The house has been unnaturally quiet all week as Ty, Michael & Danielle have been off traipsing through Wyoming pulling handcarts to better connect with their pioneer heritage.  To really get the full effect, it required replica clothing.

Since that’s not the kind of thing we have laying around, Danielle and I got to work the old fashioned way.  Thankfully scrubs make great bloomers.

Fashion show!  Orange is her new favorite color.

Ty has taken this Trek adventure as an opportunity to buy all kinds of emergency supplies.  I don’t know what kind of emergency will require neoprine socks but we are ready for whatever it is!  Ty did all the shopping and packing and checking off of lists.  Unfortunately it ALL had to fit in a 5 gallon bucket – including an extra pair of shoes.  That proved fairly impossible for our guys since their feet are pretty gianormous but with Ty’s squishing ability the lids managed to close.

Michael, who successfully avoided all camera lenses until this final moment, was quite dissatisfied with the pile of stuff I was forcing him to pack in his pockets – blistex, bug spray, anti-itch stick, mints, hand sanitizer and band-aids.  He swears the pioneers didn’t have any of that stuff and he wants a TRUE pioneer experience.  He was disappointed that their Trek did not include the catching, killing, plucking, gutting and eating of live chickens like other Treks.  I’m betting that after pulling his handcart for 14 miles a day that he will be grateful for his tennis shoes and the spaghetti dinner.  Just a guess.

Ty volunteered to go.  He wanted to make sure the kids had fun so off he went to meeting after meeting where he discovered that someone else’s idea of fun included lip syncing & dancing to Abba’s “Dancing Queen”.  He gets to wear a blond frilly wig.  Are you picturing that with me?!?  Danielle took her camera with specific instructions to video tape that soon-to-be utube sensation.  Aside from that, all the handcart families (okay, ladies) were coveting Ty due to his burliness that ensured he could pull any handcart all by himself. It promises to be an exciting adventure for all of them!

They arrive home tomorrow night – hopefully with lots of fun stories and a priceless video!

Something is very sad and wrong about this picture!

It was only for a week but the family grew quite attached to seeing the couch look like this:

All because one of Stephanie’s growing collection of specialists wrote a lovely note vouching for her inability to work for a week allowing her to use her sick pay – a.k.a. staycation fund – to suck us into one of her many movies, laugh at random sillinesses that no one else sees and catch up on all of her exciting stories.

The reason for the lovely note?  A swollen bone.  Did you know bones could swell?  It’s actually a little tricky to make happen and exceptionally painful.  It seems bones don’t swell well because they can’t expand.  This is a bad picture of it but the bottom of her leg bone is a very bright white which equals not at all good.

Since it seems that Stephanie’s high heel collection is out for the next 3-4 months (dang her larger-than-my sized feet!) a shopping trip was the perfect cure for pretty much everything.  Well, that and a pedi. 

Check out the super cute flats!

Danielle is all kinds of excited because after ALL these YEARS – 14 to be exact – the sisters wear the same size shoe.  Now if only Dani can get her to give up the right one as well…

I have been trying to figure out how my summer could possibly be almost half over without a decent pedicure & tan to show for it.  I blame the World Cup.  Seriously, it sucked me and Dani right in practically every morning.  There might be some hope for us now that Spain has ended our suspense. 

In the meantime, Michael has chosen to spend his summer in a surprising way.  He is working on a farm.  He has become an novice radish & pea picker.  We are all hoping (Michael included) that he’ll figure out how to pick faster so he can up his pay a little closer to minimum wage.  Six hours of picking, thirteen dollars richer and a whole lot tanner.  Well, in a farmer sort of way.

Michael rounds out each day with a little ballroom practice/lesson.  He and Hannah are looking sharp! at their Cha cha showcase.

Danielle headed out for some fun of her own.  First stop this summer was one of her faves – the Zoo.  She snapped just under 100 pics of practically every animal in the place.  She just loves the animals.

Then it was off to EFY and a week of independence and a shocking revelation.  Danielle discovered, to her utter amazement, that dances are FUN! 

Our June finished out in the best way possible – a visit from family.  My sister Dawnmarie & her family made a detour on their way home to Pennslyvania to spend a couple of days checking out Salt Lake and our Fashion Polly collection.  What fun!  We toured a candy factory, experienced the high life at Steph’s hotel, ran through the Olympic fountains, roamed popular tourist spots & colleges and swam until everyone was good and ready for bed. 

Here’s to hoping July slows down so we can fit a lot more summer fun in!

I think I may love end of school more than my kids.  It is a time of sincere celebration so I was excited to be the one driving the carpool the last week. 

All year long we did Word of the Day.   I had a bag full of SAT vocab and they had to pick one each morning and use it in a sentence to get an after school treat on the way home.  Surprisingly, they loved it.  Really, I was shocked by how much fun they had.  We’re really just a carpool of nerds.  So the last week I told them I would treat them to Baskin Robins – anything goes – if they could remember 20 of the words.

As luck would have it, none of the other carpool kids had ever been to Baskin Robins.  EVER!  How is that possible?!?  We practically live there.  You should have seen them trying to take in all 31 flavors and all the possibilities.  That was a happy ride home!

Danielle and Savannah had other plans for their last day of school – cool shoes.  They worked on these masterpieces for days.  FYI they glow in the dark – not that they needed more glowing power.

Here they are with our carpool breakfast…on the VERY LAST DAY!!!

And one last look at our carpool…

That was Friday and they were all smiles on the way home.  Saturday morning and Danielle is laying around depressed.  “I miss school,”  she says less than 24 hours into my summer bliss – a bliss that is defined by no homework, no projects, no reports and no tests.  A day later she is enrolled in three online classes.  THREE!  That same day she does about 4 hours worth of homework.  I’m already missing my bliss.

I am confident that Michael has my back.  There is no way he is going to have any kind of adverse reaction to having the summer off!

Ty gave Stephanie, and apparently me, airline miles for graduating college.  It was probably the most perfect gift she has ever received!  It was incredibly hard to narrow the choices of destinations down to one but in the end she was successful and the two of us flew to Budapest, Hungary – or Hungaria as I kept calling it.

The “Picture Album” link has quite a few pictures & details from our trip so you can go there get the real travel story.  I will say that Budapest is a very beautiful city.  I didn’t expect that and we were so impressed by how many wonderful  sites they have that are very well maintained. 

This picture sums up a lot of our trip – daily ice cream and all day walking.  We hiked up so many hills!  But as you can see, the view was always rewarding and so was the weight loss we enjoyed as a result.

I highly recommend that all my kids graduate from college!  We had a great time together and made so many fun memories that we will be able to look back on for years to come.