AGH. It uploaded them backwards again. Oh well. We'll go through the month from beginning to end:
Pear season. We picked the pears earlier this year, while they were green and let them ripen in the dark cool basement section of the garage. Also we picked and froze all the peaches, and corn.
And oh YUCK! We had pantry moths. This is such a saga. I'm going to attempt to give a condensed version. We first noticed some moth bug things in March-ish. Just a month after we organized our pantry with some new baskets. It wasn't until mid-August that we realized there was an infestation in our pantry... that they were being BORN in our pantry. We had them EVERYWHERE. We noticed this on a Sunday and spent the rest of the day exploding the pantry stuff all over the kitchen, trying to keep it organized with sections of "this food has been gone through and is determined clean, this pile still needs to be combed for bugs, this pile is throw away, this pile is cleared of bugs but needs to be disinfected, this pile is cleared and disinfected and is waiting to go back in the pantry once its clean. The kids could feel the stress and frustration we felt and started poking sticks at us, fighting and making the situation much more miserable. We tried to beg a free meal off of family nearby without being a burden but that didn't work, so we figured out to just use frozen food for a meal. I'm just guessing that the bugs originated with the baskets and eventually contacted Amazon and the seller to ask for a refund and was successful! Yay for good customer service. It took about another 2 months before we didn't see another moth. We had pest control come and they couldn't really do anything, so we just were vigilant with keeping all food containers locked up air tight and cleaning out and wiping down stuff often.
Back to school Drive-in Movie tradition with Jared and Ashely and Tiff and Todd's family.
In anticipation of the Timpanogos Hike coming up, I wanted to do an 8 miler and try out my old hiking shoes and thick socks. Estefi and I met super early in the morning, like 5:30, to do the Grove Creek to Battle Creek falls trails. It was dark and so we had to use our phones as flashlights. We got off the trail quite a bit and had to backtrack a bit along the Shoreline trail. We were happy to find the actual trailhead for Grove Creek. It had beautiful wooded parts, cliff parts, meadow parts, and occasional water features. It was pretty steep and we accidentally got off trail when we followed a path towards a campsite. It looked like it would connect up with the trail on the other side so we continued on but eventually found ourselves in the middle of a deep grass meadow with the trail off in the distance. To not get too far behind our estimated finish time and add even more milage onto our total distance we decided not to backtrack through the campsite but just to book it through the grass...praying to not come across any snakes which we had been warned about. EEK!
My siblings gifted me a 2 hour massage for my birthday! It. Was. Life. Changing. The girl was so friendly and knowledgable and it felt so productive and helpful. I slept so good that night and on my next run I felt like I had so much energy. I think I might do this more often... its definitely something that fills my bucket.
My friend Ellie Gooch came over to make pepper jelly with me! Our garden is doing the best ever this year with more consistent watering and weeding. The little boys love to help me carry in the produce and pick raspberries.
Alec is building some really awesome creations with his motorized lego set we got him for his 1/2 birthday this past summer. Totally worth every penny. He's made a working pin ball machine, remote control boat, car, truck, straw dispenser, race car. All of it without any plans.
Steve and Barb came to visit one day! We had dinner with Ryan and Laura and families in the afternoon. We haven't all been together for such a long time. It was really really fun to see them and have the kids play. Ryan and Laura had to leave early but Steve and Barb stayed a little longer and Barb and I took the kids exploring off the hill (the first time I've been down there since a neighbor cut a bunch of trees down) It was super tangly and difficult to get down to the park... but we made it and were able to pick some blackberries!
Other Random August happenings: Kayla, Brittany and I met up in Draper area at Henry J. Wheeler farms to let the younger kids have some fun exploration before Bennett started Kindergarten. Freddy advanced to Orange Belt in Karate! We just committed to doing Karate for another 3 years and he was invited to attend the Black Belt Training class instead of Basic Training. We're proud of his hard work and I'm surprised but so pleased that he loves it and never complains about going.
First day of School!! Alec ran to catch the bus early in the morning for his first day as a Freshman at Provo High (but missed it... the bus driver was like 5 minutes early and didn't wait for anyone! ...he must have been nervous for his first day too). Charlie is in 7th grade at his new school: Dixon Middle School. Gwen is at a new school too: 6th grade at Freedom Prep's Middle school and Freddy continues the trend with a new school: 2nd grade at Westridge Elementary. 4 kids in 4 schools. Most of them get to and from school all by themselves. We only have to take a carpool of kids to Dixon one day a week. Its super nice!
We spent a lot of time during August working up at the Ridge getting the foundation in for our cabin platform and shed. Mom and dad watched the little boys for us so we could get good work time in. Chris made a spreadsheet and even wrote a program to help us figure out the cheapest combination of cement pillars, various thickness and sizes of beams given the EXPENSIVE wood prices (Thanks Covid). We settled on a design that was strong enough to allow us to build a roof on top eventually. We chose a site with Dad first and took out any dead trees that would be in our way. Then measured out the dimensions and started digging holes. For our anniversary we, last minute, figured out a way to have the kids sleep over at cousins house for 1 night. Things didn't work out for Theo and Alec like we thought and I ended up hanging out/watching them most of the day up at the Ridge while Chris worked on the tractor. We finally were able to hand them off just around dinner time and came home late to sleep in our bed. Then slept in a little and I had a 2 hour training meeting and then we went out to lunch before getting the kids. We celebrated as a family with some chocolate cake that night.
When we got home from our MOSTER ROAD TRIP, we had lots of garden produce to pick. Grandma Dixie was kind enough to come water it extra once or twice on the hottest days. She and grandpa also hand delivered Theo's birthday present: some epic bubble guns!
Our first experience growing corn and it was a huge success! We had two different 'corn parties' with extended family where the kids got to pick their corn off the stalk, husk it and then eat it with dinner. Super fun.
