Happy Birthday and Father's Day, Jesse!

We told Jesse to get of a little early from work for his birthday this year because we had plans. Branden told me a while back that Jesse had been talking about wanting to go to Hodad's again since it's been a few years. So we drove down to Ocean Beach for dinner. It's a fun place with some good burgers. 

Since we were going down that far, we figured we should make more plans than just dinner. We took down firewood and s'mores supplies and planned to go over to Mission Beach to use a firepit for the night. Of course the fire pits were all taken when we got there. So we headed to the inland bay where I knew there were some fire pits as well. Sure enough, we found one. We had to hang out with some homeless people haha but they mostly just wandered around.

It was a lovely evening and a nice slow pace welcoming in summer as we celebrated Jesse's birthday. He wanted a French silk pie, so I made that for Sunday. He said he didn't really want anything for his birthday, so we just got him some BYU socks and some mountain biking socks that Devin picked out.

For Father's Day, Branden and I made breakfast sandwiches. We made jambalaya and corn bread for dinner. And a fruit tart for dessert which was what Jesse had asked for but wasn't that good unfortunately. We gave him a couple of biking t-shirts that didn't come in for his birthday. 

Priest High Adventure: Catalina

The week after public school got out, the priest quorum had their High Adventure camp to Catalina Island. Branden had been preparing and excited for this trip for a while. His former deacon leader who is now the Elder's Quorum president, Gus Zanini, was going with them. He's a very adventurous, fun guy and had been preparing the boys for snorkeling and spear fishing. Branden was all over it, going to the activities to practice, getting with Gus to borrow gear he would need. Gus told him just before the trip that the Bishop had tasked them with catching enough fish for the night they would have fish tacos. Branden was ready for the challenge.

They left early Monday morning, drove up to Long Beach, and caught the boat out to Catalina. They stayed til Thursday. Branden had a great time. And all of his leaders were thankful for his great attitude, his fun attitude, how helpful he was, and he was the hero of catching fish for the camp to eat. He caught the most fish. A couple other boys caught eel, a crab, and a stingray. Fish taco night was a hit. They had so much food!

Branden and some of the boys also did some night hikes, star gazing, and sometimes even got some sleep. It was a great last high adventure for Branden.

Deacon Summer Adventure

The same week Branden had high adventure, that Wednesday, Devin went with the deacons on a bike ride down the PQ canyon to the beach. They had to go out of the canyon onto the road for part of it because there had been a fire the week before at the west end of the canyon and some areas were still burning off and getting cleaned up. Of course for Devin, a bike ride is no big deal these days having done the RAC.

Thursday to Saturday, they did a backpacking trip to San Jacinto. They drove to the Palm Springs area, took the tram up the mountain, and then hiked a few miles to the campground. The next day they did an up and back to the peak and camped another night at the campground. Apparently the hike was a bit harder than the leaders had anticipated. But the boys were troopers and made it.

Devin had a lot of fun, and it was a good experience for him to be out hiking, camping, independent of us and gaining confidence and experiences for growth. Looks like it wore him out pretty good.

Preparing for the San Diego Temple Open House

I met up with my friend, Ginger, who I hadn't seen in like a year.  When the school and seminary year wrap up, I am able to come up for air and reach out to people and do things that I struggle to have time for during the year. So Ginger and I planned our favorite thing to do - take a walk on the beach.

While driving down, she got a call from a friend who is in charge of all of the shoe coverings for the San Diego temple open house. They had thousands of boxes they needed to have the coverings paired together. They were giving them to youth groups and trying to find ways to get them paired up. Ginger asked if I would be willing to take some boxes. I was happy to help, but I was thinking with just 4 of us at home, how many boxes could we actually do? 5? 10? So I told her to let me see what I could do. I started texting groups of women in my ward letting them know about the project and that I would be at our church building that coming Monday from 9 am to 1 pm. If they had time to come help for just an hour or the whole time or whatever worked, or if they wanted to take some home and bring them back to me the next morning, that would be great.

It was the last week of school, so I wasn't sure how many people I could get. But I started getting texts back immediately. So I told Ginger that we would take 100 boxes and see what we could do with them. Of course they got delivered to our stake center Sunday evening right during seminary graduation. I had not anticipated that. But the stake presidency just made an announcement at the end of seminary graduation and people helped carry the boxes from the drop-off point to the primary room where we'd be working. It all worked out.

I went early Monday and set up some tables and chairs for us to work at. I started opening boxes and people started arriving. I had about 25 people either how up to work or take some boxes and bring them back. It was incredible. It was so fun to spend those hours sitting with friends, doing service for the temple. It was the kind of work that you could just sit and chat with others while working. Some groups would make friendly competitions to see which team could finish a box first. Some of the older sisters shared how much they missed the service - like making quilts - that used to get done where you could work and serve together but also talk and strengthen friendships. They felt like this was similar to that and were grateful for the opportunity.

I was so grateful and inspired by all who came and helped and how much we were able to contribute to the temple. It's exciting to be a part of this upcoming event.

And because of our involvement, Devin and I got to have an unexpected blessing. We met Ginger and her friend down at the temple to bring down all of the bags of finished coverings to be stored there for the open house. We got to drive onto the temple grounds! And go into the underside of the temple to the "garage" type area. It was so exciting to be on the grounds and so close to our beloved temple again. It was such a gift!! We went to Handel's on our way home because that's what Jesse and I often did after a temple visit. Time to get those traditions going again.

The other part I've been preparing for is memorizing the parts I will be saying when I volunteer. I was asked to be a speaking usher. I can't volunteer the last week of the open house because it's when our family reunion is. So in the 2 weeks I can volunteer, I will volunteer 7 different shifts. I will be speaking in either the front lobby, the endowment room, or the sealing room. We don't have to memorize the parts, but I feel like I'll be better able to speak to the guests if I have it memorized. At the Yorba Linda temple open house, some people spoke well, and others just read the paper with no connection or eye contact. I want to be the first.

Celebrating the End of Another School Year

And then it was SUMMER!! We finished another school year. It seemed to go really quickly. So crazy. We have been doing this homeschooling thing for FIFTEEN years! What a life. And we graduated our fourth child. Only one more homeschooler to go!

We celebrated by doing some new things at some old favorites. We started off going to the Safari Park to see the newly opened Elephant Valley. It's a nice addition and gives better access to the elephants than what it was previously. 

We ate our packed lunch then stopped at the Ko-Li Bar in Clairemont Mesa. It's a shaved ice place that makes the most adorable shaved ice. We got two flavors and shared them between the three of us. They were bigger than we thought! They were delicious and lots of fun to eat.

After our treat, we headed down to Sea World to see the newly updated Shark Encounter. I think it's been closed almost a year. We were excited to see the changes. Except there hardly were any. It was basically the same thing with maybe some extra signage. That's it. We were sorely disappointed. What is that about? Why all the hype about it opening? Come on, Sea World.

We stayed for the dolphin show since it's reopened as well. I always love the dolphin show.

We made a couple of other quick stops before going home. We went to Old Town so Branden and I could look for San Diego sweatshirts. Branden found one; I did not. We checked out the adobe house as we passed through the area back to the car.

And we made a quick stop at the San Diego temple. We are almost to the open house, and we are so excited! 

That night we made homemade strawberry ice cream in the new Kitchen Aid attachment bowl I bought to make smaller batches of ice cream. It worked great!

It was a great day of celebrating a great year. We learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and didn't let PCA boss us around too much in our homeschooling.