August was a weird smorgasbord of events. I'll try to provide you with a snapshot.
Jack created an escape room, complete with rhyming clues and codes to break.
We cancelled a trip to Maui that we had booked in April, back when we thought things would be normal by August
The kids took naps so they could stay up til midnight and watch a meteor shower. We set up a movie on the projector in the backyard to give us something to pass the hours after it got dark, waiting for the action to hit the sky. Then we spread out a blanket on our back patio, laid on our backs, and just chatted as we watched for shooting stars. It was a simple, but beautiful, experience. I loved hanging out with the kids making memories. It made me want to book a camping trip for the next one, so we could see it all away from the city lights.
We had several hot days over 100 degrees. Thankfully, we escaped the heat at the beach a couple of times. We met up with our ward friends the Mullens at Crown Beach in Alameda. We packed lunch, brought our boogie boards and sand toys, and passed a good four or five hours together playing hard. Everyone loved it and said it was one of our best days at the beach in a long time.
It was a bittersweet day for me. It was my last hurrah with Suzanne because she and her crew moved to Colorado at the end of that week. Suzanne has been one of my very best friends for the last decade, in and out of deployments and moves. I'm so happy for her and Dan that they've found an opportunity to buy a house and settle into a bigger space for their family, but I'm just heartbroken not knowing when I'll see her again. It's especially sad for me that we didn't get to have our annual girls' weekend with me and her and Chrissy this year before she left. She was a friend that I literally prayed into my life, and she'll be a friend for life. I just wish we were next door neighbors.
We had scorching temperatures above 100 degrees for multiple days in a row. Infuriatingly, they were combined with "coincidental" power outages. We had no power from 4:30-11pm two days in a row. Three hours into the first outage, Todd pulled out our never-before-used generator and hooked our fridge and extra freezer up to power to save our food. The second night, we realized we could plug in a lamp as well so we didn't have to spend the whole evening using headlamps.
In the midst of the heat wave and the power outages, on August 16th, we had crazy wind storms and a TON of dry lightning that lasted for hours all across the Bay Area. There were so many lightning bolts flashing across the sky at once that they woke me up a couple of times in the middle of the night. For an area that usually doesn't get any thunder or lightning, it was an eerie sight.
The lightning set off multiple fires across the state, some of which became pretty large, and a couple of which were close to home. We spent about a week keeping a close watch on evacuation warnings, preparing to gather up our most important belongings and seek safety elsewhere.
The fires brought in terrible air, smoky and orange and brown and ashey.
Between Covid and everything else, it kind of felt apocalyptic.
We tried to get excited about school starting. Our school district waited until just a couple of weeks before the start of school to finally announce that they would be starting the year remotely, with a complicated path leading to the possibility of hybrid learning later in the year. I still bought everyone new water bottles, pencil pouches, and notebooks. Everyone also got new headphones in preparation for hours of online school.
Todd works with a guy who is originally from Liberia. He goes back every year with donations of medicine and clothing to try to help the people living there. A weekend without power really awakened us to how privileged our lives are and made us want to share of our bounty. We gathered a huge assortment of medicine to send over to Liberia and reflected on our blessings here at home, despite our challenges.
The girls decided to try dying the ends of their hair in Koolaid. The results were unpredictable. We dipped Gemma's hair in purple, but it came out turquoise. Hazel's ended up burgundy. It smelled really good!
Gemma and Jack got to meet their teachers and pick up supplies the day before school started. Both Mrs. Tabaracci and Mrs. Lockhart were nice enough to let me get the kids out of the car for pictures.
We've been watching Great British Baking Show as a family. It's inspired all sorts of projects in the kitchen. Most recently, Jack wanted to make soft pretzels. They turned out way yummy!
Our first day of school was certainly untraditional. We woke up to a blood red sun in a smoky sky. We thought it would be fitting to take pictures in pajamas and masks, although for reals the kids got dressed for school and didn't leave the house. I'm pretty sure no one brushed their teeth until lunchtime.
It was a very dull day full of unmet hopes and dreams, and largely spent touring the communication app the school district chose to use, which we had already received about ten emails about how to use from every single teacher, administrator, and secretary. My kids each had a chance to say about five words to the class. Gemma and Jack were in class from 8-11, and Hazel had her school day from 11:30-3.
Luckily for us all, we had our giant cookies to look forward to when it was all over.
The kids and I helped my friends Elaine and Katie decorate April's house when she had her baby. After three boys, having a girl was something exciting to look forward to! Sweet baby Ellie weighed in even bigger than Jack, at 9 pounds, 12 ounces. (This is Jack's best friend Jonah's family.)
Joann finally opened up for in-person shopping, so the kids and I went and picked out scrapbook paper to re-decorate their name letters and freshen up their bedrooms. It's pretty cool to have kids big enough to trace and cut and mod podge themselves!
Just when we thought we were safe from the fires, one broke out just a few blocks from home, right in our neighborhood. Luckily, it was pretty small and firefighters had it all out in a couple of hours, but man, Mother Nature sure has kept us on our toes this month!
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