Getting Back in the Swing of Things

Our first day back from South Carolina was Monday, August 17. I don't have any pictures for about 6 days because it took us awhile to get back into the swing of things, mentally and physically. We couldn't rest long, we had wellness checks and church assignments and outings to go on, no time for pictures of any of it! I remember feeling extra discouraged by all the catch-up that we had to do when coming back from the trip- our bathroom was still not finished, and that added to the chaos. If Hilton Head was our only trip this summer, we would have been fine. But we were gone a lot from May to Aug, and it really did me in! Our frequent travels was also a killer for Jeremy with work. It was really hard for him to keep up on his many projects. We'll have to figure out something different with seeing family next year, space things out much more, or beg people to come visit us instead.

To take our mind off of all the laundry and unpacking that needed to be done, we went to the Austin Artworks Festival and Spamerican Tour on Saturday, Aug 23. We loved the Spam samples at the Spam truck and enjoyed seeing the progress being made on the new Spam museum that will open next spring.

Here is the new future Spam Museum!

We toured around at all the local artist's booths. One artist was so nice, she let Tanner help her with some brush strokes on her painting that she was working on!

Dallin of course wanted a turn, too.

Jeremy made some more progress on the bathroom. But he had a few setbacks including having the shower door shatter as he was putting in the last screw to hold it in place.

Dallin continues to be our little monkey with new tricks almost every day.

We drove up to Minneapolis to see Stacy's beautiful little baby. Dallin was really intrigued and held baby several times. Tanner was more interested in playing on their jumbo bean bag, but he finally held the baby a few minutes before we left.

I was pretty awestruck.

Of course, during the next few days, the boys were very interested in playing baby.

Jeremy took the boys to a park one evening.

The boys made an imaginary racetrack on the deck, and then Dallin deliberately smashed into one of our flower pots.

Tanner made this train track and Dallin didn't mess it up! We're making progress.

One day, Jeremy realized how long he's had this key chain that he made in grade school and he felt pretty special that he still had it and uses it every day. This keychain has seen everything important in Jeremy's life since he was 16!

We finally got to see one of the products on the store shelves that Jeremy spent so long working on as the Skippy Assistant Product Manager. He did everything involved with it's inception, creation and production. They are so YUMMY!!

Each year, Hormel does a one day company wide softball tournament. Different divisions in the company compete against each other. Jeremy was the leader of the marketing team, and he was pretty stoked when his team won. They made a trophy using a skippy pb bites container, which seems fitting!

Here is what Jeremy does in his final stages of getting big presentations ready. he currently works on the two brands of chunk chicken that Hormel owns- the Hormel label and the Valley Fresh label. It's exciting the things he is doing with these brands.

Jeremy texted me on a Monday morning and said there were auditions for Into the Woods at the community college. The next day, I went in for an audition just to see what would happen. I've been wanting to do a play for several years now, and so it seemed like this would be a chance to get my feet wet a little. I was pretty intimidated when I found out more people showed up for this audition than ever before. To my surprise, I ended up getting a part in the show!

We had our 9 year anniversary on Aug 25!! Jeremy got me flowers in our wedding colors, which has subconsciously become the main color scheme in all of our home decor. I think yellow and turquoise are my favorite colors because Jeremy's eyes have a ring of yellow around his iris and the rest is the most beautiful Caribbean turquoise. Anyway, stay tuned for a post about our anniversary trip to Guatemala that we took in September.

I took three of our youth to the temple on Aug 29. It was a wonderful trip! I could tell the kids felt God's peace and love there. It is so rewarding to be able to take these kids to the temple-it's my favorite thing about working with the youth. We also had some fun conversations and games on the way to and from the temple. I love being a youth leader!