We have so much playing the past few weeks! It almost feels as though life has recommenced since COVID began–but not quite, because we just got notice that we are un-returning to church now. 🙁 But STILL, we have done a lot of fun summery things!

The first thing we did was Fay’s family party on June 15. She had a vision of what she wanted–snacks and drinks and everybody partying in the pool! I have yet to go in the pool, actually, because I’m always on baby duty; but the kids all had tons of fun and it made Fay’s pool party dreams come true.

Our next party, and our first grand adventure of the summer was camping in Green River. Our original plan was to be at Jordanelle; but there was a giant rainstorm that drastically lowered the temperature all over the Wasatch Front and the temperature was supposed to get down to about 33 at night. We still really wanted to go camping, so we tried to find the closest place to camp that wasn’t affected by the storm. Green River fit the bill. Josh EXPERTLY packed the car with gear and food for everybody (Seriously impressive! We have a lot of people.) and we set off. We stopped at Provo Bakery on the way down to pick up an early addition to Josh’s birthday–buttermilk bars! If you’ve never had a Provo Bakery buttermilk bar, you SHOULD!

The campsite at Green River was just about perfect for our age group. There was grass and shade abounding and the river was plenty close enough to go investigate, but plenty far enough away to set parents’ hearts at ease. We had lots of fun running around, playing/sleeping in a tent, and making food on our portable camp-stove.

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The next morning we decided to drive the extra hour and visit Goblin Valley. It was probably the most pleasant weather in history! We happily climbed all over the goblins with Josh and I taking turns holding Bianca/watching the little ones. We met some cool people from South Carolina who have been driving across the country for the past month and will continue on their journey until September, visiting their children as well as cool things along the way! I said it sounded like a great way to spend quarantine; and they said it was how they were spending their retirement. It was a happy encounter.

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Our next party was for Josh’s brother Aaron. His birthday is on June 18, and on our way home from camping, we stopped at his birthday open-house and ate some really yummy chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice-cream cake!

The next day, June 19, was Josh’s birthday!!! He is now 32 years old and more fabulous than ever! I had been trying for about a month to get him to tell me what he wanted to do for his birthday and he never could think of anything awesome enough. After work on his birthday, he decided he would head out to the store and come home with a birthday party. DID HE EVER!!!

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He got a ton of delicious foods that turned into an instant barbecue along with a bunch of outdoor games and party poppers for us all to play with. Then he got out his giant speakers and had his current favorite music playing. It was all so much fun! Happy Birthday, Josh!

The next day, June 20, we got to go to Kathryn’s midsummer party at her house and Bianca was honored to be the midsummer princess. I don’t have any pictures, sadly.

June 21, we celebrated Father’s Day with Josh in the morning and his dad in the evening. Lacey made some delicious peanut-butter cup cookies to go with yummy tacos, and we ate them outside in the lovely weather.

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We woke up on June 22 thinking it would be a normal work-day Monday. But when Carter remembered it was his turn to pick family party he decided that, since we had finally finished reading Harry Potter 2 on the way to camping the past week, we needed to have our watch-the-movie party THAT NIGHT for his family party.

This is a moment where I’m going to indulge in a bit of tooting my own horn. Carter decided he wanted our big Harry Potter party that evening at about 10:30 AM, with all the exciting things we had talked about. By dinner time, the three big kids each had a robe–two of them homemade and a custom-made wand. With our dinner of homemade bread (made that day) we had Professor Sprout’s garden, Hufflepuffs, snitches, and home-brewed polyjuice potion. Josh did go to the store while he was out for lunch and got some of the things we didn’t have yet; but I basically made all of that happen in about 7 hours!

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We also had our little lesson from Come Follow Me. And, most importantly, Carter was very pleased!

Then this past Saturday, June 27, we joined Aaron’s family once again for Medli’s 3rd birthday party. She was just about as cute as you can get as she lapped up every detail of her Pinkalicious party.

Today’s family party was Portia’s choice and it was just what we needed. We all played dress-up after the lesson–even Bianca!

All the things have happened since the last time I posted! School is now officially over, Fay finished up dance after having a 3-week bout of sickness, Bianca is two months old, we went to church last week (!!!), and things are really getting summery around here. Since it has been so long, I’m going to skip an actual “story” and instead just post pictures with explicatory captions.

Home Life

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Summer Time

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The Pool

This one actually gets some commentary.

Because of COVID and a newborn, we are feeling pretty grounded these days. We don’t have the usual museums and library to go to, and we’re not planning any vacations. Josh and I were trying to think of something we could do to make the summer still fun for the kids. They love playing in water, so we thought about getting another large wading pool, like we have had in the past. Josh looked at approximately 5 different stores in-person, and countless places on-line and couldn’t find one available anywhere. (Apparently, we’re not the only ones in quarantine right now.) We talked about trying to make something out of wood and tarps, and we just couldn’t figure out a way to get it to actually work. We found some above-ground pools on Amazon and we decided that since we weren’t doing a vacation this summer, we could splurge.

About 47 seconds after we clicked the button to place our order, I started panicking. We have little kids! I could totally just imagine Helen investigating that pool when I was inside working on dinner or something and falling in and drowning!! I told Josh we should cancel the order. But, as always, Josh had a plan to save the day. He proposed a fence with a locked gate to go around the pool so that the kids couldn’t get in! And, of course, he was able to build it for us!

After many considerations of where to place the pool we picked a spot, and Josh set about making it level enough for the pool (basically none of our yard is level on its own). We also decided to take advantage of fence that was already there, so we only had to build two sides of the one for the pool.

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Josh also hacked away at the rosebush in the corner (NOT the first time we have done that) to make space. He also had the fun idea of the kids making concrete stepping stones to go around the pool.

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Josh spent about a week leveling the corner, and about 3 hours building the fence. He is so awesome! None of it is perfect or fabulously beautiful; but it is a fenced-in pool and we are loving it!

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Since it arrived last Tuesday, we have played in it every afternoon except Saturday (because it was chilly, and we had somewhere to be). I was nervous that the kids would just want to poke around it all day while they play outside; but I guess with playing in it for at LEAST an hour every day, they get their fill and really just ignore it most of the time it isn’t officially pool time. Even so, I still pray basically every day that nobody will drown in the pool.

Conclusion

It just felt fun to have another heading. 🙂

Summer is definitely underway around here, and it is, so far, turning out to be better than I had feared, considering the restrictions of COVID. I am hopeful that it will be a good one for us!

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