That's A Wrap

 As our summer break comes to a close, I thought I'd share some random pictures of things around my house. 

First are the shrubs I planted as part of May's extreme shed makeover. Two weigela plants put in the same day. One thrives, one dies. I don't know why (water? disease? bugs?) so if I replace it, will it die too? These questions drive me crazy.

Finding toys in odd places always mostly amuses me.

This is the bench in the laundry room as you come in from the garage. The bench is handy for kids to stand on to reach their backpacks or to sit on to remove shoes. For me, it's where my store returns go, mostly Amazon. There's always something to be returned.

And a surprise selfie from Henry. Pretty sure he was supposed to be in bed at this time but sometimes he wanders up if he gets tired of waiting for me to tuck him in while I'm reading to James. I have to tuck him in which really means talking to him while he closes his bathroom door, makes a couple of baskets in his little basketball hoop, tells me what he's going to wear tomorrow, and looks for something that suddenly seems crucial. Then he finally climbs up the ladder into his bed, gets settled, turns on his little clip-on reading lamp. I ask him what he's reading (Dog Man or Calvin and Hobbes for the hundredth time) and I say something like why doesn't he read library books x, y, or z that's on his desk. Replies "I don't know" in the humming sort of rhythm that is lazy but unmistakable. Good night, Henry. Good night, Mom. Love you bud. Love you too. And as I close the door he asks what we're doing tomorrow so I swing it back open and tell him whatever it may be.

I got Erica a new bike. She needed one that didn't need the chain put back on each time she rode it. We bought it from a lady in Springville and on the way over to take a look at it, I told Erica that even if she loves it she needs to play it cool because I need to talk the lady down in price. I worked out this code: "If you love it say, 'It's okay.' If you don't want it say 'it's a nice color.'" She rode it up and down the street, came back to the driveway where the lady and I were waiting. You should have seen her eyes when she said "It's okay." The struggle to contain her excitement was real.

Later that afternoon I took James to the doctor because a fever that wouldn't break turned out to be the mildest form of strep throat I've ever seen. He had a fever for 48 hours with basically no other symptoms except that his throat hurt "a little bit." His fever wasn't going away on it's own, it wasn't turning into a cold, and he had some white spots on his throat, I took him to the doctor. Strep it is. He's been a pretty good champ on taking his amoxicillin twice a day but it's getting harder to convince him to take medicine when he doesn't feel sick. He wanted to see the spots on this throat so this is the picture I took. 

My kids get a coupon to one of the many trendy diabetes shops from our orthodontist on their birthdays. I hadn't taken anyone to get their treat yet so Thursday was everyone's birthday. They each got a cookie and a large soda with several flavor shots and spent the rest of the afternoon in a sugar coma.

Sometimes my kids sit nicely together on the couch whilst reading scriptures before bed. This is one of those rare moments. Pretty sure someone starting invading another's air space right after I took this picture.

I don't know what is still on my kids' summer bucket lists because I don't ask. I think we're down to the things I don't want to do like have a yard sale or swim at the reservoir when it's 100 degrees out. What was still on my summer bucket list was to make homemade from scratch lemonade.

Homemade lemonade has to be started way ahead of time and squeezing 20 lemon halves takes the whole family but it is so good. I wish lemon trees survived here.

Okay one thing on their list was to get ice cream at Brooker's. (This is the Revolutionary War themed ice cream shop near BYU.)

Complete with guillotine. 

On the way home we stopped at park we've never been to and swung on swings we've never seen before until it was dark and the mosquitos came out.

Erica spent the day with her best friend shopping and bowling. Her mom bought them matching outfits for the first day of school. They aren't in the same class this year (they were together for 2nd and 3rd) so I think this helps them stay connected and let everyone know they are still best friends.

Meanwhile I've been homebound too much the last couple of weeks. My car was in the shop for a couple of days last week for diagnostics and now it's back in the shop to be fixed. It's kind of putting the brakes on getting out and doing much with the kids so I feel bad about that. But we have been spending more time together doing simple things like board games and baking so I guess we'll just keep making the most of it.