Fourth of July

We had a great 4th of July weekend! It started out with some camping in Idaho with Jake and Miya on Friday night. It was very peaceful to be out in nature and enjoy the nice river, fishing, and tin foil dinners. After dinner it started raining a bit so we decided to go inside one of the tents and play games. After a couple of games of Uno, the peacefulness of being in nature quickly came to an end. It started lightning and thundering and the rain was coming down harder. We could tell that if we stayed, we would be in for a long night. As soon as the rain started coming through the tent roof, we were out of there! We grabbed everything but the tents and coolers and made a run for it to our cars. The second we stepped outside the tent, we were all drenched from head to foot! It was like walking through a waterfall, or as Miya would say: "The river was raining on us."

This is the view from our car as we are headed out of the storm. It was hard to get a good picture of the rain so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was very WET!

And so were we....

So we drove back to Josh's parents house to get dry and to spend the night. The next morning, we headed back to our campsite and were happy to see our tents still standing. We went on a hike through the "badlands" AKA Jake and Josh's hunting grounds. It started with us walking through what I like to call the toilet. I'll leave that explanation up to your imagination. It smelled a lot better once we got to the trail. The hike would have been lovely if it hadn't been so wet from the night before. The mosquitoes were all over the place! It would have been funny to watch us walking because we were constantly hitting ourselves and each other and waving our arms to keep the bugs off. It is safe to say that we didn't make it very far on the trail.

After our hike, we went back to Josh's parents house and hung out there for the rest of the day. We spent the evening at his sister's house with a nice 4th of July barbecue, bonding time as we played games, and fireworks as soon as it was dark enough.

It's been a long time since I've been exhausted at the end of the day from having so much fun. It was great!

Shelf Projects

I realized this week that my summer "break" is halfway over!! Although I have kept myself busy the past two months, I feel like I have not accomplished a single thing that I had planned to do this summer (besides school and work). The summer got off to a very slow start as I spent the first two weeks coughing up a lung or two. I got back into work the same time I started my first class of the summer. This was a 4 month course that was squeezed into 8 weeks. Gotta love summer classes! Last week, I started a new phase of my job where I spend my Tuesday and Thursday nights (until 10:30) on campus in class both as a student and a TA.

I know it probably sounds like I am complaining but I definitely am not! I am so glad I have something to do this summer because last summer was the exact opposite. I love my job(s) and I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't have homework. I have learned that I would rather be busy enough than bored out of my mind.

So.....here is why I'm writing this. Even though I have had a very productive summer with my job and school, I can't say the same for the projects at home that have piled up over the past year. Projects that had me saying, "I can work on that in the summer." Right....

This shelf is where a lot of these projects have been stashed. My goal from now until I head back to school in the fall is to have these shelves looking a lot better (i.e. the projects finished). So.... here's what everything is:


1) Brighton Quilt - This lovely quilt looks great in my head but right now it is just a jumble of T-shirts, bandanas and jeans. That is why it stays hidden behind my cutting mat. I'm having a hard time getting this from my head into actually becoming a quilt.


2) Getting the ink out of our clothes - Some time ago, somebody left a pen in their pants pocket and it EXPLODED in the washing machine! Not the nicest thing to have happen. Luckily it didn't get on all of the clothes but I'm still working on getting some of the ink out. I hear hairspray does the trick but maybe I haven't tried long enough. Does anyone have a better idea?


3) 72-Hour Kits - The milk jugs are supposed to become nice little 72-hour kits. I still need to buy the stuff to go inside them.


4) Hang decorations - "They" decided to move our wireless internet router to the exact place where I had my cute frame that says "Home is where your story begins" so I need to find another place for that. There is also a "Welcome" sign for the front door and a Family Home Evening Chart that I need to finish making.


5) Organize School Books - Last (for now), I need to get my schoolwork from last semester organized in new folders and in the closet.


I can't wait to get started!

Mouse in the House

Josh found this on our kitchen floor last night. It was already dead. Here are my questions.... How did this mouse get into my house and how did it die?? I'm glad we didn't have to chase him around and set up traps to catch him, but why would it choose my kitchen floor as the place to spend his last moments of life?

One theory is that because the lawns were sprayed yesterday, he got poisoned. That still leaves the question of how did the mouse get inside! If one mouse can get in that means another can get in, so even though this one is gone, what's to say that his friends won't find a way in too! I hope I never have to find out.