"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

Independence Day!

The 4th of July! What a holiday. So much stuff going on.

The Coombs came to stay with us while they were in town for the celebrations. So we got to hang out with them for five sleeps! The first day, me and the girls met them at Hertiage Park in Salt Lake. None of us had ever been there before. We enjoyed making crafts, riding ponies, and seeing what life would have been like when the pioneers first came to Utah.

My favorite part was panning for gold. It was fools gold, but it was still treasure. I could have done that for hours. This was Mira's pan. She was more excited about that agate than about the gold.

Saturday we went to the splash pad and had a yummy lasagna dinner. Then Sunday, the Coombs hung out with the rest of the Watts' and we went to spend the evening with my family. We barbecued and shot some fireworks in the comfort of the backyard. Neither Mira nor Cecily like the loud noise of the fireworks, so my dad let them borrow his noise-cancelling headphones. Mira still didn't want to stay and watch more than five minutes, but that was WAY longer than last year, so we're making progress. She would at least admit that they were pretty.

Monday was a day with the Watts'. Steve played foot golf with the other Watts men on Monday morning, while I took the girls up to play with their cousins at the Watts house. When they got back, the moms all went for pedicures and some shopping. We celebrated Davis's birthday with pizza and brownie sundays that night. There was lots of playing both for the adults and kids.

Tuesday was the 4th. It was a busy day. We met up at Great Grandma Watts' retirement home and talked to her and took pictures. She's got dementia pretty bad, so we were mostly introducing ourselves and letting her know she is loved.

From there, we divided up into teams and did a photo scavenger hunt of places that the Watts ancestors lived around Provo and Orem. It was fun to see where Great-great grandma and great grandma and regular grandma and even Daddy lived. I hadn't seen most of those places and we got to hang out together, so I enjoyed it until the heat made us all want to sit in front of a fan and sip iced lemonade for the rest of the day. :) After some lunch, we looked at our collection of pictures, played some games and then headed outside for water fights and slip 'n slides. I was sort of a party pooper for this part. I was not up for getting wet. But I participated in the frozen t-shirt contest! That should count for something right? :) I should mention that one of the games we played was "After the Manner of the Adverb," which I'd never played before. The first two rounds were played by adults, so we picked harder adverbs: flexibly and gracefully. It was all pretty funny--watching the women cook dinner "flexibly" or having the men play football "gracefully," but by far the funniest was when the men sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" "flexibly." I wasn't able to get to my phone fast enough or that would have been a video to go down in the history books. :)

Dinner was hamburgers and hotdogs and chips and watermelon. And of course we ended the evening with a bang. Thousands and thousands of dollars of fireworks were visible from our vantage-point and our display was amazing, too.

The rest of the week, I had to play catch-up on housework and then yesterday we went up to my parents' house to help them with some projects they want to complete before putting their house on the market in August.

Some other random pictures--

When we left one morning, there was a big beetle in our garage near a tub I set out there a few days before. I think it was a water beetle. And as I used a box lid to shoo it out of the garage, it stuck its butt up in the air to scare me away. (It didn't work.) He eventually climbed into the lid and I deposited him safely in our lilac bush. When we got home that night, this big guy was in the exact same place as the water beetle, but twice the size! If we hadn't taken the other beetle out before leaving, I might have believed he molted into this thing while we were gone. 😂 When Steve tried shooing this one with the same box lid, he got hissed at. Bugs are crazy.

These next ones are another collection of pictures that Mira took. Still impressed with her.

I love Cec-bug's thumbs up when she's approving of her own stuff. She was proud of this house that she built and she did the thumbs up when I asked if I could take a picture of it. :) She's so great.