what we want to do...  We have a tiny bit of time between the reunion and Josh's trip for his friend's wedding.

We went to California to help my in-laws pack up their house.  Guys - it looks like they are actually going to move this summer!  House is going on the market next month if all goes as planned.  We think it will sell pretty quickly, so they are heading to ID to house-hunt.  That is nuts.  So one thing I gotta squeeze in at some point is a farewell trip for my kids to Grandma and Grandpa's house in California.  My kids have a lot of memories there - especially after our years in Fort Bragg where we almost always spent at least one weekend a month there for church or shopping or whatever.   So weird to have an end of an era.  I can only imagine how strange that is for Josh's siblings - they have never had their parents live in any other house.

Sorry, no pix.  putting some on instagram these days but i don't ever take time to upload to the computer.
K.  I'm done for now.  Off to enjoy the summer evening.  have I mentioned... I LOVE SUMMER??!!


Comments

  1. I didn't have hay fever until the spring we lived in Rancho de Amigos. It was a very wet spring, the grass was prolific, and you girls came in every afternoon w/ red eyes. Nearly everyone had problems that yr. Mine stayed w/ me.

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