Port of Long Beach Tour

We all listened to Conference today and it was so nice. I love listening to all the talks and having a quiet day at home with the family.

This is my last July catch up post, and I considered skipping it, but it was so fun, I wanted to remember. We went on a boat tour of the Port of Long Beach! It was free, but you have to plan ahead a bit to get tickets.


I wanted to go on the tour with Stan and the kids for a few reasons -

1. I love going out on the ocean in a boat :)

2. I have always been fascinated by the huge cranes and mind bogglingly large stacks of train cars I see when we drive by the ports around here.

3. It is nice to do something together as a family.

4. It is always nice to feel the breeze in your hair. (Maybe that is the same as #1!)

It took a little maneuvering by our captain to get out on the tour because there was a water skiing race that day.


There were also LOTS of boats there watching the race...

...including the Coast Guard keeping an eye on everyone :)


Once we got around to the port, there was so much to see. like tugboats...


...enormous anchors...

...and lifeboats on all the big ships.

I wasn't sure what they were at first. Did they all have to have submarines for some reason(don't laugh at me Tim!)? So, I asked one of the crew members and he pointed out that the lifeboats had roofs to keep the sun off anyone stuck on one.

And my favorite thing to see, the big cranes! Number 1 is the box the operator sits in and number 2 is the crane that picks up the containers.

We saw a little wildlife.

There were lots of different flags and languages....

...and piles all over the place.

Salt -

Tires -

Metal sorted for recycling -

It was fascinating to learn some history and see it up close :)

FHE Activity AND Treat

Last Monday, for family home evening, our activity was decorating sugar cookies and our treat was eating them. Well, some of them. Even our desert loving children had to save some for lunch on Tuesday. Here are pictures of everyone's most beautiful cookies.


Rachel

Naomi

Heather

Michael

Gwen

Kelly
(more candy corn than cookie)

Family Reunion

This past July, we went to the annual family reunion on Stan's side. Here are his parents. I sure lucked out in the in-law department. They are as nice as you get :)

There were a lot of people there!

Jeff took twenty (?), thirty(?), a hundred (too many to count) nieces, nephews and grandkids fishing. He let every single kid have a turn, some even got second and third tries. Almost every kid caught a fish. Well, probably every kid caught one, but some kids, who will remain unnamed, lost one or two as well.

There was lots of teenager fun...

...and singing at the campfire.

There were marshmallows and some jaw dropping marshmallow feats performed.

We saw lovely blue dragonflies...

...humongous moths...

...and lots of deer.

It was a great trip :)

Funny Mo

My friend Kristin and I trade off the school pick up responsibilities. It is fun to have her daughter, Sydney in the car. Apparently Naomi agrees.

Sydney emailed me this from her phone -

Gwen the Adventuress

Gwen did the same math program this past July that Heather did two years ago. The kids spent the first four days of the week learning in the classroom. On Friday the parents were invited to come for an awards ceremony and the kids got to go on the ropes course. Gwen was amazing! She climbed a telephone pole and jumped off -

She pulled the release when she was suspended in the air and went into freefall -

Out of maybe 50 boys and girls, she was the first up to the top of the climbing wall...

...AND the very first one to make it ALL the way across this whatever it is (help here would be appreciated) -


She didn't want me to put up the video of her going all the way across, but she let me put up this little bit of her at the end. Listen to all that applause! That's my Gwen :)

Gwen's Birthday Party

I am still playing catch up with the posts. I think I will have July done by the end of the week.Rachel looked over my shoulder at the pictures I was uploading and asked, "Why are you blogging about that? It happened forever ago!"

Anyway, just because, here is a post from August. Gwen turned twelve!

Happy (belated) Birthday Gwen!!!

Now we have three girls in Young Women, three kids in Primary and one big girl in Relief Society(!).

Gwen invited some friends from school and some from church and we all went to a lovely little botanic garden for games and hiking.

The turtle pond was a favorite with all.

After a while, it was back to the house for cupcakes and presents. It was fun to hang out with such great girls :)

Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, the Soccer (Football?) Loving Budgerigar

Our Summer - Part 1

I have piles of pictures to sort and blog about from the past summer. I'm trying to catch up!

Last June, we traded a couple of our kids for a couple of their cousins. Brecken took the same sailing class that Rachel, Heather and Gwen took last summer (and Heather and Gwen took again last month).

We went with Brecken and Natalie to Chinatown...

...and out for dim sum. Yum!

During the week they were here, our ward had a camp fundraiser auction. I made and donated some cakes. Rachel promised peanut butter cookies and Heather and Gwen auctioned off some babysitting. The auction made enough money to pay for camp - whew!



While we were having fun down here with Brecken and Natalie, Heather and Gwen were riding horses and...

...catching snakes :)

It was NOT my day.

Last week, I was making myself a lovely hot fudge sundae, scooping the ice cream, heating the hot fudge in the microwave, and watching the hot fudge explode all over my kitchen. It splattered from the ceiling to the floor and everywhere in between.

I guess wiping up all that hot fudge up got me in a mood, because I decided to clean out my fridge, including taking the shelves out, washing them in warm soapy water and watching two of the four explode...self destruct...and fly all over the kitchen. Poor Michael even got hit and cut (just a tiny bit) by flying refrigerator shelf shrapnel.

Ugh.

Book for VT and Books for RS

It took me a while after the class I went to in June, but I finally made some more covers for Coptic bound books. I gave the first one I completed to a sister I visit taught who moved away, as a goodbye gift. I tried inlaying an image from the endpapers, but I was I little off, hence the glitter.


My next adventure in bookmaking was figuring out Japanese stab binding (I don't know if I really got it right, but I approximated it enough to work) to make some small notebook sized books for sisters who attended my Relief Society class on scripture study to stitch and use with their scriptures.

These were the samples I came up with.

This is what the preparation looked like.

Here are the two books I stitched during class to show the sisters how to do it. It was fun to figure out and then to teach :)

I plan to make more books, lots more I hope, so I started another blog just for them so that this blog doesn't get cluttered up with my hobbies. I am a bit shy about it, so I don't want to put the url here, but if you are interested, leave a comment, email or call and I will send you on over :)

Weighty Thoughts

Today, we went to our CHEP to pick up Michael's books. It was a big pile.

When we got home, I weighed Michael and he is around 38 1/2 pounds.

The books weighed about 65 pounds.

That includes 8 teacher's additions, 8 textbooks, and 14 workbooks.

Whew!

East Meets West

Yesterday for breakfast, I had a bagel that had been flown frozen from Queens to a local bakery and a glass of orange juice squeezed from oranges picked right off our So Cal tree that morning. Mmmmm :)

At the Park

The three youngest kids had swimming lessons while their sisters were at Girl's Camp. I've tried a few different places for lessons, but went with the one that was a 2 minute drive this time. It was extra nice because a friend who moved a while ago was taking her kids at the same time, so we got to catch up.

Michael is excited (but nervous) for his turn on the diving board :)

Kelly swan in the deep water a lot. It was a workout for her!

Naomi spent the time at the park eying the ice cream cart, so when it was her turn far a date with me, that is what she wanted. The girl pushing the cart finally let me take a picture when I told her she didn't have to be in it. She seemed pretty shy, but Mo wasn't.

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