There is not enough summer left

There are only three weeks left before school starts and it's not enough. I want more time just with my kids before both Mira and Emilia are gone all day. *sad face*

We did do a lot of fun stuff this last week. If we can have a few more weeks like this, maybe I'll be more ready to give them up by the time school starts.

Monday was Pioneer Day here in Utah, but Steve didn't have the day off, so we didn't do anything out of the ordinary. We went to Julia Pace's house (the lady that I help on Mondays) and I helped her find Cherokee stuff she had hiding in a million different boxes, bags, and suitcases.

Tuesday, we finally went to another summer $1 movie--it was Megamind. I had forgotten how much I liked that movie! It's extremely well-written, Will Ferrell is always so fun, and the redemption/change arc for the bad guy is so unique and satisfying. I really enjoyed it and I wasn't expecting to.

That night, Ben dropped off Cari (he'd been up to help my parents get their house ready to sell in August) so she could have a sleepover with cousins. The Elder's Quorum also had a barbeque that night and since Steve is the secretary in the Elder's Quorum, we had to be there. (We probably would have gone anyway. Maybe.) It was fun to spend time with all the people who came, but I still left early to go to gymnastics. This time I worked on doing my front handspring and front bounder on the tumble track (a long, sort-of-stiff trampoline). I got the front handspring, but the front bounder was not ready. I also took 45 minutes trying to overcome my fear of doing a front tuck on the trampoline. I did it! I did a front tuck 3 times before I had to leave. I hurt something in my arm pretty bad this week. Every time I turn my wrist, I get a stabbing pain going from my wrist to my elbow. Not so fun. And it's not getting better very quickly. I may have to stay away from handsprings and bounders this week so I don't injure it any more.

I did have my friend do a video of me doing both things that I've learned, so click here if you want to see it.

Wednesday the girls had gymnastics, and then afterward, I went over to a friend's house that travels for work. She gave me all her tips for seeing London and Paris and traveling in general. It made me even more excited for my trip. That afternoon, a babysitter watched the girls while I went to the temple with the rest of the Relief Society Presidency. It sure was beautiful that day.

That night, we were invited to have s'mores at the home of a widow in the ward. She invites two families over every Wednesday during the summer for s'mores. This is the second time we've gone and we've really enjoyed it both times. She's a funny, quirky lady and the kids love her big yard and roasting their own marshmallows (except Mira--the weirdo doesn't like marshmallows!).

As we got in the car to head home, a thunderstorm started over Utah lake. The widow lives up on the mountain, so we had a great view of the natural fireworks. (Mira also hates fireworks--natural or manmade. She wailed in the car the whole time I was taking pictures because she was "scared to look at the lightning!".)

Megan was leaving Friday, so we wanted to get together one last time, but she was frantically helping my parents get the work done on the house that it needed as well, so we settled on meeting at Thanksgiving Point on Thursday for a couple hours. Nick was nice enough to go with us so we could get in for cheap with his Grandparent's pass. We chose to do Farm Country this time, so the girls rode ponies and took a wagon ride. It was pretty cool--they were re-shoeing a pair of Clydesdales so we got to watch them work on that for a while. Feeding the baby goats was pretty fun, too, though I failed to get a picture of that.

Steve had game night that night and I watched a movie while processing the pictures that I took last weekend. I watched Safe Haven. It's a Nicholas Sparks story so I should have known better. I was in the mood for a romantic drama, but I'm not a fan of his blatant pulling of heartstrings. This one was less blatant than his others in that regard, but the story was pretty cliche, so I still wasn't a fan.

I had to get the oil changed Friday, and I worked for a number of hours processing pictures again. Steve was nice and made dinner so I could keep working. After the kids were in bed, we watched the recent remake of The Magnificent 7, which I was very disappointed in. I think it should have been rated R. There was so much violence. Uck. I wish I would have shut it off when Steve said, "We know the ending. They're going to win. It's just a question of how many of them are going to die in the process." Over half. Plus another 296 or so others. That's how many. Uck.

We had a ton of fun Saturday going up to Payson Lake as a family. Picnic lunch, swimming, looking for colorful rocks, and a beautiful trail walk around the lake.

We got home around six, made the kids dinner, changed, and left the girls with a babysitter. We had tacos at a new place called 180 Tacos. Most of them were super good. We tried 6 different kinds: achiote pork, buffalo chicken, old skool steak asada, korean bbq pork, cascabel chili chicken, and baja fish. My favorites were the cascabel chili chicken and the korean bbq pork. Interesting and different, but so so tasty. Since we had a babysitter, I wanted to do something out-of-the-ordinary, so we were going to drive up Provo Canyon and play frisbee golf at a new course, but Google was wrong and the park we drove to didn't actually have a course. So we decided to drive up to Squaw Peak (the local make-out point after dark) since neither of us had been up there since we got married. We got to the top just as the sun was setting and it made for some gorgeous views and pictures. It was a perfect summer day. Ahhhhh.

"adventures" is what we're calling this

So this week, both the Nelson cousins and the Staley cousins were in town, the girls had a make-up session of gymnastics and a regular session, Emilia turned 9 and had a birthday party, I went to the adult gymnastics class again, I helped a neighbor cut up fruit for their wedding reception, served food at the reception, took a tour of the new MTC (Missionary Training Center--they build a new HUGE building), took my kids to the library, drove to my parents house twice--once for lunch and once to help clean out their garage--listened to an entire book (Blood Rose Rebellion), and finished the edits on my book!

For her party, Emilia wanted to take her cousins and friends swimming. Nicole was kind enough to take Mira and Cecily so I could take everyone else to the pool without having to worry about them. She took them to the splash pad and they stayed for almost three hours. Emilia, Cari, Jane, Meg, and Alexia all had a blast at the Provo Rec Center. We all arrived back at the house at the same time and we had cake and cupcakes and soda (Emilia's request). Megan made the beautiful cake. It was supposed to be a mermaid cake without a mermaid on it and I think it turned out perfect.

Gymnastics was just as fun this week as last week, though this time I seemed to pull/stretch a ligament in front of my hip. It hurt so bad that night that I had to drive home using the wrong foot. But it was perfectly fine by Thursday, so the injury was less drastic even than last weeks'. I'm hoping I injure myself less and less instead of more and more so I can keep going. It really is one of the funnest things I've done as an adult. This week, I did some more front handsprings, just to make sure I still had it down, then learned what they call a front "bounder." The difference is the handspring is stepped into (so you technically jump off one foot onto your hands), and the bounder is jumping off two feet onto your hands. For some reason it was much scarier to do the bounder than the handspring, but I conquered my fear and did it, which is super exhilarating.

Pictures from my lunch with Megan, my mom, and Kris and Brenda Dahlgren at my mom's house:

When we arrived (late) at the MTC tour, with Cecily shoeless (she got in the car that morning without shoes on, of course), Grandma and Grandpa Watts and the Nelsons and Steve were all waiting for us, but since we had driven down from my parents' house (traffic was bad, which is mostly why we were late), it had been a long drive and Emilia had to go to the bathroom REALLY bad. So I ran her into the nearby church building to use the facilities. Since everyone was waiting outside in the 90 degree weather, I was in a hurry, but I decided to use the restroom, too, since I was there. Setting my phone down on the toilet paper dispenser, and telling myself that "I cannot leave that there," I hurried out, promptly forgot my own good advice, and left my phone there. It wasn't until we were at dinner at IHOP later that I remembered where I had left it. Here is a lovely selfie of the couple who found it and returned it to me through contacting my mom:

Friday was the day I helped cut fruit for two hours, and since we still had to go to the library and my kids were bored, hungry, and cranky, I decided to treat them to a sno-cone before heading to the library. We got there and ordered before I realized they only took cash and I only had $1 in my purse. So we had to load up, go to the new Zion's Bank that (finally!) opened here in Springville, to get $20. Back at the stand, the girls re-ordered and enjoyed their grape, grape, and pokemon flavored sno-cones, and then we drove across the street to the library. When we got there, Cecily insisted on opening the large, heavy door herself and ended up pulling it over her exposed toes (she was wearing flip-flops--hey, at least there were shoes this time!), scraping her toe bad enough to make it bleed. I literally had an armload of books, so I shimmied into the door, held it open with my butt while she limped, wailing, inside, where she stopped to show me her poor foot, which I could not see because of said armload of books. Trying to hurry and comfort her, I let go of the door to set down the books on a nearby bench, not realizing that she had decided to use the inside of the doorframe to hold herself up one-footed. So now the large, heavy door closed on her fingers and there was even more weeping and wailing and so forth. After running her fingers under the cold water from the fountain for a minute, I could tell that this was not going to be enough comfort for two major injuries, so while I hauled Cecily out to the car, I commissioned Emilia to put the books in the return. When she didn't come out and didn't come out, I finally went in to find her, wondering if she didn't realize we had left and she was looking for books. No. I had dropped my phone with the books and she was playing Pokemon Go. Of course. After making it home and turning on a TV show, getting two icepacks, a bandaid, and tylenol, Cecily stopped wailing and I listened to my book while making dinner so there was some incentive to do anything besides eat chocolate and lay on the couch.

Part of the cleaning out of the garage involved going through boxes of stuff. The first picture is my mom's pin collection which was (not actually in the garage and which was) divided among all the children and grandchildren. The second picture is the cassette tape for my favorite book on tape from my childhood (Fox and the Hound was a close second). She didn't have the book, but I was excited to find the tape. When the new Wonder Woman movie came out, I got all nostalgic about this book and wanted to show it to my kids. But a book with the tape on Amazon was $60+ dollars! I found a copy of just the book on eBay for less than $15, though, so having the tape will save me $45. Hooray!

Gorgeous sunset on the way home Thursday night.

Another thing we found in the garage was the game Mastermind. I LOVED playing this as a child, so I super excited that my mom let me take this home. We played five rounds tonight at Grandma and Grandpa's after dinner.

Cousins in town is super fun

Phew! Cousins in town is super fun. Nicole and the Nelson cousins are staying with Grandma and Grandpa Watts for two weeks until they can move into their new house in Seattle Washington. My girls are so sad that they're moving away, so having this time with them has been a boon to them.

Before I get underway with the week, I wanted to put in another photograph gallery by the talented Mira:

Also, Cecily drew a self-portrait at church on Sunday and I thought it was adorable:

Okay. Now back to our week. :) This week, we spent almost every day with the Nelsons. We were supposed to spend every day, but Kate was throwing up Tuesday morning, so we took a break that day.

Monday, we all went bowling. That's three times this year for me and my girls, and I finally felt like I was mostly on my game. My kids were also courageous this time since their cousins were there. We still had bumpers up, but the Nelsons throw the ball down the lane instead of using the ramp, so all of my girls tried throwing the ball down there, too. I was impressed at how well they did with it!

We used our day on Tuesday to do laundry and housecleaning and the girls played with friends in the neighborhood. Tuesday night, I tried something new that I'm so excited about. I wanted to do gymnastics when I was little, but we could never afford it. I loved watching the olympics, and gymnastics--all the events--were my favorite part all through childhood. So when my kids started going to gymnastics, I got to watch all these teenagers doing backflips and front handsprings and such and once again, I was fascinated. But some of these kids were bigger than me--heavier, taller, or less muscled. So I started thinking, why couldn't I try doing it? I'm in good shape. It's something I've always wanted to try. Why not? I asked at the place I have the girls doing gymnastics, but the 20-year-old at the front desk basically laughed at me (rude!) 😜. So I dropped it for the school year. I had a lot of stuff going on anyway. But when the summer started, all the gymnasts are at the gym at the same time and I had to watch all the teenagers doing tumbling again, alot of whom don't listen to correction, don't care that they have the privilege of being there and don't try very hard. So I called the gym in Springville and asked if they had an adult class. They said yes! They were starting one the very next day, which was Tuesday. So I went. And love love loved it! SO MUCH FUN. I hyperextended my knee (but not too bad--it's fine already), but I learned to do a front handspring on the trampoline! Eeee! I felt like a giddy schoolgirl afterward. I will definitely be going again this week.

Cecily's magnetic creations

Wednesday, Nicole watched the kids in the afternoon while I went to the temple, and then we had dinner together.

I had to go to the Mt. Timpanogos temple since the Provo one is closed for cleaning.

Thursday, after cleaning the house (again!), we met Grandpa and the Nelsons at Thanksgiving Point discovery museum. Since my knee was still wobbly from Tuesday, I wasn't looking forward to walking around a bunch and the chaos at the discovery museum always sets me on edge. But I made it through with only a headache and then treated myself to wingers afterward while the girls ate Little Ceasar's Pizza. After I put the kids in bed, Steve was having game night, so I ran to the library to pick up a hold that had come in and made gluten-free brownies to eat while I snuggled in and read the whole book in one sitting. All in all, a very good day.

Emilia, Jane, and Meg being magnified at the Museum of Natural Curiosity

Friday, I wanted to make strudla (homemade german food) for everybody, plus we planned to have the Nelson cousins stay overnight for a sleepover at our house. When we made the plans earlier in the week, I wasn't thinking about the family portrait session I had scheduled in Salt Lake, so it ended up being a crazy evening. I still made dinner for everybody, but didn't eat it with the rest of the group. Instead I drove to Murray to do the pictures while Steve and Nicole fed the girls and put a movie on for them. They decided not to do the sleepover that night, so I worked on my book after the girls were in bed.

I made gluten free strudla and it turned out really good!

Saturday, Emilia went birthday shopping with Grandma and Grandpa Watts, Steve took the other two on a daddy-daughter date, we scrubbed floors, mowed the lawn, cleaned bathrooms, and -- get this -- bought tickets for a trip to London for me and Steve! I've never been outside the American continent (I've been to Tijuana and Calgary, Canada), so this is SO exciting for me! A wonderful opportunity for sure.

Everybody singing Happy Birthday to Emilia, Emily, and Michaela

Sunday we spent with the family again, and this time, the kids actually did stay overnight. Doesn't that sound like a great week? I certainly feel blessed.

There was a storm and a double rainbow after dinner