Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Still here

It's been a whirl wind of a summer.
The girls and I trekked all over the northwest, putting at least 6,000 miles on the car.
Together we traveled to Oregon, Ca (Redwood forest - ooh la la!), Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Utah and Colorado.  When we totaled it up, we realized that through the second week of August, we had collectively only been home for 2 weeks this summer.  Crazy!
We've been grateful to see lots of family and spend time with them - making up for all of those years we spent so far away in Florida.
Er.. well really, we were taking our kids to different activities.
Our eldest went to a youth conference with her cousin in Oregon. Then we took her to a youth camp in Provo Utah for a week, while the little one and I visited cousins in Co., and also stopped in for a Rockies game (still love that stadium!). We then hung out in Ut. for a couple of days, picked up a BFF from Florida who flew in to spend the month with us, and then headed back to Wa.
We then drove back down to the Ut. border the next week for a family reunion and back home.
Back home again, the girls went to a church camp, then we headed back to Ut. to drop the BFF back to the airport and back home again after a pit stop in Idaho where we left our eldest daughter. She traveled up to West Yellowstone where she camped and hiked and swam and slept in a hammock all week at a boy scout leadership training camp.  She learned how to really rough it there, and had an amazing time.
The rest of us stayed home, my husband was in a car accident. Just quietly waiting to turn onto a road when a collision in the intersection landed a truck on top of his car and through the windshield.He walked out with just a broken pinky - so blessed!
That was the same day that I discovered a huge water leak from the AC in the garage, into our office - ruining our carpet and pad.
We turned off the AC (for the 3rd week this summer due to it not working), and then headed back to W. Yellowstone to retrieve our daughter.  We camped for a couple of days and just enjoyed hanging out, sitting by the fire, listening to ghost stories from an audio book by Jonathan Stroud.  Then we all headed back home.
Next up - the girls are going on a backpacking trip this week with the young women from church.

In other news, last week was canning week. We canned peaches, pears, tomatoes, and raspberry jam. We also dried a bunch of pears and plums, and we bought a new car to replace the one that had the truck land on it.

On top of all of this, our oldest daughter got her driver's license (EEK!) and has begun her road to independence. She's loving running her sister around, shopping and going to the library without me. She's also looking forward to driving herself to school. She also started to teach piano lessons and has 3x the students that I have (she also charges much less than me).
And, we just heard that she made it through the audition for the local youth symphony here in the Tri-Cities area. So excited for her. Life just got even more busy.

So, there you have it - the condensed synopsis of our summer!
We are looking forward to cool weather and lots of routine!