The Catching Up Post

Hello!  It's been a lovely few weeks, but with so much going on it was a little overwhelming to try and document it all, blog-wise.

Horse camp was great. We rode two days--bareback one morning and with saddles in the afternoons. We went swimming in the lake and had some good relaxing time just hanging out in between.  The entire week before Horse Camp started saw temperatures from 108-113 degrees. My sanity was hanging by a thread, wondering how I'd survive camping out in that heat in tents with five children, but God blessed us in the most amazing way with the temperature going down to the mid 90's while we were there. That was a 20 degree drop in one day! I'm still speechless with gratitude.

I have had a tremendously hard time uploading pictures for this, but that's probably good.  For some reason, I got pictures of everyone starting out on their rides. Interpreted for my photography skills, that means that I got everybody's behinds. Real interesting. You'd think I'd ask for somebody to turn around and smile, but no. I was intent on documenting that everyone has a back and a behind. 

 The morning after we got back from camp we had an all day workday to prepare for Vacation Bible School starting the next morning.

It was a very busy week with two of us being leaders and two others being leadees. Attendees. Whatever they are called.  VBS kids.  But what "9a-12p" means is us leaving the house at 7:30a and not getting home until 2p.  It is usually a lot of fun, but there were sleep issues and that created huge fatigue issues which made some of the week seem three months long.  Not to mention some children (Twin One, this means you!) bailing on activities and lying in a pew listening to the missionary story a couple of different times each day while his group went from crafts to games and snacks and wondered where he was. Next year will be better.

Our anniversary didn't end up with any big plans.  Honeyhusband's car broke last week and will need fixing in a major way, so the budget turned in that direction instead of a weekend away.  We did go out for lunch and had a Home Depot date. That is a step up from a dump date, especially if you love hardware stores (and we do).  We are in process of replacing the front door and it includes having to choose a color and paint it.  I love Do It Yourself projects if they work out. If not, well, then not so much. This one could go either way. Painting a door isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be.  Semi gloss on a steel door with a brush? Seems like it should have been a spray paint if you ask me. 

And after four solid weeks of fires, they are finally 100% contained here.  It feels very odd to not have helicopters with the buckets continually going back and forth overhead all day.  At horse camp we were even able to see the helicopters scoop up water from the lake.  How amazing!  But Redding is totally smoky still. The air quality was so bad we weren't supposed to be outside, except that we didn't believe it would bother us and we spent several hours swimming, then the rest of the night coughing. It wasn't until the third day when we were leaving that I finally connected the dots of us feeling bad and the warning not to go out unless we had to. I sometimes have a very long learning curve. Very long. 

Air quality aside, the hospitality from The Dearest was her usual stellar stuff. We were waited on hand and foot and totally spoiled.  She has such a gift!  She's definitely the Calm to my Whirlwind. Because of the busy schedule earlier, we opted to just hang out and swim and not go anywhere except for a shopping trip with my 15 year old son to the nearby outlet stores. We got lots of clothes and it was such a great price and a fun outing we are all excited to take each child in turn, only we need to find an outlet store closer to us.  It would not be nice to presume on The Dearest, plus she'd probably pack up her family and move to Pakistan once she got wind of our plans. 

I think that catches us up. We still have baseball, the pictures for baseball, fundraisers for baseball, and a car wash for baseball this Saturday, along with the finding of all the equipment from game to game.  Twin One misses out from time to time with his shoe issues, but otherwise it's all going well.  

Oh, and I finished the top of the quilt. Hurray! 

I'll get some pictures posted later.