Catching Up!

We are trying to take the reins on our house this summer, which means that this blog is taking a backseat for a while.  I'll try to get a little catching up done through June 30, so I can at least say I made it half-way through the year on the picture-a-day.  After that though, you can just assume that every picture would be about the same---either  reorganizing a closet, scrubbing something, or just in general delving into some forgotten corner of 15 years of accumulated stuff.   Either that or a picture of bucketloads of kids, since Cami is currently watching my brother's four kids while he and his wife are adventuring in Australia.    Life is good.

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June 18:   Today Glen, Emma, Adam, and I  hiked from Carderock to Great Falls, via the towpath and  Billy Goat A.    We estimate that it totaled about 8-miles.

I really enjoy pushing myself on these kinds of hikes....

If you were to ask me what an ideal day would entail for me, there would definitely be a family hike included!  

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June 19:  Emma made a delicious Father's Day breakfast for Glen....

We went to church which included Cami's roommate and BFF, Katy's, mission farewell, as well as musical numbers by the primary kids and the youth ("Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy").  

After church we went for a pleasant stroll around the neighborhood...

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June 20:   The beginning of our house projects begins by getting a dumpster delivered in front of our house.     We are cleaning out the attic and garage.   Oh joy!  

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June 21: Attic cleaning has commenced.   It's HOT up there, so we are trying to get most of our time in the attic done early in the day, then spend the time in the AC organizing and determining what belongs in the cavernous dumpster in front of our house.    

I also decided it was high time to get some mission shopping done, so Cami and I headed to the mall and had a great day at Sears and New York & Co.   

The girls made chicken mango rice salad for dinner! 

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June 22:   Today we cleaned and sorted stuff from attic....again!   Then I started selling things that we didn't need anymore.    And Adam and I played Scrabble.   He beat me.   

The Good, the Good, the Bad, the Bad, the Bad, and the Bad

June 13:  
 Good:  I went to a visiting teaching brunch with some awesome ladies.  The food was delicious and the company even better.

Good:  Ellie and Adam had a piano recital and they both did great!

Bad: Spencer crashed the car (yes, that would be the second  crashed car in the last couple of weeks).   The struts were damaged, the tire shredded, the passenger side mirror shattered, and the front passenger side body banged up.  We only repaired what it took to get the car moving again, completely ignoring the damaged body and mirror, which meant it was only $450 down the tube.....  

Bad: It was a HUGELY stressful evening sorting out the details of everything that happened. 

Bad:  Because of the stressful situation at home, Glen had to take the metro home from the airport tonight.   It took 2+ hours. 

Bad:   Cami backed out of her commitment to stay up late with Ellie, so that Ellie could be properly sleep deprived for her EEG in the morning.    That means yours truly got to stay up until 2:15am and wake up at 6:30am.   Yay me. 

Bad: Sleep deprivation and stressful circumstances  are not the ideal set-up for proper mental functioning.  

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Stake Conference and Missionaries x2

oops!   I was trying to schedule this for a future day, but messed up and accidentally published it too soon, which is why you've seen this in your feed before!

June 11:
At stake conference today,  Cami and her roommate, Katy, ran into one of their good friends from BYU, Ty, who is now serving as a missionary in our stake.  They were very happy to see each other, but  said it was very weird  not being able to give him a big hug.

Emma also had her voice recital today.  I missed her first performance, but was able to see her performing, "Hark, the Echoing Air".  The camera's sound quality is very poor and does not capture the clearness and the beauty of Emma's voice very well, but hopefully this will give you a glimpse of the difficulty of songs she performs.   I love hearing her sing!  

June 12:   Speaking of missionaries and stake conference, today I ran into the missionaries serving in our ward at stake conference and spontaneously invited them over for dinner.    We made lasagna, breadsticks, salad, and this cake.   It looks all fancy, but it's actually just an overcooked cake mix cake on the inside.   I may or may not have eaten more frosting than actual cake.   

It was a lot of fun to have the missionaries over.  We saw some cool birds on our deck during dinner (a bluejay and a ruby-throated hummingbird).  We ended up playing Telestrations with them and they shared a message about redemption.  

Other than Glen being out of town, it was a great day!


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Night at the Temple

June 9:   With my kids ages 11-21 now, I don't have to find babysitters very often anymore.  The one exception to that is when we go on youth temple trips.    It involves everyone in the family except Ellie.  At 11, she's well old enough to be on her own for a while, however because of her seizures, we aren't quite there on leaving her the several hours a temple trip takes.   It's an extra pain though, because all the teenagers we know well usually are on the temple trip too (or are  busy with something else that makes it so they can't come), and asking adults makes it feel more like a favor.
This time we called several people, none of whom could take her, and I was beginning to think that either she might just have to stay by herself or Glen or I might have to stay home from this trip.  At the last second, we finally got it taken care of, and we had a wonderful night at the temple.

Because of the timing, it was our lowest attended temple night in a long time, but it was still a good-sized group of youth.  About 90% of the names done were family names that the youth had found themselves, many of which were found by my kids!   It was an exciting and special experience for them!

 I drove a carful of 12-13-year- old girls and I got to hear a whole lot of giggling and the low-down on all the crushes.     Afterward we went out for ice cream and the silliness only increased. 

I've been in this calling (as YW president) for about four years now and going to the temple with the youth is still one of my favorite parts of it.  These youth are so busy and still they take time from their lives to come to the temple.   What great examples they are to me!

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Success!

June 8:   I am not much of a shopper, especially for clothes, so I've been somewhat dreading the whole  shopping for the mission experience with Cami.   I had the sound excuse at first, that I couldn't really do anything else until our trip to Europe was done, but, alas, that excuse is gone and it's time to get to business.

  Today we headed to Potomac Mills outlet mall and spent most of our time at Burlington Coat Factory.   She didn't find much, but did come home with this very cute outfit.

It's not a lot, but I will take whatever success we can find!  

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The Gravity Cake

June 6:  My sister, AnnaLisa, asked for Emma's help to make a cake for her FHE group.  Me?  I would have used a cake mix and slapped some frosting on, or maybe made my favorite carrot cake, which is delicious, but decidedly not very pretty.

But that's not Emma.

Here's her labor of love:   The Gravity Cake!

Not surprisingly, it was a huge hit among AnnaLisa's friends!   

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Normal Life?

May 31: First semi-normal feeling day since coming back from our trip, except for Ellie packing her bags for Hogwarts.   Did lots and lots of laundry.

June 1: Spencer was having some neuropsych testing done, so we spent ALL day at Children's Hospital in DC.

June 2:  Had to drive Spence both ways to work, took a hike with the Spigarelli's and stake YW leaders, Ellie missed activity days because I am inept, and we went to a concert at JMHS for mutual tonight.

June 3: Another almost normal day.  Tried to take Adam to flag football practice and game and spent an hour in traffic only to find out that the road was flooded and closed.   We went back home.

 June 4:  Went on a hike around Burke Lake (about 4.5 miles), then spent the rest of the day doing yard and house work.

June 5:  As per ward tradition, the girls who went to Mormon prom wore their dresses to church today.   Here's a glimpse of four of my beautiful Laurels!   Love these girls!

Patriotic Food

May 30:  Happy Memorial Day!  

Today involved long overdue yard work,  planting my birthday flowers (a month late), having a fun outing to the gym, putting flowers on our grandparent's graves....

and this lovely culinary creation by Emma!

Rest assured, that it was as delicious as it looked!

We also had watermelon and sandwiches for dinner and Ellie made our patriotic layered drinks.

Yum!

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Rolling Thunder and More

May 29:  It's the Sunday before Memorial Day, which means that it's the day that Rolling Thunder rolls through our community.    

Don't know what Rolling Thunder is?  

Let me enlighten you.   Every year as Memorial Day approaches, motorcyclists from around the nation gather in the DC area to participate in events that bring awareness to the POW's and MIA's from the wars of the past.    There are numerous events all over the area during the weekend, but on the Sunday before Memorial Day, they gather at Harley Davidson stores, the policemen block off other traffic, and they caravan parade-style to a gathering in downtown DC.     It's quite an amazing sight to see a stream of thousands of motorcyclists unified in a patriotic cause.

It's one of the highlights of our Memorial Day weekend and we are grateful for the opportunity we have to cheer them on in their journey most years (when our church schedule doesn't interfere with the timing).

We love seeing their motorcycles bedecked in flags and other patriotic symbols!

The only problem with Rolling Thunder, is that we always get blocked into our neighborhood by the road closures.   In order for me to get to ward council, I had to drive several miles  the opposite direction of the church, so that I could get around the closures.   Luckily I know that, because there was one poor fellow who just moved to the area, who ended up arriving quite late.

Wait.    

The Goolds had two fully good days in a row?   

Of course this couldn't be!   

Spencer informed us today that he was actually injured in his car crash earlier this week and that he thought he needed to see the doctor.  

So he had a large wound on his wrist from the airbag and X-rays preliminarily showed a fracture.  

So yeah, the rolling thunder in our lives seems to be continuing onward.

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Best Place on Earth

May 28: In amongst all the gunky things that have been happening this week, we had this happy day thrown in there. It was Cami's first trip to the temple to receive her endowments!

It was a wonderful day and made even more wonderful that she got to share it with her two best friends, Matt and Katy.    They're all heading on missions this summer (Katy to Argentina and Matt to Mexico), and we couldn't be more thrilled about  their friendship and where they're heading in life!

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Real Life

May 25:   We left on our trip 2-1/2 weeks ago with fans blowing all over our flooded basement.

We came home and within 12-hours this happened:

It's totaled.

And it happened right as I was leaving to go the homeschooling conference.

Paying for the  tow truck and impound lot fees was not on our list of expenses we wanted to incur right as we returned from our trip, although a certain kid will be eventually paying those back.

Nor is dealing with a four drivers on two cars ratio any fun.

In fact, I'm not sure about this real life stuff.


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Home of a Giant

May 23:  The last full day of our trip has finally arrived!  We took our time drying our shoes from our escapades in the rain yesterday, then packed up our bags, found a good bakery for one last delicious French pastry,  and then checked out of our little Parisian apartment and started trekking to the airport.

We arrived to CDG nice and early and, even with the intense security in Paris,  had plenty of time to sit and wait before our flight boarded.   We used the opportunity to buy some duty free European chocolate to share with friends.

Eventually we started the first leg of our  journey westward bound and landed in Iceland for an overnight layover.   After arriving  and checking into our motel, we took a bus into the thriving metropolis of Keflavik (the town where the airport is) and discovered the home of Giganta.

Who is Giganta, you ask?    She's a friendly Icelandic giant, of course.  

And she lives in this lovely little seaside cave right on the edge of Keflavik.

Giganta is very welcoming of visitors....

and although a tad creepy looking with an obnoxiously loud snore, she was actually quite a friendly giant. 

Giganta is the heroine of a series of Icelandic children's books.   She was lonely for a number of years before befriending a little girl, who accompanies her on many adventures. In gratitude for saving some sailors from drowning at sea, the town of Keflavik built her this cave.   She has a tree in her cave for decoration, on which children come from all over and hang their pacifiers on when they're done.  Giganta loves the colorful decorations for her cave and children love knowing that their binkies are being used to make Gianta happy.

After our very delightful visit to Giganta....

we went and got some overpriced dinner in town.....

and soaked in the stark beauty of Iceland's midnight sun one last time....

before embarking on our journey home in the morning.  

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