This and That in September!

Elizabeth is having fun at BYU, especially cheering for the Cougars!

Grandpa has been cheering for them too!

I made a lot of tomato sauce.  These are the cooked tomatoes with onion, garlic and spices.  One minute in the Vitamix and it will be smooth and ready to eat or freeze.

Brian has been dealing with Covid.  The family included him from upstairs at dinner time over Zoom!

Melanchuks attended a friend's Quincinera (A quinceañera is a celebration of a girl's 15th birthday.)

Nathaniel is looking handsome!  He had a rough time this month with a bad cough.

We made a trip to Apple Hill for donuts, juice and a few apples.

 There was a late frost and it destroyed a lot of the apples.  

Usually this area is packed with boxes of apples.

I've been spending hours putting a lot of our pictures in a book about our trip to Europe.

These are some of my favorites that I'll include.

Time to get ready for Halloween.  I did a new puzzle and made these pumpkins which are napkins.

(I think it's fun to fold napkins into different shapes and then use them at the table)

David Turns 13!

David turned 13 on Saturday.  

We were glad to help him celebrate!

Lily liked doing the hoverboard...

...while everyone else played his new game, UNO Remix.

The game took a while so we stopped to eat.  David chose deli sandwiches, corn on the cob, barbecue potato chips, cantaloupe and mint chip ice cream.

Afterwards it was actually getting cold, and so they finished the game inside.

Lily played Christmas songs on the piano.

Later, Jacob showed us that he has learned to do a backbend in gymnastics.

Here is Lily's version of a backbend.

Jacob can also do the splits.

A final ride on the hoverboards with a blowout salute to David!

It's HOT!!!

Like many others, we are having a major heat wave.

We were in Chico on Monday and here was the temperature at 5:30 p.m.

Some of the Melanchuks came out to see us off and see what 115 feels like!

We drove to McDonald's on our way to get a smoothie from the drive-through.

A darling girl helped us!

Tuesday was no better.  It was already this hot by 1:30 p.m.!

And just kept getting hotter!

I'm sure that contributed to our A/C quitting and our needing to call a repair place.  Tender mercy: They were able to come in one hour, and it was an easy 15 minute fix!  It did take us about 12 hours to get the house cooled down though so I opted to sleep downstairs on a sofa that night.

Then to make matters worse we are getting smoke from a nearby fire in two neighboring counties.  We know some people who have had to evacuate and it is 0% contained.  Here is a picture this morning of the sun obscured by smoke and our air quality report is hazardous!

Here's how we survive:

Lime juice bars, Cherry-Pineapple popsicles, and Raley's sherbet Mixed Berry and Meyer Lemon.

We'd be happy to share these with anyone brave enough to stop by!

 

This and That in August!

Always seems strange to have Back To School in August but here we go!

All of the incoming freshman at Orientation formed this Y in the stadium.  Elizabeth is in there somewhere!

Bethany had her birthday. Here she is with Chip.

We officially celebrated our Anniversary.  I put this on our cabin door on the ship.

Some friends took our picture at dinner the night of the 17th.

We walked up to the top of the ship and were all alone later that evening. 

And of course the big event for us in August was our European trip.  

We got three new ornaments:

This bell in Switzerland

This cuckoo clock in Germany

And these windmills for the Netherlands

And can't forget that August 2022 was our first time to test positive for Covid!