If it's broken....

Life seems to have handed us a long stream of broken things. The appliance graveyard is growing.  This week we found the hot water heater had a leak.  Please note, we did everything good, responsible people do. We had it in a pan (to prevent leaking). We had a "water alarm" next to it. The pan rusted out. The water went AROUND the alarm.

Instead of going into the alarm, the water went into the closet (with carpet) of the guest room. Awesome.

Everyone rallied and helped take the old water heater out and get the new one in. It took longer than anticipated and we had the water in the house shut off for about 16 hours. It was exactly 16 hours too long.

Don't worry.  Before Keith could get the guest room fixed, the garage door opener broke. It took a few days for parts to come. So, that's awesome.

In better news, Kate had gymnastics camp every day last week. The girls get points for doing homework and doing well in class.  At the end of the week, Kate won!  She got a little award of cute pens and notebooks. She was very pleased with herself.

Not only can Kate do gymnastics, she can get Corrine ready for a date.  I have a long video of her explaining "levels" of beauty and dating rules.

Kate did a pretty good job getting Corrine ready.  Corrine really enjoyed her date and I think it was a nice break from all of her school work.

Kate wanted to learn some more writing skills from Sariah. They are both working on their calligraphy practice after being inspired by Corrine. Corrine is training her little workforce for her business!

The kids were SO EXCITED to have Jakob come run a D&D session. From what I could tell, they all had fun and it went for MANY hours.  Bonding time? Math skills? No electronics? Imagination? Ok. Sounds good.

While Jakob was here, he took the opportunity to practice the piano for a musical number he will be doing in his ward in a couple of weeks. He is playing my favorite song and I realized how much I miss hearing him play the piano!

Corrine had to go to BYU to take a math final on Monday.  I decided to take the kids to the Bean Museum while we waited for her to take her test.

Zebras are Kates favorite.

The kids don't look very happy, do they?  I promise they had fun and we all enjoyed ourselves. Hayden and Sariah do not like their picture taken and I have to fight them both for any pictures.

Kate said: "Look mom! Its Donald Trump!"

I think Kate is so funny.

Maybe the kids had fun. Hayden is really into the "middle school pout" and I can't get him to seem happy about anything.  I took several pictures and this is the best he would give me.

Kate said "This is very smart. Take your prey up in the tree and other predators can't take it from you." How many 7 year olds think like this?

When we got home from the museum, Kate said "I love animals and I loved that museum. I was afraid it was all going to be beans and I wasn't sure I would like that."

Here is the weekly weather rant. WHAT. THE. HECK.  We went from FREEZING cold on the 4th of July to this?!  It is so hot we are all dying.  We didn't get much of a transition period.

If anyone is counting we have 3 and a half weeks of summer vacation left. I have mixed feelings about this, but mostly I'm very excited to get back to school.  I do have a lot to get done before school starts!