July

July has been a scorching blur. It has been an incredibly hot summer. I am woefully behind on my posts.

We celebrated the Fourth of July with the usual friends.

Caitlyn and Christian were supposed to go on their daddy-daughter campout at the beginning of the month, but since there was still snow at the end of June, they delayed until the end of the month. 

Meanwhile, Christian has been working on my truck. We've been having transmission problems on and off for some time now and it seems to be getting worse. Since it has been too hot to do much of anything, we have been spending a lot of time tuning up the car and trying to diagnose the problem with the transmission. Unfortunately, because of the heat, the only time it has been cool enough to work on the car is usually in the middle of the night.

We have not gone climbing all month. The girls have been spending a lot of time swimming and playing with some of their friends in the neighborhood. They have been spending a lot of time indoors between swimming. They even finished their Summer Reading program at the library in record time. Too bad the program rewards were less than spectacular.

The girls finally finished their crochet projects that they started two summers ago! Neither of them actually finished with the original project that they started with but they finally managed to finish it!

We've been spending a lot of time tinkering around in the kitchen. Christian got some mooncake moulds for Father's Day last month.

It's been fun and we've been enjoying all Christian's new experiments and concoctions!

Marian came by one weekend to spend some time with the kids. She took them out for treats and a movie.

Emily gave her first Sacrament talk as a youth. She was really nervous about having to go up to talk in front of so many people but she did great and gave a really good talk on choice and accountability. On the same Sunday, she had to play the piano for the young women as their leader, who normally takes care of the music, was out of town. It was the first time she has done that and she did really good. She messed up a little once, but she was able to continue on without any trouble. 

By the time that the end of the month came, we were having additional problems wth the car. The radiator is now leaking. We were not having any problems with it before, but in our tune up of the car, we flushed the radiator to clean it out and now it is leaking quite badly. 

In the end, Caitlyn and Christian put off their trip once again until the beginning of August.