Rest of August

I guess August flew by because I took hardly any more pictures.  We were busy with school and work for Westley and Corey and that's about it.  

Travis went back to the orthopedist on the Monday after school started and found that his shoulder is looking good but he still has to wear the brace for several more weeks. What a pain!

Westley got a parking spot and painted it with In-N-Out palm trees and I think it looks awesome!  Unfortunately, we are sharing two cars between three drivers because the pandemic sucked us dry of extra money and we haven't been able to buy a third car.  Something will work out, I hope.

And Jonah helped with the school announcements so I pulled the picture of him from that day off the school's Facebook page. 

 

Cars, School, and Letter Jackets

School started this week, so naturally something had to go wrong with the car. On Monday, I was enjoying time at the park with friends and all seven kids came along, a rare event indeed. When we went to leave, the car wouldn't start. It wouldn't even make a noise. Some nice people there, who ended up to be members of the church in Sachse ward, helped me out. They took Travis and Eliza to Cooper Junior High to pick up their chromebooks. They got their family patriarch who knows about cars to come and take a look. And they took the kids home with Caleb while I waited in the 98+ degree heat for AAA to come and test my battery. Westley's friend Dekan drove him to In-N-Out to get Corey's car so that he could help out with any driving later on. I waited. Finally AAA came and tested the battery. Westley brought me lunch from Braum's. And the AAA guy said that it wasn't the battery but the key fob. But he was able to get the car started, so I drove it home thinking I'd take it in the next morning. But, alas, the car would not start again. Thankfully, I had left in on the driveway so it was easier to access. I called a key fob guy who came out to the house and he told me it wasn't the key fob, but the battery. So I called AAA and set up an appointment for him to come get the car from the dreveway and take it to our mechanic a few blocks away. The soonest he could come was the next morning. So that's what happened and guess what...it did turn out to be the battery, which I had only replaced last August. They did have to reset the key fobs too though. 

 

School started on Thursday. Westley is a senior, Caleb a sophomore, Travis 8th grade, Eliza 7th grade, Jonah 4th and Annmarie 2nd. We were fortunate that school actually started here in Wylie ISD. A lot of schools across the country aren't starting in person but online, virtually, sort of like we did it in the spring. But our district offered parents a choice--to send students to campus or keep them home and do online. Our family chose campus. We aren't worried about covid19 and the district has all these measures in place for "safety". So 5th grade and up are required to wear masks and they have (supposedly) smaller class sizes and plans in place for quarantining if there are positive cases of covid19. I'm so tired of all the covid stuff. But I won't get into that in this book. We are just very glad to be in one of the few districts across the country, it seems, to get to start school on campus and on the same start day that was planned from last year. So hopefully they have a decent school year and no long closures or quarantines! And hopefully covid fade into obscurity.

Nathan is home with me now.  We are doing preschool this year but only with a few students and those students aren't even paying me!  We are doing exchanges instead.  Eliza will have violin lessons and I'll do preschool for her violin teacher's son and Nathan will get to be babysat several times a week in exchange for teaching this other woman's daughter.  It will all be fine.  I'm also cutting way back on piano lessons and only retaining five of my students.  It's going to be tight financially, but I'm looking forward to being able to devote more time to being a mom!

And Westley's letter jacket finally came!  He earned it last year and was able to put the order in and when he got home from school on the first day, he had it!  I'm so proud of him for earning it and just love how it turned out!
 

A Farewell Swim Party

Maggie and Kaori are heading back to Japan soon, so we had a final family swim party to say goodbye. Too bad that Travis couldn't swim with us because of his broken shoulder.  Maggie has done amazingly well with her back surgery and recovery.  I truly impressed with the determination and grit of this young lady.  I'm glad we were able to spend time with Kaori and Maggie while they were in Texas for her surgery.  They will be missed, but will hopefully be moving back to Texas soon.  It's possible they could be back by the end of 2020.  Fingers crossed!

 

Broken Collarbone

Well, Travis was riding his bike around with his friends and his tire slipped out from under the bike, probably by hitting a patch of dirt on the sidewalk, and he fell over and landed on his shoulder in just the right fashion so as to break the collarbone. Poor kid. Now he'll have to sit out probably the first little bit of football season. Fortunately, the season has been pused back a few weeks and doesn't start until the last week of September. So there is a small chance that in six weeks, he might be able to play again. But it is definitely broken and he has to wear a brace for a few weeks. He will be seen again in two weeks.

 

Mesquite Championship Rodeo

When I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mesquite Championship Rodeo was still open and seats weren't terribly expensive, I decided to go for it. It ended up being Corey, Westley and me all going together. This was the first time for me to go to a rodeo in Texas. I've been to rodeos before, but only in Utah. We had a good time and I was glad we were able to go.

 

July Ends

As July winds down, I decided to contact a piano repair company I saw an advertisement for on a van in the Aldi parking lot weeks ago. The piano we were given by Adam and Eve was still giving us trouble with the pedal, even though we'd had it "repaired" (more of a band-aid fix than a real repair though). So I called this guy, Uriel's piano repair, and he came right out. I was surprised because of all the covid stuff and pepole not wanting to go into other people's homes. But he came and he found that he needed to take the whole box containing the pedal system to his shop to rebuild it. So he did and returned it a week later and we finally have working pedals! Yay! 

Travis got creative and came up with his own cookie recipe: cinnamon chocolate chocolate chip cookies. He puts in cocoa and cinnamon and worked up his own recipe for chocolate chip cookies underneath all that. They are so good, but very rich. 

And a deal came into my email for cheap bowling for Tuesdays, so I decided why not?  And I took whatever kids were home and wanted to go to the bowling alley to break up the mundane.  Of course, we had to wear our masks while we there *insert eye roll*.

 

July Fun

On Jonah's day to cook, he made a fabulous fancy dessert by using fresh berries, whipped cream and chocolate syrup.  And we went swimming again with Maggie and Paige's kids at Aaron and Kaori's pool.  Also, somebody heart-attacked us.  It was the Rigbys, but they don't know that we saw them.