More Staycation – More Excitement

Day 3

         Since it has been light enough to drive Jenna to seminary in the morning, I have been taking her in while Roland sleeps.  He gets the honor of picking her up as the sun is glaring so loudly that I am not comfortable with it.  Happy Doughnuts offers specials each day: Maple Bar Monday, Twists on Tuesday and so forth. Wednesday's specialty is biscuits and gravy for a dollar.  Thus after we picked Jenna up from seminary we went to Happy Doughnuts to get biscuits and gravy for Roland and me and a bacon maple bar for Jenna.

        Roland and I left the house again just before 9:00.  We drove to Canyonville to get our second shot.  Unlike the first shot where we had to get out and go inside, we stayed in the car while they came out to us to get our ID and give us our shots.  So we are now good to go.

            Since we were already in the car, Roland decided to take me to Roseburg though Jenna would have much rather gone.  I thought it would be great for me to stay home with Bonnie as we were passing the house anyway.  But Roland wouldn’t hear of it.  We spent day four in Roseburg first at Lowes because we needed air filters but also dirt, purifiers, and a replacement pair of gloves.  Oh, and fencing to keep the chickens out of whatever we plant.  They have already knocked down our tulips and Jenna and I have each straightened them out and are losing dirt.

            We then went to Costco.  I was puzzled that they were giving away samples.  But they came in small white paper baggies that customer could eat once leaving the store.  We purchased one hot dog as I was hungry and didn’t believe the samples would tie me over.  I ate the hotdog plain and shared the samples with Roland as he drove us back home.

            We then set up an appointment to take Jenna to the fairgrounds on Saturday (I plan on staying home with Bonnie that day) and I printed out a receipt with her order number on it. Meanwhile, as you wait for our next adventure, here are some photos to tie you over:

Jenna and I have both straightened the tulips that the chickens knocked over

Roland and I added some dirt

and these flowers 

and chicken wire and pinwheels which
we hope will keep the fowl creatures out

we added chicken wire to keep them from going under the deck

I took these pictures trying to capture the concern of the chickens on the outside for those "trapped" on the inside.  They weren't trapped really.  They got in beneath the stairs but were to stupid to figure out they could exit that way as well

Mitch trying to entice the "trapped" chicken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do have three posts of Scavenger Hunt pics (plus extras in the first post as we took several pics of the first item on the list) and will post those within the next three days.

Missing Valentine’s Day

               

          I really did get a gem of a guy when I married Roland.  He is so thoughtful and compassionate.  For every year we were living in Utah, Roland would make or purchase valentines for my mom and my sisters.  We would drive to my mom’s house in Midvale and then my brother’s in Sandy (my sister-in-law, Sunny) and then later to the house in Kearns after Kayla and Bill were married.

          Valentine’s was always something different.  A box of chocolates or homemade cookies. One year we attempted Brigham Young Doughnuts in the shape of hearts. 

I could not find the individual pictures for this
post so her is a scrapbook page I had made. 

          Another year he purchased pizzas from Papa Murphy’s.  I think Brian (Sunny’s youngest boy) claimed that as his own.  Perhaps he shared. 

         Before we moved to Oregon, Roland extended his valentine giving beyond my family, but included all the single sisters in the West Valley ward (and there were A LOT of single sisters) with a candy bar with a note not to go nuts on valentine’s day but enjoy the sweet parts about it (or something like that)

          Since we moved to Oregon, his Valentine giving hasn’t gone beyond me and Jaime.  That’s too bad because I know he really enjoyed that.  I wonder if my sisters miss getting Valentines from him.

August 21 Checklist

        Jenna had asked if her friend Kylee could spend the night.  They had planned for Monday night, but workday sleepovers did not work out well when she and Annette we better friends.  I told her it would be up to Roland.  He said yes and   Jenna created a list for the following day.

             Jenna's agenda for Monday, August 21:

 1) [Kylee]

 2) pool

3) eclipse

4) doughnuts

5) library

6) rays/goin’ postal

7) little shop 8 games . . .

9) something scary

10) bed. 

Allow me to explain:  First thing, we went to Kylee’s house to pick her up at 8:30 a.m..  Check off 1.  Next we went to the pool.  When we arrived, there was a note on the door:

A birthday bash is held at the pool each year on the Friday closest to the 21st.  We have missed all three years however. We were in Roseburg this year as I suspect other two as well.   I thought it was cool that the pool was getting an eclipse for its birthday (LOL) It was just Jenna, Kylee and me in the pool.  There were three lifeguards there.  What troopers, allowing us to be there.  They had even allowed the girls to go down the slide that had been turned on. Check off number 2. 

the large slide hadn't been turned on.  They went down this small one

I thought there would be more from the class as we had made reference to watching the solar eclipse from the pool.  Our instructor had a much better view as she was watching from a city closer to Madras.  We had accumulated several pairs of glasses since summer began and Miss J managed to give away all pairs except for one.  I had already given those to Roland figuring there were other pairs in the car.

hype

this was taken earlier this summer

Kylee had a pair - which she had torn in half so that both she and Jenna could watch at the same time.

 

  Kylee had wanted me to take her home for a half hour or so, but I thought we’d be watching the eclipse first.  I ended up driving to the park by myself as I didn’t know if I’d make it back in time to watch with Roland.  As I had mentioned before, neither Jenna nor I were all that impressed as we had been expecting to see the Corona.  I think a lot of people were as we made our way to Kylee's house and found many with paper glasses on their faces looking towards the sky.  They lost interest before the passing was complete.

courtesy of my brother-in-law (view from Utah)

 The skies seemed overcast.  Not as dark as we had anticipated.  The skies were really smoky that day and the next.  Worse than Medford was.  I had a killer headache – my breathing was almost as bad as it was in Utah.  Even Roland has been affected. Check off number 3.

Now Jenna was hoping I could take them to Happy Doughnuts – which is on the other end of town.  I was willing to drive them there, but did not want to make the drive just myself (I think driving up and down Old Pacific all day is what contributed to my leg becoming sore in the first place) and by the time I got to Ray’s (the local grocery store we call Rip-Off-Rays) there weren’t any maple bars (or many doughnuts of any variety for that matter)  Jaime specifically wanted maple bars because Monday was maple bar day at the Happy Doughnut; oh well . . .) so no check-off for number 4.

I had come home to change my pants and returned for Jenna and Kylee just before 11:00.  I hadn’t planned on adding laundry to the agenda, but realized that it needed to be done.  Kylee loaded my car full of cans and bottles to take to the recycling because each return of bar-coded bottle or can (has to be readable and not bent) add up at 10 cents a can, but I had to go to the library for summer reading before they could turn in the cans. 

It was our last day at the for the children’s reading program at the library and Jenna and I have been volunteering each Monday.  I don’t know how I became the story lady, but I have told stories at each event.  After story time we have had an activity except for the day of the solar eclipse.  Story time felt like an afterthought.  The children were more involved in the activities they had already started - which is okay.  Here are some samples of most of the activities that we did for the last two months:

 

we offered Lego activities two weeks in a row:
July 24 and 31

Sponge Bobs birthday was August 10

Solar Eclipse activity Aug 8

display case as of August 8

pin the eclipse over the sun

we created fairy gardens on Aug 14

house to go in the fairy garden

learning the planets on Aug 21

this was our last day of summer reading

tiles created on the last day

making slime Aug 21

cover photo for facebook page; rocks painted at the festival

Check off library.  So I took the girls to Rays, dropped them off with the five or six bags of cans, and went to the laundry mat.  I told them I’d meet them at Goin’ Postal – which is just next door to the strip mall (I guess you could call it that) where Ray’s is located.  It’s still a good walk. 

So we were home and up to number 7.  Both enjoy scary movies, though I don’t know why.  Little Shop of Horrors is not all that scary, but because  the plant arrives on the day of the full solar eclipse, Jenna decided they needed to watch it in honor of that day’s eclipse. But they had wanted to wait until it got darker.

 They started working on number 8.  Asking questions from board games mostly.  Kylee did have an opportunity of playing Balderdash with the rest of us as we introduced her to Family Home Evening.  Kylee fell asleep as they watched Little Shop and started from the beginning the next morning (after she had gone to the pool with us again of course - the smokiest day - not a good workout because we did not breathe the air) The girls were well behaved and at a lower volume than Jenna had been with Annette.

We returned Kylee to her house just after three.  I'd forgotten that I had agreed to work a shift at the library, and so had Jenna go with me as I did not have time to take her home.

The smoke had lifted by Wednesday morning.  Back to a better pool workout.