Stow Aways: June 2016

This summer, I decided to buy a membership to Sports and Wellness, not for the gym (heaven forbid I ever exercise,) but for the pool! They have a beautiful, sparsely populated pool, and lots of space for swimming and spreading out yourself and your snacks for the afternoon. We got so sick of standing in line to get into the city pools and fighting for a spot to sit in the shade. Kristen and Lexi encouraged us to spend the summer with them here since they were also members. It was really worth it for Harriet to be able to spend some extra time with Lexi before she moved and I got to know Kristen really well too after our hours of chatting while the kids swam. Although, after their summer camp started, it wasn't quite so relaxing. The camp kids weren't allowed in the pool except for certain times, but they were still in the pool area and it wasn't too fun to stretch out with 40 kids eating lunch behind your chair!

Paige C, Lexi, and Harriet in the locker room. haha.

June brought in waves of Chapmans. David's family had a big reunion here in Albuquerque and all of the cousins were able to make it! I was pleasantly surprised about that since we are moving into a generation where most of the offspring are now adults and much more difficult to gather. We started off with a picnic in the park by Grandma and Grandpa's house:

Even Sneakers came. She enjoyed the picnic!

Jennifer (oldest cousin) and her oldest child, Everly.

Chelsea and Ben

Sue and Nathan

Stephanie and Nathan

Earl and Christine

Harriet

Evan and Grace

Grace

Stephanie

Evan, Jane, Janie

Chelsea and Stephanie

The entire crew, taken at Grandma and Grandpa's and Christine's church

Parents and siblings: original crew

Grandparents and cousins

Four Generations of Chapmans: Barbara and Earl, John, Jenifer, and her kids, Everly and Nathan

Jane's family stayed an extra day (yay!) and asked me to do some quick family photos after church.

Grumpy cousins. These four are seriously the grumpiest.

But also pretty cute and fun when they want to be.

One night, Grandma went through some old things to show the kids. She found the autograph book that was Grace and Harriet's Great-Great Grandmother's from the University of Deseret before it was named The University of Utah! This was a very cool show and tell piece. I was dying over the handwritten notes and art work inside!

At Grandma's house, games are always a must...

And, there was time to sit around, visit, and show each other things on the internet (let's face it - when people get together now, it's just a sea of phones, iPads, and devices.)

Friday night, a bunch of us went to an Isotopes Game. That was some good ABQ/cousin fun.

Saturday morning, a few of us went to the Air Force air show on base. It was supposed to be much cooler with a performance by the Thunderbird team, but the day before, a pilot had crashed in Colorado Springs, so the entire crew were grounded and couldn't perform in ABQ. This caused most of our crew to bug out and avoid the intense heat of the day, but there were a few die hards who still wanted to go. We nearly melted standing in the sun watching the planes. There have been few times I have ever been that hot. We went through several giant snow cones. Evan ended up with a Smurf foot after one was spilled down his shoe. It was blue for the rest of the weekend.

No one looks too happy... too hot to be happy...

A little farewell marshmallow roast

Then, my mom came to visit! We were so excited to have her here. She doesn't get to come very often, especially by herself. Unfortunately, Grace came down with terrible bronchitis like the first day she was here and was sick the entire time. So, our fun was limited, but we did get out and do a few things. We dragged her to the pool. Harriet showed off her stunting skills:

(Grace, dying, on a beach chair)

While she was here, the pool club had a big event that we had planned to take her to. Since Grace was sick, Grandma stayed home with Grace instead, but Harriet got in a fun night with Lexi, watching a movie (Dinosaur) in the pool!

cute friends, bobbing in the pool!

Then, we took Grandma for a pedicure:

And, we made it out of the house a couple of times for ice cream:

Thanks for coming, Mom!

Other June events included going to lunch with Kristen, Alexis, and Mrs. Blaisure, for a final goodbye. Oh what a great year these three had together!

(Lexi, Mrs. Blaisure, Harriet)

(Kristen, Mrs. Blaisure, Me)

And a fun '80's museum event:

And, dressing up the cat in a tutu:

And, Father's Day! He's such a great dad and dog parent. These three adore him and think he is the most fun parental unit in the house. They're probably right.

Bowtie Buddies

David took the girls backpacking as often as he could. This one was almost thwarted as Harriet had a panic attack just before they left. She almost didn't go with them, but after some feather smoothing and some good encouragement from sister and dad, she finally went. She was glad she did.

I was glad she did too. Look at all the prep that went into it!

Okay, so back to cars. The Pathfinder truly did die and experienced a resurrection. After reading the engine light codes, we replaced the mass air flow sensor twice and the idle air control valve. Nothing worked and the same codes kept coming up. We could not get it to run for even a few minutes without dying. It was one of the most frustrating things I've ever had happen. We suspected it might be the whole computer, in which case, it would really be dead as a doornail. We finally had it towed to a local garage, and sure enough, it was the computer. They wanted $2000 to fix it. Nope, not for a car that is only worth about double that! And, by this point, after all we had been fixing and replacing on it, we were just done. Even if we got it running again, we didn't feel like we could trust it for traveling long distances. We had been using the truck for that mostly, but we bought the truck when the kids were shorter. Now, their long legs, and our giant dog, simply didn't fit in the backseat anymore. We had several very long-distance trips coming up - David was heading to North Dakota, we had planned Disneyland, not to mention a couple times to Utah as well. We felt incredibly lucky that it made it to Denver and back at Easter and that we HADN'T taken it to Durango over Memorial Day! No, it was just time to replace our 15 year old Pathfinder. Sadly. I LOVED THAT CAR! We wanted to donate it and just get rid of it, but my dad wouldn't let us. He insisted on getting it running and selling it for us. He found a used computer in Tennessee and had it shipped to the garage and fixed it for a fraction of the price. That was incredibly nice of him, and I will always be grateful. It really did help us be able to afford a new car, and to his credit, it also provided a running vehicle to a very needy family in Salt Lake. So, at the end of a long month of sharing one car, we finally drove this cute thing home from the Subaru dealership.

I have to say, I love it to death!

So do the kids and dog! We intended to get a smaller Subaru, but after taking the kids for some test-drives, they fell in love with the leg-room in the Outback backseats. They knew how many miles they would be sitting back there! Stryder is pretty pumped with his roomy arrangements in the back too!