Farewell to Summer

As I have said before, summer is my favorite.  This year I had this running list on my phone of all the things I wanted to do this summer and as summer neared it's close I still had loads more things on that list.  The last month was a whirlwind trying to squeeze as much fun out of summer as we could before school started and we still didn't finish everything on the list!

The kids spent a lot of the summer jumping next door on Kenadie's trampoline:

I had to take a picture of all these neighborhood kids playing a pick up tackle football game in our yard one lovely summer evening.

The boys got invited to their first friend birthday party.  Adelyn Watkins invited her whole primary class over.  The boys jointly held her present like this all the way to the doorstep.  (They picked out LEGOs for her--one of their loves).


(And their second)  All the kids got invited to Cooper's birthday at the Nickelcade.


Camden came home and said he wants to spend his birthday at the Nickelcade (which is a good thing because they have all been mourning the loss of Chucky Cheese shutting down in town which was their previous favorite place to spend their birthday).

Liv did a summer theatre camp for a week and performed a little Alice in Wonderland play at the end of the week.  It was adorable to watch her.  She was a dormouse.  Babi and Papou drove up from St. George (so nice that they live there) for the occasion.

All the family got together at Steph's to celebrate Chase's birthday and we were able to get a big picture with all the cousins together.

The last weekend before school started after purchasing Liv's required school supplies at Walmart.  The kids and I drove past a shaved ice place advertising buy one get one free shaved ice.  So while, I had planned to try to start getting them to bed earlier in preparation for school, we instead stopped there and ate shaved ice as the sun set.

Camden and Carter talked me into buying these outfits at Costco one day.

 I thought I was buying Halloween Costumes, but they soon informed me that no, they just wanted them for dress ups.  Well, I agreed Liv started complaining that she didn't get anything, so I let her pick out a lego set.  I made them spend all summer earning 25 points for jobs around the house in order to earn them.  They also lost points for being unkind to siblings.  Honestly with all the earning and losing they usually hovered at a stable state of 10 points for most of the summer.  Finally, Carter was the first to earn 25 points and his dress up and then both of the other two got highly motivated to get their prizes as well.  The boys have been playing rescue squad all day every day since.


They put on play for Derek and I.  Liv was the damsel in distress and as far was we could tell there was no end in sight to the play until the boys got into a wrestling match about whose turn it was to rescue her next.

The garden has been producing like crazy.  I've canned pickles, and salsa, and taught our new neighbor how to can peaches (our own tree barely produced more than enough to eat).


I have been slowly increasing my running distance all summer and even got up to a 7.5 mile run with a friend who was training for a half.  It felt so good to finally be able to really run again after that long recovery from surgery.

Probably my best accomplishment this summer neccessitated by the fact that Babi and Papou spent the whole summer in Europe, was fixing our washer all by myself.  For some reason it the clothes wouldn't be dry after they were done washing so I would either have to run 2 or 3 additional spin cycles to get them dry enough to move to the drier or else do very tiny loads.  Either way laundry (my already nemesis) was taking me sooo long.  I dreaded doing it and towels were the worst so I just avoided those all together.  When we finally ran out of clean towels, Derek called a laundry repair guy to check it out.  He wanted almost $500 to fix the thing and I just couldn't stomach that, so I bought the part it needed myself for $200 and took apart the whole thing screw by screw to replace the part all by myself.  Derek honestly felt like paying the guy to do it was worth it and wanted nothing to do with it.  He may have been right, that was terrible and took me 4 hours.  The worst part was after I took it all apart and was looking at all the pieces and piles of screws that I had no idea which screw went where!

 I was so nervous after I got it all put back together that it wouldn't work any better, but I sat by the washing waiting for a the first cycle after the repair to finish and low and behold!!!!  It worked.  It was fixed.  Then, I ran out in the yard where Derek was mowing the law and leaped around him all excited that I now had a function washer!