Jack has a friend named "peaches" that lives behind us, she is a golden retriever.  Jack sometimes goes to the back of the yard and sits patiently waiting for her to come out and play.  It is cute that he loves seeing her through the fence.  

It was a beautiful summer evening and I needed to get some rocks from the creek at the park for a girl's camp activity.  Lucy is always willing to drive me places, so she drove me to the park.  We put the top down and enjoyed the beautiful evening.      

 

Fathers Day

Nolan thankfully slept through the night and was able to sleep in.  I stayed home from church with him and let him slowly start eating things.  We put together that he had heat exhaustion.  I kept him drinking Pedialyte and Gatorade all day and he slowly started to feel more like himself.  It was strange to not go to church and be with JJ on Father's Day.  He enjoyed church and they had pie for the men after church which JJ enjoyed.  We had some small gifts for JJ that he opened when he got home.  We went over to my dad's house that evening for banana splits and ice cream sundaes.  We wanted to keep dinner simple and not do a big thing as a group.  I also wanted to let Natalie's family enjoy some time with Dad.  They came in to spend Father's Day with him and they don't get to see him that often.  My Dad opened up cards and gifts and I was excited to give him the meals I had made for him.  He was speechless and loved them! I don't think he expected anything like it.  It was special to give them to him and explain my experience making them.  I helped him put them in his freezer in the basement.  He was so excited and loved it so much.  We brought the ping pong table up to the driveway and the kids enjoyed playing some ping pong.  We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful evening.  It was a nice get together and fun to be able to spend some time with the Wright family over the weekend.  

I hope JJ felt celebrated and loved on Father's Day.  He is an amazing Dad and I hope he knows that.  I know I love to feel celebrated on Mother's Day and I hope he felt that today from us.          

 

Youth Conference

Lucy was able to attend Youth Conference over the weekend.  They left Friday morning and came home Saturday evening.  She was able to do baptisms at the Nauvoo temple which she said was really neat.  She said the temple was so beautiful.  They toured homes in Nauvoo and enjoyed carriage rides and walking around.  She said they saw some cool performances by the missionaries there.  They had a combined dance with another stake from Wisconsin.  She said that was a lot of fun and there were some cute boys from the other stake.  Saturday, they toured Carthage and had a testimony meeting there.  They had a pizza dinner and then headed home.  She had a good experience and a fun time.  I am glad she was able to go.  Nauvoo has a special spirit about it.      

Last injection

Saturday night was Lucy's last injection.  She did it, she made it!  These last few weeks have been so hard.  Physically and emotionally and we are so glad they are over.  She was tearful just knowing she had made it and it was over. Enduring these injections, the past few years have been so hard.  Not only hard on Lucy but hard on our family.  It has been hard to watch her struggle and suffer.  It has also been hard to not have her around like normal on Sundays.  She usually lays in her room by herself and often misses church.  I hope now we can go back to enjoying her company, having her well and doing fun things as a family like we use to enjoy. I hope her appetite can return to normal and she can have family dinner with us more often.  So much of the Lucy we know, and love has been dimmed the past two years.  We hope she can return and sparkle like we remember.  Lucy said now that this is over she feels like she is slowly waking up from a bad dream.  We are so proud of her for finishing and being so strong.  We are glad to not have to have injections be part of our Saturday evenings.      

 

Chesterfield Pool

Natalie wanted to do something fun on Saturday and dad mentioned how much he enjoyed coming swimming at my pool.  He wanted to go swimming again.  We decided to head to the Chesterfield pool for the afternoon.  They have a little bit of everything and something for all ages.  Just as we were getting ready to go Nolan told me how tiered he was.  He laid down on the couch for a little while as we packed up some snacks.  We didn't think much of it since he had a busy day the day before playing with a friend and then having everyone over.  It was such a beautiful day, not nearly as hot as it had been the whole week.  We had so much fun going down the waterslides, relaxing in the lazy river and playing in the pool.  As the afternoon went on, we noticed Nolan was more and more tiered and his eyes were really glazed over.  He kept laying down on the chairs and resting.  As we were talking about leaving Nolan really seemed to be getting worse and went to the bathroom and threw up.  We got home and he fell asleep on the couch.  Garrett and I changed and headed back to Chrisy's house for a pizza dinner with everyone.  Nolan threw up again while we were gone.  Garrett and I didn't stay long at Christy's.  We then picked up Lucy from the church, she had just returned from being at Nauvoo for Youth Conference.  We stopped at Walmart for some Pedialyte, Gatorade, popsicles and oyster crackers.  We suspected Nolan had heat exhaustion and was really dehydrated.  I'm glad we were able to have a fun time and Nolan was able to do things before feeling to sick.  We will have to go back again, maybe over the 4th of July when Lauren's family comes.      

 

Natalie and her family decided to come to town for Father's Day.  It was a very last-minute trip, but we are glad they were able to come down.  I had a friend in our ward who had some left-over shredded lettuce and tortilla chips from a wedding reception.  I was glad to have some and so we decided to have everyone over Friday for taco salad.  It worked well to have the Wrights stop on their way into town and then have everyone join us.  Christy helped bring food which was so helpful.  It is not an easy task to feed a group our size, but we are pretty good at it.  The food was delicious, and the cousins had a fun time playing outside.  It was a beautiful evening, and it was so enjoyable to spend time visiting outside.  It was nice to catch up with the Natalie, we haven't seen her since the funeral.      

 

For Father's Day I had the thought to make my dad some dinners.  I know that cooking dinner is not something he is used to doing.  He is doing a great job but knew he would appreciate some meals. He told me that he misses moms cooking, especially her casseroles.  I know mealtime is the hardest and he misses mom calling him up for dinner.  Every once and a while he will have a dinner invitation, or someone will bring him dinner.  I wanted to make him some dinners that he would just have to warm up and enjoy.  I thought of making a few of the casseroles that we grew up eating.  I made him some chicken divan, lasagna and meatloaf with mashed potatoes.  Christy, Natalie and Courtney went in on the gift with me.  I was able to make 25 meals for him.  It was a lot of work to make it all, but I knew it would be appreciated.  As I was putting the labels on the containers, I had an overwhelming feeling that mom was so thankful I was doing this.  Mom took such good care of dad and I know she worries about him.  I could feel her thanking me for taking care of him.  It was a really special experience for me.  

That evening JJ and I played volleyball.  It was so hot.  It has been so hot this week.  As we played the feels like temperature was 109.  It was almost too hot to be playing.  We were so sweaty and started to feel a little heat exhaustion as the evening went on.  We were thankful for early games, but it was sure hot in the sun. We were ready to be done and go inside to cool off and shower.            

 

Garrett and I both had orthodontist appointments.  We are both getting close to getting our braces off, hurray!  That evening we invited my dad up to go swimming and have dinner with us.  He was excited to come.  We had dinner and then headed to the pool.  He said he couldn't remember the last time he had been swimming.  He had a really nice time swimming with the googles and throwing the football with the boys.  He rode his Motocycle up and took each of the boys for a ride.  They were his first passengers.  They loved it!  I told my dad that he could come up and go swimming anytime and he said he was going to take us up on that.