The End of Summer 2017 And (A Little Bit) Beyond

After returning from the Nash family reunion in Vernal, there wasn't much summer vacation left; just two weeks! Our charter school starts earlier than just about everyone else (July 24th or thereabouts), and there was a lot to get done after we arrived back in Tucson. Some of it was dull & boring (school supply shopping, yuck!), some of it was pretty fun! Here's a rundown of some of the more memorable things we experienced in late July/early August.

Nathan and I went on not just one, but TWO date nights with other adults!!

This is in bold-face because this so rarely happens anymore.  When we are lucky, we manage to sneak out of the house and pull off a quick date with just the two of us. We still have a decent number of friends living in the area, but we are all getting so busy with work, kids, church, and life in general that our socializing has been reduced significantly...especially during the school year, when all the kids' extracurriculars are in full swing.

Imagine our happiness, then, when the Savoies (some old friends from another ward) invited us to attend an "escape the room" date in Tucson, just one week after we returned home from vacation. We had been through a different escape room last year, but we really enjoyed it and were excited to try it out.

We ate a delicious dinner beforehand with our fellow "escapees" at the Brushfire BBQ, and then headed over to the Escape Room. Right from the start, I enjoyed this escape room better than our previous adventure. Why? Because this room was pirate-themed!

Rather than simply "escape" the locked room, our team had to unlock the pirate's "chest" and "steal" it. It was fun to have a different objective other than "find the key and get out." The decor was lots of fun, and there were some truly clever tricks involved in this room. For example, the eight of us started out in a very small room, with a large wardrobe taking up the bulk of the space. We reasoned that opening the wardrobe would be a key step in progressing towards our ultimate goal. When we finally got the doors open (hint: it involved magnets), the inside revealed: a secret passageway into another room, with a half-dozen more puzzles to solve inside! It was really cool.

In the end, our group managed to open up the treasure chest with about seven minutes to spare. We were pretty proud of ourselves! In our previous escape room, Nathan and I had been attempting to catch an international jewel thief. There were a lot of number- & geography-related puzzles to solve in that room. In this pirate-themed room, there were more riddles, anagrams, mirrors, and magnets; there were a greater variety of puzzles and it was great fun. We were so glad we got to go!

Just one week later, we went out with a different couple...some friends of ours from our ward (I teach her children piano, and she gives my two oldest daughters voice lessons. It's been a good trade so far!). We had mentioned to them once that we would like to try sushi...and so when they invited us our for a sushi dinner as a birthday date, we were excited to go along! The Hibberds have a lot more experience eating sushi than us, so Nathan and I were relieved to have some relative "experts" to help us pick some tastier choices.

Mmm...Beet sushi! Baby squid sushi! Eel sushi!

 

We both went more "exotic" than I think we were expecting, but we had a lot of fun trying everything out...even the stuff that we decided we didn't like. It was fun to do something different for dinner! Hopefully we will get a chance to go out for sushi again sometime.

The girls completed all their summer "extras."

Throughout the summer, our girls had each had their own "special" activity. As the girls have gotten older, and as they are slowly transitioning into teenagers, it is getting harder to figure out how to keep them entertained in the summer. Example: I signed all three girls up for swim lessons offered at our local pool by the Tucson YMCA. The lessons were free: Hooray, I thought! Well, it turns out you get what you pay for. The instruction offered was on the extreme end of basic; each of my girls already knew all of that stuff. To make matters worse, they inexplicably put Aurora in the more advanced class, and Lorelai and Celeste in the intermediate class! My older girls were offended and bored, and even Aurora thought there wasn't enough to do at these lessons. I guess next summer, if I want my girl's swimming to improve, I will put them on the local swim team (unlikely; too expensive) or sign them up for private lessons (more likely; we'll see what our schedule allows).

Despite this hiccup, we had some better luck with our other summer "extracurriculars." Lorelai at first asked to participate in a basketball camp; unfortunately, our budget and the timing of our family vacation didn't really allow her to participate. Instead, we tried something in the summer that we'd never done before...we gave Lorelai private trombone lessons! Of course, she has been taking private piano lessons from me for years now. However, she does love her trombone, and she's asked me for lessons before.

I was able to get in touch with Sammie, a former band-mate of Lorelai's from Great Expectations Academy. These days, Sammie is in high school, participating in marching band and playing first trombone in the jazz band as well. Lorelai always looked up to Sammie (as she should; Sammie is a sweet girl and an excellent trombonist!); and I decided it might be nice if the two of them could have "jam sessions" once a week! Sammie (and her mother) jumped at the chance for Sammie to be a music teacher for the summer. I paid for the lessons (not a ton of money, but hopefully a nice sum for a high-school student), and the two had a lot of fun together.

Sadly, I don't have any photographs to commemorate these lessons, but they were a nice opportunity for both girls and Lorelai really enjoyed herself. It was a good opportunity for Lorelai to see what sorts of things she would have to work on in her performance before entering high school. She got several pages of scales, exercises, & technique builders from Sammie that she worked on diligently through the summer. Besides that, she also got the chance to "goof off" with her instrument a bit; the two of them practiced improvising back & forth with each other and they enjoyed that. When the school year began again, I noticed a significant improvement in Lorelai's playing ability. Maybe it was my imagination somewhat...but I think if nothing else came out of of these lessons, they were a confidence booster for Lorelai going into seventh grade. I think that when the time comes for her to try out for jazz band in high school, she will be ready!

There was one more major activity that Lorelai was involved in this summer...

...Girl's Camp! It is a yearly event for all girls in the LDS Church (plus any of their friends who want to come along!), aged 12-18. The girls travel several hours from home and spend most of the week doing all sorts of things: outdoor activities; faith-promoting experiences; spiritual strength building; sports; music; crafts; or just plain goofing off. It is a highlight of the year for many girls, and Lorelai had been looking forward to her first year of camp for a long time.

The girls in our ward are expected to do their own fund-raising in order to attend camp, and last spring, Lorelai baked over a dozen pies to be delivered on "Pi(e) Day" (March 14, or 3/14, for you math nerds).  I helped her make the pies, of course; that is quite a workload for any one person, let alone an 11-year-old!

We ended up with fourteen pies altogether: three mixed-berry pies (my personal favorite); five apple pies, of two different types; a cherry pie; two chocolate-cream pies; and two Virginia Peanut Pies (Think a pecan pie made with peanuts instead! It was sweet and salty, and pretty tasty). We kept one of the peanut pies for ourselves, and made a "grasshopper pie" (chocolate mint)...because there was no way we weren't having pies for our own family on Pi(e) Day!

The girls from our ward, getting ready to head out to camp

Thanks to Lorelai's hard work in March, she managed to pay off her entire fee for Girl's Camp four months before camp! I was very proud. After that, the hardest part for her was waiting to go to camp! We had a busy summer, so it was still a little hard to believe my eyes when she was goofing off with her friends that first morning, waiting to board the van. It didn't feel real to me that my daughter was heading off to Girl's Camp...that's something that teenagers do, not my "little" girls!

Of course, Lorelai has been off on overnight activities several times before this; as a member of jazz band, she has traveled as far as California without me. But on those occasions, she still had cell phone access, and was still able to contact me frequently. Not hearing from her for five days was disorienting and a little worrisome. However, she had a wonderful time...and some merciful parents who'd gone along to Girl's Camp posted a few pictures on social media, so I knew she was alive and well.

Lorelai hasn't shared a whole lot with me, but I gathered that she had a very nice time at camp. She made a few crafts, went boating, got to rappel down a rock face, attended a few devotionals, participated in a gift exchange, and even went on the traditional "snipe hunt" that has been a Girl's Camp tradition since I was a girl myself. She enjoyed every minute, and had a few spiritual experiences that I suspect strengthened her testimony (of course, she will never tell me about them, because she's often close-mouthed about such things).

Girl's Camp took place outside Alpine, Arizona; it's a city up in the northeastern part of the state (in the White Mountains). The girls were frequently rained on and got a little chilly at night. When Lorelai arrived back in hot, sweaty Sahuarita, it was obvious she needed a shower! But she looked very happy to be home, and happy with her experience. I sincerely hope her next Girl's Camp is equally memorable.

But Lorelai wasn't the only daughter in our household with extra activities this summer: Celeste & Aurora got to attend a sewing camp, and make a few items!

I am one of the world's worst sewers. I can reattach buttons, and that's about it. Luckily, our neighbor Trista (the same lady who currently gives Lorelai & Celeste voice lessons!) is an excellent seamstress, and she offered a weekly "sewing camp" to interested grade-school kids this summer. I was happy for them to have the opportunity; at least they would be taught by someone with better knowledge than myself! Each week for about an hour, the girls would head over to Trista's house, and she would instruct them on basic sewing tools, use & care of a sewing machine, and stitching techniques.

By the end of the summer, they had both each made a pair of pants, and a handbag! They picked out their own fabrics, so each item had their own sense of (interesting) style. It was awesome! I am really happy they had this opportunity. I don't know if it's something they would ever want to do again, but I'm glad they got to try sewing out this once. Now if only I could follow up with them and help them expand on what they've learned! Sadly, that may not happen. Maybe I need to send them to Grandma's house next!

I had a few home projects too...and one project (literally) fell to earth.

Even though there wasn't a lot of time left in the summer, I still found time to get my homemaker on. For a while now, I have been wanting to repaint the white walls in each of the girls' bedrooms Originally, we painted all the walls of each bedroom but one, leaving one wall white as a contrast. However, the paint on that white wall was the flat, unattractive matte paint left behind by the original sellers. As a result, a lot of ugly smears & smudges had appeared on the walls over the years. I determined to buy some better white paint and cover up the mess. Besides the bedroom walls, I also decided I had enough paint to do one additional wall in our main loft area upstairs. I guess after painting the stairwell in the spring, my house-painting "itch" still needed some scratching.

It took me several weeks to get all the walls done.; I did Lorelai's room while she was away at Girl's Camp, and I had to wait until school started to take care of the other girls' rooms. When I was all finished, the walls didn't look especially different or flashy (it was more white paint, after all). However, they definitely looked cleaner, so I was satisfied. Now, most of our house has been painted the colors we want! All that remains is our upstairs loft & hallway. Here's hoping we can complete it before moving out!

As I was trying to complete this home improvement project, another, much more unwelcome home project reared its ugly head. We were sitting inside one rainy night, when we heard a sickening, wet thud come from outside. We peeked out and saw this:

A very rainy monsoon season, combined with the weakened wood inside our backyard balcony, meant that the materials had rotted through and lost all structural integrity in the rain. Sheetrock and particle board alike gave way and fell to the ground; for the rest of the summer, a steady stream of water poured through the hole during each storm.

It was very disheartening for us to see the damage. Nathan and I had known that the balcony was in bad shape and needed repair, but we had hoped to put it off for another year or so. In a year when we have had so many appliance & car repairs, as well as getting our home exterior painted, it has been scary and disheartening trying to calculate the costs of this repair. In fact, we still haven't finshed the job...although our family has had many offers of help so far. I'll share more on this later, once things are more settled.

Losing our balcony made me depressed...and like many women, when I am depressed I bake. Luckily we had a lot of fresh produce to work with this summer...

I found a recipe for Lemon Zucchini Bread, and it was so incredibly delicious I literally couldn't stop making it for a couple of weeks. I delivered loaves to many of my friends. I sent several of them up to Girl's Camp. I may have eaten a few myself! Soooo good!

I also ordered a huge crate of plums from Bountiful Baskets; I don't do as much home canning as I would like these days, but I was in a "plum" mood this summer, so I tried out a bunch of things:

I canned some halved plums to start things out; I've done that a few times before. I also froze a bag or two of plums, to use for later. But then I tried some slightly more exotic items. I made a whole bunch of plum jam, which looked and tasted delicious. Finally, I canned a few jars of spicy Asian plum sauce; it's excellent on chicken, duck, and pork. We had a little extra sauce left over after canning, and I dipped some egg rolls into it. Fantastic! It was fun to try a few new things.

I also made some plum cobbler. Yum!

Best of the rest!

When Lorelai was at Girl's Camp, Celeste & Aurora had a great time. They missed their sister, but they also had fun having the house to "themselves." We took a trip to the Tucson Children's Museum, a place Lorelai is getting a bit tired of, and they had a terrific time.

And, of course, our beautiful Coco was surviving the summer as best she could indoors.

Coco is a very active dog, and being cooped up inside all day is difficult for her (especially because she is actually afraid of the sound our air conditioner makes when it turns on! Sigh...our "brave protector" she is not.). We tried to get her some extra toys to play with...

And when it started to cool off in the evenings, we would take Coco to the local dog park, and watch her run off all her energy. Coco is a very fast dog, and we love watching her fly across the grass and play with other dogs. We are happy to have a place like this in our neighborhood.

And just like that...

School began! Lorelai got home from Girl's Camp on a Friday; our first day of school was the following Monday. Yikes! Every year our summers seem shorter. I will blog more about school another time, though...for now, I'll close the blog post with the end of summer. It was a lot of fun, and over a little too soon.

Our January, In Brief (WARNING CHEERLEADERS INCLUDED)

I have already blogged about some of our biggest activities this winter...namely, the addition of Coco to our family, and the big anniversary cruise Nathan and I took in February. But there was a lot of other stuff going on as well; some of it awesome, some of it not awesome, and some of it involving cheerleading. I'm still trying to decide where cheerleading fits on the aforementioned spectrum.

First, I should probably talk a bit about the non-awesome stuff...like how almost every single kitchen appliance broke down in the month of January. Our month of appliance misadventures actually started in the waning hours of 2016, when our dishwasher stopped working on New Year's Eve. We were frustrated but not panicked; we were busy celebrating the New Year, after all. But after a few days had passed, the dishwasher still not turning on and hand-washing gradually losing its novelty, we summoned a repairman, who informed us the control panel was dead...and repairing it would cost 2/3 the cost of a brand-new dishwasher. So off to Lowe's I went, to purchase a brand-new dishwasher and to set up a payment plan.

Literally the same week we had the new dishwasher put in, our microwave suddenly stopped working. The light and the fan would turn on, but the food inside wouldn't heat up. I was amazed that they both died within such a short window. Both the microwave and the dishwasher were the original appliances that came with the house...coincidence?? It must have been their time to die. Not having any more spare cash, we scoured Craigslist until we found an old, similarly sized microwave for sale. I drove up to Tucson to get it, and Nathan and his home teacher installed it. It is much noisier than our old model, but at least our food heats up! (and at least our wifi doesn't go on the fritz every time the microwave is running! That happened a lot with our old microwave). Hopefully this microwave will last us for another couple of years, until we have the cash to buy a brand-new model.

But our appliance woes weren't done yet! Our clothes washer had been leaking for many months now, and since I figured we were already neck-deep in repairs, I should ask our repairman what was to be done with it. He fixed not only the leak, but the loud "clacking" noise the washer made every time it was in the spin cycle. That was another $250 down the drain. And just a couple of days after that, our oven stopped heating things up. Its control panel was also dead, and the gas interface inside the oven needed some fine-tuning. By this point, we were on a first-name basis with this sweet old handyman that had spent literally hours at our house (his name was Jim, and he actually turned out to be a member of our church!). I'm thinking about sending him a gift basket. Anyway, a couple hundred more dollars later, the oven was finally repaired as well.

Ouch...to think all of that happened in January alone! The refrigerator was the only kitchen appliance to stay fully functional this winter (knock on wood). Having all these repairs hit us immediately after Christmas was tough; having to pay for them while knowing an expensive cruise was on the horizon felt even worse for Nathan and I. And there was quite a lot more housework to come later in the spring, too...but that might be a story for another time.

On a lighter note, here are a few more cheerful events from our January:

--I did a lot of post-holiday cooking...including this Thanksgiving-style feast! True, we already had one Thanksgiving feast last winter...on actual Thanksgiving, with my sister and her family in Utah. But I am a turkey junkie; I love to cook them and all the food that goes with them. So when the birds were on sale in November, I bought an additional, smaller bird to be consumed at a later date.

Was it a lot of work? Of course. Was it delicious? You betcha!

On another occasion, I had fun using one of my Christmas gifts (a homemade pasta maker!) to make our family some homemade spaghetti. It tasted surprisingly light and fresh. It is kind of hard to use a pasta maker, but the flavor was so delicious that I hope to use it again soon.

--We also continued to use up our Christmas money!! A surprising amount of people sent us Christmas money or gift cards this year...more than we are used to. So we put those funds to use in a variety of ways. A lot of those funds went towards buying lots of new books and DVDs (always favorite gifts in our house). Some of that money went towards getting new clothes. And one gift card in particular got us very excited: we went and had dessert at The Melting Pot, a delicious fondue restaurant.

We had done this same family date a few years ago, but it was fun to come back for another go-around. This time, we ordered two different fondue flavors...a chocolate peanut-butter flavor, and a berry-based fondue. It was fun to try out both flavors!

--In other dining-out news, Aurora had a fun dinner out with some of her best buddies to celebrate her seventh birthday. Aurora being the thrill seeker she is, she wanted a fun party night out at Peter Piper Pizza! We made sure to go to the restaurant that had a mini roller coaster in it :)

Some days, it is hard for me to remember that my "tiny little baby girl" is seven years old. I remember thinking Lorelai was huge by the time she was seven, and Aurora doesn't seem that big; she still seems so young to me

 But I can definitely tell she has grown in wisdom, strength, and cuteness; she really has a good heart and a lot of love for life and for her family.

Working on one of her birthday gifts; a "jewel dig"

I hope her great spirit will continue to bless others for a long long time to come.

--Lorelai had a big night in January, too...she attended her first Young Women's New Beginnings event!

Even though she is not a part of our church's Young Women's program yet (she will enter the organization when she turns 12 in August), part of the New Beginnings night is welcoming all the girls who will be entering the program during that calendar year. There are several 11-year-old girls in that age group; they were welcomed beauty-queen style, with a crown, sash, and rose! Lorelai decided to react to these gifts in true beauty-queen fashion:

 

 

 

She had a fun night hanging with her friends, learning more about what to expect in the Young Women's program, and preparing herself for this big step in her life. At this point, Lorelai is really tired of being in Primary; she feels she has learned all she is going to learn there, and she wants to try something else different. Well, she will grow up and advance soon enough, whether she (and I) are ready or not!

--Even though she doesn't enjoy Primary on Sundays, Lorelai and Celeste both still enjoy Activity Days on Wednesday nights. In January, there was a special Activity Days that everyone was really excited about; the Pinewood Derby (Girl's Edition!).

Normally, the Pinewood Derby is an activity for the Cub Scouts in our stake. But our stake Primary presidency has added a derby for the Activity Day girls as well, and they love to participate. Lorelai was out of town for the derby last year, but Celeste participated and had a great time. This year, both girls were able to create cars and race them against those of other girls in the stake.

As you can see, we are not a family or artists or engineers. Our girls' cars weren't the prettiest, and they weren't the fastest (they finished up somewhere in the middle of the pack on both counts)

 But they had a lot of fun decorating the cars anyway, and enjoyed designing and racing them on their own. I sure hope they are still holding the girl's Pinewood Derby by the time Aurora is in the program!

--Coco's "red-letter day" in January was a medical milestone; she got fixed! Hooray; now I don't have to worry about her having an unexpected litter of puppies. I was a little worried about how she would handle being left at the vet's office, but she handled everything like a champ. She was just a little tired out the following day...

...as was her "big sister." Aurora, being our wildest child, is most comfortable snuggling with Coco and this day was no exception. Coco is usually happy to oblige her cuddles! Just a day or so later, she was back to being her usual energetic, hyper self.

--Last but not least, January marked the beginning of Celeste's first-ever season as a cheerleader!

I have long said that no daughter of mine would ever become a cheerleader. I admit to being biased, and having a bad opinion of cheerleaders based on the ones in my own high school many years ago. I am sorry to say that most of the cheerleaders at my high school were very snooty, slutty, and crass...they fit all the bad stereotypes of cheerleaders everywhere. I was terrified for my girls to adopt those sorts of behaviors, and fervently hoped that they wouldn't ever express interest in cheer-leading.

I should not have been surprised that it was Celeste who got really excited about cheer-leading. She enjoys dancing and performing in front of others; and she always wears her heart on her sleeve, and is very demonstrative with her enthusiasm. She had participated in Sahuarita Dance classes for a few years, but told me last spring that she was not as interested in it any more. She was drawn to cheer-leading because it had lots of the same elements (dance/tumbling and performance), while getting to cheer out loud and encourage noisy crowds at the same time.

I decided to let Celeste try a season of cheer-leading for a couple of reasons. First, my friend and neighbor Kellie was a coach affiliated with a local flag football league (her daughter Mercedes, a friend of Celeste's, was another member of the squad). Kellie (who was a cheerleader for many years in her youth) was a tough, no-nonsense coach, who loved the sport but despised some of the behaviors that sprang from it. She tolerated no attitude from her squad members, and encouraged them to be good examples, be on their best behavior, and always work hard as a team. I thought it would be a good environment for Celeste to cheer in. Second, Celeste is not as "sporty" as our other two daughters (and that is saying something, because none of them are hard-core athletes!). She is more sedentary, and so any activity that encouraged her to exercise and burn calories was okay by me (cheer-leading, for all its other trappings, definitely has a big athletic component).

Last (but not least), the team Celeste would be cheering for was called the Broncos! Yes, named for my beloved Denver Broncos...same color scheme and everything. I figured it wouldn't be too bad for Celeste to be a cheerleader, so long as she was a Broncos cheerleader. 

So in January, we started driving Celeste down to Quail Creek Park (about a 15-minute drive) two nights a week for Celeste to get her cheers on.

Some of those nights were pretty chilly and we had to bundle up quite a bit! The girls managed to move around just enough that they didn't freeze up.

Sadly, the football team for which the girls cheered struggled with many injuries and other setbacks; they lost more games than they won. But the cheerleaders' enthusiasm stayed strong, and they were pretty inspiring to both the team members and their parents.

I was pretty impressed with Celeste that season. It was a large time commitment for her (she was already involved in the school play and one additional club, plus Activity Days at church), but she was fully committed to it. She took practices very seriously, practiced her cheers at home (both in her bedroom and in the living room), and remained focused and attentive at each and every football game. Quite a change from when I watched football games at home; she would always lose interest a few minutes in! I liked that she was so determined to be the best cheerleader she could be.

It's true that Celeste has no gymnastics training; she didn't have the flexibility or the athletic ability of some of the girls (she couldn't do any of the fancy flips or tumbles, for example). But she worked diligently throughout the season to stretch her joints & muscles, to try her best to improve her performance, and become able to perform stunts.

Celeste was a great little cheerleader; she made me mentally swallow some of the snide remarks about cheerleaders that I'd carried around for so many years. If she wants to do another season of cheering, I will encourage her to do so.

Plus, she looks absolutely adorable in her uniform! All the cheerleaders do! I suppose that is also a plus.

The cheer-leading season went though early March. At the end of the season, the girls prepared a longer dance number, choreographed to music so as to wow the crowd. It was really cute and the girls did a nice job.

At that point, we opted to take a break from cheer-leading for a little while (the school play tends to take up a lot of time in the spring, so we try not to over-schedule). But if Celeste wants to do another season of cheer-leading, I will happily sign her up. She proved to me this winter that she was committed, and that she would work hard. How my outlook has changed!

January (believe it or not) was the least busy month of the year so far. But it still had a lot going on! But March was another animal altogether, as I hope to explain in some upcoming blog posts.