Swim, Hike, Jam

 Sunnyside was trapped in a heat advisory all week, with triple digit temperatures every single day. Our busy summer life kept coming; it was just hotter than usual! Activities this week included: church girls camp for Rose, church boys camp for Jay, a swim meet for Jay and Amber, a hike for Rose and me, jam-making for Amber and me, and mowing for Jay and Rose. I also did enough running, lifting, weeding, cleaning, and pantry-restocking to require daily naps that I did not take, haha. Jeff is much better at pausing his day to take a nap than I am. 

Where are we, Arizona?? The sensor for this thermometer is in the shade on our back deck. Yes, the deck heats up and radiates that heat onto the sensor, so the actual air temp off the porch probably wasn't 117 degrees, but once the temperature rises above 105 it's hard to feel anything more than sheer misery out there. Thankfully it was usually only in the mid to upper 70s during our daily morning runs with the cross country kids. I mean, it sure felt hotter in the sun and we sweated BUCKETS, causing us to chug fluids all day after each run.

Brown Family Gathering 2024

Last week was the Brown Family gathering/reunion! My two parents, their five kids plus five spouses, and 15 grandkids gathered at my parents' house near Denver, Colorado from June 29th-July 6th for our annual reunion. 27 people under one roof may seem like too much, and there was definitely plenty of high decibel chaos, but it is a very big house so we all fit just fine. We had a happy week of quality time together.

A week with Mom

 I went to Denver by myself for a week (June 22-29th) to spend some time with just me and my Mom  before everyone else arrived for our annual big family reunion. 

Mommmmm!!!! (This picture was taken a week later during the family reunion--that's why Jay's face is between our heads in the background.)

Summer Speed-Up

The first official week of summer break was so busy it did not feel like a break. It was more like a summer speed-up! Excerpts from my journal give an accurate outline of the busy week:

Monday, June 17th: Today was the first official day of summer break, and even though there was no early morning swim practice, it was still super busy! Cross country run in the morning, followed by a short barn workout for me while Jeff did some plyo & speed at the track with a few kids. Then I went to a Relief Society presidency meeting. We had brunch at Bon Vinos for our meeting, and it was nice to ease up on presidency meeting formalities and take time to chat without feeling rushed. We ended up staying for 3.5 hours! It was good but I was socially fried by the time it ended. I came home and played the piano for an hour, which was nice but not exactly restful.

Lincoln Grade, Pitchforks, and Father's Day

Saturday, June 15th was a full day. We started out with the annual Sunnyside Ward walk to the park. We met in the church parking lot and walked the 2 miles on the bike path to Sunnyview Park, where the ward provided Costco muffins and yogurt. It was pleasant to walk and chat with friends, even though the wind was already blustering and blowing, even before 9am. Jeff and Jay drove to the park and then ran back to the church, where I was parked. Then they ran back to the park to get a few more miles in, while I walked to the park and Rose and Amber scootered. After an hour or so at the park, Jay drove all five of us back to the church, whereupon I hopped into the van and headed for Prosser (25 minutes east). My first activity in Prosser was to run up Lincoln Grade:

Atop the Lower Yakima Valley.

Selfie-ish

This week was the last week of the school year, so I tried to appreciate my quiet clean house as much as possible before the onslaught of summer break. It wasn't a lazy week; I just tried to make sure to do activities that I like best when I'm alone in a clean quiet house, while also being a productive adult each day. That translated into about 5 hours of weeding and yardwork, 5 hours of piano playing, 25 miles of running, and a dozen selfies. It was a selfie-ish week--a week where I was somewhat selfish with my time and also took more selfies than pictures of my kids.

Shaina Day, etc.

It's the kind of week where it feels easier to copy excerpts from my journal than to write new paragraphs about our latest activities. 

Monday, June 3rd: It was so windy today! Maddening! I didn't do any yardwork. But I did get up at 5am to go to physical therapy/workout session with my friend Camille. The exercises I did for my legs were very targeted at my weaknesses, and now my left glute/hammy is super sore again. Running with the XC kids this afternoon was rough for the first mile or so.

Music and Milestones

 Remember during track season when I thought life would slow down after track ended? HAHAHA, apparently that was a myth I told myself to get me through the season. This was our first week after track season and let me tell you, it was not slow. I mean, maybe it was a little less busy thanks to the absence of daily track practice, but factor in the post-track season fatigue plus we rolled right into daily cross country conditioning, plus an hour or two of yardwork each day, and it all added up to an exhausting week. But that is life--it doesn't slow down. It's not like I actually want to not do all of the activities we've been doing (except maybe the weeding--I could live with less weeds), but wow, everything seems to happen all at once! 

Jay turned 15!

Our firstborn son turned 15 on Tuesday! This birthday caught me a little off guard--when I started looking into driver's ed courses for Jay to take, he suddenly felt so incredibly old. Now that track season is over and there are only 3 more weeks left in the school year, that means that Jay's freshman year of high school is also almost over, which means that he only has 3 more years of high school left before he will be leaving home! Siff, my tiny baby.

5 out of 6

It was another full-to-bursting week, with events on 5 out of 6 nights: 

Monday, May 13th was the last middle school track meet of the season. Jeff hosted and timed the meet at the high school track. I coached during the meet and was a "ghost announcer" on the side, which meant I told the teenager with the microphone what to say and when to say it so kids knew when to report to the starting line for their races. During the meet I also ran interference between the teenage volunteers working at the meet and Jeff, who was busy doing battle with the automatic timing system. The timing system glitched several times and that along with inexperienced teenage helpers caused the meet schedule to bog down. The meet ended 90 minutes after we wanted it to, and Jeff and I didn't get home until 9pm. Our kids got rides home with kind friends earlier in the evening. 

Allergic

 I was allergic to most of last week. Mother's day was on the horizon AND the week began with a 36+ hour windstorm that blew every allergen known to humankind up into my sinuses, wreaking a specific sort of itchy sneezy havoc. Then it got hot. Not the "we're used to 50 degrees so 75 feels uncomfortable" kind of hot. No, in the space of a few days, we jumped from 50 degrees and cloudy up to 90 degrees and sweaty. Silver lining: even though I was sneezing and feeling run down physically this week, Jeff started feeling so much better than he has in months! The longer he goes without getting Covid, the better he feels, and now that it's been over 5 months since his last infection, he is starting to have more normal autonomic functions again. He's pretty happy about it! I am too.

A triple meet week

The last intense week of track season is behind us. April really came at us relentlessly, and now we have emerged into May, with only one high school meet per week from now on, and only one remaining middle school meet in the season. This week, however, we had three track meets. Technically there were four meets, but none of us had to go to the high school JV meet so I'm counting this as a three-meet-week, plus two days of high school parent teacher conferences that go until 7:30pm. Anyways, on Monday morning when I pulled out of the garage to drive Jay to seminary, I made the unpleasant discovery that we had yet another irrigation pipe leak. This time it drained into the low spot north of the barn on our driveway, creating Lake Jay for the second time this year. Jeff shut off the valve in question and I called the company that installed our system. A few days later, the lake in our driveway was mostly gone and the offending pipe was capped. 

Lake Jay returns! The name of this driveway lake was much disputed among the kids the first time it appeared in January, but somehow Jay's name stuck for the second flooding.