On July 6th, we went as a family to the Food Bank to bag 50,000 lbs. of potatoes someone anonymously donated to the South Plains Food Bank. It was such a neat and special experience to serve together as a family. Both Kelsey and Mylee got into action—Lanaea hung out in her stroller. Mylee enjoyed bagging potatoes once the giant bags got low enough for her to reach. Kelsey carefully placed the bagged potatoes into bins. I want to do more things like this as a family.
This service project was only a small portion of a much larger service project our stake puts on every year. This year our goal is to collect 300,000 pounds of food to donate. As a family we participated in this effort by inviting our neighbors to bring a bag a food to donate to the South Plains Food Bank to a neighborhood party I helped plan. As a family we collected 20 bags of food and many others said they would use the recyclable bags we gave them and drop the food off at drop boxes for the food bank in our local grocery stores. Kelsey and Mylee felt so proud and good when they were able to bring all that food to primary the day after our party—they have been working hard as a primary to collect food for the food bank.
Lanaea has had about enough!!
Blake is convinced that Lanaea is going to be his little athlete because she LOVES playing with balls. It’s the cutest thing!! It’s the one toy that she prefers over any others. The only other toy that can compete is her doll—which I think is a perfect combination!! She’s both feminine and athletic, qualities that I think suit a girl very well. I’m excited to see what happens with Lanaea as she grows older.
With my church responsibilities and a recent job I took on to transcribe a missionary journal of a relative from 1896, summer hasn’t been as uneventful as I would have hoped, but we have caught a few days of really good play. The girls LOVE to play in their pool. It’s even more of a treat when we get to go to a real swimming pool. It’s been fun that Blake has been able to join us this year—last year he couldn’t swim because he had just had surgery. It’s been fun to see Kelsey and Mylee play with one another. Mylee really missed Kelsey during the day when she was in school. It warms my heart to see my girls play with one another. Kelsey and Lanaea also have such a sweet relationship. Lanaea will often go up to her and give her loves and ask to be cuddled. It’s so precious!!
In June, we decided to make another trip to Palo Duro since we had such a good experience the first time. This time we had a working air conditioner and we came prepared with more water AND gatorade. The weather was actually perfect. The evening we arrived, Blake took a quick bike ride, finding a large horny toad along the way. He brought it back to show the girls and we kept it for a while until some campers near us informed our girls that they were endangered and that we should tell our parents to let it go. We didn’t want to cause problems and were not aware of them being endangered (we found out later that they used to be endangered, they are a protected species now) so we let it go. That night our girls took forever to get relaxed and go to sleep. We made the mistake of not bringing Lanaea’s port-a-crib because it took up so much space. We had to let her fall asleep in her car seat to get her to sleep. When Blake and I went to bed we moved her to the tent. I spent a lot of the night moving Lanaea back into her bed we had made her on the floor. She wasn’t used to sleeping unrestricted.
Near the end of May, strawberries went on sale for $.75 a pound at Walmart. I had never seen a pint of strawberries that cheap before so I stocked up!! I bought 25 lbs of strawberries and ended up freezing enough to get 4 gallon-sized bags and had enough left over to make 14 jars of jam—one is not pictured. I felt accomplished!!!
On May 28th, our stake hosted a 5 K run for the purpose of kicking off a food drive for the South Plains Food Bank. Blake was working so I showed with our girls and our double stroller with the intent to at least walk the 3 miles together. I actually did get to run some with Kelsey at the beginning but she got tired out after a while. It was really hot. We weren’t in the race to win though, we were there for a good cause and I wanted to model to my children a healthy and good activity. We all had a good time. After the 5K race I got Kelsey to run in the ½ mile race for the kids. I ran with her to help motivate her. She felt cool! After the race there were bagels and a variety of fruit. It was a fun and eventful morning.
May 27th was Kelsey’s last day of school. It was such a good year for her. She LOVED school and I could not have been more pleased with her teacher and the school. It was a very good experience. When school first started I was concerned I would have a hard time waking Kelsey up and have arguments over what she should wear, but she got up herself and most days picked out appropriate and nice things to wear to school. It was such an enjoyable year!!
On May 26th, Kelsey had her end of school party. All the kindergarten teachers had planned the event. The kids had coke floats, but had sent Kelsey with rootbeer so she could have rootbeer instead of coke. I was so proud of her that she even asked for rootbeer before I arrived at the party. She knew she wasn’t supposed to drink coke. Don’t ask me why they wanted to give coke to 5 and 6 year olds! The kids were also given spray bottles and had a full blown water fight. It was really cute seeing the teachers get involved. Kelsey had a great time. Mylee eventually got into the fun too and borrowed Kelsey’s spray bottle for a while. I had to crack up though when I found Kelsey a couple of times tending to a little garden she had created in the rocks and dirt!! All the kids had a really fun time. 
On May 20th, Kelsey’s school had their annual field day which they called “Buddy Fun Day”. Kelsey had all of her activities in the morning which unfortunately happened to be freezing that day!! I arrived at her activities a little late, but thought it might be a good idea to bring a change of clothes because a paper had mentioned the kids would get wet. When I arrived they had a jumper set up with a pool of water at the end. Kelsey and her little buddy had gone down and were soaked. Kelsey was freezing and shivering uncontrollably. I was a little upset that they would continue to have such an activity for these small children on such a cold day. I had Kelsey go into the bathroom and change into the clothes I had brought her and had her wear her jacket. Things went a lot better from then on. She went to a station where she had to keep a fire ball candy in her mouth and who ever kept it in the longest won—she won, but mostly because she didn’t realize she could spit it out—I had taught her good manners!! She also played a game where she had to a roll a tire, jump in a potato bag and get pulled on a little cart. It was a really fun day, just cold.
When we finally made it over to the state park, we ate a sack lunch and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. The park features a rock bridge that had formed over the years due to erosion. We all hiked down a carefully carved out path to see underneath the bridge below. The bridge formation was beautiful. It even had a tiny stream of water that cascaded over the top of the bridge creating a beautiful little waterfall. Everything below the water was covered with green moss and plants. There were all sorts of neat caverns and pools of water underneath the bridge. We all really enjoyed it. Eventually we made it back up the trail—it was a lot easier going down!! I’m glad Blake was carrying Lanaea on his back and not me! We found another short little hike that led to another small waterfall on the other side of the park. We all then went back to the cabin to enjoy a campfire, smores, a yummy dinner, and of course talking and board games through the night. I should note that our girls were on cloud nine, including Lanaea. They loved playing on the giant swings, playing in the woods and enjoying nature. Each night we also kept warm from a pot belly stove that Blake and Matt kept stocked with wood.
The next day Blake’s Grandma and Grandpa showed up to visit and be with us for a while. That morning we had planned to go shooting with Grandpa. Grandpa had been to a spot to shoot but couldn’t remember where it was exactly. We took a couple of wrong turns and never ended up finding the spot he remembered, but we eventually found a spot that was open enough to shoot. This was manly time!! Blake even got me out there to shoot—only my second time ever. I shot a 22 and a hand gun (I’m sure it has a name, but I couldn’t tell it to ya). I mostly enjoyed seeing Kelsey interact with her Great-Grandfather—it was so precious. Monica and her friend had stayed back at the cabin with the rest of the kids. We mostly relaxed the rest of the day and all of our company left for home that evening. It was nice to have a quite evening together with just our family.
