Milestones.

Bill and I finally took our seminary class their supplies that had been left in our closet in mid-March as we adjourned for Spring Break, not knowing we would never gather together again. It sat in the church building for a couple of months before we were told we could retrieve it (back on May 14). It felt weird to be back at the church, and even weirder to be in our deserted seminary room.

I am terrible at remembering to take "before" pictures, so, once again, you just get an "after."

We wanted to personally drop off each student's supplies with a little treat and a gift, but we waited FOREVER for the "gift" part to arrive in the mail, so our bags sat idle for another month +.

Finally, after an email to Emily Belle Freeman (from Don't Miss This), to check on the status of my order (which I had received an email a month earlier saying it was ready to be shipped), and the discovery that it had apparently been lost in transit to the USPS, we received the MMLX bracelets we had ordered. I made a little card to go with the bracelet, knocked out some giant rice krispie treats, and the bags were ready.

We made a couple trips around the area to drop them off (knocked on the wrong door and had a half-dressed Asian man who didn't speak English answer... oops, wrong house). We met parents we had never met before (very enlightening), and saw firsthand where our students call home. It gave me new insight into some of them, so I may attempt to visit my students' homes early in the school year this year. (Bill and I have been asked to teach another year... this will make 4 years for me. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.)

We were also dropping off a few grad gifts along the way.

I made these for the girls:

And these for the boys:

I didn't do gifts for all the grads that sent us announcements, just those in our ward and close by, everyone else got a gift card sent in the mail :)

We also dropped off a baby gift for a young sister in our ward, who had had a baby shower A YEAR AGO. I intended to go, but didn't make it, so needed to drop off the gift, but instead it sat in my closet, then in my front room, forever. Yes, I feel sheepish. I had told her I had it for her(on several occasions), and that I would drop it by. Luckily it was only baby shampoo, a bath toy, and a hooded towel. I think her 1-year-old can still use it hahahaha.

It was immediately following our drop off of this gift (after a long day of dropping off seminary gift bags), that we realized that our odometer was about to reach a milestone. We decided to drive to the high school nearby as it did.

06.28.20

12:56 pm

I love a car with longevity and reliability.

I hope it can make it another 100,000 miles.

We finally made it home for home church and our weekly fill of Nora Jane

 and Evie Rose.

I love them.

Dads Day.

A few days before Father's Day, I made these envelopes for the menfolk in my ward in an effort to help my dear friend Vernet, who is currently serving as the Relief Society President. SHE made all the brownies & blondies (much more time consuming than making the envelopes), and the youth delivered them to the doorsteps of all the men in the ward. I forgot to snap a picture (I made about 80 I think) before handing them over to Vernet, so I grabbed this off of FB, posted by a grateful recipient.

ON Father's Day I had the thought to make a pie.

Perhaps it was because our ward usually has a massive pie picnic following Church on Father's Day, and we missed it this year due to the pandemic. I had lots of lemons, so decided on a lemon meringue pie. Evie helped with the crust (yes, she actually did some of that crimping - I was impressed). 

Ta-da! It turned out so good.

I need to make more pies.

These fine men smoked some ribs.

Okay, we may have taken the easy way and purchased the pre-cooked ribs, but they smoked them to heat them, and they turned out great.

I had purchased gift baskets from a sister in our ward (The Sweet Roller). They were AMAZING.

They had a cinnamon roll, 2 pieces of fudge, a bag of caramel corn, a fudge-dipped apple, a Dad's root beer, and a chocolate bow-tie. She made ALL of it (except the root beer haha).

I gave Bill a few little gifts to celebrate the fact that he's the father of my beautiful children. I am not the greatest at gift giving, so he may or may not have loved all of his gifts, even if he says he did.

And here are some sweet sentiments from the girls:

Mauri called and chatted with us all.

We had home church in there somewhere.

It was a good day.

The Great Sand Dunes.

June 11-13

Bill and I were spontaneous.

I had talked to a friend (Judy Campbell - 83 years old) while I was giving her haircut (Friday June 5th), and she had gone to the sand dunes with her family that week. She said it was beautiful and so much fun. When I got home, I told Bill we should go. I have had it on my list of things to do in Colorado for years, but we have never had time with all the kids' schedules and summer church and sports activities. I looked up nearby campgrounds, threw some food together, Bill loaded up the camping gear, and we were off.

The first campground we tried was up a horribly rough road, and once we finally bounced and jostled our way there, it was completely full. The campsites looked miserable anyway. Bill suggested that we might just have to drive to the nearest town and stay in a hotel/motel. We decided to drive toward the sand dunes anyway, just to get a closer look. On our way we passed this little place:

Online it had said this campground was still closed due to the pandemic, but people were at the window, so Bill went to check. Yes, they were open. Yes, they had plenty of room. Yay! He paid the fee for two nights, and we drove around to find a campsite that would suit us.

It was perfect.

Although we had to look out for patches of these little cacti.

Once camp was set, we ate dinner, played some cards, and hit the hay.

It was a very windy night, so neither of us slept well with all the flapping and slapping of our tent.

The next morning we were both up early, so we got dressed, ate breakfast, and headed out to the dunes around 7:30am.

We were blessed to have left early - we avoided paying the park entrance fee (don't worry, we weren't cheating the system - there was literally a sign on the money-taker's window that said they weren't open yet, but to drive on through), the dunes weren't very crowded, and we were able to achieve our goal of hiking to the top of "the highest sand dune in North America" before it got too hot.

Total win.

Pictures do not do this place justice. These pictures are taken at the top of the highest dune. I wouldn't have been able to tell that other than the fact that I WAS THERE. It's definitely more impressive in real life. You should go.

It started getting hot on our way back down, but let me just tell ya, it's way faster and much easier going down than it is going up. But you already know that.

There is a river/stream/flowing water at the base of the dunes that is so "refreshing" (Bill's latest favorite word for just about anything). It felt amazing to take our shoes off and cool our feet.

The dunes were starting to fill up with people as we were getting ready to leave. We found a nearby picnic site, and relaxed and ate a snack. We may have both played a few sudoku games on our phones. We are THAT exciting.

We decided afterward to make the 30 minute drive to Alamosa... to say we've been there.

And to get an ice cream at McDonald's (my choice) and some KFC for lunch (Bill's choice).

McDonald's did not have ice cream, but KFC had a great little box lunch, so we got two and headed for a nearby park we had passed on our way. We discovered that it was right next to the Rio Grande, so we walked across the Rio Grande... to say we had.

We drove back to our campsite,

played some more card games (luckily by the end of our trip we had both won twice),

built a fire,

then hit the hay once again. This time we both took a Tylenol PM to help us sleep better - unfortunately it didn't work, and we had yet another long windy night with the tent slapping and flapping endlessly. The next morning we got up and tore down camp. The campground had started filling up, so we were happy to be leaving before it became a small city.

Judy had also told me about stopping by Bishop's Castle. She said it was near Rye, CO. I know where Rye is... it's where we've had many years of Girls Camp at a campground that the Church has a 100 year lease on. It was {sorta} on our way home, so we decided to go. We discovered that it was actually much farther than where Girls Camp is held. We also discovered that it is the darn weirdest place we've been to. (To be fair, Judy had said, "My family went in it... I just stayed outside")

It's basically some haphazard welder/stone-mason's dream with a dungeons and dragons theme. It has a huge warning sign before you enter the premises (much bigger than the above sign - that was just a little sign hung on some of the ironwork). We entered anyway. Bill didn't like it one little bit. 

We made our way to {almost} the top, snapped a few pics, then couldn't get out of there fast enough.

We came. We saw. We experienced.

No need to ever return haha.

(When I told Mar about it during one of our weekly video calls, she said, "That kind of makes me want to go even more, now." Crazy girl.

It was a long, heavy-traffic drive home, but it was an adventure.

A spontaneous adventure. Just the two of us. We need to do more of that.