Pacific Northwest Trip 2026- part 4

June 21 was the Summer Solstice.

Goodbye, Spring. Hello, Summer.

It was also Father's Day. We got to spend it with my father-in-law. I wore my bow earrings to celebrate and took a selfie. It was also National Selfie Day.

And... it was a family member's birthday so I also wore my bow earrings for that.

 

Jeremy finished up at his fair in California the night before and drove to spend the night at my brother and sister-in-law's. He went to church with them Sunday morning and made sure to wear his Father's Day tie. He also got chocolate.

I appreciate the selfies they got.

 

Jeremy drove the rest of the way home to find a card and a couple Father's Day gifts which we left for him. We weren't able to be with him (though we did call and sing "Daddy's Homecoming" to him on his trip) but we were able to let him know we were thinking of him.  

Pacific Northwest Trip 2026- part 3

June 19 was Garfield the Cat Day. We were so busy that day, we celebrated it observed the next day with lasagna.  

 

Later that evening, we made s'mores on the last day of Spring.

Goodbye, Spring. Hello, Summer.

After toasting marshmallows over coals, the fire was used to burn some other things so the flames grew. 

Jet: Whoa. There's fire in there now. 

 

Jr. and Nichole had fun taking some artistic pictures. 

Jr. calls this his Balrog picture:

Do you see it?

It's fun to see shapes in things. 

Rainy Adventures

Remember that rainy Saturday I mentioned when we planted our plants. The night before was also a rainy night... and a windy day. Garbage and recycling cans up and down the street kept getting blown over.

Jr. Jr. went on an overnight campout that he thought was so fun because it was miserable in the rain. All the Young Men were miserable together. 

Lucky went to a friend's "Summer Kickoff Party" that night where they were going to play outside games and watch an outdoor movie. When we went to pick up another friend to give him a ride, we used an umbrella. Yeah. The host decided to move the party indoors. 

 

Hey. As long as they had fun, right? 

Summertime Means...

Summertime means more Summer Reading, of course. One of the things we like to do is Provo Story Trails. Different Provo parks have signs set up that tell a story based on a fairy tale of folktale. It's fun to see the similarities between stories we're familiar with and how they are told in other countries and cultures.

Things have been busy so Lucky, Jet, and I went to one story trail and I went to two more on my own. Luckily there's a new one every week through the end of July so we'll have more opportunities. They are left up for two weeks before being taken down.

The Story of the Five Heads at Lions Park, Maui's Fish or The Creation of New Zealand at Riverside Park, Catherine and Her Destiny at Kiwanis Park.

 

It's harder getting the start and end pictures when I go by myself. Tee Hee.

Summertime also means fairs and that sometimes means dropping off and picking up Jeremy so he can do balloon animals. Jet and I are big helpers when it comes to supporting Jeremy in this way.

Summertime also means Summer parties. Lucky's school teacher invited all her former students for a little get together at the park next to the school. Lucky had fun connecting with friends, eating treats, and getting to see his teacher again since she won't be his teacher next school year.

When Jet and I went to pick him up, we stayed for a while ourselves and joined in the fun.

Solstice Selfies

June 21 was the Summer Solstice. Jeremy happened to pick the longest day of the year to invite me to go out after dark to look for common poorwills. 

That meant the kids stayed up way too late while we were gone. 

We didn't see any poorwills, though we did hear several, but we took a lot of selfies for National Selfie Day.

Summer Solstice

Back in April, I blogged about the Spring Equinox that happened in March and an open window and the book series, Fablehaven. Go check out my blog post from April 9, 2020.
This month we knew the Summer Solstice was coming up. We looked it up in the book and found out it's the night before the Solstice to be most wary or Midsummer's Eve. So we decided to make sure the windows were closed the night before and I told the kids they needed to get in their beds and stay there until morning. As often happens, we forgot about the windows until dark when I made Nichole close all of them. Some of the kids refused to listen to me about staying in their beds. You know what? We all made it through the night. Huh. I guess we don't live on a magical preserve.

For the first day of Summer itself, the kids and I had plans to have some fun outside time together. Since people stayed up too late and got up too late, we finally got out to enjoy the sunshine around 5pm. By that time, the clouds had rolled in (it was sunny earlier in the day) and we celebrated with the overcast sky. Oh, well. It was still warm and we had some nice discussion time and acted out stories and some other things to earn Summer reading badges.

Since June 20 was also National Vanilla Milkshake Day, I made vanilla milkshakes for the family. I expressed my thoughts on plain vanilla on this blog before so I added some nutmeg and cinnamon to my milkshake.

What We Did to Beat the Heat

It has been hot this Summer.  Yes, hot.  We've had to think of ways to beat the heat.  One way is by driving in our air-conditioned van (something I am very thankful for) to the Orem Library where it is also nice and cool.  One day we went out in the heat before going down to the library.  We did have a good reason, though.  For about a week around and after the 4th of July, our city had flying in a local canyon (hiking area) a gigantic American flag.  Huge.  Enormous.  Record breaking in size- "largest American flag to ever fly."  78 feet wide, 152 feet long.  We decided to go up to see it, though technically it's so big we can see it from our living room window through the trees.  To get a better look at it, we drove up to the trailhead then walked up a bit to get some pictures.  It was so neat- and big.

Afterward we did drive down to the Orem Library.  Jeremy got some work in, the kids and I got some reading in, and the kids went on a scavenger hunt.  They searched around the library for paper constellations then took their results back to receive a special prize.  The reward?  Solar glasses for the upcoming total solar eclipse in August (90% in our neck of the woods).  Jeremy and I also earned solar glasses from the library by answering trivia questions.

 It was a nice way to beat the heat.

Repeat Day 2017

Pete and Repeat were in a boat.  Pete fell out.  Who was left?
Repeat.
Pete and Repeat were in a boat.  Pete fell out.  Who was left?
Repeat.
Pete and Repeat were in a boat.  Pete fell out.  Who was left?
Repeat.
Pete and Repeat...

It's amazing how many times our children will answer, "Repeat," and we just keep going and going and going with this.
Well, June 3 is Repeat Day.  For scripture study tonight, Jeremy asked the kids several times if they were ready for family prayer and scripture study.  Once they were and we had our prayer, Jeremy shared a scripture and thought and all the kids repeated it after him.  They enjoyed that.  A good way to learn is by repeating something.

In other news on this third day of June, Jeremy finished some sculptures for the Orem Library's Summer Reading Program.  So if you go to the library next week, they will be on display and you can see them in person.  The theme for the Summer Reading Program is "Make it Work," and the kickoff event, their teddy bear picnic, has a steampunk theme.  Jeremy built a 12 foot tall robot with accompanying inventor.

When he finished he was able to come to a neighborhood BBQ which the kids and I were already at.

 

So that's how Repeat Day went for us this year.  I'm not going to repeat it all, but you can re-read it if you want.

The Groundhog's Summer

Yesterday we were too busy to celebrate Ground Hog's day so we moved the celebration to today. How does one celebrate a giant rodent predicting six more week of winter? By pretending it is summer of course! Well that and Feb 3rd is the half way point of winter, so again... summer!

We made our usual imitation ground hog burgers (sometimes we do real ground hog burgers, but ground beef is usually less expensive than ground pork) and then we had other traditional summer picnic foods. Besides the burgers we had chips, melon, potato salad, and lemonade. We topped it all off by watching the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. No matter how many times you watch that movie it is like you've watched it forty more times than that. It's that good!

More Waterfalls

Jeremy (after I mentioned that we'd been to three waterfalls this week):  Do we want to go to Bridal Veil Falls on Saturday to make it four?
So we did.  The kids got to get wet this morning at the annual Primary Water Party,

then we rested while watching Kung Fu Panda 3 at home, then when Daddy got home from work and after he'd had a bit of time to rest, we headed out Provo Canyon to Bridal Veil Falls.

We do so much family stuff on weekdays because weekends are Jeremy's busiest times that we forget what Saturday evenings in the Summer are like.  Bridal Veil Falls was crowded.  Someone was having a family reunion.
We then drove up to Big Springs.  All along that road it was crowded.  There were family reunions and weddings going on all over the place.  Wow.  We did get a short hike in, though.

I think Lucky is learning the art of playing in the dirt at Big Springs.

Ah, Summer.  4 waterfalls in one week.  Lots of outdoor time.