Sunday July 26, 2015
Dear Cassidy -

1. Can you please translate "gminde abend?" You use those words every week and we can't translate them on Google so I'm a little confused!

2. Where did you get balloons that said, "I am a child of God?"

3. I LOVED your "9 month" list" you sent us!

That's so exciting that the Meckels came to church! I'm praying that they came again this week! And terribly sad about Michael. I'm sorry about him. It's hard when you'd like to see someone make the right choice and they don't!

I'm excited to hear about if you got to go to Buchenwald? And did you see that only your "pic2" pictures came through to me last week?

Well - here's how things were for us this week...

Monday was a pretty normal day. I had a dr. appointment to get a refill for my asthma inhaler. Hadlie had an orthodontist appointment. They sort of messed up on her first retainer and she's got one tooth that's been moving. So they made her like an invisiline retainer to move that one tooth back. She has to wear it for a month or so. We did area jobs and we got paid that day so that meant lots of grocery shopping to restock our house.

Tuesday I went to Colten's senior appointment with Mrs. Bond at the high school. She asked about what you were doing. Said to tell you hi. The appointment was good - mostly because Colten actually gave Mrs. Bond some answers about what he' planning on doing after high school. We've been trying to encourage him to make some decisions which is really hard for him. Maybe harder for him than it is for you. It's genetic I swear. So he told her he's planning on going on his mission in the summer next year...he wants to maybe do his generals at UVU and then transfer to the U. And he wants to do an internship this year. So that was good! He has no interest in going for the regent's because he'd have to take AP Pysch.

After is appointment the girls and I went down to the library area to visit the food places for Fiesta Days. We were some of the first customers. Ha! We ate tacos and a tornado potato! There were a few less booths there this year but still enough to find plenty to eat.

This week I instigated "learn how to cook a meal week." So each of the kids planned one dinner and I helped them make it. River was first on Tuesday night. The requirements were a protein, carb and vege. She made French dip sandwiches, mashed potatoes and canned green beans. She did a great job and is pretty funny. She was all nervous about touching the sliced roast beef because she thought it wasn't cooked and she announced after dinner that "stuff doesn't taste very good when you cook it yourself." Amen. She also made us chocolate chip cake!

Wednesday we had Brooke's kids here. She paid the girls again to watch her kids while she cleaned out the rest of her basement. The girls did pretty good taking charge. Hadlie had piano lessons and then that evening we met Brooke, Adam, Grammy & Papa down at Fiesta Days for dinner. Then we all went to the Rodeo! It was a super good one this year. It had rained for a minute earlier in the day and had cooled things down so it wasn't super hot. There was different stock and announcers this year and it was good! We tried to get a picture of Joe Butler, your favorite cowboy but we're not as good at it as you. He was here again though.

Thursday Hadlie and I did our work down at the horses then I took River to gymnastics then we went back to Fiesta Days to check out the shopping booths and get one more potato and corn on the cob. I've been trying to go through pictures for 2014 for the girls so they can do their own project life book for that year. I finally got them done and couldn't ever upload all 400 pictures to Persnickety correctly so we just took a disc into them. We stopped by and visited Grammy and Papa and Colten cooked us dinner. He did Tilapia scampi, brown rice and fresh green beans (can you tell we have differing opinions vs. canned/fresh green beans). It was all very yummy. Hadlie and River were watching Cupcake Wars and decided to make fancy cupcakes. That only lasted so long before there was a disagreement. Hadlie ended up finishing and I told River she could make something new on Friday. It wasn't nice night.

Friday we got up and went to our special Spanish Fork parade. We sat with the Jacksons as usual and Dad and Jim even came. We ended up bringing Kortney home with us and she stayed the day here. It was wonderful! Hadlie hasn't hung out with ANY friends since about the second week of school except for a movie night she did with Mary a few weeks ago. Hadlie was so happy and entertained the whole day - it was great! River made peanut butter cupcakes and I cleaned out the storage room. River decided a few weeks ago to pack up all her doll stuff from under the stairs and change that into a "chill out" space. So we got rid of lots of dress ups, baby stuff, etc. and organized/stored her doll things. Colten worked from 3-midnight for the 24th celebration down at the ball parks.

Yesterday Hadlie and I went to the horses and Dad came along. After that Hadlie and I mowed the lawn and Dad and Colten tried to work on Colten's bike to get it in working order. We're planning on going camping for one night this coming week and I thought it'd be nice to take some bikes. Well - that turned in to an all day project. Dad was not super happy. I tried my best to be helpful. I went and picked up a bike rack that we rented from BYU and worked on getting our food ready to go. Camping is a lot of work but I'm trying to have a better attitude this year than last because it did turn out to be very fun.

Today we have our last 11:00 church. Then we switch to 1:00. I highly dislike that time. Today we're also going to Grandma Bonnie's to have a goodbye dinner for Ben and Jace. Ben has to be in Virginia at SVU in about a week so their family is taking an RV and going cross country visiting spots along the way before they drop him off. Jace is headed to SUU I believe. Weird that we'll have you, Spencer, Ben & Jace gone!

We're nearing the end of our summer here. This is what we have left...camping tomorrow and Tuesday at Mirror Lake just a couple of hours away. Hike to timp caves, Colten will go to Vegas the first week of August, back to school shopping and then the ranch isn't until the very last week of summer!

Well - I hope you've had another good week and that not too many appointments fell through. Keep up the great emails! I love you!

Love - Mom