The Great Summer Catch-all

The freedom of summer break allows us to engage in a variety of small-but-fun activities in between the big trips and excursions. Here is the day-to-day of June and July, all thrown together:

• Dirt piles forever
• Running with Rosie
• Family walks in June
• Potty training the Amby
• Hair cuts for the boys
• A trip to the dentist
• Grama Leslie’s birthday
• A bike ride or two
• Falling on a run
• Ward Pioneer Day party
• Lounging

Now, for the photos and stories:

THE DIRT PILES. Our neighbors are having a pool put into their backyard, and a large amount of the excavated dirt was dumped back behind the barn behind our house, next to the irrigation creek. When the kids discovered the mounds back in June, they were in heaven. They visit the dirt piles several times a week, even during the recent heat wave. It does my heart good to see my kids rolling in, sliding on, digging in, and relishing good old fashioned dirt. Then they come back caked in dirt and shedding clouds of it all over the house and I start to re-think that good-hearted feeling just a little. We’ve employed communal hose-downs, wading pool wash-offs, shake-and-scrapes, feet-in-sink scrubbing, and full-on soapy showers to combat the varying degrees of dirty-ness they return in. I try my best not to lament too forcefully whenever I step out onto the side porch and its covered in dirt, or worse, when I see a brownish gray dirt-coated child walking through the house on the carpet with poofs of dirt floating off with each step. One day in mid-June, I went out back so the kids could show me their beloved dirt.

Jay gets a very intense look on his face when he’s describing something to me. He had to have been baking under that hot sun against the dirt, but DIRT!

I love that cute face, silhouetted against the blue sky.

Up and down, leaping from pile to pile, sometimes sitting to slide down one side.

RUNNING WITH ROSIE: During the first month of summer break, Rose and I went on about 2 runs per week together, trying to get Rose ready for the Shoreline 2 mile race. Her vigor and enthusiasm for running waned proportionally to the heat index, though, so we ran slower and slower, and shorter and shorter each day. But it was still good for a seven-year old! Amber liked to come sometimes. One morning I let Amber try to run with us instead of ride the stroller because I thought we were going so slowly she’d be able to keep up. But while Amber has boundless energy, she does not have the attention span to focus on running in a straight line for 5 minutes straight without stopping to dig or pick up a rock or run in a different direction. So I spent the majority of the run jogging back and forth between my daughters. Eventually we made it home.

Amber completed her half mile run in pink rubber boots and a dress.

FAMILY WALKS: back in June when it was bearably hot (mid-80’s), we liked to go on family walks after dinner. One week we ate outside on our front porch two or three times and then went on walks afterwards. Doing normal activities like eating dinner outside makes me feel so peaceful. I like the calming feeling of being outside, even if we are only on our front porch. Our walks were chaotic and sweaty, but they were an excellent way to spend the last bit of the witching hour before bedtime. Summer time is family time!

Dinner on the front porch.

A pleasant postprandial stroll along the canal. We thought Jeff looked like a narwhal or a unicorn with the way Amber was holding her stick by his forehead.

To battle!

Here’s a pretty panorama picture I took of the canal road west of our house.

Then it heated up a LOT too much for family walks and on the fifth consecutive day in triple digits, I considered renaming our side of Washington WArizona.

Rose, building. These plastic discs are called “Brain Flakes” which sounds kind of gross to me, but they are a fun connecting toy. Rose appreciates the bright colors and thoughtful engineering that goes into each masterpiece.

POTTY TRAINING. After our last failure at potty training in early May, I resolved to keep working on it but without any expectations. I let Amber decide if she wanted to sit on the potty or not and accepted her decision, even if she chose not to do what I wanted. Giving Amber the feeling of autonomy was a turning point. She is not completely potty trained yet (whatever that means) but she is doing pretty well. To motivate her to stop pooping her undies, I told her that anytime she poops in the potty, she gets to pick out a movie to watch. Amber adores our shelf of old-school Disney VHS tapes, and watching a movie is the absolute only potty training reward that has worked on her. Normally we limit screen time to afternoons, but that rule does not apply to potty training movie-rewards. A few mornings in, when this deal was still new, Amber went into the bathroom every ten minutes for an hour, trying her hardest to pinch out a little poop because she wanted to watch a movie right after breakfast. When she finally got a tiny bit into the toilet, it was jubilation galore and on came the movie.

For some reason I cringe less about extra screen time if the kids are watching a classic like Snow White. Amber’s favorites for a while were Sleeping Beauty (aka “Sleeping Aurora”) and Snow White. Then she shifted to Aladdin and Little Mermaid. She watches these movies over and over and over. Sometimes when she poops twice in one day, she chooses to watch the same movie twice in the same day! Whatever works! She knows how to pop the tape into the VCR and start it on her own (she loves doing that) and I have finally taught her to “be kind, rewind.” (we have a rewinder machine). Old school technology is much simpler and more durable than digital and DVDs. Big clunky video tapes are very 3-year-old-friendly.

In the past week or two, Jay and Rose have introduced Amber to their current favorite cartoon called Voltron, and currently when Amber does her potty business correctly, she chooses a cartoon or two to watch instead of a full on movie. This past week has been the best week of Amber’s 1.5 year-long potty training process.

Where does Aurora-barbie’s hair end and Amber’s hair begin?

The Ambride with her preferred mode of transportation. I think this crown-veil combo she concocted is supposed to resemble Ariel’s wedding veil and crown at the end of Little Mermaid.

HAIR CUTS. The Sunday Morning Shaina Salon does its best.

A WAVE of babies flooded seven of my friends in one week during June, and I couldn’t resist bringing home a “baby” of my very own.

DENTIST: I dread it. I much prefer to brush and floss my own teeth, thanks, and those pointy sharp scrapy tools of gum-puncturing pain should be reserved for interrogation rooms. I love our dentist and the office and all of that, but boy do I hate surrendering my mouth to those sharp medieval instruments of torture. I had my teeth cleaned the day before the kids had their cleanings. No cavities for any of us!

The waiting room has a row of old school desks.

Amber was impressively well-behaved.

No cavity rewards: bouncy balls!

GRAMA LESLIE’S BIRTHDAY: July 18th. Her thoughtful daughter Steph got 63-ish pink flamingos and we all helped stick them in Leslie’s front yard as a birthday surprise while Leslie was out shopping. The kids swam together before we went home, then later that day we gathered for a family birthday dinner.

The cousins, proud of their flamingo handiwork.

Rose ferried Tate and Grayce around the pool.

Leslie LOVED her flamingos.

Happy birthday, Grama! Steph makes such good cake.

BIKE RIDE: I rode my bike to a chiropractor appointment two weeks ago, just for fun. I have battled some sort of misaligned something in my infrastructure, and finally made an appointment with our friend Chad at his office. I have gone twice so far and it is helping. Never underestimate the relief of a well-set spine! This was my first bike ride in at least two years and it was also the first time since I became a mother that sitting on a bike didn’t cause me severe agony. It was just bearable enough for me to go on a few for-fun bike rides around the bumpy canal roads near our house. Our next door neighbor is a big mountain biker, and he always takes pictures while he’s biking. I accepted that challenge and tried a few shaky selfies, and nearly crashed into the canal in the process. Hah! I am a beginner and might stay that way for a while, since I don’t fancy a bike wreck.

A post-run ride with Rose.

Riding home with Jay.

FALLING ON A RUN: Last week I was running with a member of Jeff’s cross country team when I tripped over an uneven sidewalk fragment and fell hard onto my left kneecap. I walked it off and then finished the final 4.5 miles of our run while the blood slowly dripped down my leg. When I stopped running, I had an impressively gory knee and it started to bruise and swell something fierce. OUCH. I couldn’t run for three days afterwards. It has been years since I tripped and fell while running, and I felt pretty ridiculous about it. After Amber was born, I started doing a full-core strengthening program that includes my hips, back and deep abdominal muscles. Strengthening my all-around core really helped with my stability while running. Before I did these exercises, I used to trip on nothing and fall, but that stopped once I beefed up my core. This week’s fall was a straight-up trip on uneven painful pavement. But it is healing nicely, right next to my other run-fall knee-scars. [scroll fast if you don’t want to see the gore]

PAIN.

WARD PIONEER DAY PARTY: We had an outdoor ward potluck picnic to celebrate Pioneer Day, and a ward swim afterwards. It was my first time in the pool all summer and how refreshing to plunge into cold water on a blazing hot evening after sweating and chatting at a picnic. We have a good ward. Every time I swallow my inner “hermitude” and show up to do my best to socialize, I learn a little bit more about people and get to know them a little bit better.

Post-swim picture.

LOUNGING: Not everything we do is energetic. The harder we play, the harder we lounge.

Watching The Little Mermaid and hiding from King Triton’s wrath.

Watching a cartoon on Jeff’s phone.

I got back from my run to this scene: these four love Saturday morning cartoons. One of the things I love about Jeff is how much he enjoys watching cartoons with our kids.