Saturday

 

Friday night, Jeremy joined some others and hiked up Mount Timp as part of the Timpanogos Emergency Response Team.  He has his first aid certifications and his Ham radio license.  Him and the others camp from Friday to Sunday at the meadows and make sure that hikers have enough water and such.  The most exciting incident this last weekend was apparently splinting someone's knee that had hyper extended it on the saddle.  They splinted it, gave him extra water and a walkie talkie that they checked in with him all the way down the mountain where he gave it back to the group at the bottom.  

While Jer was off having all the fun, I was in traction for my neck and hips.  Physical therapy is helping.  I'm not done yet, but it's been very good.  Sat I had a PRP shot into my hip.  It was so sore afterwards, but I've heard all good things about them, so I'm willing to try it to improve quality of life.  They want me to do stem cell therapy, I'm not sure what I think about that one.  Apparently my biggest problems are from 1) my pelvic bone being out of alignment, which causes pain in my hips and SI joint dysfunction. 2) possibly a genetic disc disease that has contributed to me getting arthritis before I'm 40 and 3) PCOS causing hormone imbalances which sends out the wrong hormones for strengthening and loosening tendons.  Since starting therapy I no longer have migraines, I can walk stairs normally instead of with a lead foot, it's easier to get out of bed.  I still have pain, but it's not the same pain that I've had for the last 10 years.  I have another 3 shots into my hip, and 6 more office visits to do.  Then I need to keep doing my exercises at home and they want to do a series of 5 shots into my lower back and neck.

Misc

 

This is me trying to teach Seth how to lead music in our sacrament meeting last Sunday.

My brother Seth found this written in his room.  He's pretty sure it's an Ada thing.

4 of the daycare kids come at 6:30 in the morning.  This one is almost always exhausted.  He will fall asleep once or twice a day.  Seth and Sam were watching something on TV downstairs while waiting for the girls to wake up.  This friend of ours was out.... and did NOT want to wake up for anything.

Fires

 With the 500 fires in California and Nevada and the fires in Colorado and the three fires in Utah, we have had absolutely horrible air quality.  Every time we leave the house we're coughing and throats itching.  The closest fire to us was a small one caused by campers up Battle Creek.  My autistic young woman texted me for over an hour about it.  She LOVES fires.  She tracks them and loves the beautiful flames and the process of putting them out.  I kept getting questions like:

"How far are you from the fire?"

"Did you see the planes circling it?" 

"Are you going to be evacuated?"

"What time did it start so I can report it to the fire service."

Sam and I seem to do the worst with the poor air quality, but most of my day is inside right now anyways.  We still haven't been able to get rid of the wasps in the backyard.  I let me kids go out and play because they know to leave them alone and just don't bother them.  The daycare kids on the other hand are not so nice to bugs.  5 of the 8 of them like to find spiders, worms, earwigs and potato bugs in my yard and either squish them or carry them around until they die.  I don't think that being out by wasps would be a good idea for them.

Back to School

I wasn't sure what the next school year would bring.  I wasn't sure if they'd open schools or if they'd open and close again in October.  I was thinking of doing distance learning with all of the kids, but I really didn't want to.  They did OK doing it last year, but they didn't excel like they usually do with a full time teacher.  Between the need to see their friends, them doing really well in school, Ada being in jr high for the first time, daycare and me being on the school board it really made more sense to take them back to school.  Honestly, I'm very proud of how our charter school has handled everything.  I can't believe how grown up these kids are getting.  They loved going back to school.  They didn't have any problems wearing their masks either.  That was my biggest fear, but after wearing the disposable masks on our Yellowstone trip, they were all thrilled to have masks their size that was made out of material that they had picked out.  I made enough masks that they each have one per day and an extra for their backpack.  So far it's been great.  Ada says she likes the cloth ones way more than the medical masks.   

Miss Evelyn is starting 4th grade.  We also started back at ballet to help her feet.  We were doing it remotely, but she struggles doing it remotely and they dance 6 feet apart in the studio.  She LOVES her class.  She has Muhlestein this year.  Ada had her and we're super excited for Evelyn.  One of the main focus' in her classroom is on joy in reading.  Evelyn is a reader.  That's what she does.  During our trip to Yellowstone she listened to and understood the whole Steelheart series and read 5 of the Wizard of Oz books. (In two weeks).  She says that none of her really close friends are in her class, but she does recognize some people.  They only have 15 people in class, but they are all facing the same way, desks are farther apart and she has no problem wearing her mask except to figure out how to keep her glasses from slipping down on them.  Our school said that they would be buy all our supplies this year, so usually where I spend $200 on back to school supplies, I spent hours making masks out of material already in our home and spent maybe $50 on back to school clothes for the younger three. 

This cute toothless kid was thrilled to be a 1st grader that went to school all day.  He's sad that they alternate recess times so he won't actually see Evelyn at school recess, but he loves to feel grown up eating lunch at school.  He's excited that he knows quite a few people in his class and one of Ada's best friends has a brother in his class.  He went the first day, but the next day was so smoky from the fires in California that you couldn't even see the mountains from our house.  Seth was coughing, and their attendance policy now has been suspended, so I just kept him home.  He thought that was fine and just watched tv all morning.  

I can't believe that this kid is in 6th grade!  Sam is so excited to be in the strict teacher's class.  Mr. Carlson doesn't allow chatter and side talk.  Sam LOVES that.  That's his pet peeve.  Mr. Carlson is also the advanced math teacher which is Sam's favorite subject.  Usually they have break out groups where the kids would go to different teachers for different subjects so that they are learning on their level, but with Covid they want to keep the same group of kids with the same teacher all day.  I think Sam will do great this year.

Ada is thrilled to be all grown up.  We went and had to buy her $200 of clothes because she has grown out of everything this year and because this is the first year without uniforms. She loved clothes shopping.  I've never really done that with her.  I've always ordered it online or bought something at walmart or target.  This time we went to several stores, tried on everything and chose her favorites.  She chose choir, drama and art as her electives.  They don't have lockers to keep kids out of the halls.  PE lockers are 6 feet apart. Choir they stand 6 feet apart.  As long as they are 6 feet apart, they are allowed to take off their masks for choir and PE.  They are doing Ultimate Frisbee for the first unit and I think you couldn't get a better socially distant sport.  She's made two new friends very quickly and has a few people from her old school in a couple of her classes.  They have assigned seats on the bus.  I offered that she could ride her bike with two of our neighbors since it's only about 2 miles away, but she likes riding the bus.  She has been all smiles every day this week and comes home to tell me all about her days.  She's very excited for the home ec class.  She LOVES her math teacher.  She was dreading math, but was happy with it after only one class.  This summer she took the advanced math placement test.  She ended up in the advanced math class, which is great.  She was doing 8th grade math last year and I was afraid that she's get to 7th grade and be bored.  They also did an assessment in English to see where everyone was at on the second day.  She is on a 12th grade reading level and has been reading all the Brandon Sanderson books she can reach.  I keep offering other authors, but she always goes back to Sanderson. Her teacher and many of the students were shocked at her reading, but she's always been a good reader.  She had wanted to get into Honors English but we missed the test date for that one.  I hope she gets to do lots of writing.  Last year, she and a couple of students helped her writing club teacher come up with ideas and write the book that she published this year.  I can't wait to read it and see how it is.  I think out of everyone, it's going to be hardest to not bring home germs from jr high.  I have everyone wash their hands as they come home every day and they've done it happily for the most part.

Ogden River

Sharon used to live in Ogden and had a great place for kids to play.  It had a shallow bank for little kids and building dams, and a deeper and faster part that you could ride down with a life jacket.  The kids had a blast.

 

Spiral Jetty and the Great Salt Lake

 Bucketlist item, check!  I've been wanting to go to the Spiral Jetty for YEARS.  About 20 years to be exact.  I first heard about it when it was covered by the lake, then I heard that you needed 4 wheel drive to get there.... Then my sister Sharon found out about it and was more pro-active than me.  We finally got up there.  While we were there, I told the kids about floating in the Great Salt Lake.  They all wanted to try it and loved the floating part but didn't love the salt part.  Seth got salt in his eyes because he dunked his head.  We had to wash his eyes out then he was fine.  Sam and Evelyn got salt in their private areas and said that it burned.... so we rinsed off and made them pee.  They felt much better after that.  Ada told me that once she started floating, she had no control over her feet.... they just popped up and stayed up.  When the kids all got out, they sparkled all over like the vampires from the Twilight movies.  It was pretty funny.  Just walking down to the lake is an adventure.  It's about a half mile from the Jetty to the lake and it goes from fine sand to crunchy salt crystals pretty quick.  The crystals even form in waves like sand does on the beach, and then they get hard. One of the funny things to see was that bugs get crystalized too.  We saw lots of grasshoppers and dragonflies crystalized into the ground. The water was very warm too.  I wonder if that's partially because of salt content.  Part of the lake was pink too.

On the way back from the Jetty, we stopped off at the Golden Spike for our 3rd time.  It was fun to see Seth react to the trains again.  He really liked them and was so happy that they have stars on the wheels.  Evelyn wanted very badly to see the Golden Spike, but it's in Sanford, California.  We found a replica to look at though.

We were all crackly and crusty, so Sharon drove us to the Ogden River and we went swimming to clean off all the salt.