Friends, Fruit, Family

I love summer time! Friends are home. Fruit is in season. Family visits. It's great.

I have a dear friend, well actually several dear friends, but one in particular. Charity Smith. She lives 2 doors down and both she and her daughter (Berlynn, who is Bekah's age) are home during the summer. So every day, my kids wake up and ask to go to Berlynn's house, and Berlynn wakes up and begs to come to ours. The kids just run back and forth from one house to another. Dress ups, swimming, trains, babies. It's the perfect neighbor! If I have to run somewhere, Charity urges me to leave the kids with her, and vice versa. Plus, the two of us get along really well. We are both a lot like each other's husbands, so we are obviously very compatible :) This morning she called to see if my kids could come and play because hers was a little ornery and needed friendly diversions. This was great, because I had already sent my kids back to bed for time out and it was only 8 am. (They had been up way to late singing & talking in their room last night). While they played very nicely together, I watched the kids while Charity did some stuff & then I got to run errands. We had lunch together and Charity and I did Yoga while Kyle napped and the girls played. We are even visiting teaching companions. We have gone to dinner together when both of our husbands are gone, gone to movies (with kids dressed up), gone hiking, swimming, biking. My favorite time was when we went to the Mayan a couple years ago. Her daughter used to undress whenever she got in water, and in the few seconds that it took for me to look away from the kids and wave to Charity as she pulled up with the car, I turned to find her daughter completely naked, trying to climb into the water fountain in front of the restaurant. Ahh! You can't beat memories like those! She is the best neighbor. We've had wonderful spiritual discussions, frustrations, and lots of laughs. It's sad that she will start teaching school in a couple weeks and tragic that they are trying to sell their house and move up north. Don't be surprised if I sound really depressed this winter.

With fruit in season, I have started domestically mooching. One friend let me come and pick raspberries, and so I made freezer jam. Another lady in our ward let me come and pick apricots. I made fruit leather with them. Never done that, and I find that I always have a big learning curve domestically. I put it on tinfoil. Big mistake. It took about 10 min. to make, about 2 hours to pull all the tinfoil of the fruit leather. I also picked cherries from a neighbor, but because they had worms, I always had to cut the cherries and pull out the worms before we ate. I still can't believe that I did that (Charity did it too, bless her, and even made us cherry pie. I think both our husbands were slightly grossed out), but the cherries were really good.

It has been WONDERFUL having so much family come visit. We have had a chance to see Rob's extended family again this week, Aunt Liz & kids, Sid & Steph, almost all of Bruce and Jeannies family are here for the summer, Brett, Wendy & family (my kids LOVE the cousins Rosey, Max, Chelsea, and Ashley), Grandma Bassett, Jannene & Kevin at their magic show last week... And of course I'm so excited for next week when all of my family arrives for the wedding. We love hanging out with family. Rob enjoyed golfing this Saturday with his uncles while I attended a bridal shower. I have to admit, it makes me really nervous to think about the possibility of moving in the future.

So for now, I will just enjoy this marvelous wonderful summer!