celebrate

We had quite a full week, mostly full of play time and celebration. :) Summers are nice. We made it over to play games with our friend's Chris and Alyssa Sunday evening, and Wayne played some World of Warcraft with artist friends Monday evening while I read. We played games with Karl and Angela both Friday and Saturday (and probably tonight) since they were in town this week. It was fun, especially all the bunny mayhem that happened when we played Killer Bunnies. Some bunnies tragically died in horrific ways (in the game, of course), and we all had a good time.

Before Karl and Angela arrived Wednesday, we did a little canning of some homemade strawberry jam on Tuesday evening. It was fun! And tasty! It was my first experience that I can remember making and canning jam. I'd done a little freezer jam before with a roommate once, but this was a different experience entirely. We're hoping to find some good berries to make other varieties of jam this summer too (maybe in Oregon or Washington when we make our 4th of July trip?), so this is just the beginning!

Thursday we celebrated the summer solstice with a picnic and some kite flying at a park. A little bit of frisbee tossing probably happened somewhere in there too. And then later that evening Chris and Alyssa shared a really funny Japanese movie with us (University of Laughs) and Karl and Angela. Friday we celebrated the day after the summer solstice by visiting Wayne and Karl's favorite "toy store" (aka Fry's electronics) and an ice cream shop. And Saturday we celebrated...Saturday...by heading down to a couple of Santa Cruz beaches. It was lovely, and only a few spots were missed by sunscreen; we know this, of course, by where exactly the small sunburns are located today -- but at least they are in isolated spots. :)

Teaching in primary went well today...better than most days. Of course only three kids came to class, but I also had done quite a lot of thought and preparation to try and keep the class in control. We'll have to see if some of these new strategies hold up when more people are in town...though we're preparing to be out of town for the next couple of Sundays, so it will be a little while. We will be leaving for our big camping trip to the Olympic peninsula this Friday evening or Saturday morning. That means this week we're looking for camping supplies (maybe a cooler and stove?) so we can eat something other than pb&j during the week we're gone (any suggestions for good camping food, anyone?), and planning out what we want to see while we're there. More fun times ahead!