So yes…it has been a while since I last blogged. A great while. And I was doing so well at being consistent, too! We are just coming out of a really busy season in our house and I have to say, it is SO nice to have a bit of down time. The only thing that we have planned for the entire rest of the summer is the church family campout weekend in a couple weeks. After that… NOTHING! I’m happy about that. Of course, by then my garden will be in full swing and I will be canning and it will be time to get ready for back to school…so really, it’s not like we will ever be doing nothing. Anyway.
So, since there has been so much going on, I’m just going to write a little paragraph about everything that has been going on…then I will feel like I’m “caught up” and can proceed forward from that point. Ready? 4th of July. I have decided that this holiday is probably one of my favorites. It’s in the middle of Summer…nothing else surrounds it so it stands on it’s own. It’s about family and freedom and BBQ and fireworks…and s’mores. At least it is for me. I love s’mores. So we (well, I) decided that this year I wanted to have a 4th of July party. Despite the fact that we were leaving on vacation 2 days afterward. But since we live in Corbett just down the street from where the “famous” Corbett 4th of July parade happens, of course we have the perfect house for a party! So we spent literally over a week cleaning up our yard, planting flowers, painting outdoor furniture, and laying a patio for our pool area. But the work was SO worth it. I am finally for the first time in the almost 3 years of living here, starting to be happy with how my yard looks. It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s starting to be enjoyable being out there now and I’m so glad! Anyway, we had the party and several people came and we had a blast. Plan on it again next year everyone!
Yellowstone. Like I mentioned earlier, we planned to leave 2 days after our 4th of July party on vacation. Now that I think about it- as sad as it is, I think this was the longest vacation that we’ve ever been on. Ever. We left on the 6th, drove 16 hours to Island Park, Idaho where we were staying and didn’t get home until the evening of the 14th. That’s 8 days! My mom’s family has a reunion every other year and different families take turns planning it. This year my mom her sisters and my grandma planned everything. They rented a big house for all of us to sleep in (5 bathrooms, sleeps 30) and so both my aunts and my grandma, most of my cousins and even grandkids came to sleep in that big house. It was a blast! During our time there we drove into Yellowstone on several occasions. We were about 40 minutes away from the park. What I never realized was how much driving was involved in the whole Yellowstone experience. We had to drive there and drive between each geyser or waterfall or whatever we were looking at. We would get out of the car, walk around and then get back in the car and go to the next one. It was a lot of driving! But it was beautiful. I don’t think we saw everything, but we saw lots of different geysers where the water is so hot that it boils out of the ground…that was so fascinating to me. We saw waterfalls and rivers and wide open meadows (which are my favorite) and we saw lots of bison, deer, some elk, a coyote, and even a couple brown bears which were Josh’s favorite. We had a good time. And amazingly enough we made it home with all 5 of our children. It was touch and go there at the end of our trip. We almost had to throw someone out the window.
After arriving home from Yellowstone on Wednesday night we had another whirlwind few days getting ready for Bryce’s birthday party (he turned 10 on the 13th….10! Can you believe I have a child that old? I can’t) AND the decoration day for VBS which was the entirety of Saturday. Saturday consisted of heading to church about 10 am, starting the process of decorating my classroom, leaving about 12:30, heading to Bryce’s party and then going back to church to finish up. Thankfully, Josh went with me the second time to help me with the decorations. He’s a lot taller than me.
Monday morning began the week of VBS, which is always a very full and busy week. This is my third year of teaching the 5th grade and I still love it! The week for me consists of getting up around 6-6:30 am, getting myself ready to go, waking up the children, getting them all dressed, fed and ready to go, loading them plus all my teaching materials for that day up in the car and leaving the house by about 8 am. VBS runs from 9am to 12:30 and is filled with 20 minute blocks. Every 20 minutes we line up and go to a new place for a new activity. I’m surprised that I didn’t lose weight from all the running I did from place to place that week. We usually leave the church about 1-1:30 and get home around 2. At which point I have 5 tired, cranky children that I need to feed. Then I have to decide what I’m going to do for the next day’s activity and what I’m going to make for dinner. Then it’s clean up, kids in bed and us in bed and start all over in the morning. This year though, was the best year ever! Our class was huge- 32 kids on Wednesday. I had so much fun with the kids and one girl even asked Jesus in her heart by the end of the week!! So it was all totally worth it!
Well, that fairly “sums” up my last 3 weeks. At this point, I am just so happy to be at home and not have anything urgent that needs done or any place that I need to be.
I will do better in the next couple weeks at catching up on other posts that need written such as Bryce’s birthday, my garden and a couple of exciting announcements coming soon…so watch for that!