Catching Up August 2025 part I'm not even going to number them this time

August 6 was Wiggle Your Toes Day. I wiggled my toes. Luckily that is an easy one to celebrate because August was crazy and like July, we skipped a lot of things we normally celebrate.

Jeremy and I took a walk around the local farmer's market and saw how crowded it was.

We're still cute. 

Afterward we went home and had root beer floats for Root Beer Float Day.

August 8 was Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbors' Porch Night. I really wanted to celebrate this with zucchini from our garden. The timing didn't work out. Bummer. One was close but it didn't work out.

What I did do that night was go to a Girls Gather activity. Spa Night.

Nichole, Stephanie, and I got together for a relaxing evening. We soaked our feet. We did some meditation. We ate snacks. We played games. We talked and talked.

Oh, I love Stephanie. She is such a good friend and good example. She taught me the following: How do you thrive through trials? Embrace a spa. S=Scriptures P=Prayers A=Affirmations. 

I needed that night and I'm grateful for taking the opportunity to breathe and relax.

 

Like Nichole and Jr. did in July, Lucky took swim lessons in August.

August 10 was Lazy Day. I wasn't that lazy but I did have a moment of resting that day. Jr. came and joined me in my room showing me on his phone what Lucky was doing in VR Golf. I got to watch with Jr. as Lucky made an impossible shot, bouncing off the railing of some stairs down into the area it was supposed to be, maybe even into the hole. I don't remember exactly. It was awesome, though.

Another day we played VR Golf for Family Home Evening. It was my first time ever doing VR. Obviously other family members have done it. Kind of crazy the first time. Lots of "Whoah."

 

August 11 was Play in the Sand Day. I chose not to because of the algal bloom in the lake. I did look at the sand, though, and got a nice morning picture in my spot that I like. 

 

August 13 was Alfred Hitchcock's Birthday. We watched two Alfred Hitchcock movies that day. I slept through one of them.

Bison Day 2024

I love this tradition we've adopted of going to Antelope Island on Bison Day. We missed it in 2022 but were able to go last year and this year we made sure to go and of course we brought Otter the Bison, so named because when Jr. first saw the bison plushie a few years ago, he commented how it looked like an otter. Otter the Bison. Love it.

Had to get my bison selfie. I do it the safe way.  

 Jeremy also does it the safe way.

 

Besides seeing bison, we wanted to see birds for the UCB challenge. We got some on the causeway on the way in, some more at Garr Ranch, and some as we drove around the island a bit. 

We just needed a few more. We drove to certain places looking for specific birds.

 

And check out the magpie on the back of the bison. So fun.

 

We saw some birds out in the distance at one point but weren't exactly sure what they were. We wanted to get our 24 species so I hiked way out taking pictures every once in a while to hopefully identify which birds they were. Until my camera battery died and I had not taken the bag with the extra batteries with me. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Jeremy managed to get a picture through binoculars with his phone of me hiking through the sand. 

Have you ever hiked through sand? I've done quite a bit because of where I grew up. 

We figured out those birds were horned larks which Jeremy had guessed even before I went down there. 

Later we realized we didn't even need the horned larks for the challenge because we saw a bunch more birds from the causeway on the way out. Ha Ha Ha Ha.

But hey, it made for some good pictures- including me pouring sand out of my shoe.

Besides being Bison Day (and Play Outside Day, the first Saturday of every month), November 2 was also Plan Your Epitaph Day. So as we were driving around Antelope Island, we had some fun.

 

Here lies Jr. Jr. He fell off a cliff. 

His brother said, "It's not my fault you're so shoveable."

Mom: Plan Your Epitaph Day.

Lucky: I'm not buckled.

Dad: Wow. That was fast.

Dad: I think I would get a squid coming down my arm with the tentacles wrapped around...

Mom: It's Plan Your Epitaph Day, not Tattoo Day.

Dad: Plan your epic tat.

Jr. Jr.: Here lies Jr. Jr. His last words were, "What? That's not a bear."

 

Our Vacation, Thy Creations, and Our Relations- Part 5

Me: Stop distracting me with birds when we're trying to get ready for a trip.

Husband: Stop being distracted by Instagram while we're trying to get ready for a trip.

Ha. Ha. I was posting about that first interaction outside with the birds.

 

Road Trip!

Usually when we visit my parents, they plan a trip for us to Shore Acres. This year was no exception. We stopped briefly  to tie the van's shoes, then rode horses down to the beach. Jet had a lot of fun splashing around in the ocean, and even more throwing sand everywhere.

 

O.K. Now that I have access to my blog again- we did not, in fact, tie the van's shoes, nor did we ride horses anywhere. Jet did, however, have fun splashing in the ocean. He got to a lot more than last year and yes, he did have fun throwing sand everywhere.

O.K. What we stopped briefly to do was to see some birds and seals and sea lions at Cape Arago viewpoint.

Then we ate lunch and tried to get some family pictures in the garden before heading down to the beach.

The sand was so hot and the water was so cold. Lucky once again refused to take his shoes and socks off and luckily didn't get his feet wet this year. Jr. and Jr. Jr. got their feet wet. They took their shoes and socks off first.

Nichole enjoyed sitting on the sand sketching. I love that she does that.

Jeremy took pictures of birds and us and nature. It was so good to have him there this year. As I mentioned before, it had been 8 years since he visited Oregon.

 

I loved our time together there.

 

  

 

We made it back to our final destination of my parents' house that evening after having a great day out.

I'll share more of our wonderful vacation later.

What She Missed- August 11

Wednesday, August 11-

Play in the Sand Day. After doing chores again, the boys convinced me to let them play more video games- either sandbox games or games that had sand in them.

We didn't have any real sand so the toddler had to make do with what he could find while Mom wasn't looking.

Good thing I hadn't put the eggs in yet. 

I'll say my reaction was good, though. He's a toddler. It's not like he would understand if I gave him a talking to about what he did wrong. So I let him play and took pictures. I figured the mess to clean up wouldn't be different if I stopped him as soon as I saw or if I waited until he was done. There would just be less screaming if I waited so I did then moved him over to the kitchen sink where I could wash him off. Then I gave strict instructions for people to watch him and keep him out of the kitchen while I cleaned up and started a new batch of cornbread.

This isn't the first time I've handled a messy situation with a toddler and managed to get pictures. I even blogged about some of them, especially when I kept my temper. When Jr. was little, he drew all over his face with a sparkly pen. I blogged about it in September of 2009.

When Jr. Jr. was little, he got finger paint on our new bed. I blogged about it in July of 2013.

There are others but sometimes I'm pleased with how I handle situations. I think it helped that I was already in a good mood when I found Jet with the cornbread mix.

Camping in the Sun and Rain

It looks like I never blogged about camping as a family last year.  Well, we did, and the time before that was when I was pregnant with Jr. Jr. so you see, it had been a while.
This year, we made sure to go camping again, especially since one of Jr.'s requirements for cub scouts is to go on an overnight campout... and because we wanted to.  It was fun.

We went to Jordanelle State Park- Jordanelle Reservoir.  The kids were all helpful throughout (except for the times they weren't). 

We had a beautiful campsite with lots of trees (read: lots of birds).  There were various other critters who visited us from time to time as well.

It was somewhat warm when we got there, then cooled off a bit during the evening. 
We had fun playing games in the tent (the kids loved Uno) and Jeremy told us half a Jackerina story, "Jackerina and the Chickadees of Terror."

It rained most of the night and next morning (good thing we put the rain fly up when we set up the tent- ask me about last year's adventure).  We were flexible however and changed some meals around since we wouldn't light a fire in the rain.  Even though we did have the rain fly up, some things in our tent still got wet.  Oh well.  All part of the adventure, right?

We went for a drive while the weather was as it was and found some marmots, a cute weasel, and many birds, including bobolinks.  We got a much better view of them this year than the one we saw from quite a distance last year.

The bobolinks were also being quite vocal.  They make some interesting sounds to go along with their interesting look.   

Click on the picture to see it larger.

When we got back to the campground, it had dried out a bit, so after lunch we went down to the reservoir because the kids wanted to learn how to skip rocks.  There was some skipping and some rock (and log/stick) throwing and it was fun.

 
We had another good evening.  The day before, the kids explored around our campsite and found some secret passages through the trees and a sandpit where they enjoyed much drawing with sticks.
Jr. was tired enough that by the time we finished that day, we didn't play any card games and he was asleep while Jeremy finished the Jackerina story.

The next morning we packed up and left the campground. 

We drove around the reservoir to another section of the state park.  Another of Jr.'s cub scout requirements is to go on a 1-mile hike or walk and note animal signs.  That was very easy for him since as soon as we got out of the van he heard a cicada buzzing, saw leaves that had been chewed by some bug, heard and saw several birds, and we all got bitten by mosquitoes.  It was still a nice hike/walk, but there were some areas that we couldn't go to because the river was so high.

 Then we headed home.

Now to talk about food.  Several people on facebook gave us good suggestions.  We did some experimenting and kept with some traditional camping food.  I already mentioned that we moved some meals around, so here's what we ended up with.
For dinner the first night, we had hot dogs and watermelon and grilled corn on the cob (yumm) and s'mores.

For breakfast the next morning, we ate donuts in the van.
For lunch we had quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks, Jr., for making the quesadillas) with carrots.

For dinner we tried out pizza (with and without foil on top) in pie tins.  I baked crust before we left so we just had to put toppings on.  Everyone got their own personal pizza.  We had salad and whatever watermelon and carrots people wanted to eat.  We also made wafflecone s'mores again.  We tried jiffy pop, but it didn't work very well for us.

For breakfast before we packed up and left we had breakfast sandwiches and hot chocolate.  We also tried pudding-filled biscuits like we did last year.  I don't think I want to try those again.  You wrap a biscuit on a stick and cook it over the campfire then fill it with pudding.  The inside of the biscuit doesn't get cooked very well, though.

Now to talk about celebrating holidays on our trip.  The day we got there was Magic Day.  We kept telling Lucky that everything we did from lighting the fire to setting up the tent was magic.
The next day was Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.  And lookee what I did.  Dropped the eggs (not intentionally).

Sigh.  Jeremy was going to cook them for breakfast the next morning, but nicely fried them up that night instead.  Sigh.  It actually made it faster the last morning when assembling and warming up breakfast sandwiches.

Speaking of the last day.  That was Pop Goes the Weasel Day.  Since we had seen that weasel the day before, Jeremy suggested we go look for it again since it was so cute.  So... Pop goes, "The weasel.  Let's go look for it."  Unfortunately we didn't see it again.  But we did see more bobolinks and marmots.

And that's about all I am going to say about our camping trip.