Cousin central

The main Brown Family get-together with my parents and all five of their kids plus spouses plus 12 grandchildren lasted for the first week of our stay in Denver. All of my siblings left my parents' house during the second week we were there. Em left her four kids at the house for the second week, and Dani and Alivia (who live near Denver) visited several times during the week, so there was plenty of quality cousin time. As usual, I barely saw my three kids while we were in Denver. Cousin central is their favorite place to be! The stayed at the house the whole time we were there and played every day away: board games, card games, Dungeons and Dragons, videoing skits, swimming, and watching plenty of Studio C comedy sketches together (and then quoting it at anyone with ears). 

Grand Teton National Park

Our one and only summer trip is done. It lasted from June 25th-July 15th: three weeks of family bonding, road trip and reunion style. While we were away, I completely ignored all photo-organization and now, twenty-one days and a thousand pictures later, I am facing a messy mega-sized morass of adventure pictures! This post is my first foray into sorting through the photographic evidence of our three week journey. I love looking at my pictures, but organizing them is a daunting project. As my tenth grade geometry teacher used to say, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!" Here's the first mouthful. Hopefully it's not too chewy.

School's out!

The strangest school year ever is over at last. The official last day of school was Friday, June 19th, but elementary school report card pickup was Tuesday, June 16th. Jay and Rose finished their last assignments on Friday, June 12th. They each had one last class video meeting on Monday, June 15th before they were officially DONE. Confused yet? Welcome to "distance learning!" Hah. These ambiguous end dates wreaked havoc on my traditional "last day of school" pictures and end-of-school survey worksheet, so we decided to call Friday, June 12th our last day of school. We took our front porch pictures and filled out my homemade worksheets a full week before Jeff was officially done with his school year as a teacher. 

Snow Lakes

Last week it was high time for another Shaina trail adventure, but the weather forecasts in the mountains were cold, rainy, and stormy all week. I used the time to research possibilities, scouring maps, trip reports, trail descriptions, and weather forecasts for days before finally choosing my forest. This week the weather cleared. On Tuesday night, I threw together my gear and went to bed looking forward to an early start the next day.

Quarantine Hair

Jay was determined to wait until the school year ended before getting a haircut. Consequently, he grew an impressively luxurious strawberry mop of hair. The last time I trimmed his hair back in February was the best haircut I've ever given. My February fading and layering job on Jay's hair made it grow out in an almost-perfect way. The back didn't look bushy and mullet-long because I layered it so well and because the top was so much longer. It was satisfying to see my quality amateur work grow out so nicely. But the situation was getting intense. Jay developed a head-jerk-side-sweep to swoop the hair out of his eyes every few seconds. He voluntarily wore it in a ponytail on two separate occasions. He was feeling ready to see clearly again.

June Joys

School is winding down down down. There are still a few more things to be done before school is officially out for the summer, but it is rapidly waning. This week we had some oddly cool weather, with some storms and humidity. It made for some dynamic sky views--my favorite. 

On Monday my adult sized scooter came, so Jeff and I were able to enjoy scooter rides together. That same day, our ward primary had a kids' virtual talent show where each child could perform and share a video on our Facebook group or create art and share a picture of it. Jay played one of his favorite piano songs from Lord of the Rings. Rose did a flip on the trampoline. Amber drew a picture of a rainbow. It was fun seeing what talents the other kids in our ward shared, and helped us feel just a little more connected. 

Weird week

It was a weird week. I was in a funk. Intense events were happening nationwide. Social media morphed from a cozy place to touch base with friends to a polarized battleground of guilt trips and calls to arms. Inside my own home, all of my usual activities sounded either difficult or uninteresting in the most irritatingly relentless fashion. 

Just now, as I sat down to type this blog post, Amber destroyed a tree Rose built out of "brain flakes" building discs. Rose screamed and cried and shoved Amber away. Amber cried. As natural consequences, I had Rose apologize to Amber for the shove, and Amber had to clean up the busted pieces. Amber thought this was the most unfair edict ever, and in anger she tornado'd the blocks around the room, scattering them far and wide and making her clean-up job that much harder. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I endured Amber's endless protestations and outright refusal to clean up. Her main argument was she wanted lunch before she cleaned up the mess. I refused. She whined and moaned and kicked more pieces around. I told her whiny kids get naps instead of afternoon screen time. She got more mad. 

Happy Jeff-Day

June 1st was Jeff's birthday! We love him! I gave him an adult sized scooter. He gave himself a new video game controller. The kids made him cards. My mom sent him a book about a French snail named Escargot. Jeff requested Cajun shrimp for dinner and brownies with ice cream for dessert. I made my best batch of Cajun Shrimp ever, and even accessorized with several colorful side dishes. Side dishes are my nemesis, but I managed to slice a watermelon, heat and butter a can of sweet corn, cook the rice, and toss a heart of Romaine lettuce into a bowl. It was such a lovely summery meal, we ate it outside in the front yard. Lighting the birthday candles was a challenge in the breezy outdoors, so we don't have pictures of that portion. We lit a 3 and an 8 shaped candle, and one of them blew out before we could sing Happy Birthday at top speed. Jeff blew out the other one and we called it good. After dinner, Jeff's parents paid us a responsibly distant visit. They sat in our yard while we sat on our porch and chatted for half an hour. Happy birthday to the best husband ever!

Hex Mountain

About 100 miles northwest of our house is the tiny town of Cle Elum, nicknamed "the heart of the Cascades." Many recreation areas are still closed due to the pandemic, but extensive research revealed a gem of a trail hidden tucked away down an unmarked unnamed gravel road. No parking lot, no facilities, no closure--the perfect pandemic escape! This area was burned during the horrible wildfires of 2017, so trail info warned that it was a full-sun no-shade excursion. I knew I would need water for the endeavor. When my snazzy new hydration vest was delivered a few days early, I decided it was time to tackle the Hex Mountain Trail.  

May End

Another month is drawing to a close. Journal excerpts from the end of May: 

Monday, May 18, 2020. My book came today! The one I wrote! Well, it's the first draft, but I started reading it and got about a quarter of the way through. So far so good. I thought taking 2 weeks away from it felt like forever, but it all feels more familiar than I expected. I hope I can be objective and figure out what to do to it. 

Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Last night/early this morning I had the weirdest dream where I was preparing to fight Lord Voldemort and I couldn't find my wand. My wand was a tiny sewing pin and I kept losing it amidst a bunch of non-magical pins. In order to find my wand, I touched the pins and said "lumos" over and over until my wand-pin lit up. I knew I was going to fight Voldemort in my parents' house instead of Hogwarts, and I was stressed about making a mess in their house during my duel with my tiny pin-wand. It was a stressful dream, and I never actually got to the part where I fought Voldemort. Thank goodness! Haha, I haven't remembered a dream that vividly in a long time! Random!

Jay's Birthday

"It's not every day that your young man turns eleven." --Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scanning the pages of HP book one made me relatively certain that this quote is only spoken in the movie, not the book, sadly.  I have been holding onto Hagrid's movie-quote for the past few years in anticipation of Jay's eleventh birthday, and at last the day came. Thursday, May 21st was Jay's day. He turned eleven in his calm collected easygoing way. No fanfare or dramatics; just a boy joyfully digging into a pile of new books wearing his new toy sword. We love our Jay!

Halfway through May

Somehow we are already halfway through May. Somehow we are only halfway through May. The days are all blending together in a long blob of quarantine sameness. May marked the beginning of the end of any given day "feeling" like a specific day. For example, pre-pandemic, Monday felt like a Monday because we had just done the usual church Sunday routine the previous day. Friday felt like Friday because we had finished four full busy weekdays. Sunday felt like Sunday because it had been a week since we had a day of rest and went to church. Now, we have precious little to mark the passing of our days. Even my journal entries feel bland and similar. It is a challenge to TAKE each day and MAKE it useful when we have zero plans outside of our home. Running is my sanity right now.