Busy Week!

So much has happened this past week that I fell behind so this will be a LONG post! We'll start with last Wednesday the 17th where Garrett had his friend Austin over again and they decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies and sell them down the street by the entrance to our subdivision. They did pretty well making about $17.50 by selling each cookie at 50 cents each. The very next day they decided to do lemonade for 50 cents a cup. They made nearly $50 because a couple of people were generous and gave them $10 donations. It's still amazing to think they got that much money from a lemonade stand! The day they sold cookies Jack had made his own stand to sell some of his toys. As soon as he made enough money to buy the Lego Harry Potter video game he was saving for he was done. He had set up on a different corner a little closer to home and had shade. Two of his friends were the ones that bought from him.

Curtis and I had been debating for over the past month what to do for our anniversary this year. We wanted to do some new and fun things or maybe even fly some where for the weekend. He took Friday and Monday off and we ultimately decided to stay around here and do stuff in the valley. Curtis mentioned that he wanted to do golfing so I said okay I'll try it even though I wasn't too excited. A couple weeks ago I went ahead and bought a Groupon deal to go do a glass blowing class and scheduled it for Monday, which was our actual anniversary. We were going to do the golfing on Friday but then Thursday evening Curtis came up with the idea to rent a jet ski for the day. It sounded fun to me so of course I said yes. We were able to make an online reservation and went in early the next morning to pick it up. While we were driving home with the jet ski we decided to go give the kids a quick ride at Lake Lowell before we went to do our own thing. Curtis and I talked about going up to Lucky Peak or Black Canyon. We called the kids and told them to get ready to go so they would be ready by the time we got back to the house. Nikki had to work at 11:00 that morning so she got to have the first ride. I drove the van over separately so that I could get her back home quickly after her ride. Anyway, the two little girls were happy to swim in the lake while the boys got their turn on the jet ski. Neither of them wanted to do it at first but we talked them into it and they did enjoy it. Alice mostly did it because I was the one to ride behind her while dad drove.  I was just in my regular clothes at the time because we were in a hurry to go give the kids a ride that we decided to get in our swim clothes later.

After giving all the kids a ride we went back home to eat lunch and get ourselves ready. Charlotte was also getting picked up at 1:00 to go play with a friend for a few hours, which made babysitting a little easier for the boys. I was so happy that I still had my wet suit because it came in handy for today.  It helped protect my legs from rubbing on the jet ski but also didn't have to put on so much sun screen. However, I did manage to miss a few small spots that got burned. The very edge of my hair line on my forehead, a small strip on both my legs because my wet suit had moved (although I thought I had lifted up my suit pant legs far enough to prevent that when I was putting sunscreen on), and then the tops of my hands! I think this may be the first time ever burning the tops of my hands and it's because I washed my hands after putting sunscreen on. I didn't worry about applying it on top because I don't normally need to do that. So for this reason I will definitely put sunscreen there the next time we do jet skiing but also I think I will wear gloves anyway because I did most of the driving when Curtis and I went together since he drove all the kids and my hands were pretty sore. Also, when we ate lunch we decided it would be a waste of time to drive out somewhere else when Lake Lowell was right down the road from our house, so we just went back to Lake Lowell.

 It took a little while for me to get used to the feel of the jet ski but after that I started getting braver with trying new things like swerving in an S form and then eventually circles. Curtis took a turn and scared me with how he does cookies but we never tipped over. There was only once that he fell off when I was swerving and he was leaning the opposite way of the machine, when usually he was leaning with the machine. So he kind of did it to himself. We spent about 2 1/2 hours on the lake by ourselves, sometimes stopping to watch birds of prey hunt and sometimes just to take a dip in the lake. When we were done and it was around 4:00 or so we went home where I changed my clothes and we went down the street to Idaho Pizza for dinner. At the time we ordered we were the only people staying to dine in. Later a few more people came including Kim Keller and his family. He's in our stake presidency. Even though we went to Idaho Pizza we didn't end up ordering any pizza. Nikki thought we were silly for doing that but I was in the mood for a sandwich, so we both  got the salad bar, split a chicken cordon bleu sandwich, and some hot wings. Nikki got off work a little early so she walked over and joined us and we shared our food with her. Then we picked up her best friend Angie and went home and got all the kids again and went for round 2 on giving rides to the kids.  They all had so much fun. It was great to be able to share it with them. And believe it or not, Curtis and I still went on a long walk that same night with our friend Emily. It had to be about a 6 mile walk by the time we finished and we were so sore. My feet were killing me and Curtis had gotten sunburned so he was sore from that.

We left Saturday open for finishing the play house, which was putting up the swing set. I thought we were going to need several men to help hold that heavy beam up while he put the braces on but Curtis was smart and had built a temporary beam to support it. When it came time to put the real beam up it was Curtis, Nikki, Garrett and I that lifted it up there. Curtis was on the far end and just went up a ladder while Nikki and Garrett took the other end up the playhouse steps and I got on another ladder in the middle to help support it. After finishing the swing set Curtis helped me hang two hammocks underneath. Garrett's friend Austin had come over and helped with the swing set also and then he helped us clean up all the stuff that's been stored under the playhouse for the last 6-7 weeks. It took 7 weeks to get the playhouse built. There's still a few small things we need to do but at last the kids can play on it regularly and enjoy it.

He was trying to cut off a little bit to make it more level because it was just a little high on that end but it was too hard to do so we just didn't worry about it.

First one to test the swing out. We are loving this type of swing!

Nikki and I both got to test it out before the other kids. It was fun and relaxing!

The boys rode together at first but then we decided to make a rule that no one over age 10 could double up unless they were with someone small like Alice, just to make sure we don't break our swings or put too much pressure on the beam.

The kids like to wrap themselves up and turn over in the hammocks. They made me do it once and I was scared I would fall out so I didn't do it long.

After we cleaned everything up.

The swings are a little high right now but that's one of the small things we still need to do, get some chains to extend the length.

We are so happy with the way it turned out!

Saturday night Curtis had to prepare a talk for the next morning for Sacrament meeting, it also being Father's day. Since we had 9:00 am church we didn't bother cooking him breakfast which he was glad we didn't since he was busy finishing writing his talk that morning. It was the first time that our whole family went to church since the pandemic. It was definitely different and it's strange not having so many people in the chapel but it was a good service and he did well. Jack had made a little treasure hunt for Curtis to find his Father's Day gifts so he started as soon as we got home from church. As soon as that was over all the kids rushed outside to go enjoy the swings and hammocks. After we changed clothes, Curtis and I joined them. It was very nice and we love having so much shade from our neighbor's tree. We get shade most of the day.

Around 1:00 pm we headed over to Curtis's sister Jeanie's house where she made fry bread and I think their brother Steve made the Mexican stew that we ate it with. It was delicious.  They also had some salads and we brought homemade salsa and chips. And dessert was cake with berries and whipped topping. The high light for the kids was getting to see Jeanie's chickens!

This is a different type of chicken than the other ones she has but I can't remember the name. She has two like this and they are babies right now, and so fluffy!

She has 11 of these chickens, which she will get eggs from.

After visiting at Jeanie's for awhile we went home and everyone took naps except me and Alice. Even Charlotte did and we had a hard time waking her up when it was time to go to my grandma's to visit with more family and have more cake and goodies! After our visit there, Dad and Laverne came to our house to see our playhouse and then Curtis and I went on a walk with them on the greenbelt. My toes were hurting quite a bit again after this walk but it was a nice walk and glad we went. I even got the opportunity to help Laverne hand feed the ducks some bird feed. They were scared at first but then I got some to eat right out of my hand! It felt a little weird but it was fun. Some of the ducks started to get a little aggressive with eating out of my hand so I threw the rest on the ground.

Well, yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary! We started out by doing a little shopping at Dick's Sporting Goods store to hopefully find me some new shoes, which we did! They were comfortable when trying them at the store but my toes were still pretty sore from the last couple walks so even after wearing them through the day yesterday my toes still hurt. I'm hoping that after I let my toes heal a little that the shoes will feel good again. After all, we spent a lot of money on them (the brand is Brooks)! Anyway, we also bought me a golfing hat so that I could wear a high ponytail and still have a hat to wear while golfing. Curtis also bought a bucket of balls and some golfing tees. Then it was over to Centennial Golf Course to do our golfing. We started with a bucket of balls each and went to the driving range where Curtis taught me how to hit the balls since I have never played a game of real golf in my life. I did the driving range once a long time ago with my friend Whitney when we were kids and I've done mini golf and disc golf.

I have to say I was not happy while we were at the driving range. I was doing such a bad job that at that point I did not want to play even a 9 hole game. When I say bad I mean I just kept missing the ball when swinging and when I did hit it usually didn't go very high or very far. I did get a couple of decent hits though. After the driving range we went over to the putting practice area. I did a lot better at putting thanks to mini golf! I told Curtis I didn't want to play a game but he really wanted to and so he finally convinced me to by saying we could rent a golf cart (instead of walking) and play a version where we would actually work together. It got a lot more fun because I got to drive the golf cart! The version we played was where we would both hit the ball and whoever's ball went the furthest we would both hit our next ball from that spot. Most of the time we were picking up my ball to go over and hit from where his ball landed but there were a few times where I actually did better. There was even one hole we did where it was a par 3 and we had to hit it over a stream of water. That was the only hole where I did better on all the hits than he did AND we made par! I did do a lot better as we played than when we did the driving range so I'm glad we did play. However, we had to cut our game down to 7 holes because we had a glass blowing class we had scheduled and had to get over to Boise.

Putting practice

There was a little wind that kept blowing my ponytail over my hat but I was thankful for the breeze to help keep it cooler since it was due to be in the 80's.

Checking to see where I need to hit the ball.

I'm glad I brought my gym gloves because it hurts your hands. We will need to get some golfing gloves if we start doing this regularly. And you can see I'm wearing my new shoes.

Like I said, we didn't get to finish our 9 hole game because we had a glass blowing class to get to in Boise. So we ended after 7 holes and rushed over to our class. It was nice because it wasn't a big class, just the two of us. I don't think they do classes over 2 people at a time. They had us choose which glass item we wanted to make and then use the restroom and wash our hands before we got started. Curtis chose to make a paper weight. The one they had on display looked pretty cool. I decided to make a wavy bowl. The guy doing the class had us pick out colors and then told us to put on some safety glasses but said that we could use our sunglasses if we wanted to, so that's what we did. We had Curtis do his project first while I watched and then switched. They had to be put in the kiln and then cool so we can't pick them up until after 3:00 pm today. That class was fun and we can't wait to see the finished products.  I will post pictures when we get them.

Rolling the glass in the color chips. I chose the BSU mix.

Now I understand why they call it glass blowing. Curtis didn't have to do any blowing for his project but I did.

I was blowing while the instructor was turning the glass so I had to move along with him while blowing.

Now I'm spinning the glass. We have to keep turning it because it's so soft and hot that it would fall off if we didn't.

This is where the instructor spun it to get the waves in the bowl after heating it up.

After removing the bowl from the pole he had me use a blow torch to soften the part where the pole was connected. Then we smoothed it out and put it in the kiln.

We had bought some sunflower seeds and jolly ranchers for while we were golfing but it seemed to satisfy us enough that we didn't even eat lunch so we were definitely ready for dinner now! After doing some searching on our phones for places that will allow dining in we finally decided on the Indian Creek Steakhouse in Caldwell. Neither of us had eaten there but we had heard it was good. It was early enough in the day that we didn't need to wait for a table either. The food was delicious! We were ready to go home and relax after that by watching a movie, Master and Commander. Then relaxing outside on the hammocks and swings with the kids. It's been a great anniversary and I'm glad we did all those fun things, even the golfing!

Steak, loaded mashed potatoes, fry bread, and beans. Our appetizer was grilled shrimp. It was so good!

Steak, french fries, fry bread and asparagus.