Smokey Smoke

Once again Oregon is on fire. The air quality this week was terrible ranging from 120 (today) to the worst day with levels over 300. The wind picked up last night and caused the Coleman Creek fire to reignite, no bueno. We’ve been cooped up most of the week as a result, if we go outside our eyes start to burn and allergic reactions immediately crop up. We have all those firefighters, pilots, emergency responders, and evacuees in our prayers. 

Phillip officially started band camp on Monday with his new freshman underlings. Bodhe and Phillip are co-captains of the front ensemble this year. Phillip is not so sure about being in a leadership role, I, however am excited for him. He will be awesome. Monday and Tuesday Phillip had leadership camp with their new band director Mr. Blakely. He is so far an exceptional communicator! He lets us know updates after each day about how camp went! Trey Bledsoe said that Blakely  is an amazing guy; he worked with him for two years while Mr B finished his doctorate at BSU. All the marching band participants started Wednesday with the camp running through next Friday. The marching band had to practice inside this entire week because the air quality was above 150. Phillip said by day 3 he was required to have the first movement memorized. Challenge those kids!!!! YES! 

Early Monday morning before band camp, Phillip and I drove back out to Murphy for round two of the DMV written test. Phillip was most excited that he passed this time! The wildfires just south of the Owyhees was quite apparent with the amount of smoke and ash in the air. Across the street from the county offices sat helicopters with fire fighting accoutrements. Hooray for Phillip! Now to pass the skills test. 

After I dropped Phillip off at camp it was time to drag out my sewing machine and attack the mound of alterations and clothing fixes piled up in the laundry room. It took most of Monday to work my way through the pile of clothes. While I worked on the clothes, Everett started working on his “Chester, the Chess Jester” costume. He is using the costume for Halloween and to attend the Renaissance Fair with Kyran who will be “Dexter, the Chess Bester.” We worked on the jester hat, it turned out pretty good. Later he used the MCO tunic pattern to make a white tunic. I helped him make a pointed collar to complete the sewing portion of his costume. Everett 3D printed a large chess piece that fit on a stick as another accessory. 

Tuesday, Evelyn and I went to see Nina. I think we are getting to the point where Evelyn is not excited about going to see Nina. We seem to talk about the same issues and get no resolution. I finished sorting through and cleaning 2007-2012 photos backed-up on the old NAS drive and move the cleaned files to our new Synology drive. The new drive is lightening fast, I can see previews in milliseconds which makes cleaning so much easier. It was easier for me to clean the photo folders by year, opening each folder over deleting duplicates from the synology reports. I’m plowing through photos quickly. 

I hosted a tea party for the ladies I minister to Wednesday afternoon. In the morning I made raspberry scones and white chocolate scones. I was worried the raspberry scones did not turn out because the dough turned very wet after adding the berries. The bottoms burned before the middles were baked through. I trimmed off the burnt bottoms because the rest of each scone was perfect. The girls all got hair cuts from the amazing Kymra. Evelyn helped me make the spread for cucumber sandwiches and assemble those. I made fresh lemonade for the “tea” part. Evelyn and Josie wanted in on the tea party action, they each invited 2-3 friends while I had my ladies over. They really wanted a room like Amelia had for her 16th birthday. It was cozy inside their little room! Lucy and her mom made rhubarb cake and banana bread. That was to die for. Pinkies UP! Right after the tea parties ended the girls romped off to hang out. The boys helped me clean up the mess because the YM were coming over to watch The Best Two Years movie for their activity. I worked on hand sewing fabric to cover some open lace on my dress for Jared’s wedding. We are going to look all snazzy with new ties for the boys and dresses for the girls.  

Thursday the girls helped me assemble patterns and cut fabric for two projects they really wanted me to sew. Evelyn wanted a dress out of some cactus knit fabric that I about donated from my fabric stash. She nabbed the fabric eliciting a promise from me that I would sew her a dress. I was obligated to get her a cute dress thrown together. Mrs Harp showed Josie an adorable stuffed animal bassinet, Josie wanted a bassinet for her crochet animals. It was fun to use my rusty sewing skills on projects other than hemming. Unfortunately, I was NOT in a great mood. My gut is all tied in knots thinking about going back to work on Monday. Boo hoo. 

Josie got to attend a Banana Ball game between the Party Animals and the Texas Tailgaters with her besties Lucy and Kara. She was so excited to go and experience that. She said the game was hilarious. There was even a person in a blue bodysuit rolling around the blue field! She came home fired up with lots of stories. 

We spent a fun hour at Midway park while Phillip took his DMV Skills test. Bruce, the tester, is a really good guy. After all the stories from Ruth and others horror stories about DMV testers I was ready for Phillip to not pass. Phillip is a very careful driver, at least so far. He did not want to drive like Carson, I think Carson’s driving scared him into wanting to drive carefully and cautiously. He was very nervous but did a really good job. Before his test Phillip and I spent 20 minutes reviewing parts of the car and general rules of the road. Hooray! Now I just need to make ONE more trek down to Murphy so he can get his license. I CANNOT wait for him to drive himself to school, marching band, Austin visits, and pick up kids. Everett is already on the docket for Driver’s Ed, I’m not letting that lapse again. The kids enjoyed playing at the play ground and on the splash pad. We celebrated with a McD breakfast action. 

It was past time to address the yard. We worked mostly as a family to get the yard squared away. There was a fair amount of weeding, raking, garbage collection, mowing, and trimming that needed to get done. The boys needed new shoes for school so that was our third big event on Saturday. Phillip is raving about his new Hoka shoes. That kid has triple wide feet. The Hobbits are jealous. Sometimes I hear Everett screaming upstairs…the reason? Phillip has grabbed Everett’s entire foot with his foot in an astonishing feat of wrapping toes around Everett’s foot. Everett also could type with his long toes. Phillip has hobbit feet, Everett has typewriter toes, not sure which one I would choose. We ended the day with Ms Gingerich. She came over for dinner. I served ham, cantaloupe, cheese, and bread hot out of the oven. Perfect for a hot day. We did a little water coloring and talked about all the things. 

Justin is often found in the evenings with his laptop and a fistful of radios outside. He made contact with some people down in Chile! The reach of his radios is quite incredible. It’s fun to watch Justin puttering around with all his tech devices. He recently got a Raspberry Pi to dork around with. 

One day this week Everett stumbled out of bed at “gasp” 1 pm. Evelyn said, “Look…it’s Everett the Pony of LOVE!” I spit out my mouthful of water, laughing my guts out. She said it’s actually Darrel, the pony of love from High School musical. So funny. 

Grandpa Lane had a health scare this week with his heart. Mom said his HR was down to 32-38 BPM early in the morning. He is now wearing a heart monitor to collect more data on his heart activity. Looks like he may need a pace maker or some other intervention once the doctors have more information. We were all praying mightily over the weekend.