Last Week of Summer???

Seems early, right??  Sadly, this is Emma's last week of summer vacation before she starts high school!!  The charter school is not part of our school district, and therefore sets its own schedule, and its schedule starts next week for freshman.  She has her walk thru, pictures, gets her schedule and books on Monday. Tues - Fri is freshman orientation where she's linked up with a senior and 11 other freshman.  They spend the 4 days doing activities to get acquainted with the campus, lockers, routines, meet other kids, etc. The idea is that when real school starts the following week, all the nerves and jitters of being on a new campus where they don't know what's where or who's who will be gone. 

This week she's finishing up an on line course she opted to do this summer to start off high school with having already earned 5 credits.  Takes about 3-4 hours to do 2 lessons, and she had to do 40 to complete the course. She's got about 8 left to finish up.  She's been pretty good about staying on track, even when we were in Disneyland, she worked on them at the hotel during the rest of the families nap time.  Her only real break has been this past week when we were camping and had no internet.

These next pics are randomly tossed into this post, because I can...from the state fair.

 Sophie is a pro rib eater....and goat whisperer.

Speaking of camping...what  a needed escape that was!  Without going into too much detail, that "wonky heart" thing that my heart sometimes does, especially in heat (my 2 dnf's at diablo 50k were due to this) reared up with a vengeance.  Instead of once or twice a week, it was every 5-10 beats, around the clock, for about 2 weeks. After an ER visit, tests, cardiologist, dr, the general thought is stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, low potassium and iron came together to create the perfect storm of PVC's (premature ventricular contractions).  Not overly concerned, lots of people have them all the time and don't even know. I feel every single one, and have for as long as I can remember into my childhood.   I've mentioned the wonky heart here on the blog over the years, but had never seen a dr for it until this past month when things got crazy.  It was nice, after a lifetime of feeling something weird, to have a name for what's happening. It was also kind of neat, in a twisted way, for Brian to be able to watch the EKG and see them happen.  I could hold  a finger up when it happened and he could see the extra beat and then a pause of beats on the monitor.

So anyway, back to camping....I started on some meds to help with the anxiety, which will hopefully help with sleep eventually, an Iron supplement, and bananas, and after a week away from life, out in the woods....and guess what??  I'm back to just an occasional PVC once or twice a day, like normal.  There's still a few tests and echocardiogram just to cover all basis coming up, but things feel back to normal.  Camping was great. We slept in way later than normal, swam and floated, fished and caught nothing, napped, read, hammock-ed, played games, campfired....and then started over the next day doing about the same thing.  It was right about 90 everyday. Jumped up into the 100's the day we were leaving, so we packed up everything the night before and got out of dodge early the last day to void the heat. 

So....that about catches you up on life.  Em starts school, first football game it Aug 13th which starts our Friday night lights season (I love high school football games!!)  Sophie and Myles start the 22cd. My goal is to be involved with school stuff....but it's become clear I need to get back to my alone time on the mountain to destress and find my happy place : ) Last year I was at the school almost daily volunteering, so I need to find  a better balance this coming year.

Almost Caught Up!

I'm trying to get all caught up before we head out of town for our last camping trip of the summer.  So after we got back from Disneyland, we had one day to get the house clean and laundry done, and be ready for 2 weeks of family staying with us! We were looking forward to these 2 weeks for months! Sophie was getting baptized at our big summer convention at the Cow Palace, and the grandparents wanted to be here for that.  I put in a request for them to dunk her in a horse trough...but was denied : )

 We've lived here for near 17 years and somehow, Brian's folks found this restaurant that we had never been to.  We will be back!!

 Brian's dad, Grandpa Larry teaching the kids proper form for archery.

 Roasting our dinner in the back yard.

 Grandma Jackie and the kids at the Cow Palace.

 We bring lunch to the Cow Palace all three days....this was one days worth of lunch.

 Mom brought me her grandfather's, my great grandfather's, cabbage chopper.  He would make home made sauerkraut with her when she was a little girl.  I love old family things, and sauerkraut, so this was a special thing to be given.

 My mom also painted this bowl and pitcher for me and got it here, unbroken, from WA. I love it!!

 Sophie is down there somewhere. Those getting baptized sit down in front of the stage, there were 41 people.

 Auntie Jill, Latham fam, and grandma Jackie.

We had a great 2 weeks with family, and a great convention!!

Guess what??? That catches you all up!! This week was full of dr appointments (all is well) and now getting packed up and ready for camping.  A friend very nicely, and generously, surprised us with tickets to the state fair, so we will do that Sat and then head out for a week of relaxation, camping coffee, and fishing!!

One More Today

Ok, so we went down south. I already posted the beach and surfing pictures last month, so I'll skip those and go straight to some Disney ones.  It was very, very hot when we were there. We would go in the morning, head back to the room around noon, and stay there till 5 or 6, then head back.  That schedule has been one of the perks of having a season pass....we don't feel like we have to cram it all in to full, long days.  I will cram all the pictures into one post, though : )

 My ewok..it was over 100 keep in mind.  I couldn't get him to take it off.

 After the park has closed and Main Street is open, this is always a nice place to rest and let the crowds thin out.

 At night, the shooting gallery light changes to night time.

 The heat had us all wiped out!!

 New, and much appreciated security.  They've added metal detectors.

 We took shelter from the heat in the Golden Horseshoe and shared a big sundae!

 Her hat is Chip on one side, and Dale on the other.

 We also hid out in Lincoln's speech for a while.  It's still so cool to see him stand up and talk and gesture. We also got Jamba Juice in downtown Disney as we walked back to the park one evening.

 We also ate Dole Whip before going into the Tiki Room.

 New ride in Cars Land, notice they are not on any kind of a track. It's cool to watch, they line dance with each other.  Not super fun to ride, but pretty cool technology!

 Ugh man.....I will be so happy when the special 60th fireworks go away!!  There's total grid lock for two hours leading up to them, it's a nightmare trying to move around.  We happened to eat snacks at the end of Main Street, and were pretty much trapped there.  Brian went on line to see what the best way to see the fireworks was, and it said wait for the last float in the light parade to go by, and then jump into the crowd behind it.  You'll get corralled by ropes real quick because they section the street off into groups of people.  We tried, failed, and quickly just ducked under a rope to get into a group.

 This is looking behind us, down main street toward the train station. The reason to watch from here is you see all the projections on main street, and also the castle and fireworks.  The castle lights up and has images projected on it, also.

 That's as good as my camera would get the castle.

 This is a scene from Little Mermaid, the coral inflates from the roof tops.

The coolest thing is that it snows at one point....it was really, really cool!

 Where our hotel is, we walk through the Grand Californian Hotel, and come out the other side on Main Street.  They set up a water station on the super hot days.  Plain, or with fruit in it.

 Love this one of Brian and Myles walking.

 I'm going to go out on a limb and say Brian got the better picture here.

 Myles watches a lot of disney history videos on line and had certain hole in the wall things that he really wanted to see this time and tell us the history behind. Snow Whites pond was one of those things.

 One of our favorite things about walking back and forth from hotel to park is taking time inside the Grand Californian to relax.  Its about half way through our walk.  There's rocking chairs everywhere, large stone fireplaces, movies playing for the kids....my feet always appreciate the rest at the end of the day!

We went into the park bits and pieces of 6 days.  One day we just slept in late and went into the park around 1.  We also took some time to go see Dory in Downtown Disney.  It was a great, relaxing trip!