The Primary presidency brought Jack and Gemma enormous cookies because the primary kids accomplished a group goal of participating and memorizing scriptures. It was also their final interaction with that group of leaders. I was called to replace our Primary president, who is moving out of state this summer. It's a weird time to take on such a big calling, but I'm super excited to work in the primary again.
We bought kinetic sand. The kids have spent lots of happy hours playing with it in the shady backyard.
More hikes when the weather has been comfortable:
Del Valle -
Morgan Territory Regional Preserve -
Hazel had a virtual violin recital. It was nice not to have the pressure of performing in front of a large group.
We went to Crown Beach in Alameda and played in the shallow bay water.
Todd FaceTimed us while flying over Big Sur and Hearst Castle.
We bought a badminton/volleyball net for more backyard fun.
A family of foxes has been spotted numerous times on the trail and in our culdesac. Our neighbor across the street caught this excellent picture on her doorbell camera.
Finally, finally, Suzanne and Chrissy and their families felt comfortable enough to come over for dinner and a hangout. It felt amazing to hug people we love.
Todd's mom planned a cousin camp for the kids. Covid cases spiked in Utah right when we wanted to go out, and my parents asked us not to visit. I almost didn't go because I was so sad to not see my family, but in the end, it felt too selfish to take such a great experience away from my kids because of my own disappointments.
While Todd was flying a helicopter from Texas to California, I drove the entire 12 hours myself. I didn't know if I'd be able to do it, and was enormously proud of myself for not having to spend the night in Nevada. My kids are terrific travelers - I wasn't worried about them. But I've never spent more than five hours at at time behind the wheel, so I truly didn't know if I was capable of doing the whole drive in one day. We packed lots of yummy fruits and veggies to nosh on in the car, and I downloaded a plethora of podcasts, which turned out to have more staying power than music and were, I believe, my secret weapon.
After a successful cross-state drive, it was truly disappointing that we had a medical emergency within ten minutes of showing up at Poppa and Grammie's house. Jack was doing a flip on their trampoline, landed on his feet but fell back, and split his head open when he hit the uncovered springs. I tried taking him to urgent care, but they had closed an hour earlier than their posted hours (I'm sure I have coronavirus to thank for that), so it was up to me to clean it and close it. I didn't dare use superglue, although I bet that's what they would have done at urgent care, so instead I just snipped short the hair around it, cleaned it as best I could, put some antiseptic on it, followed by a wad of gauze, and gave Jack a cool ninja-like sports wrap headband to hold it all on. Thankfully, everything healed well.
The kids had lots of fun with Grammie and their cousins. They made lots of delicious treats, ran around outside playing yard games and jumping on the tramp, painted the play set (and got tons of paint in their hair), rode the tractor of course, and even had a sleepover on the tramp their last night together.
I tried to spend as much time as possible alone, in the mountains. I hiked Deer Creek Reservoir and walked the Provo Canyon Parkway, did yoga up in Provo Canyon at South Fork Park (probably my top highlight of all), ate gourmet cookies from Suus in Midway and from Swig in Provo, and even chilled for a while with a novel in the canyon as well.
Beany's husband Adam had lent Larry his BMW convertible, and I totally wanted a piece of that action! Larry and I took it out for a drive through the mountains around Midway and Park City for a good couple of hours. I even took a turn behind the wheel!
So although it was sad not seeing my family, and I felt like I couldn't reach out to friends and ask them to expose their families to my California germs, I made the most of my time and had a good time.
We made sure to get back before Father's Day so we could spend the day with our favorite guy. Hazel made Todd a scavenger hunt, complete with rhyming clues. It was a perfectly thoughtful gift for him, as that is just his sort of thing.
Gemma played him an original composition on the piano.
Jack surprised Todd with a piano song that Todd loved and had been wanting Jack to learn. Jack practiced completely in secret and kept it a surprise from his dad until the big performance. I thought that was pretty cool.
Gemma and Jack wanted to sleep on our tramp, recreating the fun time Gemma missed out on at Grammie Camp. (She fell asleep a good couple hours before the big kids decided to go out.) I thought that was such a fun idea and was all for letting the two of them bond. Unfortunately, we didn't think to cover them in bug spray, and they got eaten by mosquitoes during the night. Gemma had over 20 bites on her the next morning.
A couple of those bites were on her face, and caused some nasty side effects. Not that next morning, but the day after that, Gemma woke up with super puffy eyes. I gave her some Clarytin and called my nurse friend for advice. She suggested that it was bacteria from the mosquito feet, and that it would probably be fine, but if she didn't look better the second day, to take her in to a doctor to get checked out. Well, the next morning Gemma looked worse, so while Hazel and Jack continued with our fun plans to swim at a neighbor's pool, I took Gemma to urgent care instead. There was just a small part of me that worried it was a spider bite, and we were leaving for Alaska the next day, so I wanted some peace of mind. Thanks to dumb Covid, our urgent care visit took far longer than it should have, but the good news is that we got her a prescription steroid antihistamine to go along with the Benadryl, and everything cleared up in a few days.
Well, we got our booties on a plane and escaped to Sitka for a week. It was a cool, green slice of heaven! We'd never been there before without bringing some extra family along, and I was a little worried the kids would be so tired of being alone with each other. But I didn't need to worry. They played so hard and so cute with each other; it was magic bonding time. We made some excellent memories. We slowed way down and spent lots more time on the island than usual, just playing at the cabin, exploring the trails and hanging out at the dock.
The kids loved collecting fun pieces of nature everywhere we went, shells and leaves and slugs and mossy pieces of bark.
We told the kids we would cover souvenirs this year, and let them all pick out a t-shirt or sweatshirt to represent Sitka. Everyone loved their pick.
Of course we ate at the Mean Queen. Delicious!
We hiked Mosquito Cove, Salmon Lake, and Indian River. We even took our kayaks partway up the river on the way to Salmon Lake. That was cool, and absolutely beautiful. On our way back down, we dipped our fingers in the water for tastes, trying to identify where the fresh water and the salt water converged.
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| Mr. Vamp Vamp, aka Fang |
We circumnavigated our island in the kayaks, and explored other pieces of land nearby. We saw an enormous orange jellyfish in the water and followed it around for a while.
We had a fire in the pit on the deck a couple times. We invited some friends we've gotten to know from previous years at church to come over for s'mores. And we found this fire coloring pouch by the checkout stand of a store we went to and decided to give it a try. The kids were hoping for Harry Potter-esque magic. What we really got was not quite that cool, but it was interesting to see turquoise flames.
The kids played and giggled together a TON. I loved seeing them being such good buddies.
Since we didn't have anyone else with us on this trip, Hazel and I got a crash course in how to be deckhands. Being our sixth trip to Sitka and all, I probably should have picked up on how to tie up a boat at the dock by now, but somehow I hadn't. That made for some drama our first afternoon out, when the rope slid out of my hands and got sucked up into the boat's engine. Eek. Had to run to the neighbor's cabin and beg for someone to rescue my family. Todd had dropped anchor and was preparing to load everyone and everything into the kayaks to take them to the dock. I'm crossing my fingers as I type this, hoping that Todd would agree that I became a lot more helpful over the course of the week.
Our last full day, we took an hour long boat ride out to Goddard Hot Springs. We only stopped to "fish" once. Nothing was caught, and everyone felt sea sick as we sat in the rocking boat, but I did finally catch my first glimpse of a whale tale in Alaska. No pictures, and I don't think any of the kids saw the whale, but it was pretty amazing.
The hot springs were especially delightful because we had them all to ourselves. Hazel and Todd tried out the muddy ones before joining the rest of us in the beautiful cedar hut bath houses. We stayed for several hours, enjoying our picnic lunch, cheering Hazel on as she swam strokes in the cold ocean water, and kayaking around to explore the nearby islands. I even took a nap on the boardwalk, soaking up the warmth of our only truly sunny day of the week.
Nobody wanted to come home. It was a sweet, restful week.
