250th

 We changed things up this year, and I invited our family to go to the Kish's lakehouse over the weekend of the 4th. Well, I didn't invite us to stay with them, just that we could be there and ride their boat with them! Victoria goes most years, when she's in Michigan, with them anyway, and with her serving her mission here now, I figured we should all go together. I think it's technically the way service missionaries do vacations, with their families. I also told Karyn we'd stay in our camper at the campsite on the same lake, so they didn't have to actually host us the whole time. We planned our menu together, and pretty much ate all our meals together. We just didn't have to infiltrate their house the entire night. 

Here's a worn sign of our campsite from the lakeside. Despite the sign, it was a nice campsite. 

I actually liked the showers with the open top. 

When we arrived on Friday, it was mostly fun on the lake with the kids hanging out with Sammie and Susie and their neighbors who also brought friends and cousins. They played a game in which the kids pushed each other off the floating dock, over and over. Erik had a new arm cover for his cast that was bigger since his other one was too small. This one was a little too big, though, and his cast was a little damp. Besides playing Ukre, the Michigan card game, and prepping food with Karyn, I spent the evening blowing the hair dryer into Erik's cast. It seemed to have worked since it was dry the next day, and I haven't smelled any foul odors coming from it, so I guess that's good. 

This was taken from inside the sunroom while we were playing cards. You can slightly see Erik's big cast on his left arm. 

We rode the golf cart to say hi to Karyn's aunt and uncle.

We got to be goofy adults for a bit. 

The kids literally played til the sun went down.

Kade wasn't able to come up til Saturday, and he brought Erik's smaller water cover. Erik wore both the next day and decided that he shouldn't play so rough in the water, nor wakeboard. He rode the boat with us a ton and watched his siblings wakeboard, all of whom are getting really good at it. He got to ride on the tube, too, so that was good. On the morning of the 4th, the adults, including Victoria and Susie, went to breakfast.

They have really good biscuits and gravy, according to everyone. I got an omelette, which was also excellent and something I actually like. 

Victoria

Austin prepping for a trick.

Kade, chilling. 

Karyn and I in the water. 

Erik playing frisbee extremely well with one hand. You can see his big blue water cover pretty well in this pic. 

Kade

There was a parade of boats on the evening of the 4th. It was so fun! I loved having a parade in the evening. The one where we live is early for a summer morning, and my kids never want to go then. The fireworks show was not great, but it was fine. We saw a few the night before, and the big fireworks show here in Canton on the 9th.

Hamilton-inspired theme. They were dressed like the characters and had the music blaring. 

Hot dog theme and so hilarious! They even had an actual wiener dog aboard!

Victoria and Susie were greeting everyone from our dock. 

There were many other boats- some playing music, some just waving, but all had some kind of patriotic representation on their boat. 

The few fireworks on the third. 

I didn't take any on the 4th because they were on the other side and harder to see. 

Happy 4th!

On Sunday, we went to the branch for church. It was so coincidental that we saw our old bishop and his wife from Andrews Air Force Base, 23 years ago, in the branch. Bishop Lee came over to hug Jason and me right in the middle of the announcements! After sacrament meeting, on my way to talk to them, an old friend from the Plymouth Ward came to say hi. She also attends that branch- another coincidence! And to top it all off, there's a kid who just came back from BYU cross country camp and is going into his senior year as a runner, so Austin talked to him, and then a man came up and told us he knows a family in our ward now because he was their bishop in a different state recently. Such a small world!

When we returned from sacrament meeting, we sat down to have lunch with the Kishs, and Karyn got a call that her mom had a stroke. Her mom was two doors down at her brother's lakehouse. Karyn and Joe left right away and ended up following the ambulance to the hospital for them to reduce the clot with medication and then to another for them to perform surgery on her. The surgery took a total of 20 minutes to complete. So the rest of Sunday was worrying and waiting, and us supporting Sammie and Susie. Everything turned out much better than it could have, and Susan is in rehab, doing better than she was before her stroke. That Sunday evening, the kids ended up swimming across the lake for fun and had fun playing games before we left Monday morning. The miracle of Susan's stroke was that she normally lives by herself, and she happened to be surrounded by family, just two doors down from her daughter, where she was found and helped immediately. She'll be getting out of rehab soon and then doing outpatient PT while she stays at Karyn's house in Canton.

Later on, when we knew things were under control, Jason and I went on the paddleboat.

The kids, pre-swim across the lake with Victoria and Susie in the boat for assistance. 

Post-swim. Victoria and Susie swam back, and someone else rode the support boat.

The gang after the swim. Erik was in the support boat both ways, and Austin swam both ways. 

July 9th Canton fireworks. 

It started to rain, but that didn't slow us down!

A lot of other people left, but we got creative. 

Someone else who didn't leave got this pic of us and texted it to Victoria. She was so sweet!

Meanwhile, when we returned on Monday, we completed our 4th of July weekend with a viewing of Young Washington, upon Jason's request. We thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for the sequel we hear is in the works. 

Happy 250th, America!

Trek Weekend

 I never got the chance to go on Trek. I don't recall the opportunity to go when I was a youth; I don't think our Stake did it. Four years ago, Victoria and Kade went for the first time. That was when I was in charge of Girl's Camp. This time, Jason is the Stake Young Men's president and was involved in the planning process. It was also the time that Erik and Austin would be able to go. 

As it got closer, I noticed they were still looking for a cook for Trek, so I volunteered to help with that. I figured this would be a good opportunity to go. I always felt envious of the people going on Trek. It sounds so fun!  By that time, Victoria had been asked to attend as well (I figured they'd ask the service missionary), and she would be the photographer. 

Luckily, I wasn't in charge of the cooking, only on the cooking team, which was just perfect! I helped "plan" the menu (really, the lead cook had planned it, I just agreed and gave a couple of suggestions). The only prep work I did was gather things from our ward building, which is also the Stake center, to use in the unstocked kitchen at camp. I didn't have to shop for any food since I was assigned the job of picking up the 38 pizzas for lunch on the first day. 

For dinner that night, we served a taco bar, with cobbler and ice cream for dessert. Breakfast both mornings consisted of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage links, yogurt, granola, bananas, milk, and juice. We bought everything premade, and we just had to defrost and heat, which did take some time for 80+ people. Lunch on the second day was a hot dog bar with salad, dinner was a potato bar with all the fixings, and brownies with ice cream for dessert. The last day's lunch was sandwiches with fruit and chips. Obviously, the food wasn't pioneer food, but we wanted the kids to enjoy the food. Our lead cook's viewpoint was that if the food isn't good, then no one has a good time. And I fully agree with her! We had vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy-free options. Most of the work involved dicing the tomatoes for the taco bar and then warming up, putting out, and cleaning up. It was pretty easy and so fun to observe the Trek happenings in first person, even if I didn't get to do the hikes with them. When I had free time, I walked around to see where their hikes were. I also enjoyed watching some of their games and the square dance evening, in which I was able to participate a bit.

38 pizzas!

Dicing tomatoes

River crossing

Tuff!

Erik and some friends.

I loved Erik's group's name!

Erik's team pulling.

Austin's team in a bind.

Hair washing time!

Victoria let some girls do her hair. 

We boiled water and filled a cooler with it while the potatoes were baking. Then we dumped the water out and put the baked potatoes in. They stayed piping hot!

Huge moth

Cooperative games

All the kids seemed to have had a great time. Victoria had great opportunities with the youth and took excellent pictures! Neither Erik nor I got poison ivy, a big worry of mine now. In fact, the only problem occurred literally 5 minutes before we left. Erik missed the football, but not after it connected with his pinkie. He went home with another family, and they got him ice at McDonald's. We were exhausted when we got home (we didn't sleep well at Trek), and Jason had a really bad cough. So we unpacked some things, ate dinner, and went to bed. Erik woke with major ear pain in both ears, and Kade wasn't feeling well, so they both stayed home from church on Father's Day. Jason wore a mask, even though he was with a lot of people at Trek; we were outside most of the time. 

We celebrated Jason with a breakfast of egg sandwiches on homemade sourdough I had made just before Trek and steak fajitas (my first time making steak, ever!) for dinner. Victoria helped me with the steak, which I needed. They turned out pretty good. The kids gave Jason a couple of gifts, and we had a very low-key day. Kade ended up having to go to work during dinner, but he spent some time with Jason in the morning. 

Sourdough bread with egg, turkey bacon, and cheese melted on it. 

Erik got him socks from when he was in Canada. 

Victoria got him a belt from when she was in Mexico. 

I allowed Austin to give him the candy I bought him. (Kade was working by this time.)

We saw the baby ducks in our front yard on Mother's Day, and Benito, our pet bunny that lives there now, graced us with his presence on Father's Day!

The cats love to watch Benito!!!

I made an appointment for Erik to get an X-ray at the Urgent Care on Monday morning, where they diagnosed him with swimmer's ear in both ears (funny, he wasn't swimming at Trek, but he did get dunked one time in the river they crossed). They also declared his pinkie broken. Guess which hurt him more- the ear pain. The break was near a growth plate, and he finally got his cast on Friday. 

Unfortunately, there's a major heat wave coming up this week. This cast is going to be dreadful.  

So Trek was fantastic, Father's Day was okay, and the week after Trek was uneventful. I guess that's the way it goes.