The Shay and Nick Howe family came to visit. Nick is Jeremy's second son. They stayed at our guest house and entertained us with their three adorable children! Shay taught Benjamin how to make homemade empinadas, he was in heaven! They were delicious.
Each Tuesday we take our garbage out to the curb. Like most Americans who want their trash taken away. Our curb just happens to be several hundred yards away.. this is a daunting when the trash is full. In the afternoon the kids take the bins home. Depending on how many bins we have someone drives while a couple kids sit in the back of the van and hold on. I had to document this much like Laura Ingles documented her homestead years.
The pool was flooded three times because of the rain. Yesterday we finally drained it. There was several layers of mud on the pool floor. We had to bucket brigade it out. It took hours. We had to power wash the walls, that was satisfying but time consuming. The mud was stanky....
We haven't seen this many wild flowers on the property ever. The creek has been flowing for weeks, it's been great!! The dogs are in heaven.
My dear friend Xochitl Hosmer, colleague and mentor passed away from Covid pneumonia. Her husband Anthony and Benjamin are close. This loss hit our family like a ton of bricks. Benjamin and I were both asked to speak at her funeral. The funeral was cancelled but I still plan on writing my thoughts here on the lessons I learned from her.
The last week before Olivia moved out brought so many emotions. She texted me at work and asked if she could pickup the family groceries? Um yeah, that's an easy answer and an awesome daughter!! She's my right hand woman. I'm grateful she will be close enough that she can come home for Sunday dinner and far enough away that she can strengthen her adulting muscles. Muscles that she has been developing since kindergarten. This girl is entering college with 50+ credits and enough drive to bust out two majors. She is going to positively change the world, because she's been cheerfully changing mine for the last 18 years 💕 PS Olivia Howe I will safely store your sweaters and always take your phone calls 😁 #BearDown
August and July has brought so much rain!! We have never seen this much water on the property. A couple of posts ago I showed how our house had been flooded. I went to a relief Society presidency meeting and showed the pictures to the presidency. Later my president Lisa Weigel talked to her husband, Mark about how bad the flooding was at our house the next day Mark brought his backhoe and trenched our property. He spent the entire Friday making trenches for the water to flow so that our house wouldn't flood again. The very next day torrential rain came again. Those trenches that he dug, in places were 3 ft deep and were overflowing. If he hadn't have trenched our house would have been flooded again.
