First half of summer

 We kicked off summer by joining a swim team. Since the city pools aren't having swim team this summer, we found a county pool that is about 15 minutes away and joined that swim team. Annie opted out, but Rachel, Ryan, Megan, McKenzie and Peyton all joined. Megan did fine on the swim test the first day, but the more she swam the more nervous the steep decline to the deep end of the pool freaked her out, until she finally decided half way through the second day that she was done for the summer. Maybe next year when she can swim at Purple Heart Pool, where it never gets deeper than 7 feet. 

Rachel is officially vaccinated! She got her second shot a little over two weeks ago, felt just a little achy and yucky the day after, and is back up and at it. She was able to go maskless to church today for the first time since they ask that all non-vaccinated people wear masks. 

For FHE a couple of weeks ago Megan wanted to go to Candy World to get Thrifty ice cream. Mmmm. Ice cream.

That Monday and Tuesday Rachel also participated in a Volleyball Camp at Empire High School. She had a good time and a couple friends of hers happened to be there, too. I think they'll have fun together in Volleyball when the season starts when school is back in session next month. 

It was a busy few days getting everything ready for girls camp, since I'm the ward camp director. I was happy to have Cori Peterson as my assistant to help out. We decided that next time there is ward camp, there needs to be an official camp cook called. Dealing with the food was definitely a job in and of itself. It was a pretty impressive feat, however, that at Costco our total came to $200.00 even. We had to document it.

So Rachel and I left the rest of the family in Tucson and headed for Mt. Graham to camp at the Frost family's cabin. The women leaders slept in the cabin, but the YW had to set up their tents around the cabin. It was a learning experience for many.

After lunch and tent set up, some of the YW went to climb a big rock. It bade me nervous watching all the girls on precariously high perches, but no one was hurt, and all had lots of fun.

Unfortunately, after we got back to camp Rachel started to feel sick. She had complained of shoulder/neck pain and a headache that morning, but I figured it was from volleyball camp, and gave her some ibuprofen. Apparently that masked the fever, which came back in full force that afternoon. Because one of her YW leaders had tested positive for COVID the week before, I was very nervous about her somehow having caught it, even though she had never gotten within 6 feet of the leader at the activity they were both at the day before testing positive. Because she was already feeling pretty bad, and I was worried about COVID, I drove her home and she ended up missing the rest of camp (but was COVID negative, thank goodness!). I was so bummed to be at camp without Rachel. I just kept thinking of how much she would have enjoyed each of the activities. But that's life, sometimes. 

Here are all the YW at camp when we went to the lake. 

Rachel is represented in all the t-shirts they're wearing, since she designed the shirts. She used her digital art skills to combine a boat, like on Moana, with the logo for the youth theme for the year. It turned out really great.

Last week we discovered this app that converts pictures into cartoon versions. Here is our family, cartoon-ized: 

Annie had a few coupons for Peter Piper she's had since school was wrapping up. Last week we finally got to go for pizza and to blow some tokens earning tickets. 

My first token I won 300 tickets out of pure luck. I shared them among the kids after they used all their tokens and they were able to get a few pieces of candy each. They had fun learning about how gambling doesn't pay off. :) 

Sister Spear invited us over to swim in her pool on Friday. Her dogs had lots of fun, enjoying the attention from all the kids. One of her dogs, Malibu, loves swimming and playing fetch with her frisbee, so she'd jump right in to the pool and swim to the frisbee. The other dog, Leo, would bring his ball and drop it in the pool for a kid to throw on the grass for him to fetch, since he does not like swimming. 

Rachel is pet sitting for them for almost 2 weeks, and we've been given permission to swim in their pool as much as we want while they're gone. The kids are looking forward to it.

Our neighbors, Joanne and Eileen gave us their Wii when they were cleaning out stuff in conjunction with remodeling their house. Since we got our new entertainment center last month, we upgraded our TV to fit better for Father's Day, moving our old TV over to be used as a new computer monitor. So, in conjunction with setting up the new TV, we also set up the Wii. 

We just have sports games, but the kids had a fun time getting to know a few of the games: archery, golf, and wakeboarding. 

In trying to give the kids more practice and freedom self-regulating and making their own choices, I've given them a 2 hour screen time limit per day this summer and they get to decide when/how to use their time. I think it is having its desired effect, because they are turning off the TV on their own, and negotiating for who wants to watch what, when. We'll see how it goes now that another screen activity has been added to the options.