Cotton candy

 

Our neighbor was missing seeing people around the neighborhood, so they hosted a socially distanced cotton candy party.  They could make all sorts of shapes.  The kids had a blast and it gave them something fun to do while I was doing daycare.

Fall party

 

My brother had a bunch of boxes to burn after his last move, so my parents hosted a fire pit roasting party and bought the kids pumpkins to decorate. They had fun, I ate too much homegrown cantaloupe Iso juicy!), and the boys had fun playing Magic.

I'm so glad to have the Wilcox family all together again.  We've missed them.

Before burning the boxes, these guys had so much fun making their boxes into a giant fort and trying to get McKay's new puppy to come in on his own.

Sam's art

 

Sam always says he's not an artist.  But while not everyone is an artist at heart, everyone can do art. These are a couple from his art notebook at school.

shoes

When three of your daycare kids wear the same pair of shoes and are almost the same size you just have to put them on a Shelf and try not to mix them up.

Birthdays

 

Miss Ada made me laugh so hard this week.  She was supposed to do a stand up comedy routine for drama to learn about not getting the jitters on stage.  They could write their own or memorize someone else's.  Ada did both.  She took someone's joke and customized it for her.  My favorite one that she told was, "People say that their dogs are just like their children.  I don't think they are, my mom runs a daycare and I don't think that she'd send little Ben out into the snow with no shoes or coat on and say just go potty and then come back in.  We also don't put collars on them to keep them from talking to other kids in the neighborhood. "Hey there Suzie!" zap."

My brother's two sets of twins both had their birthday's last week.  So we had to party.  When you have 4 birthday kids you need to try to make it fun without breaking the bank.   We had food and played at the fun park near their home.

We had my whole immediate family there at the same time.  

This is typical Evelyn.  My 4th grader reading 7th grade stuff cuddled under a baby blanket and not caring about the chaos everywhere around her.

I think they all liked their presents, but I usually don't have to buy gift bags in bulk....

Memories

 

I love memories.  Probably because it reminds me to be happy now too. My cousin sent this to me . How fun.  I always loved having pen pals.  I wrote to my cousin, Tiffany, and to my second cousin, Rosanne for years.  I had a pen pal named Tyler in elementary school and in High School I had one named Katy that I'm still friends with today.

My brother, McKay, just moved back to Utah.  In the move, he found a bunch of old photos and this one was awesome.  

Cousin's babies

 

My cousin Amber is having her first baby.  I'm excited for her.  These were her wedding colors, she's an art deco kind of artist and she's having a boy so I think it will work.

I fell in love with this yarn and made up this blanket for whoever needs it next.  My Mom and sister say it looks more feminine, so the next girl. $10 baby gifts, yay.

Seems appropriate

 

Driving down the street, Ada told me that I HAD to take a picture of this one.  She said it was just appropriate for this year.

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.