We liked to pick raspberries every year in August, but last year's harvest was so pathetic we weren't sure it would even be worth it this year! Back in the good old days we used to get 25 or 30 pounds of berries with all of us picking. Last year I think it was 3 pounds😩. Still, we gave it a try. The plants weren't in great shape. The owner of the raspberry patch said the late freeze and the summer heat had been hard on them. But we managed about 11 pounds, so that was pretty good. Enough to make several batches of muffins and a bunch of pie!
The VERY sad thing is that there were no peaches this year. Not a single peach. My mom didn't get any, her neighbors didn't get any, Sam's student's family that owns a peach orchard didn't get any, and not even our favorite place Allred's had any! I thought they'd say "we only have a FEW this year…" or "they are a bit small and pale…" but no. Absolutely not one peach to be had. We look forward to them SO much every Fall that it's quite a blow! Not as much of a blow as it must be for the peach growers, however. So sad!
But, at least we had raspberries!
Raspberry muffins!
And so many pies!
Oh yum.
It's been hot. Here's Teddy showing what we look like when we enter the fridge room at Costco. Ahhh!
BUT, hallelujah, we have also had lots of rain! Wonderful torrential thunderstorms that cool everything off and bring us all out to the porch to watch. We are a family who loves rain!
Rivers on the road
Low clouds
The kids were delighted to find "the dip" (our name for the low area on the other side of our hill) completely flooded after one of the storms. It drains quickly because it's meant as a drainage basin, but while it lasts it's so fun!
Oh gee, it's up to my knee
Not quite sure why Junie felt she had to just wade in jeans and all, but it does show how deep it was!
"What's under your jacket?" I asked Gus. (It was Caw, of course. See his tail?)
The park down the street, by our old house, flooded into even more of a lake!
Oh my, it's up to my thigh
All the storms have made for some beautiful skies and clouds!
And some beautiful light beams across the valley, perhaps as some more deserving families are translated and beamed up right to heaven? Lucky them.
Happy news: we are back in our real church building, the one just around the corner from us, which has been in use by a different stake for the last few years. The building we were using wasn't very far away either, of course, only a five-minute drive and nothing to complain about, but it was across a busy road and just a little less convenient in every way. So we are quite happy to be back in the close one, where everyone can walk to church and youth activities in just a minute or two!
These little scamps are running to try and beat me to church! And they did it, too! (Holding the bunny Milky's paws between them!)
Speaking of bunnies, it has been a year since our little Nutmeg died. We had a little dinner to remember him and talk about him. We miss him.
On another note: monkeys. Clementine got out some of Seb's old monkeys and they seem to be up to no good!
Clementine is in a cutting and making stage, which is very cute but also very messy. She's MUCH handier with the scissors than her brothers were at her age, and thus that much more of a menace in the craft department! She is obsessed with different sizes of things, and her latest favorite thing to make is animals with little paper pouches into which they can tuck other animals! I think it started with seeing a stuffed kangaroo with a pouch and a joey (used to be Malachi's; the kids dredged it up out of a box, I suppose) and it has only multiplied from there. This little set of creatures is (from left to right): a kangaroo, a monkey, a Caw, and a gnome. Each one has a pouch. Their "babies" are out of the pouches and laid next to them so you can see—but then the babies themselves also have pouches and babies, down to the fourth generation—I believe—it may be the fifth. The tiniest ones are SO tiny I don't even know how Clementine draws on them or cuts them, but she does somehow, and then holds them up to me proudly and loses them half the time by dropping them onto a bed or a rug where they are just TOO tiny to be found!
The Gnome Girl herself
We had our back-to-school celebration for the year (or "selubreashin," if you wish) with a "Spiral" theme…I won't recap the whole thing but it's supposed to symbolize "Keep Trying," which is our theme for the year: everything takes practice and it's not a failure if you don't do it perfectly on the first try! Keep trying! I believe even the little ones have internalized this now, since Clementine keeps saying to me cheerfully when I'm grumbling about something like having to re-do her braids when she jerks her head the wrong way, "Remember…keep trying, Mommy!"
Some spiralish foods
And some "keep trying" quotes
Count on Daisy to always dress for the theme
We watched some videos about Rube Goldberg Machines and "Trick Shots" and how long it sometimes takes to get these to work even a single time (it's months, sometimes, or 400 tries…SO many tries), so after dinner we let the kids set up and try different trick shots with cups or ping-pong balls. It was pretty chaotic, but hilarious to watch them all in different stages of concentration trying to do their tricks. Every so often someone would actually do what they set out to do and then there would be whoops of joy, but other than that…just lots of laughing and "keep trying"! Ha!
Clementine trying to drop the right color of ping-pong ball into the right color of cup
Junie trying to juggle…
…and astounded at herself when she finally caught two balls!
This new Bendigo has nothing to do with anything. Ignore her, please.
But Goldie won't ignore her. She loves her. (Belladonna is her name.)
Clementine's work, the next day
Sam had some meetings at BYU, so Daisy and I went down with him to get some stuff at the bookstore and walk around campus to find all her classes. It was so fun! I love BYU. Especially when there are no students there, ha ha.
And last of all, here is beautiful Goldie wearing her new green back-to-school dress!
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