Taylor had a tougher than usual week.  He had three days of three hour school days this week.  He has had a few school days like this scattered through the summer, I think 9 in total.  It has been good to get him up and moving.  He has had a bump on his neck for awhile that this week decided to get nasty.  It got big, red and made his whole neck and shoulder sore.  We assumed it was a boil so I took him in to the doctor to get it taken care of.  The general surgeon had just left for the holiday (24th of July) and since it wasn't an emergency that couldn't wait until Friday the doctor decided to culture it and put Taylor on some super strong antibiotics.  Robyn and Brynn volunteered to hold Taylor's hands while the rest, thinking of Allison's guinea pig's boil/abscess fled the scene.  But although it looked like a huge boil it didn't act like one as we couldn't get anything but blood out.  So now we are thinking it might have been an infected lymph node.  Whatever it was we didn't go into surgery Friday as planned as it has gone way down on the antibiotics, fever is gone and Taylor is once again a very happy camper.


Monday morning we dropped Spencer off at EFY.  He wasn't super excited about going especially when he learned that he would be in classes  and have to wear church clothes one day.  He was a little peeved when he saw everyone had a phone but him as he had followed the packing list's advice to leave electronics at home.  Cousins and Robyn had fun checking out his dorm room.  Jeremy picked Spencer up Saturday morning at 7 am!  After eating some french toast at Kneaders and having a three hour nap he was ready to tell us all his stories.  Classes were not his favorite although I hope some lessons snuck their way in there.  But he really liked his counselor, his group and all the activities they did.  He has a stockpile now of lame Mormon pick up lines, that I am sure will come in useful some day.  It was amazing how much calmer I felt this week, I forget how much emotional space he takes up in my mind sometime.  Love it, but also enjoy the break!

Cousins were with us until Thursday morning.  We had to get back to reality a little bit and do errands and jobs around the house.  But we were able to go to Library classes:


the pool, watch movies and make bubbles and visit a nearby lake.


The two girls off in the water were Brynn and Robyn.  Allison didn't think she needed a swimsuit and then deeply regretted it.


Wednesday night Kayla and Robyn went to Activity Days and learned how to fish.  They came home 2 1/2 hours later, wet, dirty, cleaned trout in one hand, swedish fish and goldfish in the other and with the biggest smiles on their faces.  They had the best time! (notice how their leader even gave them plastic gloves for the fish gutting)




Thursday morning after seeing the cousins off, with Allison's friend Kayla we went down to try to get into a Studio C dress rehearsal...along with a few hundred other people.  After they handed out the wristbands to the first two hundred people, of which we were not part of, and dealing with tears we brainstormed what else we could do.  So we went to the Provo pioneer festival, in 104 degree weather to mine for gold:

ride a pony:

get our faces painted:

and eat gigantic snow cones:


We kept pouring water bottles over Taylor's head to cool him off but he wasn't happy till he was home with air conditioning blowing on him.

That night we celebrated Pioneer Day by grabbing some Costa Vida and going to West Jordan's pioneer days for their pioneer musical.  Singing, sky divers, lots of fireworks and a musical.  Very cheesy but on holidays I love cheesiness.

Robyn is done with swim team now.  On Saturday she had her last meet that involved us leaving at 6:30 in the morning.


She was a little apprehensive - goggles didn't feel right, cap was too tight, her stomach hurt.  But I went off to time and then she turned into this little rock star.  She got first place for freestyle, beating her PR by 2 seconds, first place for butterfly beating her PR by 7!! seconds and fourth place for backstroke beating her PR by 1 second.  She was in a relay too and we think she got second but we don't know yet till they post all the times.  She was on cloud nine and was quite proud of her ribbons.  One of the things I was most proud of is that she has to get herself to all her events by herself while I worked as a timer.  She has loved swimming this year and is also happy to switch to just playing in the pool for the rest of the summer.

Jeremy has been busy doing photo shoot lately with several friends' missionaries heading out.  He has been enjoying the work.