First I promise no gross photos in this post!  Spencer went on Trek with our stake this week.  He left early Wednesday morning with his sleeping bag in a trash bag and all his belongings in a 5 gallon bucket and returned home Saturday evening.  He pulled a handcart around 21 miles, had a dance, activities, pioneer stories and games, a testimony meeting and had a great time.  I was praying so hard that everything would go well for him on this trip and I count it as an answer to my prayer that he was assigned to the family of my visiting teacher and her husband the YM president of our ward.  Both of who know Spencer well and are amazing, loving people.  The amount of work that went into this activity was awe inspiring and I was so glad he got to do this.


And speaking of church...this week Jeremy got to do a photo walk for the church at the Bishop's storehouse and was there presented along with 4 others their missionary tags.  They are the first photographer missionaries the church has called.  He was asked to submit a missionary application a month or so ago and has been going through the process.  He is asked to commit to 8 hours a week working on photos for the church to use.  He is very excited about this opportunity.

This week Jeremy set up our new mattress in our bedroom to see if it helps out with his back.  I think it is starting to make a difference.  Jeremy had some Herculean evening of super dad effort this week, which brings us around to Midnight.

Midnight is still alive and kicking.  Monday she wasn't doing well so we went to talk to the guys at IFA who suggested we use a syringe and inject an iodine solution into the cyst and really flush it out like they do with cows.  So we tried that.  And when I saw we, I mean the royal we, meaning Jeremy.  And then Tuesday, Midnight was having a hard time breathing and was really laboring.  So back to IFA and their animal expert who supplied us with swine/cow tetracycline.  So we would wrap Midnight up and force down a mixture of antibiotics twice a day.  Allison pulled out her math skills to figure out the dosage as it was meant for much larger animals.  I feel like we are experimenting on animals in our house lately!  But the whole combination seems to have helped and Midnight now runs away and really struggles if we try to pick her up, all a good sign in my book.  So we might have Midnight for awhile longer.  On Tuesday, Allison spent the day reading The Rainbow Bridge and sympathy cards from past pet tragedies and praying really hard.


So Tuesday was also National Cheesecake day.  So Jeremy with Allison and Spencer drove up to cheesecake factory so we could celebrate properly.  Luckily he didn't show me this picture of my double chin till after I had eaten my share!  Good husbands don't mention the extra chin, great husbands not only keep their mouth shut they hand you their leftover cheesecake to polish off.

Monday Robyn still had a high fever and was starting to cry non-stop about her ears.  She finally stopped crying and was trying to eat something when I asked her if she was feeling better.  She replied, "no, I am holding all my screams inside because you said you would lock me in my room if I didn't stop because you didn't want to listen to me".  And I realized yep that is exactly what I said.  I can only listen to crying/screaming for so long.  Took her in and she had a double ear infection that was quite bad.  Took awhile for things to start getting better on antibiotics but she is back to her usual sunshine self now.

Not thinking this through I took the girls and Taylor to 7 peaks water park on Wednesday with some friends.  I thought Robyn would be just fine by then.  An hour of whining later I realized that wasn't the case.  But Allison graciously took her on a waterslide and she was able to tough it out with a smile from then on.  Taylor loved the wave pool.  I think he thought he was on a beach somewhere.  We did a couple of girly things with Spencer gone.  We went to the pool one afternoon and a farmer's market another day.  The girls have become farmer's market experts poking around in the jewlery bargin baskets and asking the food vendors how much they could get with their two dollars.

Our plum tree is loaded and we are trying to stay ahead of the birds by picking them before they are fully ripe.  I made spiced plum jam this week so our house smelled like Christmas to me.  Tonight Spencer made plum crisp for dessert.  Throw in some zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, zucchini cake and really awesome BLTS this week summer eating is definitely here.  Thanks to my wonderful visiting teacher Lana, we have orange wellington tomatoes this year.  Jeremy said he felt like was eating really snooty BLTS but they were awesome.  And thanks to my mom's idea we planted basil which really tastes great on them.

Friday night Jeremy and I got to go on a double date with some friends to eat dinner and attend a Provo rooftop concert.  It was Mindy Gledhill who is one of our favorite performers and incidentally is one of Taylor's favorites to listen to.  It was an awesome evening although I felt extremely old next to all the twenty somethings we were surrounded by.