August

August went by as another hot steaming blur. It has been a pretty miserable this summer. None of our plans worked out and it is almost too hot to go anywhere.

The kids have been swimming a lot with their friends in the neighborhood. We even met up with Caitlyn's friend from school once at the public pool.

It seems to be the only thing we can do in this weather.

On the second weekend of the month, Christian and Caitlyn took off for their daddy-daughter camp out. They were headed out Friday morning to Laurel Mountain. They had been planning on the trip for a year now. I got several texts from Christian as the progressed up the 395. By the late afternoon, I figured that they had arrived to their destination and was setting up for the night as they were to get up for an early start. However, later that evening, I found out that they were in Lassen!

Apparently, there were fires all over the place and the air was thick with smoke. Plus, Caitlyn was getting cold feet about their climb. Christian decided to let her off the hook and let her choose a new destination on the fly. She chose to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park since she has never been there before.

The hiking was easy and the place was crowded and smelly, but beautiful. They spent the day exploring the park. Unfortunately, as they were going back to find a campsite for the night, Christian's truck started running roughly. We are not sure what the problem was. They decided that they had better just start heading home and see how far the truck will take them. It was a risky decision for them to go so far since my truck has been having all sorts of problems as well and we were not sure what a long drive would do to it. 

I got several messages during the night updating me on their progress. I thought for sure that we would have to pick up and go after them at some point, but they drove through the night. Christian only pulled over briefly to get in a quick cat nap before continuing on their long journey back home. They made it back safely in the morning.

While they were off on their adventures, we spent time locally as we did not want to drive very far with my questionable car. We did some shopping on Friday and went out to lunch. On Saturday, we went to Roller City so that Emily can practice with her roller blades. I stuck with the old fashioned roller skates.

I still fell once in the beginning as I had not gone to a roller rink since before I was Emily's age! It hurt a lot more than I remember from when I was a kid. I don't know if it is because I am bigger and heavier now or they just don't make roller rinks like they used to! It is basically a laminated cement floor. There was even some puckering on one side of the rink from water damage or something so the floor was not entirely even where I fell. Anyway, I was pretty sore afterwards and apparently hurt my right wrist because it hurt for the rest of the month!

Emily did pretty well, but fell several times still. I think her butt was pretty bruised in the end and we called it a day after her third fall. We decided to go out for Ice Cream to soothe or sore butts and egos.

After Christian returned, we tried to figure out what was going on with his truck but it seemed to be running fine and normal after that!