August 2023

Our last days of summer were filled with a few more trips to the mountains. We succeeded this time in making it to Donut Falls and enjoyed the wild flowers along the way and a well earned slurpy after. A  last slip n slide day with friends, froyo after helping mama clean out her office, and one last swim day at grandma and grandpa's pool. Jefferson and Carter like doing swim races now and Carter is so funny and fast- keeping his head in the whole time and doing the funniest paddle, but despite looking funny he is super fast and has won the race quite a few times. The boys kept busy on the hottest days with crafts and being creative. Our last before school started activity was camping with all of our Jefferson family. Funny it was at the same spot Mary took the YW camping 6 years ago, this time thankfully no one got sick and there were no floods. We had fun with games, smores, a spontaneous after dinner play put on by the kids, archery, a ropes course, and hatchet throwing. The boys made some zebra puppets and surprised us with a puppet show where they had tickets, seat numbers, and an usher. And Jefferson started his first day of 3rd grade, and Carter his first day of preschool, all of which had to be celebrated with an afterschool treat- this year a little too cold for ice cream alone so thank goodness for fried cheese curds. We visited Grandma Great to play a game and celebrate her 93 birthday- she is so sharp with word games and has taught us so many words we use when we play scrabble. And on the last day of August we checked out our new splashpad by us- super chill. Our favorite Jeffersonism was when Carter and Jefferson were discussing the sculptor of Mount Rushmore and Carter asked how he died and Jefferson said "he died of oldness."  So now our new joke is "don't catch oldness this year." Sadly the second week of August Mary caught covid- which makes the first time for anyone in our family. Brad was such a great nurse, and the kids enjoyed some screen time finally this summer. A pattern seems to be developing though of always being sick for the beginning of school. Hoping to break the pattern next year.