Scorching the World

Tom had errands to run today, but managed to go out and water before leaving. We bought furniture from Ashley Furniture, but you can’t just buy it and take it home. You have to place your order, then pay to have it brought down from Stockton. Tom asked if we could pick it up in Stockton to save the delivery fee, which they said we. Our bookshelves were ready to be picked up, but the recliner he ordered won’t be ready until September! They had told us it would take 3-6 weeks, but not 3 months! So we decided it would be worth two trips since the deliveries were so far apart. While he was there, he saw the very recliner he wanted, so he asked if he could just buy it there and take it, but they said, no, you have to wait for it to come in. He said, it is right here. They said, that’s just how it is. So he canceled the recliner he had ordered and bought the one there, that will be ready in a few weeks.   Anyway, while being so far from home, he decided to also go see Ryan and anyo...

The theme of this day was “You can’t do that until you do this, and you can’t do this. I am training Andrea to replace me. Monday mornings are always busy, and today I tried to save as much as I could to show Andrea how to do it. We spent an hour on the phone before she said she had an appointment and could talk next about 12:30pm. I kept working the rest of the morning. Suddenly she was ready again.   Since my phone went swimming on Saturday, I went about 10:30 (the soonest I could get away from CQ phone) to Verizon to see if they could resurrect it. They couldn’t. They told me I do have phone insurance, which made me really happy that I made such a good decision when we bought our phones! Good job us!   So all I have to do is file an insurance claim and pay $150 deductible to get a phone very similar to the one I have. BUT   I couldn’t file a claim until I canceled Find My Phone feature on my phone. The girl was explaining to me how to do it, and would hav...

Tom had Bishopric meeting, then came home just in time to pick me up. The missionaries asked us to pick up Paula and they had told her we would be taking her to the Spanish ward. She is very bilingual and actually doesn’t know how to pray in English. We have thought all along she would fit in better in the Spanish ward, and we were happy to have an excuse to visit there. It was wonderful meetings and lessons. Many people spoke to Paula and welcomed her and told her to come back, but as soon as we were out the door she said, “I want to go back to Van Ness.” She said she doesn’t understand enough English to understand all the talks and lessons. So, ok! It felt weird to go to Church without my phone to use for scriptures, the lesson, and to sing. Oh, and I wasn't at all surprised with I got asked to play the piano for the closing song in Relief Society! I asked Todd to stay home today with his boys (Tanya and Caeli were in Dublin with Tami) so that the Pettus’ could have some time w...

Tom wants to help clean the church on Saturday mornings, but every Saturday he has forgotten until too late to go. This ward doesn’t have any schedule for the cleaning; they just put out a call every Friday night for everyone who can, to come. So last night he set an alarm.   Of course we were already awake, but it helped us not forget to go. The boys woke up a little after 7, so we fed them and left Ziona and Geneva sleeping. They were good helpers, and we left after about half hour. We took them to buy donuts, and they bought an extra one for whichever sister woke up first. When we got home, Ziona and Geneva were still asleep, and when Ziona got up, she won the donut; Geneva never knew there was a donut.   Tanya left early to go to Sacramento with Caeli, so Kaden didn’t get to come over until Todd brought him. Cannon came too, but after a short time Todd and Cannon left. Kaden was so happy to be here to play with his cousins.   We turned off the internet to he...

 We swam

When I got up at about 5 because my arm was aching, Geneva was out wandering around. She had not yet gone to sleep. We will have to do something about that because that means she sleeps all day. I have had hardly any Clean Queen work this week. Unusually small amount of work It’s been so nice! We got a text from the missionaries that they wanted us to join then at 7pm, but I didn’t feel like I could leave the kids swimming, so Tom went without me. He left while we were in the pool so he could run errands on the way.   Ziona and I got in around 4pm and the boys joined about an hour later. We swam until about 6:30 when hunger forced us out. When we were all out, drying ourselves off, Geneva came out, ready to swim. So sad.   I made them some corn on the cobb and quesadillas for dinner, then watched more finals of Olympics. I love watching the track and field events! After that was just scriptures and bed.   I’m so grateful for our pool and fun kids to swim wit...

Today was pretty normal all morning – Tanya dropped off Kaden in the morning so he could spend the day with his cousins playing video games, I worked, Tom did yardwork, and stuff like that. But one thing different was that Geneva was up around 10:30am instead of sleeping until 3pm. When Tom asked her why she was awake so early, she said, “Because tonight is mutual.” Sadly, she is no longer invited to mutual because she has graduated from high school, so she was disappointed all day. Also, Ziona checked the pool water temperature and watched for shade on the pool several times like she usually does, but about 2pm came to me and reminded me that today was Wednesday. She had remembered that today she had an activity days swim party! When we were having a lunch of corn on the cob, I told Geneva that she could go to Institute tonight and told her about some other activities they were having, she said, “oh good. Another bunch of people I will meet who I will never see again.” It is sure ha...

That is the main thing for the day. Ziona goes out several times a day to see if the pool is shaded yet and checks the water temperature on our little alligator thermometer. The boys were also anxious to get in. Kaden, however, didn’t even bring a swimming suit and yet Dexter and Trevor got in without him. He sat in the house and played on his phone the whole time. We swam from about 4:00 to 7:00, then I made everyone get out. I wanted to be out when Tanya got here so I could hang out with her.   She came about 8:30 pm and didn’t stay long because she needed to pick up Cannon from something. It was cooler weather – around 100 instead of 107, so the water and weather were more conducive to play, but the bees continue to torture us. I have made a spray that I put in 4 spray bottles that sure makes them fly away, and if we do it continually, every time we see a bee, they stay manageable. If we don’t spray all that we see, many, many more come and they become more aggressive. ...

As the Knudsens were leaving last night Dexter showed me he had is toothbrush in his hand and said he was going to sleep at Knudsens’ house. Having one child less here makes a huge difference. We just had Ziona and Trevor. Geneva is always in her room, so she hardly counts. I told her we are all going to remember this as the summer Geneva was asleep. Anyway, Trevor slept in longer since Dexter wasn’t here to wake up early to play computers with, and Ziona slept longer because the house was so quiet. We didn’t see Geneva until after 4pm, and then only briefly. I think Ziona enjoyed having Trevor to herself. She hardly ever gets to play with him.   It doesn’t seem like we did much all day. The only thing notable is that the person that we just hired to take my place had second thoughts, so Lilian immediately hired the other contender. I sent her a list of what I do, but she never responded so now I have doubts about her, too.   In the late morning, Dexter and Kaden arr...

I really try to spoil Tom on Father’s Day because he spoils me all year. So I gave him his gifts before anyone came over. Basically, I gave him things that I noticed he wished he had over that last several months. I had them all hidden in our closet. Good thing he doesn’t’ look closely at anything on my side of the closet. I think the gift he liked most was a picture I took and framed of a car in our neighborhood that he stops or slows down to look at every time it is out of the garage as we drive by. He really liked that one. He wanted to make fried potatoes for breakfast, so he didn’t get breakfast in bed. He would rather cook than be cooked for. It was tricky to get all the potato burritos made in time for everyone to eat before we left for church, but we made it. We took 3 of the kids with us.   We had been told that Church would be back to normal without masks and without social distancing, but they still had every other row blocked off, and most people had masks. I was ...

Tom made a good breakfast Dexter and Trevor before they needed to be at the service project at Lafayette park in Fresno at 9am. They finished before noon and Tom picked them up. They were supposed to go back to join the swimming at a clubhouse pool with all YM/YW. After we dropped them off at the park service project, we went to buy groceries for tomorrow, then mailed the Clean Queen computer to Lilian! What excitement to get that gone! Happy days! It is the beginning of freedom for me.   We kind of hung out until 4pm when there was enough shade on the pool to get in. We tried to coax Dexter and Trevor in, but they weren’t interested. Geneva had not come out of her bedroom yet – don’t know if she was still asleep, and Tom had things he needed to do. So Ziona and I swam alone for 3 hours! The water was 85 degrees and fabulous! We talked and talked. She got braver and braver in her swimming ability, and soon we were spending all our time in the deep end. She stays close to the ...

Retirement is coming! 6/18 I’m not sure how hot it was today, but probably around 107. When we opened the door at 5am to see if we could cool down the house naturally, it was already 80 outside. So we knew it would be a good swimming day!   While all the girls in the stake are at girl’s camp, the stake put together a 3-day boy’s day camp, so Dexter and Trevor have had done that yesterday, today and tomorrow that is ALL DAY. I’m glad they have each other to go with because they don’t know anyone here and would have a hard time joining activities. On Thursday, they had a tri-tip dinner, then games and competitions. They they went to a Trampoline Park and ended with a gospel message. They finished at 10:30pm Then today they started with donuts and devotional at 10an, had YM Olympics, lunch, then 5 hours at Lake Millerton where they got to swim and ride in speed boats. Then dinner, a sunset hike/activity, then a gospel message at 8:30pm!!   After they got home, we had sc...

  After we had been in the pool over an hour, I started to get really cold. I stuck it out longer than I wanted to, but it was just hard to get out while the kids were still playing and having so much fun. When I finally did get out, I was really cold. I took a hot shower, but still felt cold. I got a blanket and laid down on the couch for scriptures, but was still freezing. As soon as scriptures were over, about 10pm, we went to bed and I got Tom to put 3 extra blankets on me and I was still cold. Then I knew for sure I had a fever and it had to be a reaction from the shot. I thought after 1 ½ days, the danger was past. Tom didn’t get sick at all. I think I was freezing about half the night, then I started sweating, and sweat the rest of the night. My head was sweating, and I ached all over. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well, so we got up very slowly this morning. It was 8:30 before I went out to log into the computers for the boys. I felt fine except for a slight headac...

I worked Clean Queen pretty much all day. I’m trying to get all the CQ files off my computer and onto the CQ computer so I can hand that over when we get someone to replace me. It was a hassle to use two computers, so I had switched everything to my computer and just used two screens all the time. Now I have to put it all back and there is a lot more now than there was when I quit using it. We learned from our mistake of having Ziona sleep on the couch in the family room and us on the air mattress, and with her approval, we moved her back onto the tiny loveseat in our room and we slept in our beds. That works great until CQ wakes up and the whole rest of the house is asleep. This morning I used Trina and Chris’ room to work until people woke up. Today Anne had set up a zoom interview with one of the applicants for my job and I got to join in. It was good to see what she looked like, how she felt about the job, and watch Anne and Lilian talk to her about details. Lilian asked me to ex...

We were wrong about being able to sleep well on the air mattress. I think Tom inflated it too much, and it was like sleeping on the floor except it made more noise when we tried to turn over. I could not go to sleep at all, so eventually I moved to the loveseat. I still had a hard time falling asleep because it is way too small to stretch out on. About 5am Tom and I moved to our own bed, confident that Ziona would be able to make it the rest of the night. I still didn’t ever really fall into a deep sleep before it was time to get up. We had the appointment at Kaiser to get our 2 nd COVID shot at 8am, so we took off before breakfast. Again, there was no line. There were about 10 nurses waiting for someone they could stick with a needle, and the room where people recuperate was virtually empty except for us.   Trina makes oatmeal different from how I do, so I asked the kids if they knew how. Ziona said “You mean do we know how to boil water and pour a pack of instant oatmeal i...

  Tom wanted to run some errands, and was gone almost all day with them. He felt like he got a lot done. He texted me on the way home saying his errands had been very “fruitful” and could the kids please come out to help carry things in. It turned out his fruitful trip was a little play on words because he had stopped at our favorite fruit stand and bought his favorite things, plus Gabby gave him a whole box of tangerines, a small box of peaches, a watermelon, and strawberries. Very ‘fruitful’ indeed!   I just kind of was home. I did Clean Queen several hours because we are now looking for someone to replace me! Hooray! I confessed to Lilian that I need to be not working by August because especially with the pandemic winding down, we hope to be able to travel by August/September. I feel bad quitting before she sells the company but the sale just seems to be moving way too slowly. I feel a bit like a traitor and that I am abandoning her.   But she jumped right on...

Tom didn’t have any meetings before Church, so we just made breakfast and got ready, and went to Church. In order for Pettus’ to not have to take the BFV (big fat van) we needed to take one child with us, and Trevor was the first one ready, so we got to have him with us. Trevor is the most darling, gentile, and sweet little boy. I love that he is unspoiled by the world. I adore Trevor. He helped us save enough seats for their whole family when they got there.   The meetings were good and it was nice to have Trina sitting next to me in Relief Society. As soon as we got home from Church, I left again to go to the Alluvial Relief Society. Somehow we had the wrong time, so we (the Stake RS presidency) were all late, but it was a really good meeting. They have a happy group and laughed a lot together. I love visiting other wards!   Tom made dinner while I was gone and warmed up some leftovers for me when I got home. Mmmm, chilaquiles! Nothing was happening around here, so I...