Summer moments

We had a lot of great moments while staying at my parents' house for the summer. 

Maddie and I went on a lot of walks. Sometimes Abi came with us, but most of the time it was Maddie and I going on a quest to find deer and cats. 

A house up the street had kittens, so we had to visit every day.

cute little leaping fawn...

We also got to enjoy their amazing yard.

My mom made me a cake to celebrate my birthday a few months late...

And we went to Barnes and Noble as per our usual tradition. But this year we watched movies at home instead of the theater.

Abi didn't want to go to any stores, so Maddie and I donned our masks and went back-to-school shopping together, just the two of us. But we took lunch home for everyone.

One of the biggest things:

Maddie has been too afraid of taking the training wheels off her bike. When we have tried to convince her to do it, she would say she never wanted to ride a bike again. When we moved I got rid of her bike since it was getting small for her anyway, and Abi's bike (that she had outgrown) became Maddie's. Even though she said she wouldn't ride it, I brought it to my parents' house with us and parked it on the back patio. Eventually she started getting on just to try... on the grass. All summer she tried and tried to ride it. She finally did it! And it was amazing. 

Maddie made a doll.

I wanted to read the Bark of the Bog Owl to my girls, and so I ended up reading it to my parents too. My dad was the one begging for more chapters. 

For part of the time Doug took over my mom's office to work, but then he ended up having to go into work for a couple months, so he wasn't able to work from home again until the end of August. 

He spent most of the Saturdays working on restoring my parents' picnic table and benches. 

Maddie was proud of her biking injuries.

As usual, I took part in The Reading Rush read-a-thon. I look forward to it all year. 

A frosting thing Maddie made one day out of paper...

We didn't go out in our yard much in Provo- we had an insane amount of insects there and it just wasn't comfortable, so it was really fun to spend time reading outside. 

Abi had her first summer job. She spent the summer transcribing journals and family history records for Doug's mom. 

 

Visiting Christmas Tree Lane

When we were staying at my parents' house I found out that Hallmark was filming a Christmas movie in the next town over, about ten minutes from their house. So, Maddie and I jumped in the car to go check it out. They were mostly done filming so some of the sets were coming down, but we were able to walk around freely looking at everything. 

We loved looking in the windows of this "shop". Then the owner came by and saw us. She said since there was no one else around she would let us in.

 It was so cute inside and so much fun to be able to do that. I was hoping to love the movie after hanging out on the set, but... alas, it wasn't a favorite. Still, we were glad we got to do this!

Poetry Teatime

Most of the time Poetry Teatime will get its own post, but these are the three other teatimes we had during the first term while still at my parents' house. 

Our poet for this year is John Greenleaf Whittier. This one was to introduce him. My mom had made me a late birthday cake since we couldn't celebrate together during the first lockdown, so we had leftovers of that. 

This poetry teatime was quite simple with yogurt that the girls could mix toppings into. 

This was another lunch teatime, with cheese and crackers (and sandwiches for some)

 

Christmas in July

 The girls and I decided that Christmas in June makes more sense because it is actually halfway there, but Christmas in July does sound better... so we decided to celebrate it with my parents this year. 

We have a tradition of Christmas Eve books, so I gave the girls each a new book the night before we were going to celebrate.

My mom and I had talked about just watching a Christmas movie and having some treats, but both of us got sneaky and bought some gifts-without knowing the other had done it!

I made this little tree and taped it up to the entertainment center with the gifts under it. 

That was when I saw that my mom had put out a little tree with gifts too. So funny!

Everyone was surprised the next morning!

I got the girls some Pokemon gifts. They were pretty excited.

Doug enjoys the show Murder she Wrote, and we joke about him having a crush on Angela Lansbury... so when I saw that they had made a Jessica Fletcher Funko pop, I had to get it for him!

For my dad, we got some of his favorite candy...

And I thought of my mom when I saw this notebook, so I picked it up for her.

My mom made waffles with apple pie filling on top for breakfast...

She also made my favorite Christmas treat- nut clusters

I saved one Cranberry Ginger ale from last Christmas season, so we enjoyed that with our hoagies for lunch. 

My mom also made some yummy festive popcorn, and we watched a Hallmark movie.

It was a really fun day!