Heating Things Up

July is always a hot month temperature wise and I feel like things heat up in the sense that it is busy! It used to be that summer was just starting up when the 4th of July came (our girls were in year around school during their early elementary days). Now as soon as July ends we're in back to school mode. No matter how you slice it, July is a crazy month jammed pack with lots of summer events. Let's see if I can catch up on a few of the fun things we did. 

Andrew had a great experience and KCS orchestra camp. We all attended the performance Friday, July 11th and then went out for ice cream to celebrate. The fun little place we went to had Grilled Pineapple Ice Cream that month and it was delicious!

 

Steve and I played in the Farmington Festival Days pickleball tournament that morning. I would like to say we had fun but it was rough, we can at least say we didn't get pickled. Steve was having a rough morning and I had not slept well the night before so we just couldn't click. The timing of things was a little rough too. We didn't get our bye until the end and we had two friends playing in the tournament we didn't play until our last two games. I think it would have helped us settle into a fun state if we had played them earlier. Oh well, we love playing in the leagues together so we'll stick with that right now. And we got a cute shirt out of the deal. 

 

The following week Andrew had Deacon's camp, July 16-19. He was so excited. One of the items on the agenda noted, "retirement". Andrew was like why do we need to learn about retirement at our age. We laughed and explained it was to learn how to retire a flag which they did the first night and then they learned they could no longer have fires. Marcus was bored out of his mind without Andrew, he even said, "I just spent most of the last week without Andrew while he did violin camp now he's going to be gone nights too." He had a friend over one day to keep him occupied. 😂 When Andrew came home Saturday, I realized he was in the same clothes I dropped him off in. I asked him if he ever changed. His reply, "Yes, I changed into my swim clothes the day we were at the lake. Then I put on clean underwear but my old clothes back on." I had worked with him to pack a whole bag of clothes and showed him where his sleep clothes were and everything. Oh boys! He had a great time and told us all about the yummy food, the devotionals they had discussing spiritual things, and the activities they did which included: fishing, kayaking, can-can game, and playing cards. One of his sweet leaders sent me this message, "We loved being with Andrew! He's a fun boy! He has a great personality and can carry on a thoughtful conversation. He's a great reflection of you and Steve."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend, Lori from Tucson was in Utah so we had lunch together on Thursday, July 17th and then hung out and caught up. It was fun. We even played some cards together. Steve took Lila and Andrew to the Syracuse temple on the evening of Saturday, July 19th to do baptisms and then brought home some ice cream from the new creamery in Syracuse. That night we told the boys we had managed to get 49ers training day camp tickets for the following week while we are in Oakland. They were pretty excited. Steve wanted to wait to tell them but I think part of the excitement is the anticipation. It also gave them time to make a sign to take.

Sunday, July 20th we attended Steve's sister, Stephanie's sacrament meeting to hear her twin boys speak before they leave on their missions to Oliver to Bolivia and Gabe to Africa. It was a good meeting and we were happy we could be there to support them. We are sending our prayers and love as they head out to serve the Lord. 

 

Other crazy news, is I was online looking for jobs Lila could apply for (she needs to get a job!) and found a couple I was interested in. So I filled out 2 applications on Tuesday, July 15th. One of them called me the following day to setup an interview. I interviewed on Monday, July 21st and they called the next day to offer me the position so I had a couple of onboarding things to do for that before we left for our trip. I'm excited and a little nervous. I'll be teaching anti-vaping at the schools here through Davis Behavioral Health so I'm not working for the school district but I'll be working while the kids are in school so it was a win win in my book. As I was telling some of my friends about it they mentioned an article that had just come out about how expensive it is for the school districts to dispose of the vaping products they confiscate. Due to their lithium batteries and chemicals they cannot just throw them away they have to pay for them to be properly disposed of and it's costing thousands of dollars. It has been a really interesting learning curve for me as I've done some training with Davis Behavioral Health and I truly have enjoyed some of the things I'm learning.

Lunch and Late Night Pool Party

Right before we left camping I received a text message from Rancho, a Chinese intern we got really close to during Andrew's kindergarten year and right before COVID. He and his wife, Rae were in town so we invited them for lunch on Sunday. I meant to take a picture but I totally forgot. It was fun catching up and it turns out they are trying to move here so he is looking for a job and housing so we helped them with some information regarding contacts with the school district and how to look for housing on KSL. Rae is lovely and the kids enjoyed speaking Chinese with them. We hope things work out for them and that we can stay in touch as they are closer now.

 

Then Monday Andrew started his violin camp. Thankfully this year it is much closer to us. I stayed the morning to get him checked in and then watched the faculty concert with him which was so fun. They had a harpsichord and played several fun songs, one about a gruffalo and another about a trout. Then I helped make the faculty lunch (my volunteer assignment) before heading home. I drove back down to pick Andrew up then took the boys to pickleball at which point Steve and I finally worked out. Then he took the boys to their friends house for pancake night while he mowed the lawn. He was so hot that he convinced the boys to get in the pool with him. Well the pool was 92 degrees so we had a late night swim. They stayed up way past their bedtime but it really was so fun! Everyone had a blast!

America the Beautiful

We had planned to leave Thursday afternoon when Ellie got home from work but when checking the weather leading up we noticed rain so we ordered a canopy off of Amazon and were waiting for it to be delivered. Luckily it came towards the beginning of the delivery window then we quickly finished loading up to head out. Packing for this trip was a little tricky because we were also trying to think through our big camping trip at the end of the month and what would help for that to go smoothly (a couple of times Steve and I were each a little confused about which camping trip we were talking about 😆). Steve was a trooper because we wanted to take all 4 paddle boards, camping gear, and we had gotten an email saying there was no water so we had to haul water. First turn out of the neighborhood and things were sliding so we had to make a few adjustments but the rest of the ride went smoothly and the kids were happy it only took us a little over an hour to get there.

Our campsite was beautiful! We got camp setup pretty quickly, thankfully it wasn't raining. Then we had second dinner. We boiled water and let the kids pick some noodles to eat and tried some of our freeze dried food that we will be taking on our camping trip later this month. Then we made a run to the bathrooms before going to bed. The pit toilets were well taken care of but really dark so I was glad we brought flashlights. And by the way they had working water, we tried calling, emailing, and chatting online about the water situation with no response so we packed water to be safe.

the boys always love exploring

 

As we were getting ready for bed I said we would have pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Ellie said re-hydrated pancakes and I said no real pancakes and her eyes got really big and excited. I guess she hasn't been camping with us since we bought the little stove and griddle. 🤣

We got up the next morning made breakfast and then loaded up to head to Timpanogos Cave for our tour reservation. The kids were troopers on the hike and Steve read from the little information pamphlet as we passed certain points. The reservation system tells you what time to check in at the bottom before the hike but didn't tell us how long we had to get to the top or what time our cave tour started. Apparently we booked it because we made it to the top in an hour with 30 minutes to spare but it was nice to relax for a minute and enjoy the views. 

 

 

The caves were really cool. There are three caves up there: Hansen, Middle, and Timpanogos caves. We really enjoyed the tour. Andrew even asked a couple of really insightful questions. One being about the popcorn structures made by evaporation the guide pointed out. Andrew asked how is there evaporation in the damp cave? Turns out of you see those popcorn like structures it means you are probably near a natural entrance because the airflow will be better in these areas.

popcorn structures

 

The hike down went much faster and there was some nice clouds making it a lot cooler then it could have been. We ate a little snack, used the nice restrooms there, and looked around the gift shop. Then we headed back to camp for walking taco lunch. Steve made a comment about how we really did not need the canopy then about half way through lunch the thunder started and we put up the canopy just in time before the rain hit and boy did it come down for a while. We sat there talking while the boys carved for a bit and trying to decide if we could make a run for the tent to play a card game. Finally there was a break so we ran to the bigger tent to play cards only to find the tent was seeping water and things were getting pretty wet. Steve ran and got a towel out of the van and we did our best to wipe up a bit. Then we played cards. It was fun, there was laughter, and we stayed pretty dry. There was a little break in the rain during our game and then we heard the thunder so Steve and decided to move the canopy down over our tent. Good thing we did because it down poured again.

trying to dry things out

 

Steve drove to the camp host to buy is some wood for a fire. We managed to get it going and roast hot dogs, pineapple, and smores. However, a slight drizzle started again so we moved the canopy back up over the table. Then back over our tent for the night just in case it rained overnight, Steve called it our rain fly (we couldn't check the forecast because we didn't have service--isn't that one of the best things about camping, unplugging for a bit).

Andrew sliced open our firewood with his pocket knife then couldn't find it. We looked on the ground and everywhere with no luck. I told Andrew he could buy a new one, I think he was having a little envy from Marcus new knife anyway. 

Steve took Ellie, Lila, and Andrew for a drive up to Silver Lake. We didn't know if the van would make it there but Steve wanted to check it out. Marcus and I stayed behind to keep watch on the fire. We talked and kept adding logs to the fire. The others had fun exploring the lake.

 

 

When they got back they kept throwing branches of pine needles on the fire and they would crackle and pop. I told them to all enjoy their "fireworks" for our 4th of July night.

We all slept pretty good that night. Well Marcus sat up in the middle of the night and really loudly said, "What is this? Where am I?" I calmed him down and got him back to sleep pretty quickly by throwing part of my quillow over him and snuggling for a bit. I love my quillow bag. It was definitely cooler the second night. Steve was so hot the first night he slept on top of his sleeping bag.

 

Saturday morning after breakfast we went to Tibble Fork Reservoir to paddle board. The reservoir was slammed when we drove by it after our hike the day before (which is part of the reason Steve wanted to check out the other lake but it took them 30 minutes to get up there instead of the 5 to the reservoir). It was busy but we managed to find a parking spot and started blowing up paddle boards. Everyone had a blast. I thought we'd use the canopy but there would be these big gusts of wind and we couldn't get the stakes in so we left it down. We had a sack lunch to eat there but only the boys took a quick lunch break. Marcus fed some ducks and we even saw a bald eagle flying over us which felt very patriotic. We were there for almost 2.5 hours just enjoying our time before we started packing up. The place was getting even busier and we needed to go pack up camp, we left everything up giving it time to dry out in the sun before packing it up.

Bald Eagle

Steve says he got splashed a lot as a passenger with Marcus 😂

 

As we were packing up I let the kids have a bowl of cold cereal as a little snack and to keep them a little busy as Steve and I finished things. The boys went exploring again and Marcus found Andrew's pocket knife. 🎉 We managed to stuff everything back in the van and arrived home around 4pm. 

 

After unloading the camping gear and trying to put the new 4th paddle board up with the others we realized it would fit if we got rid of the old spare tire that has been up there for years. So with the captain chair out we decided to make a quick run to the dump with the tire, old water heater, some pallets, and a few other things we've been wanting to get rid of. Talk about a productive way to end the weekend. It was a lovely weekend celebrating America the Beautiful over the 4th of July weekend.