The Blue Angels

My 11-year-old has been telling me for years that he would love to go see the Blue Angels in person. "It's something I've wanted to do my entire life," he told me.

We've spent a lot of time watching videos of them on YouTube.

Well, they finally made it to a town near us, so we spent my birthday checking off an item from J's bucket list. The look on his face when they made their first Mach 1 pass was the best birthday present I could have received. The feeling in my chest as they roared by was a close second.

I've said before that I believe in hefty amounts of horsepower. Our day with the Blue Angels cranked that up a notch. Or twelve. My words fall painfully short to describe the feeling I had as they streaked across the billowy sky that day, but J now has my permission to join the Navy if he so chooses.

 

 

 

Mission Accomplished.

A Challenge!

Happy November! I recently came across this little photography challenge and thought it might be fun to give it a try. At the very least, I should have a blog post every day this month...

So here is my self-portrait for Day 1. It's gloomy and stormy today (as you'd expect November 1st to be here in the mountain tops). I actually took this picture about a week and a half ago, when I was on a cruise down in sunny Mexico! As we all know, I am a summer-lovin' girl, and this picture definitely represents that: no make-up, sunglasses, messy hair; and if you look close enough, you can see the straps of my swimsuit! Yes, I will take all the summer I can get.

A Day at the Lake

Yesterday some friends invited us out to Deer Creek. It's not within my abilities to turn down an offer like that!

Mt. Timpanogos rising above Deer Creek

(yes, there's still snow on it in July)

Jamison doing a dance to coax his friend into the water

The cutest twelve-year-old I know

I think they enjoyed themselves...

Ah... my happy place

The Streak is Over

Twenty three years ago, my great-grandmother died and we made the looooonnngg 7-hour drive from Casa Grande, Arizona to Escalante, UT for the funeral. After the service, a dinner was provided for our family at the church. I had some potato salad. I think it was left over from someone's Thanksgiving dinner, which would have been a week before the funeral. Within an hour of the dinner, everything on my inside wanted to be on my outside. The drive home was a joy ride.

Needless to say, I haven't had potato salad in 23 years.

Until today. Who knew that a back yard picnic for my son's cub scout pack meeting would be the place I would bravely try the summer staple? I liked it, and as for my stomach, so far so good.

Which just goes to show... don't be afraid to try new (or old) things.

Oh, That's Where I've Been

The end of school usually ushers in the care-free, stress-free, lazy days of summer.

Usually.

But first there was girls camp to plan and prep for, and then execute. I think it was a success.

Then there was a parade in which my daughter appeared and at which my mother-in-law fell and broke her hip. Then of course, there was emergency hip-replacement surgery, not to mention the subsequent rehab.

Next came WIFYR, a week-long writing conference that was easily the best writing conference I've ever attended.

We managed to squeeze in a Father's Day cook-out.

Finally, one of those lazy, care-free days showed up. We saw a movie, had lunch, and watched Jamison make an amazing catch at his baseball game.

Then there was six weeks' worth of neglect to make up for in chores. I discovered that I hoard buttons... not on purpose.

Then my dad came, which forced us into a few more of those lazy, care-free, let's go hiking and fishing and to a car show types of days.

Tomorrow? Who knows? But it's nearly the 4th of July and I've got to get to work on my tan!

Slip-Sliding Away

Do you ever feel like you're living on borrowed time? Or that whatever time you have is being pulled right out from under your nose? I'm not talking about the deep, philosophical, facing-my-own-mortality kind of fleeting, in case you're wondering.

But sometimes you just gotta put on your swimsuit without shaving your armpits, know what I mean? In1999 when my daughter was born, I walked away from a lucrative teaching career, vowing to never again return. I knew I would go back to work one day, but I had visions of working in a furniture store and using my paycheck and employee discount to buy pretty things on which to park my patootie.

Flash forward eleven years, and I am embarking on my third year of teaching kindergarten. That vow I took? You know, the one where I vowed never to set foot inside of a school as an employee? Today was one of those days when I was reminded why. Unfortunately, there are no furniture stores here in Midway, so there but for the grace of God go I.

And since returning to teaching, my summers have become sacred. I appreciate, enjoy, and dare I say it, relish the carefree lifestyle that summer offers to teachers. Do I sometimes leave dirty dishes in the sink at night? Yes. Do my kids and I stay up way too late watching Amazing Stories? Naturally. Do we plan to go swimming 10 minutes before we go swimming? Without a doubt.

I have the next few days of blissful summer left before school brings it all to a grinding halt on Monday. What will we do? Anything we want; because, after all, summer is being yanked out from under our noses... and sometimes there's just no time to shave.

Ahh...

Today was one of those perfect summer days. You know, the kind of care-free day that makes you wish summer would last just a little bit longer? I got up and went for a bike ride, which turned into a walk after my rear tire went flat; but I got to cross a river and walk amongst bright yellow sunflowers, so no complaints there. After I made it back home, my neighbor knocked on the door, very excited to show my kids the very fat and very orange caterpillar she had found in her yard. My kids were fascinated by its walrus-shaped face. My daughter and I then made apricot fruit leather. Remember that stuff? You'd peel it from the cellophane and mold it to the roof of your mouth... you know you did. When I was a kid, I ate it until I got sick. It's so much better than the food-colored corn syrup stuff that they sell now. Once the fruit leather was leathering up in the oven, we packed a picnic and headed for the park, where we met up with friends. We attempted to fly kites, emphasis on attempted. And then in one of those fabulous, spontaneous, impromptu moments, we swapped kids. Her son came home with me and my son; my daughter went home with her and her daughters.

Can I just say, I very well had the two cutest boys in the galaxy spend the afternoon at my house? They quoted Phineas and Ferb, sang me the Perry the Platypus song, played with Legos and the Wii. They swam and I read a book. They raced toy boats down the river in our back yard. The phrase of the day: "We have soooo much in common!" The phrase frozen in time also comes to mind, because there's nothing more darling than a 7-year-old with a fresh haircut and his friend singing the Perry the Platypus song in the back seat of a 2001 Chevy Tahoe.

After a dinner of grilled drumsticks and green beans, our two families met back up at our favorite ice cream shop. If I haven't mentioned this place before (Corner Sweet Treats) then I apologize. They have no less than a dozen homemade flavors on hand and you can get a giant, four-scoop, super sundae for $5.30, emphasis on giant. The scoops are the size of softballs! If you're ever in town, be sure to try the lemon custard with hot fudge; it's divine. So we hung out, we chatted, we laughed, and the kids raced each other up and down the sidewalk.

The nights here are already starting to cool off; a few renegade leaves are already turning yellow, and school starts exactly two weeks from today. But today? Today was a perfect summer day.

United

It's hard to let the first day of a new month pass by without some kind of blog post. So here goes.
Independence Day is this weekend. Isn't that great? I am sooo one of those Norman Rockwell-Americana-I-Love-Summer people. Watermelon, corn-on-the-cob, sparklers, and star-spangled ribbons in my hair... what's not to love?

But if you watch the news these days, it seems there's less and less to love. There are lots of issues out there that are dividing us. Common ground and common sense are in short supply. Everyone has an opinion, but there are no easy answers. There's a rift.

Allow me to list a few things that still unite us:

Kindness: today I let a guy in a Jeep merge infront of me as we entered the freeway. His face was as brown as the hills he'd just come from, but his teeth were as white as a choir boy's robe. How do I know? Because that's all I could see as he turned to smile and wave. Ya gotta love the thank-you wave.

Hope: there's a woman from the Salt Lake area who's been missing for many months now. Yet every now and then, she'll get a mention on the local news because friends and family members keep organizing search parties to find her. They have hope. That can only be good. It's contagious. The founding fathers had hope. Hope for a country where men could be free. Today we still have hope. We hope that we can leave the world a little better than we found it. We hope that our children will have it better than we do. And we have it pretty darn good right now. Let's remember that every once in a while.

Ingenuity: don't you just love it when someone has a good idea? Even if the idea never comes to fruition, isn't it fun to cheer them on as they chase their dream? Everyone lucky enough to live in America has the same opportunity to act on their ideas. Is the playing field level? No. But ya gotta love a good challenge. And if it weren't for ingenuity, we wouldn't have 500-horsepower muscle cars, ice cream cones, television, vaccines, paper clips, or scones. And who doesn't love a good scone, drowning in butter and honey?

So this weekend, as you're watching the fireworks, think about everyone else watching the fireworks in their communities, and remember that we are all united.