Mani/Pedi for Grandma Betty

About once a month, the girls and I go and visit a sweet 90+ year old woman from our church family named Betty.  The girls bring our tub of nail polishes and they paint her toes and fingers for her-- a job she told me her late husband used to do when her hands started shaking.  This has become a sweet time for all of us.  Grandma Betty tells the girls fascinating stories about what life was like when she was a young girl.  Then before we leave, she insists that Ella and Delia pick out necklaces and glass figurines from her collection.  She also gives them a few bucks.  The girls truly love participating in this act of service, and I'm so proud of them when they try to refuse her money.  But Grandma Betty says, "When you get old, you just accumulate stuff, including money.  It gives me greater joy to give it away than keep it."  What a neat lesson for all of us. :)

Back To School

So, here is my annual Three-Weeks-After-School-Has-Started "Back to School" post!  I guess I just need about 3 weeks to feel like I kinda got life under control again before I spend time blogging. 

This year is off to a great start!  I am teaching preschool all 5 days again, in the same classroom, with the same team of teachers consistently and I am so happy.  I have 2 neat classes of kids who have already captured my heart and added adorable sayings and stories to my collection.  There are just enough challenges in each class to keep every day interesting too. :)

 Here we are on the first day of school, sporting gleaming new shoes and some new school gear.

Delia is super excited about this year!  She got a teacher we've never had, but know is one of the best on staff.  Miss S. is actually a friend.  I bring the girls to help in my classroom the week before school starts, but then I often have to hunt them down because they have ditched me to hang out with Miss S. as she sets up too.  She is funny and cool and full of interesting teaching ideas.  Besides getting the teacher she has been wanting for years, Delia also got her sweet best friend Kate in her class.  The picture below was actually taken on the day that teacher emails went out telling us who was in what class.  We knew they'd be coming between 1:00 and 3:00.  This is where Delia parked herself while waiting to find out if she'd have Miss S. or not!

This year marks a huge transition for Ella as she moves to Middle School.  For some reason this honestly feels more monumental to me than when she started preschool or kindergarten.  She has a locker.  She has a schedule and switches teachers and classes.  She has study hall options (which she gave up so should could be a part of both the band and choir).  She can play sports on teams (which she plans on doing).  She can run for Student Council (which she also plans on doing).  She now totes a school-issued laptop around with her.  And she absolutely loves every bit of it.  It is pretty neat to watch our girl thrive in this adolescent stage!

Going Out with a Bang 3: Cubs Game

Our one big splurge this week was tickets for a Cubs vs. A's game.  If this does happen to be our year, (which it is kinda sorta maybe looking like?) we wanted to be sure we could say, "We SAW the World Champion Chicago Cubs team play this summer!"  This was a 3 game series and we're so happy that we could not only see the Cubs win on the day we went, but see them sweep Oakland this weekend!

We had the coolest seats in row 1 of center field.  Rizzo walked right under us!  Fowler actually waved back at us!  Every time an almost home run was caught it happened right by us!  It was a view of a stadium we have never had and we really enjoyed it!

What was SO fun about this game was watching it as the away team, but totally not feeling like the away team!  There was just as much Cubbie Blue in the Coliseum as green and yellow and the people sitting on all sides of us were Cubs fans too!  When the Cubs won, a sea of W flags broke out, as did the "Hey Chicago Wha'd'ya Say?" song!  Dave said the Cubs travel well, but we've seen them play in California lots of times and have never been in such good company!  Maybe everyone else is thinking the same thing we are: THIS is the year!  Better see them while we can! 

Going Out with a Bang 2: Bay Area Exploring

Another thing on that Fun Stuff to Do List was to find a great path and go for a family rollerblading outing.  We did find an awesome new path in the Bay Area, but quickly had to abandon the roller blades and just hike it when we realized how bumpy and full of cracks it was.

But, that does not mean we wouldn't totally recommend that our local friends check this path out!  Just bring your walking shoes or bikes instead. :)

The path we found was a 6 mile, flat, shoreline-hugging trail that wound around an actual island.  It had great views of San Francisco, the USS Hornet, and the Bay Bridge.  One part of the path took us right past the Oakland Airport runways, so we could see planes taking off right over our heads.  Another part of the path wound through gorgeous neighborhoods.  And the whole time we walked, we kept that beautiful view of  the bay in sight, as well as all the neat wildlife that lives in it.

  

One unexpected bonus to spending a day in the Bay Area was a reprieve from the triple digit heat we've been enjoying.  We kept our sweatshirts on all day in the 60 degree weather.  This was a perfect, nearby, free!, outing for us for this week!

Going Out with a Bang 1: Water Park Fun

While we don't officially start school for a week yet, the next one is going to be full of classroom set up and in-service days, meaning the week we just completed was kind of our LAST OFFICIAL WEEK of summer.  We packed it with fun activities and made the most of it!  Realizing he was not going to get anywhere near to taking his 4 weeks of vacation this year, Dave also took a week off.  This was one of the greatest weeks of summer for us!  We made two lists: one of neglected things to get done and one of fun stuff to do together.  Fun items were little things like "Go out for breakfast" or "Spend a day at the pool, all 4 of us" or "Have some friends over" or "Worship at a new-to-us church".  We feel both rested and accomplished in crossing nearly everything off both lists!

  

We kicked off this Last Official Week of Summer with a trip to the water park with Dorina, Shawn and their girls.  For this outing, Dave hung back to get work done before he took his week off.  We had the best time racing each other down water slides, bobbing in the wave pool, floating in the lazy river, playing tag in the fountain park, and catching up while waiting in lines.

  

After almost 8 hours in the water park, we had an awesome dinner at Pieology-- a new pizza place for us.  The girls amused us with their stellar selfie-taking skills.  Kinda scary just HOW good they are at this!

Spending a day in a water park is unintentionally becoming a summer tradition for us!  (Summer 2015, Summer 2014, Summer 2010)  Something about flying down a water slide brings out the kid in you!  I think it's such fun, we'll have to keep this tradition alive!

A Summer in the Margin

While the first part of our summer was packed with Disneyland, Mount Hermon and camping, the July section of our calendar was blissfully blank.  Dave's schedule is pretty busy and normal this summer and we're trying to save some money for some home-improvement projects, so I decided to embrace all that blank space and intentionally celebrate a nice wide margin in our summer.  The girls and I are having the most delicious, lazy summer!  We sleep long.  We read 700 page books together.  We watch entire seasons of Fixer Upper on Netflix.  We play board games at night.  It has been the most restful season we've had in a long time!

We kicked off summer with some pedicures, courtesy of Auntie Kris.

I got us a pass to the community pool for the summer, so we've been spending nearly every afternoon there.

As my sister and I did when we grew up going to the community pool every day, the girls are becoming strong swimmers.  They are swimming laps, going long distances underwater, and learning how to dive.  While they play "Marco Polo" with friends they are meeting from the community, I am sitting in the shade getting lots of library books read.

 Best part about our pool is that it's somewhat of a secret!  A day care group does come every day, but only for a bit.  When they leave, we literally have it to ourselves!  

We've been eating lots of delicious food this summer!  Our garden and fruit trees are the best they've ever been!  We can hardly keep up with the peaches the size of softballs and huge bowls of tomatoes I'm plucking every few days!  A favorite way to use those tomatoes has been this bruschetta recipe: yellow and red cherry tomatoes from the garden, fresh basil leaves, garlic, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar and olive oil over warm toasted bread.  Yummmmm!

 For Christmas we gave Dave the gift of permission to buy a new grill.  He finally cashed that in this summer and bought a Traeger, which smokes our meat and makes it the most delectable thing ever.  Come over and let us smoke a brisket or tri-tip for you!!

We've gotten lots of time with our dearest friends.  Building forts, playing badminton and flashlight tag, and talking until late at night with Phil and Jetta.  Playing outside with the girls and catching up with Sara and Arend. 

 And swimming and eating popsicles with Amy and her family.

For her birthday, Delia got rollerblades, so we've also been spending lots of time at church breaking those in.  And when our temps soar into the 109 degree range?  No problem!  We just have Daddy let us into the nice cool church basement!

We do venture out for some errands from time to time.  We went blueberry picking and stocked the freezer with 33 pounds.  We gave the cars a good cleaning.

There has been work too.  One week of summer was dedicated to VBS, where Dave and I once again taught interactive stories up in the Bible room to the 4 rotations of kids (which were huge this year with our numbers being over 100!).  Ella has graduated up to "helper" this year and enjoyed co-leading a crew of students.  We did the Cave Quest VBS, so the girls got creative and dressed as bats on the theme dress up day.

We've also done a lot of house chores and projects.  Ella got all my windows washed for me.  And I spent a weekend totally scrubbing down and affixing new hardware to our 50 kitchen cabinets.

I'm about to say the bad words: school starts in just a few weeks.  But, we are rested and recharged; my house is in great shape; everything we wanted to do came off the summer to-do list; and, though living a life of leisure is certainly heavenly for a short time, I think we're ready.

We Made It to the Top!

Two years ago we went to Yosemite and it was sadly all dried up.  When I saw the recent photos a friend posted of the waterfalls actually going this summer, I was inspired to head back and see the Yosemite we know and love-- one where the rivers are roaring and the falls are flowing.  We made a plan to take the girls on the biggest hike yet-- to see Nevada Falls, a waterfall I have not seen since we hiked to top of Half Dome the summer before we had Ella.  Well, here's the thing about ambitious plans when you have two little hikers-in-training and two adult bodies that have aged 12 years: they change!  We had our butts kicked so thoroughly by the Vernal Falls hike and were so pooped that we did not make it all the way up to Nevada, but felt satisfied enough to just catch a glimpse of it.

The Vernal Falls hike is actually a short one, just over 2 miles round trip.  But the straight uphill you travel for 1000+ feet makes this hike a strenuous one.  The girls had their share of griping, but overall did pretty great considering what we were asking them to do!

We were encouraged when we easily made it to the bridge.

Then came Delia's favorite part of the hike-- that steep granite stairway and its over 600 huge steps.   Delia comes to life on this part of the path and has to repeatedly be told to slow down and wait for her out-of-breath parents.   This happened the last time we hiked this trail too.

The views of Vernal Falls are sooooo worth every extra heart beat, every drop of sweat, and every gasp for breath.  They are unlike any other, making this my all-time favorite hike.  Mist soaking you from the falls, and vibrant rainbows at the base, and people getting engaged around you (for real, we saw this!), just add to the majesty of this sight.

We took in the view of the falls for a good long time and then ventured into brand new territory for the girls-- the second half of the crazy stone steps that take you straight up to the top of the falls.  This is where this hike started getting HARD for almost all of us.  There were tears, there were muscle cramps, there was dehydration.

But, WE MADE IT!  Up at the top, you get another reward-- a great view of all that water tumbling over the cliff and the tiny dot people on the path we were just on far below. 

At the top is also the gorgeous, crystal-clear Emerald Lake that feeds the falls.  We parked it on some huge boulders by this lake and ate our lunch. 

  

After lunch we ventured up the Silver Apron, a great stretch of smooth stone where water gently cascades down.  If the lake you ended in didn't feed a huge waterfall, this would make an amazing waterside!

Once we caught sight of Nevada Falls (see it up there in the picture below?), we felt okay about skipping 800 more feet of elevation gain and taking our worn out selves back down the path.

  

The way down was easier on our hearts and lungs, but harder on our legs.  We made lots of efforts all day to encourage the girls when they were feeling tired and discouraged.  Dave asked, "Do you think Vernal Falls would be as spectacular if you didn't have to work so hard to see it?  Isn't it satisfying to know you've seen something many people aren't able to?"  Delia said, "NO.  I think the falls would be most amazing if you could just walk right up to it!"

Some ice cream in the village and a good long dip in the icy Merced River on the valley floor perked our weary little adventures right up.  The cool snow-melted water felt soooo good on our tired toes and watching the kids swim with a view of Cathedral Rock in the background was super neat.

I'm so happy to have had another opportunity to see my favorite falls this summer.  I thank God for able bodies.  For an ease to the terrible drought we've been dealing with in California.  For family members who are willing to take on hard challenges together.  And for His magnificent creation!