Return of the Boy

 He's BAAAAAACCCKkkkkk......

Okay, here's a confession. I spent the first half of the summer worrying about Chase and hoping that he was surviving his new experience of work and living away from home. Once he started to love it, I immediately switched to dreading the day he would have to come home. I knew how much he was loving his time with his friends at camp, and how hard it was going to be to leave them. And I was not wrong. Coming home was hard! That's such a good thing though. 

Chase had an amazing summer at Aspen Grove. He grew so much and learned so much about himself, and kind of turned a corner in his life. He let us know that he felt very certain about his desire to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and to leave sometime late this fall or early in the winter. He seemed much happier, although lonely without his Provo crew. 

Here he is with one of his roommates and best friends at camp, Cameron, on the day I went up there to pick up all of his stuff. He stayed one more night to be with friends as long as possible, then got a ride home the next day. He also got to spend Labor Day weekend working there, which made him a lot of money and also reunited him with many folks, though not everyone. 

Here is the photo I posted on Instagram the day after he got home, just to express my happiness at his happiness. 

Not that every day since then has been happy - it's definitely a weird time, since he knows he wants to get out on a mission. He didn't start school, though he did start taking a missionary preparation class at the Institute of Religion at the UofU. He's kind of in limbo, in a waiting period between major events in his life. He's been helpful working on some projects for his grandma, but he kind of needs a job. But...he's leaving soon so.... anyway, it's weird. But truly overall joyful.

Here are some closing photos of him enjoying a new prize he bought himself after discovering that working for money can have an upside. Money! Thus....lightsaber. 

I love this boy. I love what he has learned and how he has grown. And I'm pretty sure there is a lot more of that to come in the next weeks, months and years. 

A Very Sweet 16

For what felt like the first time ever, Romney's birthday happened a few days before the start of school. For years it seemed to start on the first day or within the first week. (I guess not last year because school was delayed until the 8th of September, and then another week after that due to the apocalyptic windstorm.) That does not mean, however, that school did not encroach at all into her birthday. Romney is part of the school's Madrigal Choir, and they got a new teacher in the middle of the year last year. He's great - Romney's favorite choir teacher ever. And he has plans for these kids! He even started the year with a two-day "retreat" before school started, having the kids meet up at a church to learn some music, have fun and get to know each other. Of course one of the days was on Romney's birthday. She didn't really mind, though. She really enjoys singing with this group. 

We had to start our birthday celebrations earlier than we would have liked on a summer day, but since the sun wakes us up at like 5:30am anyway, it was all good!

I had so much fun picking out gifts for Romney. She's been talking about wanting a beret forever, and she also loves funny novelty-type hats. I struck gold and found her a beret that looks like an egg. We decided to call it her "beregg." Isn't she just so dang cute?

 

She also got a regular black beret that's not nearly as fun. We got her a mochi ice-cream making set, bacon-shaped bandaids and...something else that I can't remember. But I feel like it was significant. Huh. I wonder what she got - I'll have to ask her! Oh yeah...that shirt she's wearing in the photos above. But still...I think there was something else. 

After a quick breakfast we got her off to her retreat. I popped in at lunchtime with some tasty take-out (no brown-bagging it on your birthday!) and then when the day wrapped up with the choir, she and I went out for pedicures before picking up CupBop and bringing it home so she and a couple of very sweet friends could hang out and watch a movie. I can't remember if she picked HotRod or Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but it's likely that she picked one of those two since they're pretty much her two favorite movies.  Too bad I can't remember anything once more than a month has passed. I really must stop procrastinating my blog entries. And I really must try to take better pictures on birthday occasions!

Just so you know, Romney is just delightful. It is very rare that she is unhappy or grouchy, and even when she is, she never lashes out or takes things out on her family. She includes her sister and goes out of her way to help her along. She's so creative and talented and funny. We really lucked out with this gal! It's so weird that she's 16 now. And just as sweet as can be.

Follow Up - Troy reminded me what the other gift was! And it was the best gift of all! Romney fell in love with this awesome story she found on Spotify - it is a story that sounds like a Scottish fairytale, complete with narration by Billy Boyd (aka Peregrin Took) and is accompanied by an entire orchestra. It is a delightful story. Sadly, it disappeared from Spotify and everywhere else like itunes and the like. My clever husband, however, tracked down a CD on eBay and we got it here in time for Romney's birthday. It was totally unexpected and she was absolutely thrilled! I love when we can surprise our kids with a gift they didn't even know they wanted.

Phew. Thanks for reminding me, Troy.

Summer Bucket List

 

At the beginning of the summer Emma put together a Bucket List and hung it up on the fridge. She had some great ideas on there and we did our best to get to all of them. Clearly our best was short of perfect this year -  we had many un-crossed-off items on the page but we had fun along the way. Frankly, this summer was so dang hot we didn't really feel like doing a lot of them. A picnic dinner when it's 105 degrees? No thanks! 

The stuff we did:

Make ice cream, go camping, take popsicles to all the kids in the neighborhood, have a sleepover, tie dye shirts. have a breakfast cookout, play night games, watch a backyard movie, paint and hide rocks, build a fort, take a road trip, hold Emma's Book 3 recital, make s'mores, and spend a day at Aspen Grove.

The stuff we need to try again next year:

Go fishing, go fishing for crawdads, have a picnic dinner, host a game night, fly a kite, go to a drive-in movie, have a water balloon fight, hike to a lake, go stargazing, and play mini-golf. 

I guess we did more than we did not do, but I'm still wondering why we couldn't pull off something as simple as stargazing. Probably we were too busy staying inside and trying to not melt. Also, the stars don't come out until really late in the summertime. So phooey, we did our best and will remake the list next year. 

It truly seemed like this summer wasn't ever going to end, especially when you accept that September will also be hot and the cool weather will not come until school has been in session for more than a month. But like all things do, summer did indeed finally end.  I don't think there was much to the summer that I didn't blog about already, but as I was going through my photos I decided to put a few stragglers from the summer here just to remember some of the other little details.

One thing that I will not miss from the summer is taking care of Waterhaven Pool. I was the official Certified Pool Operator and I got Romney the job of taking care of all the chemicals over the summer. It wasn't a hard job but it was a little tedious. The bigger issue was having a broken boiler for the entire summer, having people be grumpy about a cold pool, having to contact repair people over and over again...it was stressful. Here's a lovely shot of me wearing protective gear while replacing the pool acid. It sums up my pool feelings pretty well. I'm hoping very much that next summer is better with much more swimming otherwise we might jump ship on the pool membership so to speak.

Totally not going to go over every detail but we got many visits from hawks this year. It was always alarming and quite exhilarating actually to discover a large bird scoping out my little chickens and scaring it away and throwing things at it and even making the neighbors wonder if you're okay while you yell things like "Get OUT of here! Just GO AWAY! Leave us ALONE!!" That made me laugh to think of what the neighbors might be thinking as I hollered those words. Also once the hawk got stuck in the old coop area and I tried to capture some photos of it that didn't turn out well. What did turn out well was having these close encounters without losing any of our chickens to its appetite. We still have all 8 chickens who are getting along so well now even when one is limping. They spent a lot of the summer outside of their coop and run which made for some very interesting egg-hunts, and I'm sure that there are eggs hidden here and there in the yard even now. Now that we've had three or four visits from the hawk, even shooing chickens into the coop as the hawk was literally swooping for them, our chicks are spending much more time under their roof.

Sunburns happened. The girls went to youth conference with our church youth at Bear Lake and I actually don't really have photos except that Emma got horribly sunburned. They had a great time though. Hmm. I really should track down more pictures.

We even got a brief visit from the Seattle Romneys and enjoyed dinner with them at Cubby's and a little time for Rosey and Emma to hang out. We always love time with the Seattleites and wish we could see them more!

So I'm here to tell you that we officially survived summer. We did not shrivel up or melt or evaporate even though pretty much every moment it felt like we were going to. We had fun. It was really busy actually - I can't tell if it was abnormally busy and hectic like it felt or if it was normal and only felt busy because of how it compared to the totally empty Covid summer last year. Who knows. All I know is....we made it. 

A Special Cousin

While I was partying the night away at my 30 year reunion, Troy was at home receiving our weekend guests, Peter and Sheri and kids. They came up because Sheri felt like a visit to her grandparents in Heber was long overdue. They drove north on Saturday, straight to Heber, spent the afternoon with her family, then came to our house late that night.

Here's what I want to say. Peter and Sheri have darling darling kids. All four of them are so fun and delightful and we adore them. I just have to give a special shout out to their 2nd daughter though, who is just a couple of months younger than Emma. Cara has been Emma's most loyal friend in her whole life and I'm really grateful for her. Those two girls are facetiming constantly and text and just show up for each other. She's a darling friend to Emma, who really needs her in her life. 

Emma finished learning all the pieces in Book 3 of her Suzuki violin program and she needed to have a little recital to make it official. Boy was I glad when I realized that Peter and Sheri were going to be here on the weekend of her recital. We just got to enjoy Emma's playing just with ourselves and Troy's mom. Emma played beautifully. She got very nervous right before it started but really pulled herself together and did a great job!

Grateful to cousins for showing up for us. We love them so much. And also so grateful to The Becky and all she does for Emma.

30 Years Later

East High School, Class of 1991. That's me. Thinking back on those four years really makes my brain get twisty, to use the gymnasts' phrase. What on earth? Which way is up? How come 4 years can take a lifetime and the 30 years since then can seem to talk half as long? It's so weird.

I had a great high school experience. I know there were times that were hard, that I felt all the feelings all the time so fiercely that I thought I was going to explode or just drive my parents and friends all crazy. But I also had so much fun. I'm so grateful I had a place at EHS. I loved the theater department so much and the friends I had there. I also connected with so many other people of all kinds, even though I often felt intimidated by them or looked down on by them. That may have been true - there may have been times that people really thought I was odd. After all, I loved big hats and no shoes. But also a lot of that was probably just in my head. 

I went to my 20 year reunion and it felt like a much bigger deal than this one. I wore fancy clothes and heels, spent a lot time fussing over my hair, and got really nervous to go. For some reason, our 30th didn't feel that way. I don't know if it's because we all got so shaken by the state of the world over the past 18 months, or if we just grew up even more, but this reunion was so fun. It felt more relaxed, more joyful, more full of people just wanting to be together. I had several long and deep conversations with people I swear I never spoke to in high school at all. 

I loved the causal gathering - and what was funny was that the Highland High 1991 reunion just so happened to be scheduled at the other pavilion at Sugarhouse park at the very same time. I kind of wanted to go over and say hello, but since I really only know two people from that class and both of them are boys I dated with kind of awkward breakups, I decided to not do that. Instead, I just stayed forever at this party, even to the point where the sprinklers at the park got turned on and I got totally blasted in the face and was totally soaking wet. Luckily I had not picked a white shirt so it was benign and also hilarious. 

A highlight of this reunion for me was getting the assignment to create the playlist for the party. What fun that was! I tried to fill it with a mix of the classic old things that our class loved like Cat Stevens and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young as well as things that came out that year like The Samples and The Sundays, plus the leftover 80s hits that we love as much now as we did then like Howard Jones and General Public. I confess that I can not stop listening to this playlist.

The only sad part of the evening was that it didn't last longer. I didn't get quite enough time with some of the people I had hoped to, and I know there were many people who didn't come at all. I know our class was way bigger than I even know, that there are dozens of people who would never consider coming to a reunion or feel like part of a group at all. I'm sad about that. But for someone who sometimes felt a little bit like an outcast myself, I was grateful to be there and feel a human connection with so many fellow classmates. 

Also, I really should have taken more pictures. 

More Aspen Grove

One little Sunday afternoon at Aspen Grove camp was definitely not enough, especially on a day when none of the activities were rolling. Chase was very cute actually and mentioned a couple of times that we should come up again, and that he had Thursday off. So just a day after the girls and I got home from St. George, Troy took the day off of work and we went back to camp. We went nice and early - apparently Thursday mornings are biscuit and gravy mornings, and Chase told us that was the best breakfast they had up there. Worth the early drive! 

We made it in time to enjoy breakfast together but that really wasn't the fun part of the morning. The best part of going to Aspen Grove is seeing Chase in his element. He's put in weeks of work up there - I can hardly believe the summer is almost over. He for sure has a whole society of friends and a summer's worth of stories to tell. It was so fun to go and eat breakfast with some of the friends he has made. They all are very gregarious and willing to chat with us. 

After breakfast we headed across the bridge to make our first stop of the day - a visit to the ropes course. Gulp. I don't have a great history with ropes courses, especially high ones. However, this has a great set up. The whole system is made so that when you attach your harness to the course, you can go anywhere on the obstacles and you are connected to the ropes. You don't need people belaying you or tying and untying knots. You have this metal thingy on a rope on your harness and you just slide it around and sort of work it over these metal plates to get to the next obstacle of your choice. It means that you can really just play around on the course and not have a specific destination or objective. Just go have fun. And it really was fun. I was of course sweating like crazy within about five minutes - it's a ton of work and really taxes your muscles. But also just fun. I kind of wondered if it would be too much for Emma. She generally has not loved physical activities like that. But she had a great time and stayed on longer than any of us. Troy and Chase took on the high ropes course and we gals stuck to the low one. I don't think I could have handled the high course but Chase just jumped from step to step like a champ.

 

Chase with good friends Sav, Alexis and Sam

After the ropes course we headed to the arts and crafts area. There is a cool yurt that houses the pen-turning stations, and you have to be 18 to do that, so Troy and Chase signed up to make one. Romney was a little bummed but she and Emma and I had fun in the craft shack glazing ceramics. 

Emma made the cute little gnome, I made a polka-dot bowl and Romney made a terrifying cereal bowl. We decided that it was a bowl that asked you in a slightly crazed way..."DID YOU FINISH YOUR CEREAL??" to which you can quickly reply with panic in your voice yes sir!!!

We had to take a break in the middle of crafts for a lunch break which was tacos. It was so funny - Chase and his dining hall buddies who also had the day off were ecstatic that they didn't have to work the taco shift. Apparently it's a real mess and with all of the different elements for tacos it's just a total pain. They really cheered when they figured out what was for lunch. Of course before we returned to the riverside craft house, we made a stop in the store for ice cream. Must have ice cream. I went for the graham cracker flavor which was good but so sweet it made me sleepy.

After we wrapped up our crafts, we all agreed it was time to head home. We were tired and Chase was hoping for a nap and time with friends before dinner. That was actually so happy - he wanted us there, spent the day with us, brought friends along to meet us and hang out with us, and then wanted to get back to hanging out with them by himself. All good things, I'd say.

The drive home was a bit longer - we took the Alpine Loop way which was beautiful but slightly treacherous considering how everyone going the opposite way from us seemed to be totally speeding. I'm turning into a total granny driver. Why does everyone have to be in such a hurry? And trust me, I drive over the speed limit already. Just not a LOT over. Kids these days.