School is Almost Here Again

Thank goodness Meagan is almost ready to go back. This college thing has been a little hard for her to grasp. Hopefully after the first semester she'll have it down and she can do it on her own. I've spent a lot of time helping her figure out grants, schedules, etc. We're almost there...

I strongly encouraged Meagan to go take the math placement test last Monday. She was glad she did. Hoping to do well enough to make it into Math 1010, she exceeded our expectations and tested out of it! Wow, Meagan is pretty smart.

Today I overheard Jarom tell Cameron he was a little bit excited to go back to school. "Well, just so I can see my friends, mostly," he told Cameron. Cameron and Jarom both have their schedules now. They both got what they asked for, so that's good. Jarom got Mr. Owen, who is the best math teacher at the jr. high. I was so excited when I saw that, I did a happy dance right there in the kitchen. Meagan had Mr. Owen twice. She had an awful pre-algebra teacher in 7th grade and almost failed it. She got Mr. Owen for algebra and geometry and got straight A's.

Amber is starting 6th grade this year. David and I have one kid in elementary, one in jr. high, one in high school and one in college. Wow. This is going to be quite the year.

Thor is getting better, I guess. We've pretty much kept him in his cage the last 2 weeks. Every once in a while the kids aren't fast enough moving him from cage to cage and he escapes and runs around the house. They catch him pretty quickly. He has calmed down enough that we don't have to give him tranquilizers all the time.

Last Tuesday our family finally made it up to the canyon. I've been wanting to go all summer. It was fun. We roasted hotdogs and made s'mores and dutch oven chicken. We left the potatoes at home on a kitchen chair, so we had chicken and carrots with biscuits on top, with no potatoes. The biscuits never really browned, but they did get done. Jarom said they were his favorite part.

We attempted a dutch oven apple cobbler, but put it on the coals too late, so we had to finish cooking it at home in the oven. We had banana boats, too. And Cameron brought up a box of 24 fat boy ice cream sandwiches. We way over-sugared ourselves. Next time we're only taking up ONE dessert, not four! And, if we do another dutch oven cobbler, we'll know to put it on the coals at the same time as we do the main dish.

We didn't have enough time to hike, but we did walk around the picnic area. Amber and I waded in the creek, in Quintin's honor. He told me last summer that he liked to go up to that canyon and soak his feet in the cold water. I swear he was still a little kid at the age of 78. Even in August the water is ice cold. Cameron managed to fall in the water, but didn't seem to mind much. It was still pretty warm in the sun.

I love being up in the forest "away" from civilization. A tree squirrel smelled our dutch oven chicken and came sniffing into our picnic area. She hopped up on one of the picnic tables trying to figure out where the food smell was coming from. She even climbed onto the fire pit and sniffed. She finally realized the food was too hot to get to and ran away. Cameron felt pity on her a tossed her a slice of bread, which she promptly grabbed and ran away with.

I doubt we'll make it to the canyon again this summer, but at least we made it once. Maybe Labor Day weekend?