Words, Words

Last week I got a text from my friend asking if I wanted to see a play with her. Her husband had gifted her the tickets for her birthday back in May and she was excited to use them. At first they tried to find a sitter so they could go together, but it was the weekend of youth conference for both our stake (their old stake) and their new stake, so there were no youth to be found. She decided to make a girls night of it. I said yes!

And then she discovered that she had the date wrong and it was actually for Saturday night when all the youth would be back in town. She opted to keep it a girls night.

My brain got a solid workout watching the existential comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It was well done and fun to see something from the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

Where Are the Lazy Days of Summer?

This has been our busiest summer, maybe ever. We don't have any big trips planned, we've only done a handful of things for our summer theme, and we aren't dong any major household projects.

Why is it so busy?

Normal stuff. Girls camp, high adventure, FSY, youth conference, library activities, the occasional park visit with friends, and weekly church youth night. Add in newer things like Cooper's cross country practices and Phoebe's harp lessons and it feels like we've been running at top speed. I spent most of Wednesday in my van, driving kids places and waiting for them to finish whatever I had driven them to.

Today I laid down for an hour of quiet time and I woke up two hours later, shocked that I had slept at all. That's how worn out I am from the summer so far.

I love summer. I'm not wishing it away. But, man, I am tired.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

About two months ago we had some friends over for a few hours to play. Topher and his friend Caleb spent much of that time in the backyard. We had just prepped the garden bed, but hadn't planted anything yet. Topher and Caleb found our stash of seeds and decided to plant some pumpkins. We found out after the fact, of course. They were very proud of themselves.

A week later we planted the rest of the garden. Topher was concerned that we were upsetting his seeds.

It turns out he had nothing to worry about. His pumpkin is coming along quite nicely.

Stringy

"Mom! Can I borrow your phone? The light is perfect and I have an idea!" -Sophie, right before her ukulele photoshoot.

What's Your Sign

Cooper and Phoebe went to FSY in New Jersey last week. We picked them up at 7:00 on Saturday morning, then headed over to visit a different university.

Princeton has some beautiful buildings and some pretty cool statues. We each took pictures in front of our Chinese Zodiac signs. 

And then we crossed back over into Pennsylvania where Washington crossed the Delaware River.

 It's a tiny bridge, and I didn't love that. But it's cool that we went.

In the Leafy Treetops

On Saturday night we had a big ward activity that I helped plan and run. There were several stations, one of which asked the members of the ward to write their name on a leaf and add the lead to our ward family tree. After the activity, somehow the extra leaves ended up among my party supplies. I decided to use them for singing time the next day.

The leaves on the left have song titles, the leaves on the right have instructions on how to sing the songs. I scattered the leaves on the ground at the front of the room and the kids got to pick which leaves we added to the tree that Bryan drew. I've done similar activities with them in the past, including making a thanksgiving tree. But either the kids didn't remember or they were nice enough not to point it out.

Sometimes the kids get carried away with the actions and forget to really sing. This time I brought a handful of blank leaves. I called them our bonus leaves. I told the kids that our primary pianist would listen to how they sang. If they sang the words clearly and used strong (but not yelling) voices, they could earn a bonus leaf for each song. That made all the difference! They didn't earn one on the first song, and that really pushed them to do their best for the songs that came after. I realized after I took the picture that they'd earned one more bonus leaf that I'd forgotten to add.

The bonus leaves are in the middle.

She's an Old Girl

How can you tell when your vehicle is getting older? The door handle comes off in your hand.

Don't worry, Sophie was able to put it back on.

Fancy Digits

What happens when the mom sleeps in and Sophie is unexpectedly and unintentionally in charge of Topher?

In related news, we appear to be out of nail polish remover.

Oh No! My Hat!

Topher and Sophie had fun at the library today. They attended an art class about the work of Jon Klassen, listened to a few of his stories, then tried their hand at imitating some of his art.

And then we stayed for another hour and a half, reading books, going on scavenger hunts, playing games, and collecting prizes.

We really love the library.

On a Roll

The number of emails I get each day is pretty ridiculous. I know I'm not the only one experiencing this. I try to skim the titles and read the important ones. Because I prioritize staying off my phone when I'm with my kids, I tend to look through big batches of emails in a few minutes, a couple times a day. That means that many of my emails are left unread. Usually they're the newsletter/spam/junk mail kind of emails. But every once in a while I miss something important.

Tonight I discovered a few of those important missed emails. I shared my frustration with Bryan and he suggested I take a little time to clean out my inbox. Except I had nearly 34,000 unread emails.

Yup, 34,000.

He kindly showed me a trick to batch delete emails, something he uses when his inbox gets out of control. Which is almost never, because he stays on top of digital clutter. (For what it's worth, most of my focus goes to physical clutter rather than digital clutter.) He suggested I spend ten minutes a day working on it until my unread count was zero. I knew that once I started this project I would want to finish it as quickly as possible.

And that is how I came to spend the last four hours deleting emails.

I'm currently down to 14,895, which I think is pretty decent progress.