Smoky June

It's been a long week of higher than usual temperatures, making it hard for the approximately 800 firefighters working to contain the Brianhead fires on the mountains east of Cedar City. The fire has been burning for over a week now, over 40,000 acres--the largest wildfire in the US right now.  (A dubious distinction). Everything smells like smoke outside.

Fire in the mountains. #brianhead

A post shared by Rosalyn Eves (@rosalyn.eves) on Jun 20, 2017 at 7:44pm PDT

Aside from high temperatures, we had fun this week. Lydia was in town for the ArtsFusion camp with Evelyn, so the cousins got to hang out in the mornings and go swimming 3 days this week at the pool behind Bubby's house. Oliver can swim pretty well with his flotation device, so I didn't even have to get in! (Though I was prepared to jump in if need be).

Andrew spent two days at the Cedar Mountain Science camp, and despite a hurt ankle, I think he had fun. He was especially proud of his team winning the shelter competition (the theme was survival).

Picked up this goofball from a summer science camp last night. Glad to have him back. #cedarmountainsciencecamp #cedarmountain #suummountaincenter #camp

A post shared by Rosalyn Eves (@rosalyn.eves) on Jun 23, 2017 at 8:50am PDT

Other highlights? I went to dinner with my writing group to celebrate one of my friend's birthday--we went to the Ninja, and apparently we go there often enough that one of the servers (same one from Oliver's birthday) not only knows me, but my friends Tasha and Helen as well. (Granted, some of that comes from our university affiliation too).

Friday evening we had dinner with Sarah and her two youngest kids at Bruno's, where my kids nearly got kicked out for misbehaving but calmed down considerably once they had food. (Hmm . . . )

Saturday morning they  had a cute program at the end of ArtsFusion, where the kids displayed the art they had made and sung their songs. Sarah had to leave right after, and we spent the afternoon cleaning the house and then hanging out at the library.

We had Trisha over for dinner today, because Robert was out of town--he flew to Dallas to ordain Matt to be a high priest, after Matt came back from a 2 week backpacking adventure with the young men to find that they wanted to make him bishop. Which they did today. I'm sure he will do an excellent job, but I do feel bad about the timing (he still had his travel beard when they called him, and their baby isn't quite 2 months old!).

Speaking of callings, rumor has it that Dan might finally get released from his calling as Cub Master (5 years in). We're grateful he had the chance to serve, but sometimes change is nice.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful week! If you have a few spare prayers, send them toward the firefighters in our area.

A birthday and a tournament

Coming back after being gone for just over a week  meant the first part of this week was spent getting back into  some kind of routine (which isn't, frankly, very interesting).

On Friday, Oliver turned five. This has been a bitter-sweet birthday for me, because as delightful as Oliver can be, I miss that baby face of his. (And as he's the last of my babies, it's harder to see him hit milestones that we won't hit again).

(I tried to get a good birthday picture. As you can tell, he wasn't making it easy. For some reason, he can't look at the camera.)

For his birthday, Oliver had his first-ever birthday party (okay, non-family party). We were trying to keep it fairly low-key, so we planned mostly water activities outside. We invited a bunch of little kids, figuring it was summer and not everyone would come. So of course, everyone came--including his cousin Maggie, who was in town unexpectedly that day.

The kids played pin the tail on the cat (somehow I got the idea that it would be easier to paint my own cat than do a simple line drawing).

They got to blow bubbles outside, and try a funny relay where they were supposed to grab a water balloon, run across the lawn to a chair, sit on their balloon and pop it, then run back to the next person in line. Except the water balloons were unexpectedly sturdy and most of the kids were too light to pop them with their weight alone, so Dan had to help most of them.

Then, we handed out cheap squirt guns to all the kids. That kept them occupied for a good 30 minutes (and would have been more except the party was drawing close to its end). Even the girls (esp. Evelyn) got into it. Unfortunately, Dan was the target of more than one kid--and one of the little boys got stung but wouldn't let anyone look at it except his mom, so we had to call her back. (As soon as the stinger was out, he was back to running around like it never happened).

When everyone was wet, we laid out some towels on the grass and handed out ice cream cake. The kids must have been hungry because they ate an impressive amount. After ice cream, we opened presents inside and then the parents (thankfully) started arriving. All in all, a successful birthday for Mr. Obi.

 (He asked for the cat, btw)

We had dinner that night at the Ninja, at Oliver's request. Sarah was in town with her girls, so it was a larger than usual group. Andrew tried (and I think liked?) the beef udon, and Oliver of course wanted miso soup and California rolls.

Evelyn managed to photobomb yet another presentation of the birthday dessert. (We have a great picture of her doing the same thing at my birthday last year).

Also--apparently we go to the Ninja often enough that our server recognizes our names. He told me he's signed up for my class this fall. :)

Saturday morning was the Tae Kwon Do tournament as part of the Utah Summer games. Andrew competed in the novice category--it was pretty interesting to watch. Mostly more advanced players come to the games, so a lot of the lower levels are mostly local kids (and they have a pretty wide range of ages competing--Andrew was in a category with two younger kids, one much younger).

Here's Andrew doing his form competition and a video of him sparring. He got second in sparring (out of four) and I was pleased for him, if only because it would have hurt his ego to lose to the two younger kids. He's got a lot to learn still, but he's slowly improving.

 Andrew with his teacher, Master Johnny Oh, and the rest of his class who were in the games. We really like Master Johnny, who's a class-act. He works with international students at the university, and the proceeds of the class he teaches go to the local crisis center. I know Andrew might progress faster at a regular martial arts studio, but we really like this class.

That afternoon, we took Evelyn, Lydia, and Oliver to see Cars 3. It was a cute movie (I liked the twist at the end), but the short before it was even better.

Yesterday also seemed to be the day that Oliver determined to prove that 5 was not, in fact, any better than 4: he dripped some of Andrew's ink from a marker set all over the coffee table and floor in the front room (luckily most of it washed off), I spent most of my time in the movie trying to wrangle him so he wouldn't stand up in his chair or kick the seat in front of him, and when we got to Bubby and Poppy's after the movie to pick up Andrew (who hadn't wanted to see it), Oliver knocked the door off the closet, where it crashed into the window and smashed a lovely ceramic planter.

To be fair, he has been better today, which is a good thing: we had the biggest primary today that we've had since I was called: 5 visitors in junior primary and 9 in senior primary (considering we only had 13 other kids in senior primary, the visitors nearly doubled the size).

Happy Father's Day to all our readers! Dan got to put together a Guardians of the Galaxy lego set with his kids (I'll admit, I bought it solely because it had baby Groot) and take a short nap on the couch before Oliver decided to wake him up.

California!

 Okay, maybe the heading was a *bit* of false advertising. We did go to California last week, but we have a little catching up to do first.

Memorial day, we went to Cedar Breaks. The viewpoint was beautiful, as always, but the hike we had hoped to do was covered in snow and closed. Even the hike we did do (a short walk between the visitor's center and the campsite) had parts that were covered in snow. The kids seemed to like it though.

The next weekend, we headed up to Provo. We went to the Provo rec center Friday afternoon and spent Saturday in SLC with Sarah and her kids. Evelyn and I went to see Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (updated a bit from the version my mom used to sing to us, but I still knew most of the songs).

Before we drove up, though, I had a job to do. There were thistles all over my mom's flower beds, so I spent a good hour and a half digging them up. They filled the garbage can! But I knew my mom would hate seeing her yard like that.

Oliver also got to open an early birthday present--a Tsum Tsum holder with Tsums. He said, "This is just exactly what I wanted!" Funny kid.

We got home late Saturday night and then I had an early meeting Sunday, taught sharing time, and then we packed up as soon as we got home and drove to California. We stayed at the Newport Beach Marriott villas, which were lovely and so close to Crystal Cove beach.

The first day was quite cold and cloudy, so we didn't get in the water. We walked down to Crystal Cove and admired the 30s era beach houses, then tried to see tide pools. (Saw plenty, but not with live creatures in them).

That afternoon I had a short stop to make at a nearby Barnes & Noble--my publicist told them we'd be in the area and I'd stop by to sign books. They even ordered extra copies, so if you know anyone in the Newport Beach area, there are lots of signed books there. It was fun to see the books on the shelves and on the Teen Bestselling books table (though I'm pretty sure that table is where publishers can pay to have books displayed, rather than any actual bestseller status). The only thing of note about the visit was how nervous I was--I love bookstores, everything had been prearranged, and yet I still felt my heart hammering when I went to talk to the clerk. I still don't feel like a "real" author.

When I got back, we took the kids swimming at the hotel pool--sixty degree temperatures notwithstanding! And we went to Trader Joe's to pick out dinner. (Conveniently for us, TJ's was the closest grocery store--we only went 4 out of the 5 days we were in town. The kids really like their yogurt).

 Tuesday, we had tickets on a whale watching expedition. It was still cool and cloudy (and Oliver insisted on climbing up and down the ladder between the upper and lower deck a million times). But we saw sea lions, dolphins, and even a fin whale!

 The sea lions on the way back into harbor were one of the favorites.

We went to Newport Beach near Balboa that afternoon. Still cool and cloudy, but that didn't deter the kids from going in the water (for that matter, Dan and I both tried the boogie boards too--it was cold enough that once you got sort of numb, it was actually warm when you got out of the water!)

We made the cardinal error of neglecting sunscreen because we didn't see any sun that day--as a result, we were all a bit sunburned that afternoon.

Wednesday we went to a Dodger's game. The kids seemed to like the overpriced food best of all. But after about the fourth inning, Oliver was done, so he and Evelyn and I went and hung out at the kids' play area. (We did see the three runs scored that game).

The game was unexpectedly interesting for me as the blogger who was doing my cover reveal posted the cover a little earlier than I expected and my phone was blowing up with notifications. (You can see the post here, though warning: the description is a little spoilery of book 1 if you haven't read it yet!)

After the game, we dragged the kids to the Natural History Museum, which Dan and I both wanted to see. It was pretty cool--4 T-rex skeletons (I had no idea how fast those things grew! A baby T-rex hatched at 6 lbs, and grew to over a ton in just a few years). Oliver picked up a plastic T-rex head that you put on your hand like a puppet (he named it Chompy) and liked it so much that for the rest of the trip he insisted that we go back to the museum to get another one--even when we were in St. George and it would have taken 6 hours to drive back.

 Thursday was our long-awaited beach day--the sun actually came out! And I got to have lunch with my friend Melanie, who recommended a great taco place near Huntington beach. (She's in Jeni's MFA program too).

 Oliver spent most of his time running too and from the beach.

 I found this handsome guy on the beach with a board and he followed us home. ;)

 Evelyn, riding in the waves.

 I made a (sort of) sandcastle that lasted all of 30 seconds before Godzilla--I mean, Oliver--stomped on it.

We were supposed to leave on Friday, but no one (except maybe Dan?) was ready for our vacation to end, so we found a cheap hotel room in Barstow and spent the day at Knott's Berry Farm. The older kids enjoyed new roller coasters, and Oliver and I tried all the rides in the kid section. My favorite ride was a "4D" ride--a mash of steampunk and Jules Verne type exploration of the deep, where we got to shoot mech creatures. (I think it was all the more fun because we had no idea what the ride was like when we got in line, only that it seemed to draw a lot of people and everyone could ride it)

Yesterday was a long day driving home in the increasing heat. But we made it. I'm not looking forward to tackling the laundry or the weeds this week, but it is nice to sleep in my own bed again.

(I'd go back tomorrow if I could though.)