recap of the week

I made raspberry jam this week!  I have been wanting some but was a little afraid to try making it by myself.  I made it once before with my sister but to be honest she did all the jam making and I did the kid watching.  My SIL, Melissa has made it for me a few times, too.  When we moved I had to empty my freezer and I have been missing my raspberry freezer jam ever since.  It turned out great and wasn't hard at all, now I just wish I could make some delicious home-made bread to go with it!

Holden had a Scout Court of Honor.  Thanks to the Hurst's taking him to Scout camp in Idaho he earned a whole slew of merit badges and advanced  2 ranks!!! I was a proud mama, since 1) I had no idea about the rank thing and 2) I didn't even do a thing (accept pack his bag and fly him there!). I feel like Holden's whole Scouting career has been a success due to the Hurst family, I can't thank them enough!!! I'm trying really hard to keep Nicholas caught up with the legacy Derek and Holden have created.  THANK YOU JES & MARCI!!

Holden was loving being 12 this week.  Turning 12 means a whole bunch of exciting things in our church.  He had a great experience the first Sunday in his deacon's quorum and then that night he went to a Fireside with a bunch of his friends.  I drove a carload over to the Stake Center and I just had to take a picture of them.  I was surprised they didn't utter a word of complaint and even  actually co-operated.  Boys at 12 are different than girls at 12.  If I would have tried that with Chloe I would have gotten a big eye-roll with a "mmoooooooomm, you are soooooooooooo embarrassing". Don't these boys look sharp! Tonight he is headed off to his first Scout Camp-out and he is super excited.

Getting ready for his camp-out, we took a trip to Sportsman's Warehouse, where we found these sunglasses.  I was cracking up because I bought the exact sunglasses(the black & white pair) after 5th grade. We were in Logan, Utah for the summer getting ready to head to our new home in Germany.  I just remember wearing those glasses, hanging out with Jenny Watts, walking up and down the sidewalk in front of Jon Reece's house, wishing he would notice me and thinking I was pretty cool. I offered to buy the boys a pair but they both declined. What!!??

Austin has been catching up on all the swimming he missed out on this summer with his broken arm. The doctor actually encouraged A LOT of swimming because he said it is great therapy to help the arm gets it's motion back.  He has definitely been getting his "therapy" in.

We actually have to swim because our weather has been HOT! Hot and stormy, we had another haboob last night.  We missed the last big one that hit on July 5th, but look at the pictures!  They show the dust better than my shots of last night.

You can literally see the wall of dust coming towards you and it gets dark in a matter of just a few minutes.  It's an eery feeling but I stayed outside to watch until  the wind was blowing so hard  that I could not open my eyes because of all the dust in the air.  This is what it looked like outside our house.

AND Here is the weather report from yesterday.  I looked it up because Austin came home from school and reported that they were not allowed to go to recess.  I questioned the older boys and he was right.  No recess for the little kids and 4th grade and above only got a 5 minutes recess. I knew it felt TERRIBLY HOT yesterday!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!  We will because Travis has been on a trip for 9 days and he gets home tonight, YAHOO!

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