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? 

It's Raining? Bring on the Snails!

Because we've had rainy weather lately, 

that means we're getting into snail season. 

So one rainy day, we couldn't help but take pictures of snails. 

Nature's cool, man. 

Lots of Lights

December 6 was a day for being around holiday lights apparently.

Since it was St. Nicholas Day, we found candy in our shoes. Lucky let me know that he had learned about that holiday in the library so when he saw it on the calendar, it reminded him that it was that holiday so he went to look in his shoes.

I need to take a little break from writing now because Jet wants his turn so this is my way of doing service for him now- letting him type.

 

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Now it's my turn (after I edited his a little). 

Besides St. Nicholas Day, December 6 was also Put On Your Own Shoes Day. That happened. 

Since the lights are on at City Center Park now, I wanted to get out for a walk on the first morning I could, which was that Saturday (because weekdays during school, there's not enough time). You know I like going for morning walks there when the lights are on. It was Play Outside Day as well.

It was raining that morning so I was worried about going out until Jeremy encouraged me to unlock my "inner Oregonian" and I realized I could use an umbrella. So I went and got a good walk in the rain and enjoyed the lights (and an audiobook). 

That evening, Nichole needed to go some places for homework so I took her to the mall and to BYU, both places with holiday lights. 

She pointed out the cool Nativity they had on the windows of the library at BYU. 

The moon looked cool that night.

We ate breakfast sandwiches that night because it was Microwave Oven Day and I made sure to cook my egg in the microwave as well as sausage links. 

 

Screen Free Week

I'm so proud of myself. Screen Free Week was May 5-11 this year. I prepared early and had blog posts scheduled for while I wasn't on. Yay. 

Of course, there was a lot of screen time because everything with school is screens nowadays, assignments, emails (including me having to check emails), texts, etc. Sigh.

Back in my day (insert old person speak), we didn't send all our homework assignments over the internet. We didn't even have the internet when I was in elementary school and middle school. Why, I remember having to pull the encyclopedias off my dad's bookshelf to look up information for my report on cats. That's right. I did a report about cats- domestic cats. You know the reason cats always land on their feet? Well, I do. I had it in my report, my handwritten report that I turned into my teacher in class. These kids nowadays... they write a report and the teacher can instantly see it. All this newfangled technology. It's everywhere.

O.K. That's enough of that. This newfangled technology is actually very handy with family history. I was able to have blog posts scheduled and get caught up even when I wasn't on the computer myself. Nice.

 

So... about Screen Free Week.

 

Monday, May 5, was Cinco de Mayo. We had pork salad bowls (kind of like at Cafe Rio). Yummmmmm. I made tortilla bowls to put them in, had rice, beans, lettuce, pork, cilantro lime dressing, and whatever else. We didn't all have the same in our bowls. 

That day was also a rainy day (we've had several rainy days in the last couple weeks) so the snails were out. I actually found one crawling down the van door. That means it had to somehow get up for it to be crawling down. I moved it off before driving as I didn't know what would happen to it otherwise.

I went for a brief walk at the lake. Definitely stormy with all the choppy water. 

After dinner, we had Family Home Evening. Our activity since it was Screen Free Week was going to the Orem Library and picking out a book each (and some of the kids picked out a board game as well). 

Libby the Librantula was out so I said, "Hi," to her while we were there.

 

Apparently nothing of significance happened on Tuesday, May 6. The lake was still choppy. 

Wednesday, May 7, was a busy day. Both Lucky and Jr. had performances that day. 

Lucky joined a whole bunch of 5th graders to do "Hope of America." See him in this picture? Right there. Right there in the red shirt. 

Actually Jeremy could point out which one he was because they were there early enough he could see him before all the seats got filled and memorized which row and how far in he was. The students made an American flag.

And here they are all shining. 

 

Jr. had his last orchestra concert that same night. I went to watch him in that.

He also got a couple awards. One for being "Most Consistent Cellist" and a paper plate award for being "the beautiful newsboy" since he played in the pit orchestra for both Beauty and the Beast (twice) and Newsies.

 

Ha Ha Ha. Now that Screen Free Week is over, I haven't had as much time on the computer for blogging. This is all I'm able to blog about for now. I'll talk about the rest of Screen Free Week later.

 

Jet: Can I write for a little bit?

This is his typing (abbreviated by me).

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Our Vacation, Thy Creations, and Our Relations- Part 1

Let me tell you about the best vacation I've had in a long time. I love Jeremy's suggestion for the title of the post.

First off, let me mention that the last couple times the kids and I went to Oregon (last year then 5 years before that), Jeremy was not able to go with us so it had been 8 years since he had been in Oregon. Both times without him we kept things kind of chill and didn't do a lot except of course to go to Shore Acres last year and on a near to where my parents live nature trail both times. Tradition.

When we went to Washington both times Jeremy flew in then drove back with us, last year only getting a few days there.

This year, Jeremy took enough work off that he had a real vacation. And it was wonderful. 

The day before we left as we were packing our car top carrier, it started sprinkling. We had to get our tarp out of the trunk to cover it up "just in case." It's a good thing we did because it started pouring down. Heh heh. Jet and I got soaked then I had to wash our clothes because we were wearing some of what we were going to wear on the trip. Heh Heh. Jet was very happy to play in the rain and I figured he deserved to. The rain felt really good, cooling things down after it had been hot for a while.

The next morning we packed our wet tarp back in the trunk along with the rest of our trip stuff and headed out in the rain.

Road Trip!

Waving at my sister as we passed by on the freeway.

Welcome to Idaho.

Waving at my mom's hometown.

Waving at our friends' home as we passed by on the freeway.

We weren't quick enough to get a picture of the "Welcome to Oregon" sign as we crossed the Snake River so I got creative.

Apparently the doll head made the trip with us and kept popping up in different places.

We made sure to celebrate on the drive. National Sunglasses Day and National Handshake Day were both on June 27.

We finally reached our final destination at my parents' house in Oregon.

I'll share more of our wonderful vacation later.

Last Week of School- Monday

We reached the last week of school for the boys. Busy week. It always is. Here's how it started out.