July 2021

Chris took some of the kids to see the balloons take off. We love this 4th of July tradition.  We also had our traditional flag cake.  We watched the stadium of Fire fireworks from our neighbors lot on Saturday and got out some sparklers on Sunday after eating dinner with the Archibald's.  

We love our garden produce! Some of our zucchini grew so much while we were at the Ridge.  Max and Theo love to follow me out to the garden and bring the produce back in. I'm trying to teach Theo to only pick the raspberries and tomatoes that are red. Theo will say to himself, like a mantra, "Ohnee da WED ones" (Only the RED ones.) as he wanders around the plants.  We did our first canning of the year and made low sugar Apricot-Pineapple Jam.

Charlie and I are training to hike Timp later in the summer with Jared, and Estefi and Jordan. All of Jared's family joined us for this 6 miler just in the mountains behind their house. I love hiking!

We've really struggled with showing kindness and speaking kindly. Our house feels like theres contention abounding.  Chris led a cool FHE trying to teach the kids about how cooperating brings blessings with challenging the kids to eat a big Ice Cream Sundae without bending their elbows. Alec figured it out right away and knew the secret would be to feed the other people.  It was a great moment. I wish I could say it made a difference in how the kids treated each other, but I guess baby steps. 

My sister's oldest daughter, Mary turned 18! Mary has had a really really rough year with needing to drop out of highschool because of her kidney disease, going to a super strict ultra vegan diet, then a scary seizure resulting in a long hospital stay, progressing far enough in the disease to require dialysis, then undergoing transplant surgery to receive a kidney from her mom thereby needing to avoid large groups due to her immunosuppressants. Her friends were all graduating highschool and moving on and turning 18 needed a special treat! Tiff, Sarah and I put on this fancy bohemian style All-Vegan FEAST out in the woods for her 2 close friends, grandma and aunts. We also reserved two yurts to stay the night in.  I made bread and fancy vegan butters. It was so delicious.  It was a lot of work but came together so nicely and was such an enjoyable evening. Mary is such a sweet, mature young woman! 

The Archibald boys have a boys backpacking trip! They went up near Mirror Lake in the Uintas and then hiked for about 7 miles to a lake and camped.  The next day they hiked back almost all the way and camped next to Wall lake.  There was a good wind, which kept the mosquitos away, and almost everyone went swimming in the frigid water.  The next morning they packed up and hiked the mile or so back out and got home before lunch.  They had a fun time...but Alec says he's never doing that again. haha.

Gwendolyn turns 11! She was supposed to go to a bouncy place with cousins on Friday but wasn't feeling well so we just had Mia Salmon over for a low-key sleepover and went to a bouncy place a week or so later. I made a quick breakfast in bed before going to the stake center for the Stake Baptisms. My mom came over to babysit the kids and pamper Gwen. Then Gwen and I went out to lunch at Roll up, a creperie.  We opened presents and had cake the next day: an Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich cake.  We love our drama-loving, singing, talking, smart, hard-working Gwen!

Gwen wanted crutches for her birthday last year but we didn't get them for her.  So when she put her name on these crutches at Grandma Claudia's after her funeral we thought if no one else was interested in them, we could maybe give them to Gwen for her birthday this year. Dreams do come true! She was so excited for them and plays around with them all the time. 

Chris qualified for the State Am again! He got TWO practice rounds, one at Thanksgiving Point and another at Alpine Country Club.  I was able to watch half of his round on the first day of competition at Thanksgiving Point.  His goal this year was not break 80 and he did it! He did really well on the first day, shooting 73 and on the second day was feeling off and shot 78.  He was 3 shots away from being in a play off to get into the match play. He finished in the top half and was happy to have the chance to participate! 

We've got our own little project going on up at the Ridge! We're building a platform and shed for a big canvas tent! We want to eventually build a roof over the tent so we can leave it up year round so we need to make the platform really strong with footings deep enough to break the freeze line.  So to start we need to take out the dead trees that could fall on it.  Chris and Dad did all the hard work, I just took care of the kids and went for rides on the ATV with Alec. 

We made a yummy gluten free apricot almond tart for dinner with Jared and Ashley's family with apricots from our tree. So fun. 

Summer fun...scootering in the rain. 

About a week before our planned Summer Road Trip, our sliding door started hitching funny and eventually stopped working all together. Thoughts of a long road trip with us all crowded in there and only 1 working door was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes. (remember me saying we're in a contentious stage as a family right now??)  I called a lot of places to try and get it fixed but no one wanted to touch a sliding car door with a 10 foot pole! Mechanics told me it was a problem for Body Shops... Body Shops said it was best at the dealership, the dealership was booked a month out! So Chris diagnosed the issue as best he could, watched some youtube videos, ordered a part, and fixed it himself!! Sweating in the hot garage. I love this guy right here. 

My birthday! I turned 37. All I wanted for my birthday this year was some quiet time alone. I've been working really hard this summer to put out fights, and keep kid engaged in non-screen activities, and supporting Chris with work, work at the Ridge and a lot of golf. I needed some peace and quiet. I went up to the Ridge and stayed in my parents trailer by myself for just over 24 hours.  I brought books to read, my laptop to catch up on blog posts and my Emotional Resilience FHE plans.  I brought healthy food and enjoyed making food for only me, and eating it while it was hot! I had one little scare when I locked myself out of the trailer, after giving myself insulin for breakfast but before I could eat it.  I could still access the fridge/freezer and so knew I could eat a popsicle if it came down to it (but I didn't want to eat a popsicle for breakfast!)  But I found a ladder, and popped out a screen and climbed in and fried my egg and had my breakfast.  Whew! The morning went by all too fast but I loved being alone and productive.  I ran out of insulin and had plans to meet Chris for dinner but we ended up just going home and had cake with kids (after a site change). 

I can't go a month without some funny pictures of Max sleeping.  I love the one of him on the potty. Apparently, I took too long to come wipe him. 

 

Ridge Week 2021

 Unfortunately the well digger wasn't able to come get the well dug before Ridge Week, like we originally thought, so instead of being at the Ridge the whole week, getting all those projects we dreamed up in that epic 5 hour sibling drive from Boise, we shortened the week and did things away from the Ridge to save on water usage. Monday we went to Lagoon.  I've never been before and Chris has only been once. We got up there before it opened to get a good place in line.  The kids had lots of fun. It was a small enough park, (compared to Disneyland) and we had enough adults and big kids to split off by ages. Charlie and Alec had so much fun running from big ride to big ride with their cousins. Gwen hung out with the middle group of girls with Jared and Ashely and also enjoyed lots of fun rides. Freddy stayed with Chris and I and the younger boys for most of the time. Just Max and Theo needed two adults since Theo wasn't old enough for many of the rides that Max could go on IF he had a bigger person with him. We met up for lunch in the middle of the day then headed over to the water park. Then changed back into clothes and did more rides, buying dinner  and staying until the park closed. The kids had a lot of fun and we discovered (although we already sort of knew) that Max has no fear, but we really discovered that Theo HATES rides. Except the bumper Cars. He (eventually) loved them.  Chris and I found the park crowded, expensive and it was a little sad to not get to go on any interesting rides ourselves.  Dinner was especially hard. Waiting in line for almost AN HOUR  by myself with all the hungry fussy kids to get BLAH food with poor service from poor teenagers with poor training. UGH.  But we went! The kids will remember it. 

Then camping at the Ridge for 3 nights. We had left our tent up from Memorial Day. It was nice to not have to set everything up again! But.... we did have some water in our tent from flooding and our tarp canopy broke apart a little in the wind and by the end of the week our zipper on our tent door completely broke. We pinned a sheet over the door to keep out bugs.  (I CAN'T WAIT FOR OUR CANVAS TENT TO COME!!) The kids enjoyed a lot of cousin game time and talk time. We set up a projector and screen to watch a movie in our newly screened-in pavilion. We got the zip line working, we made the sandbox, and built the playground of out of the free leftover boxes our neighbor scavenged out of a Costco dumpster and then gave to us.  

The biggest thing about Ridge Week for Gwen was the play we put on. For the Drama Club in June, Gwen and I picked a play from online, read it with interested Betteridge cousins over zoom, assigned parts and held play practice via zoom once a week. Then during Ridge Week, we practiced multiple times a day and then performed it the morning we broke camp.  The kids LOVED this. (it was kind of a lot of work for me as the only adult director, but it was worth it to see how much fun the kids had with it) We had really good participation from all ages...we even had a sound crew! 

A big memory for me, personally, was that during one of those play practices, alot of the other adults ate dessert without us and Jordan announced his latest idea of NOT doing canvas tents but going back to mini cabins... but just keeping them the same size as a shed (no porch or big loft) and just not getting permits for them. Apparently everyone there got onboard and by the time I found out, I was grumpy and tired from trying to get Max and Theo to sleep and I felt abandoned and stupid for being the only one to buy a Canvas Tent. I feel less inclined to lead out in Ridge stuff and feel less excited about the tent but oh well. Kind of a sour end to a great (although EXHAUSTING week) but I know my family loves me and it'll all work out just fine.