Life and Times of The Johnston family: Last Day of Summer Vatcation and Such!

Going back to the week of August 11-17. It was a pretty typical week. Tuesday was Bravo classes, I put in a withdrawal form to take Elizabeth out of her dance/tumble class(you have to give a month notice) as she's signed up to start at UP With Kids a Children's Theater in September, which she is very excited about...especially since they're doing Frostbite which is a version of Frozen! Wednesday I took Elizabeth to have her vision checked....and we did not get great news. The vision in her left eye is much worse than it used to be. It's so bad that her brain is really only using her right eye to see out of, which will eventually make her left eye go lazy. So he ramped up her prescription, especially for her left eye and we're hoping that just being able to see better out of her left eye will convince her brain to use it more. If not then we'll patch her right eye and if that fails then she'll have to have surgery again. Her doctor is hopeful that we won't have to do surgery that the patch will work if needed. Sadly the astigmatism in her left eye doubled as well, so between her really strong prescription and bad astigmatism she has to have special order lenses now. What a Wednesday! Thanks to Mary for watching Devin for me! Friday was the kids' last day of summer vacation so we spent the morning having fun! Fist at a new splash pad that's just a few minutes away and super fun! We got there pretty early so it wasn't busy for the first little bit, but it did eventually get crazy busy and so Devin bowed out after only about 20 minutes, Elizabeth hung in for another about 40 minutes then even she was ready to be done. They changed into their clothes in the restroom then played at a couple playgrounds that are right next to the splash pad, the kids played for another hour then we drove to an empty pavilion at a park by our house, and had a picnic lunch. Then the kids played at that playground for almost another hour, then we came home and had quiet time. The kids both agreed it was a great last day of summer vacation! Saturday Mary came up again to watch Devin while Tony, Elizabeth and I went to the Ogden Temple Open House. Elizabeth liked it but obviously it's hard for her to understand exactly what goes on in the temple as she just wasn't fully satisfied with the simple answers. She did think it was very beautiful though! She told me she loved seeing a place like where mommy and daddy were sealed. She told me she's wondered what it looked like, and that it was different than what she thought...but prettier! In the information tent she read most of the plaques about the different parts of the temple and honestly I think it would have been better for her to have done that before she went through the temple, as Elizabeth is a read and understand kind of person. She loved seeing the Christus Statue, she pointed out the nail prints in His hands and feet, and told me, "Jesus really died for me, didn't he." Sometimes she really doesn't seem 5 years old! Tony showed her that the granite used on the temple came from Egypt and she just lit up! That girl LOVES Egypt!! It was a great experience together! When we got home we dropped Elizabeth off with Mary then went to the Credit Union to take care of some business. Then we had lunch and Tony took Elizabeth to the storage unit to start putting up the shelves, and Devin stayed home with me and just played while I cleaned and organized the school room. Both my and Tony's tasks were lots of hard work so when we were done we rewarded ourselves and the kids for being such a big help by going to Olive Garden with a gift card for dinner! It was so yummy!! Sunday Devin had a hard time getting to church so we were afraid he was going to be hard to drop off in nursery, but to my surprise he saw all the fun toys, and was fine! He went straight to his "go-to" toy, which is a little car raceway. Phew! Teaching our primary class went really well too, and Elizabeth reported being good as well so I call it a success!!

Fun at the Splash Pad!