Prom, Dog Stroller, Summer Vacation, Walking Boot, Blackstone, Birthday, Fishing, Virtual Dance Recital

Summer is finally here, however, I must say that with 'homeschool' the last two months it feels like summer actually started two months ago--haha!  Here's my kids celebrating the fact that there is even less of a routine than the week before:

I did take a picture to show the official last day of school compared to the first day of school.  It is funny to see the difference between the first day and the last day of school.  Yes, for the last day of school the kids are all in their pajamas with barefeet, but that is truly what our homeschooling uniform looked like--haha!  We did make it through this crazy last few months of homeschool, though!  That's something to celebrate for sure!  We are hoping that the COVID 19 stuff will have calmed down and school will resume like normal in the fall.

Aaron's birthday and Father's Day are pretty close together so this year I decided to get one big gift instead of two smaller ones.  Aaron has been wanting a Blackstone Griddle for awhile now so that's what he got.  He has been so excited about it.  Even though he could barely hobble along with crutches he wanted to try cooking on it.  He had the boys help him put it together.  Then he seasoned it for a few hours.  

Then he cooked a bunch of hashbrowns and omelets for its maiden voyage.  It must have been good because there were NO leftovers!

The next day he tried cooking a huge batch of potato, sausage, green and red bell pepper and onion hash.  It was pretty tasty.  

A few days later we had some more breakfast for dinner.  Good thing it can cook a ton of bacon at one time because our kids mowed through it!

We were stuck home during Memorial Day since Aaron was still trying to recover from surgery.  However, he still wanted to have a BBQ to celebrate.  We invited G&G T over for hamburgers Sunday evening.  Aaron made 24 quarter pound hamburgers for everyone.  Hamburgers are the kids' favorite so when dinner was over there were only 4 hamburgers left.  We had 9 people for dinner and there were only 4 burgers leftover.  Josh ended up eating 7 burgers by himself before Aaron told him he was done eating.  Have I mentioned my kids eat so much food?!  Anyway, the kids loved them so much they all got up extra early the next day, Monday, so they could have one of the leftover burgers for breakfast.  What weirdos!  

Sophie can be weird sometimes.  She loves laying like this on any soft surface. My kids say she forgot how to dog when she does this:

Aaron had his 18 day post op visit yesterday for his ankle/foot.  Things were looking pretty good so he got to get his stitches out.  Wahoo!  He even got to the okay to ditch the knee scooter, too.  He can walk around with crutches or even with just his boot as long as he can handle it.  He was also really excited to be able to finally shower.  Taking a bath or doing a sponge bath just doesn't cut it.  I was glad he could shower again, too--haha!

His left ankle is still pretty swollen, but is feeling better.  After visiting with the doctor the medical assistant took Aaron's stitches out.  It's a good thing I double checked her work when we got home because she missed a few stitches. DOH!  Luckily, I was able to get them out without a problem.  Aaron gets to start physical therapy in a few days.  He has mixed feelings about that, though.  It will be nice to get more movement out of his ankle, but doing the exercises hurts.

In other happenings we are trying to help Sophie out. Matthew walks her so much and she just isn't a very energetic dog.  She is a very low energy dog that would prefer to lay around and sleep/snuggle all day.  We have limited Matthew to only walking 3 hours a day--yes you read that correctly we had to LIMIT Matthew's walks to only 3 HOURS a day. Anyway, Sophie was still hiding whenever she heard Matthew pick up her leash in preparation to go on a walk--poor dog!  We have looked into getting another bigger more energetic dog, but that is more expensive in food and bigger waste clean ups.  I prefer Sophie's tootsie roll size poops versus something much bigger.  Anyway, to try something different out before we end up getting another bigger dog, I saw a dog stroller.  I never knew they made such things, but they do!  I ordered one and as soon as it was delivered Matthew had it out of the box and assembled in seconds flat.  Sophie still doesn't know quite how to feel about being in the stroller, though.  We are trying to help her like it by putting handfuls of dog treats inside before we put her in it.  Hopefully she will start looking forward to her walks instead of hiding whenever she hears the leash get picked up.  Keeping my fingers crossed!!  All the kids have had a turn taking Sophie out in her stroller.  Here's Sarah and Sophie:

It was Aaron's birthday this past Sunday.  Whenever it is someones birthday they get to choose their favorite dinner to eat.  Aaron chose homemade meat lasagna and instead of a birthday cake he wanted a cheesecake instead.  We had G&G T over for our lasagna dinner that included fresh broccoli, garlic bread, and jello.  Then we had cheesecake for dessert.  It was pretty hard to fit 42 candles on the cheesecake, though--haha!

I needed to have the fire extinguisher on hand just in case--haha!

So. Much. Smoke!!!!

As with wine Aaron gets better with age!  He's a great example to me.  He is a great husband, father, engineer, chef, etc.  I am grateful he was born and that I have had the opportunity to know him for the past 20+ years.

This past week we have done a virtual scavenger hunt with the 12 year old class in young women.  Sarah and I had fun taking pictures and crossing off the list as we went along:

 This was our virtual scavenger hunt list:

Josh was sad that he missed out on his Jr. Prom because of the cancellation of school due to COVID-19.  However, a group of friends got together and decided to have a friend Prom instead.  They planned it out and held it last Saturday.  Here's Josh as he was leaving for the activity.  He took his date to a yearbook signing party.

He wasn't coming back to change into his suit so I took a picture of him carrying his suit out to his car before he left on his date.

Here's Josh and his cute date, Kilee:

Here's the group of friends enjoying their friend Prom:

They all had a great time.

Every time Noah sees G&G T he asks them when he can have a sleepover at their house.  They finally caved and set up a sleepover with him and Sarah over this past weekend.  Noah was so excited to go fishing with Grandpa T.  Noah rubbed it in Grandpa's face that he caught 8 fish while Grandpa only caught 1.

Sarah wasn't interested in going fishing so she just hung out with Grandma at home until they got back.  They had a fun time.

We got word that Matthew's summer camp at Camp K got cancelled for this year.  BOO!  His summer program is hopefully starting back up the beginning of July.  We are really looking forward to that!  We are trying to keep Matthew busy, but his interests are so limited.  He loves shredding papers, walking Sophie and occasionally watching animal and Veterinary shows--his favorite being Rocky Mountain Rescue.  However, those don't fill the majority of his time and, well, idle hands...... If he is bored he gets into mischief or starts teasing his siblings which makes everyone mad.  When Matthew gets mad he has a hard time controlling himself.  He was mad last week and went over and kicked Aaron in his ankle that just got surgery.  OUCH!!  Matthew does so much better when he is busy and occupied so we do try to keep him busy.  He does love vacuuming so we let him vacuum out the van and the car this past Saturday.  He LOVED it and he actually did a great job.  That chore might be added to his weekly repertoire--haha!  He also did beg to pick out ingredients at the store to cook dinner.  I helped him make sour cream chicken enchiladas.  They were pretty tasty.  I have taken everyone out to play some more Pickleball, but that only lasts so long.  Let's just say we are really looking forward to July and the starting up of his summer program!

My Clematis flowers are finally starting to bloom.  They are so pretty!

Sarah's dance recital got cancelled due to COVID-19.  Her teacher is making the best of that and once the threat level turned to yellow she started in person classes again.  While it was red she held Zoom class meetings, but it was nice to have in person classes again.  Since there couldn't be a recital she recorded all the dances in her backyard and is putting together everyones recorded dances in a movie platform to send out so everyone can have a virtual recital.  She did have a banner for photo ops in her front yard:

Here's my cute girl before one of her recorded dance classes:

After her second recorded dance class:

I am looking forward to the virtual dance recital!!

Speaking of Sarah she was pretty giddy this week since the library opened back up.  The poor girl has been reading and rereading a bunch of books and was eager to get something new.  We were able to pick her up 5 new books and once we got home I haven't seen her since.  She has holed up in her room to read her new books.  What a bookworm!

Cross Country has started up somewhat.  After much coaxing Daniel said he would try out cross country this year.  The official first day of Cross country team practice will be on Monday, but for this week all the newbies are supposed to run 20 miles.  The oldies are supposed to run 40 miles.  Hopefully Daniel will still want to participate after those 20 miles--haha!  During one of Josh's runs two weeks ago he ran into G&G T walking around Jensen Pond in Syracuse.  Another one of Josh's trail runs up Waterfall Canyon with some friends he ran into his cousins Kade and Nathan.

I had a bit of a scare last week. I ended up being referred to have a mammogram with an ultrasound.  Thankfully, after seeing a surgeon I don't need surgery, yet, but will watch and wait to see if anything happens in the future.  I got my mammogram at McKay Dee on the fourth floor.  After filling out all the paperwork I waited for my turn to get called back.  The fourth floor also has labor and deliver, post partum and the Newborn Intensive Care Unit.  That brought back so many memories of my week stay with preeclampsia and getting steroid shots and when Noah was born and stayed in the NICU for a month.  Seeing the NICU sign:

and this picture again outside of the NICU entrance after so many years still brought back all those crazy memories of 10 years ago.

Glad Noah is as healthy as he is after such a crazy birth.