Father's Day and getting outside with friends

Last Sunday we did a lesson about our foundations of faith. For an object lesson, we split up into teams and tried to build castles out of wooden blocks. One team had to build on the thick living room carpet for a foundation. The other team got a book to set on top of the carpet. The team with the book was able to keep their castle from falling over an made a tall, sturdy building with a fountain and flowers out front. The castle on the carpet kept collapsing. In the end, Cecily was able to build a decent castle, but it needed a lot of shoring up and she wasn't able to make it very tall.

We compared that to the kinds of foundations we need to build our faith and testimonies on. We wrote down our ideas of what our family's cornerstones are and asked ourselves if there were any areas we needed to work on to make our foundations sturdier.

I thought it turned out to be a good lesson. If anyone is interested, I based the lesson on the different starting points of Alma, Amulek, and Zeezrom's testimonies in Alma 8-12 and Elder Gary L. Stevenson's talk, "A Good Foundation against the Time to Come," from April 2020 General Conference.

The castle on the book:

The castle on the carpet:

Another attempt at the castle on the carpet later on. Cecily had learned some tricks by then. :)

The next day, she was doing her creative time with the blocks and spelled "citchin" on the kitchen counter.

Monday night, we went out to dinner at a local restaurant because Steve's work gave him $50 to spend to help local businesses. We chose the Trolley in Springville because Steve really liked their chicken sandwich and eggroll appetizer and I LOVE their rosemary garlic cheese fries.

After we arrived (it's a 35 minute drive from our house), we found out none of those things were on their updated for Covid 19 menu. We were all sad-faced over those and not super impressed with the items we did end up choosing.

I was still grateful to not have to make dinner that night, though. And any kind of french fries are better than no french fries in my book.

On Tuesday, I did our first in-person Activity Days meeting since Covid started. We got together outside and played frisbee golf with our own frisbees. That's a super easy activity since the course is in our backyard. After we finished our 9 holes, the boys jumped on the trampoline for a few minutes and I gave them ice cream sandwiches for a snack.

Emilia also had her first in-person Young Women's activity that night. They were supposed to go ice blocking, but all the local stores were sold out of ice blocks, so they played water-balloon volleyball instead. It was really cold that night though -- like 55 degrees, so she came home freezing.

We went to visit my mom on Wednesday and joined the Childresses at Thanksgiving Point gardens on Thursday. We ate a picnic dinner there and wandered around for an hour and a half. They had to go after that, and I took the girls home and put them to bed.

Friday, we had another pizza taste test, this time with four pizza places in Springville: Main Street Pizza, Two Jacks Pizza, Zubs, and Pier 49. Main Street Pizza took a resounding lead with 4.7 out of 5 stars. Two Jacks and Pier 49 were mid-range around 3.5 and Zubs was only like a 2 because they put more cheese on the pizza than the girls liked. I think Cecily gave it 1.5 stars.

I think Pier 49 would have done better if we'd done a specialty pizza, but the kids won't eat anything but pepperoni and the pepperoni was kinda bland. I got a gluten-free Nob Hill and it was delicious. Even then though, both pizzas at Pier 49 were way overpriced at $17 each for a medium. The Main Street Pizza large was only $14, I think. Still more than Little Ceasars by a lot, so they'll still get a ton of business from us, but if we're wanting something a little classier, Main Street Pizza and Village Baker are our go-tos now.

Saturday, I set up to spend some time with my mom without my kids. We were going to get pedicures and then do a craft together, but it didn't work out quite like we planned. We did get our toenails painted by Alison and they turned out great.

Here's my mom's:

Here's mine:

Today, we made breakfast in bed for Steve, had church, and now I'm going to go make some lemon bars and get ready for pork chops and red potatoes for dinner. Happy Father's Day to my dad, my uncles and my father- and brothers-in law! I love you all!

Lots of family

We were supposed to go to Cascade Springs on Memorial Day with my parents and Alison and James. But James wasn't feeling well, so they didn't go. And then we drove all the way up to Midway and found the road closed.

So we tried going to a park, but it was closed. And after much deliberation, we decided to eat our picnic lunch early and do a quick photo scavenger hunt on Main Street. I won't bore you with the scavenger hunt pictures we took, but here are ones of people.

This one is labled. We were supposed to take a picture of something heavier than your shoe. Haha.

This was something smooth. We're in the window reflection.

We started a new routine for summer after Memorial Day and school was out. The kids have to get dressed, make their beds, brush their hair, eat breakfast, read for 20 minutes, go outside or exercise for 20 minutes, do something creative for 20 minutes, and do their chores for the day, before they can have any screen time.

Since Cecily is still a beginning reader, she often listens to books instead of reading them herself. She's been on a Stick Dog and Stick Cat kick, so they've done some fan art as their creative time. This was Mira's on the white board one day. I think she did an excellent job. The first picture is hers, the second is the art from the books.

We found out the week after Memorial Day that our Nelson cousins would be coming to stay with us over the coming weekend. And then, all of us would go down to St. George that Tuesday and share an Airbnb, so we could see the rest of the Watts family (Grandma and Grandpa, Joe and Cindy and family, and Heather Stratton and her boys would be stopping on the way to Lake Powell). Flo was getting baptized that Saturday, too, though we still had to participate via Zoom.

That Saturday, I also did my first Facebook event for my book cover group. I was doing daily posts in different cover marketplaces and a lot of premades, so that kept me super busy. Plus I had to clean and ready my house, and since we were going to be in 95 degree weather in St. George, I needed to update my kids' wardrobes. I usually do a lot of thrift shopping at DI to cloth them for the summer, but DI is still closed. So we went to a bunch of stores at the mall and Walmart and Smiths. And I couldn't find enough shorts that were Emilia's size and not super duper short. I finally figured out that Savers in Orem was open, though it wasn't until we got there that we realized that we couldn't try anything on in the store. We ended up buying a few things, trying them on in our van, returning the ones that didn't fit, buying new ones, trying them on, etc. It was annoying. But we found a lot of great shorts/capris/exercise leggings for her at a really good price.

At the regular retail stores we did find a lot of fun t-shirts for Emilia. I'm kinda jealous of her summer wardrobe. :)

There was one night that it rained a lot before we left, but before that started, the sky was just gorgeous.

Once the Nelson's arrived Sunday afternoon, we enjoyed some time together at our house. Then Monday, we went to the Butterfly Biosphere and the Dinosaur Museum.

The Nelson's youngest, Eve, is almost as cute as Jules. ;) She's MUCH more petite. She's 9 months and actually wearing 9 month clothes instead of 18 month. Haha.

Tuesday we headed to St. George. Jules was a trooper for the (what turned out to be a) four+ hour drive.

This trip was super weird. It was like our trip karma had gone haywire. Mira lost her glasses.  We forgot the baby's entire suitcase and had to buy her all new clothes. I forgot my swimsuit. My kids all got rashes from something. We got stuck in stop & go traffic before making it even 20 miles from our house on a Tuesday at 4pm. I lost my keys with our only copy of the key fob. We lost two bottles of hand sanitizer in 5 days. Mira packed all of her underwear in a different bag than her other clothes and then left that bag at home. And our bumper fell off because of the wind.

It's all worked out. We found my keys and Mira's glasses. We were able to pop the bumper back on (and made it all the way home without incident!). We bought all the stuff we forgot and found hand sanitizer we could purchase. But phew! It wasn't the kind of adventure we were expecting!

Plus, the kids all had an amazing time with their cousins, we all got out of the house for nearly a week, and we got plenty of sunshine and water and fun and games.

At this spillway, you could climb behind the waterfall and stand up.

Can you see all the cousins back there?

We arrived back home Sunday night. So Monday we tried to get back into a routine. This is Cecily and Jules doing yoga for her 20 minutes of exercise. Jules often does my workouts with me, too and i find it very endearing.

On Thursday, we went to see my mom. They'd gone to visit Terry and Linda in Nevada while we were in St. George. Hopefully none of us were sick and didn't know it because we were sharing lots of people's germs.

Jules loves wet rags. Nana gave her one, and this is her playing peekaboo with it.

Thursday evening, Nick and Wilda came up to stay with us. Joe and Cindy were supposed to come on Friday, but they had the sniffles and decided to stay home. They were all coming for the funeral of Steve's first-cousin-once-removed, Tiffany (I can't remember her last name). She passed away from complications of cancer while we were in St. George.

Grandma and Grandpa had never been to the Butterfly Biosphere, so we took them. They've gotten more butterflies and we went early enough that it wasn't a humid deathtrap in there (it was still HOT though), so it was kind of magical, even after having been there three times in the last month.

Jules was happy until I wanted her to stay so I could take a picture. She has an amazingly well-practiced glare.