I told Gregg last night that August actually feels like it took a month to get through. I felt like June and July just flew by and all of a sudden they were over, but August took its time. And it was good. We did a LOT of fun things - camping, hiking, splashing in the water of multiple lakes, playing with cousins, reading, balloon festival, starting school, riding bikes - and now it feels like it should be September tomorrow. Which is good.
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| 8.1.19 (yep, you can say I got carried away with my holds - usually I have 20+ waiting for me, but they're mostly all picture books. This time they were all for me!) |
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| 8.2.19 (Friday Night Pizza and a Movie - we watched this gem . . . do you know what it is? I'll give you a hint: He's Some Terrific Radiant Humble Thingamajigama Pig!) |
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| 8.2.19 (While Gregg got the kids in bed, I walked to the store and bought ice cream, which we then turned into root beer floats and ate them on the couch while we watched Stranger Than Fiction for a little date night. So fun! I took this on the walk home because the light was lovely on the Seven Sisters.) |
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| 8.3.19 (back to school list for Cal - getting ready for a shopping trip next week!) |
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| 8.3.19 (part two of the shopping list - I'm not sure how I feel about all that candy requested!) |
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| 8.3.19 (continuing my series of these trees in all seasons - here's full summer) |
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| 8.3.19 (funny mail - should we make them send us a check for two cents?!) |
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| 8.4.19 (Sunday morning balloon floating by - a fun preview to what's coming later this month!) |
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| 8.4.19 (looking darling in her new sea turtle dress) |
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| 8.4.19 (oh good grief could they be cuter?) |
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| 8.4.19 (looking so old with a tie!) |
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| 8.5.19 (from our first ever campout in the tearanasaurus rex (moreabout that here) - we had some visitors wander through camp while we ate our hot dogs for dinner) |
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| 8.5.19 (Lots of visitors - including a big old sheepdog who just laid down at the end of our little road and let the sheep wander all around him/sniff him as they walked by.) |
bonus videos!
8.5.19
(when Cal saw the sheepdog she said, "it's just like Fly
and Babe!" (we recently read Babe together).)
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| 8.5.19 (I finished this by the fire - it was entertaining, sure, but I wouldn't call it the best book I've read this summer, which I was kind of expecting from the hype I had heard about it. Not bad, but just kind of over the top drama.) |
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| 8.6.19 (the goodies from this week's library stack) |
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| 8.7.19 (this one made us chuckle) |
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| 8.11.19 (finished this one while camping in Monte Cristo and I really enjoyed and could relate to what she said, especially the early chapters about the simplifying and shedding) |
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| 8.12.19 (another monday morning walk on the bike path by the reservoir with Charlie and his mom and brother) |
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| 8.12.19 (water level is dropping - this rope swing tree used to be totally under water - and the dead fish along the edge of the lake are additional proof) |
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| 8.12.19 (I spy yellow leaves!) |
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| 8.12.19 (another twinge of yellow popping up - every year I think it's so early, but I'm guessing it happens about mid-august every year anyway) |
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| 8.12.19 (story time with Ms. Dayna - Sam and Charlie = BFFs) |
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| 8.12.19 (I was in purge mode, wanting to start the school year with fresh walls and doors again, but I just had to snap a couple pics of cute drawings we've been enjoying lately. I couldn't remember if I ever took a pic/posted this one previously, so if I did, here's a repeat. Cal's alien creatures make me smile.) |
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| 8.12.19 (dinos drawn by sam - I can't remember if the red lines on the red one are teeth or blood?) |
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| 8.12.19 |
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| 8.14.19 (the tour of utah bike race came through our neighborhood today - we got to watch them go past this corner by Carlos and Harley's on their first loop around the reservoir) |
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| 8.14.19 (here they come! |
bonus video!
8.14.19
(then we watched them come past our corner as they
made their second lap around and headed up to
Powder Mountain for the finish)
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| 8.14.19 (Grace and Heather invited us to their combined "birthday bash at the splash" at the park near their house - Heather made chocolate raspberry cheesecake and chocolate T. Rex cake and they were both amazing!) |
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| 8.14.19 |
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| 8.14.19 (Cal made them both cards) |
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| 8.14.19 (and we gave them both some books) |
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| 8.15.19 (while I was hiking with Megan and Heather, my mom was watching all the kids with Ky - they had a grand time at Grandma's!) |
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| 8.15.19 (cousin pool day - everyone minus baby Maggie participated) |
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| 8.15.19 (all the three and unders napped while Cal and Ev had some grand quiet time including cookie making with grandma, art time, and story snuggles) |
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| 8.16.19 (some recent audiobook finishes that we loved) |
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| 8.16.19 (Callie was super into this one - one day while listening she said, "I love all the chocolately parts!" and Sam said, "I love the Charlie parts!" haha) |
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| 8.17.19 (I spent a good, quiet afternoon bingeing on this one - I liked it more than I expected. I think it's worth reading if you're an Anne fan) |
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| 8.17.19 (dinner out with these hooligans - we have Cohen and Melia staying with us for a few days and we went into Ogden to meet up with Heather and the boys, but had to get some grub first) |
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| 8.17.19 (Pepito's Cheeseteaks on 25th Street were AMAZING! Seriously good stuff. And the fries were great, too.) |
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| 8.17.19 (bowling buddies - Cohen was the champ in this group for the first game scoring 105!- I asked him how he got so good at bowling and he said, "I have no idea!" |
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| 8.19.19 (We've read the book Bee-Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park dozens of times, but have never made the stuff (recipe seen here from the back of the book) . . . till now! This was our back-to- school "feast" and everyone loved it!) |
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| 8.19.19 (more directions from the book) |
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| 8.19.19 (another version, this one in the August 2019 Friend Magazine, which finally pushed us into giving it a try. I used my friend Alli's Korean Beef recipe. Then we mixed and matched the topping ideas from the book and the magazine, ending up with carrots, cukes, sprouts (which I bought but forgot to put on the table), sauted mushrooms and sesame seeds (from the magazine version) plus the eggs and sauted spinach (from the book version). YUM!) |
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| 8.20.19 (first day of first grade and I can't handle the cuteness! (I'm so glad Gregg thought to get out the big camera for some "real" photos before we headed off to school)) |
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| 8.20.19 (she's ready!) |
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| 8.20.19 (her bike is ready, too!) |
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| 8.20.19 (we made it a family affair to drop her off) |
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| 8.20.19 (a few nerves showing up in this smile, but she did great and completely loves school and her teacher) |
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| 8.20.19 (Sam and I got busy making cookies for Cal's after school treat (and, honestly, because I needed some cookies, too!) He said at 9:30: "I thought Callie was still here!" And then at 11:30: "Mom, is school over yet?!" Poor boy, these days are going to be long!) |
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| 8.20.19 (a jug o' love) |
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| 8.20.19 (We went for a walk to the lake to check out the fish-stink factor (recently a ton of fish have died and washed up on shore all around the reservoir because of the heat and the dropped water levels which causes oxygen levels to drop, too, and it was STINKY for a few days. Verdict: plenty of dead fish still around, but they're past the stinky phase, plus these sunflowers just keep stunning me!) |
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| 8.20.19 (luckily for Sam, we had a couple friends come over to be baby sat for a couple hours, and that made the long, lonely day at home with mom more bearable!) |
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| 8.22.19 (finished this one. I found it interesting, entertaining, and informative.) |
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| 8.23.19 (read this one in a day! loved it! But I think I still like Garlic and Sapphires better.) |
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| 8.23.19 (started this one next (and finished it a couple days later) - it's a Canadian-Muslim retelling of Pride and Prejudice and it was fun and quick to read, but not necessarily amazing literature or anything like that) |
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| 8.25.19 (Stake Conference fishtail braid practice) |
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| 8.26.19 (whipped this Oatmeal Chocolate Cake (first time attempting it in a bundt and it was bundt perfection) up for a ward party this week - mmmm! it smelled amazing!) |
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| 8.26.19 (pre-bed projecting - this was an "all about me" poster collage Callie made to share with her class. She included some fingerprint art (the cupcake on the left), drawing (that penguin on the right is her first ever and it turned out adorable), photos of her and her family, a sticker from where she skis, her favorite book (The Book With No Pictures), she loves to cook (she drew a pot and some Football Meatloaf from her cookbook), she loves monkey bars (so she drew herself crossing a long set), and her favorite color is pink) |
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| 8.27.19 (cruisin' on the blacktop behind the school after we dropped Cal off - on the big red bike, no less!) |
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| 8.27.19 (he loves how fast he can go with less pedalling now) |
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| 8.27.19 (at our ward picnic at Camp Atoka, the kids tried out the big rope swing that is part of a little ropes course at the camp) |
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| 8.27.19 (the leftovers after the party - that's a lot of cake! (I had extra cream cheese frosting after making a Zucchini Spice Cake on Sunday (yes, lots of cake around here!), so I slathered it on the chocolate oatmeal number I made this time. It was yummy!) |
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| 8.27.19 (we read this tonight before bed and it accidentally turned out to be the perfect book for to segway into a little chat about this week's Come Follow Me lesson about spiritual gifts. Yes!) |
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| 8.28.19 (two more down, both tiny and green essay collections and both very fun) |
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| 8.28.19 (texted to Gregg on our anniversary: "current status" he was currently checking into his hotel in Avon when I sent it to him. Happy Anniversary to us!) |
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| 8.29.19 (the end of August triggers an undeniable craving for bacon and tomato sandwiches and marv 'n' joes in me, but I had no tomatoes, so I went seeking out a roadside stand while I was in Ogden and found a table in someone's yard on the way to Paul and Kim's in West Haven that was selling these beauts! Best $5.05 I've ever spent!) |
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| 8.29.19 (we had gone all summer without paying a visit to the "stream" across the street from our house (we lived there last summer so it was weird to never have gone this year). after last night's visit, Cal and Sam requested another chance to play (in swimsuits this time)) |
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| 8.29.19 (magical, I tell you!) |
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| 8.29.19 (it was freezing cold water, but that didn't stop these two from gallivanting about for 40 minutes!) |
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| 8.29.19 (another lovely evening to the west, that turned into quite the thunder and lightning storm that evening, and then again, when it woke me up at 11:30 with some of the loudest thunder and heaviest rain I can remember!) |
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| 8.30.19 (Sam and I had a little date/adventure to the dinosaur park in Ogden while we waited to pick up Gregg from the rental car place after his trip) |
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| 8.30.19 (we covered the whole park!) |
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| 8.30.19 (he likes his meat eaters, but doesn't want to get too close) |
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| 8.30.19 (it was fun having some one-on-one time with my boy (which we will be having lots of for the next couple of years, and I am here for it!)) |
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| 8.30.19 (itchy nose selfie) |
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| 8.30.19 |
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| 8.30.19 (gifts from my momma, delivered by my dad - I love harvest time!!) |
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| 8.30.19 (sandwich number four in 19 hours - I told you it was an undeniable craving!) |
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| 8.30.19 (it's friday, all! my new favorite pizza is this, a little bit a la Papa Murphy's: crust + ranch dressing from a bottle (I use kraft) + minced garlic or garlic powder sprinkled over top + mozza + chicken, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, onions (and mushrooms if you have them but I didn't today) + sprinkle of parm from a can - YUM!) |
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| 8.31.19 (sunrise Saturday) |
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| 8.31.19 (another one bites the dust - I've completed all but two books from that stack I posted on the first day this month! One I still need to start and the other I had to return because someone else had it on hold. Plus I added another mid-month. Plus we listened to a handful of audiobooks during the month. All told, I had a record reading month with 13 completed books in August!! Road trips plus cousin time plus school did wonders for my reading life.) |
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| 8.31.19 (our first ever family bike ride turned into a "bike hike" when we decided to ride to our trailhead and hike to the overlook.) |
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| 8.31.19 (it was SO fun! Super Saturday Status achieved!) |
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| 8.31.19 (we hear owls in our trees over our garage pretty much every morning and evening, but we rarely get a glimpse of them lately because the leaves are such good camouflage. tonight, though, we were roasting mallows for dessert and saw an owl fly into the tree over our front porch - it sat there and watched us by the fire for a good long while and it was so fun to see it again!) |
