St. George and one more week of summer break

School starts in one week.  It feels like such a long time ago that we were in the states but it's only been about 20 days since we got home.  We still don't have kids' schedules or teacher assignments but I'm hopeful it will be a good year for everyone.  Isaac is taking his final SAT on Saturday and he is signing up for shifts to bus monitor for all the school orientations (new student, Elementary, Middle, High) so he's got a busy week.  Will is heading to the temple today to do a session in Japanese with his friends who are also leaving on missions and is trying to fit in last hangouts with friends before they all go their separate ways.  The girls have a Totoro movie day scheduled with my friend Brittany.  Brittany was Felicity's teacher at school last year and my counselor in the Primary.  She told the girls to come over to her house tomorrow to have a Totoro viewing party.  They are going to make pancakes and watch the movie.  She is so fun.  She's in the YW's now and Piper is moving up this year so I think it will be good for her to get to know Brittany better.  Eli doesn't have much happening between now and when school starts but he needs a haircut and Mike and I are taking him out for a date to get Kakigori because last summer he wasn't able to go because of his injury.  Mike was interviewed on a podcast this morning for his book.  His publisher set the podcast up for him.  It's not a widely viewed/listened to podcast but any point of attention is good.  He also had surgery on Friday to clear up some inflammation in his nose. They scraped and crunched and cleaned his airways.  He was told to expect a lot of bleeding but he's barely bled at all.  He is, however, very stuffy and I hope that is just the recovery process.  We hope the surgery worked so he can start to breathe better.  I am just trying to hold on and ride the wave of change that is happening in our family with Will leaving and the kids going back to school.  I'm still dealing with some really uncomfortable eczema, on my fourth round of steroids and so many moisturizers I've lost count.  I'm also taking a double dose of antihistamine that is making me very tired and they took a blood test to see if I'm allergic to anything.  Aside from that, my life is fairly boring.  I do need to end this post though because today I am taking a lady around town.  She just moved here and her husband is a new co-worker of Mike's.  She seems very nice and much more ready to tackle Tokyo than I was when I first moved here.  I'm excited to be in a position where I can actually contribute to someone learning about this city.  

Before I sign off for the day though, here are more pictures from our trip.  

We headed down to St. George to spend the day with my sister.  We went to Dixey Rock to climb around the red rocks and then we grabbed lunch at a cute little diner.  After, we dropped the kids off at my sister's house and Mike stayed back to do some work and watch the littles while my sister and I took the boys to play laser tag (it was fun!) and to do a little thrifting.  Thrifting was a flop.  For dinner we ordered Papa John's and then we loaded everyone up to go to a soda shop before we said goodbye.  The two little girls stayed in St. George for a sleepover and the rest of us went back to Cedar.  The girls had such a good time--swimming, painting nails, painting pictures, staying up late, watching movies, playing laser tag.  They had a giant list written out of all the things they wanted to do and I think they did them all but one.