The wood was tough and wet. Trees being vascular plants, they absorb water readily, and these were so wet the water oozed out when the wedge went in. I don’t think they’ll be ready to burn by the time autumn arrives, but I’ll keep them in the back of the wood shed, just in case.

(The woodshed is another story. I started the work of expanding that on Saturday morning, but after the roof collapsed on me I never finished it. I went down to work on wood blocks instead, just before it started raining.)

Then on Sunday morning I arose at 5 am to to speak in a ward in Bonners Ferry, over an hour away. I found that I had worked so hard the day before that I was basically worthless on Sunday afternoon. I had home teaching to do, but was sick and listless. The moral of the story is not to work too hard. I‘ll be sure to ignore it next time I have a free Saturday.

Vacation/family pictures to come.

My kids, like myself, have an abhorrence of any ride with a circular trajectory, when that trajectory is more violent than a Ferris wheel. Jess insisted that Emma ride a roller coaster this year, but Emma is still traumatized by her experience when she was ten. Emma’s a tough, adventurous kid; but she screamed throughout the ride. When the short ride was finally over, we wobbled our way past the counter where we could buy pictures of ourselves on the ride. I was wearing an encouraging Dad-smile that says, “Come on, this is fun!” Emma’s face was a mask of abject terror. I have never, before or since, seen a person look more frightened.

So this time we did the safe things: the log flume ride, the Model-T car drive, the Ferris wheel. Emma and Becca went up first, and soon Katie and I found ourselves at the tippy top of the Ferris wheel admiring the surrounding view, a delightful breeze lifting our hair. When we came down Jess was flushed with heat. “Let’s do lunch,” she said, “and then the water park.” Okay.

Apparently half the people in the Western Hemisphere had the same idea. (You are part of the other half, which was at work.) There was hardly room for water in the Lazy River (a swirling self-propelled stream) or the two wave pools, and the water-slide queues snaked down the stairs almost to the ground. Halfway through the afternoon, while Abby came shrieking down the kiddie-slide for the eighteenth time, I felt my shoulder getting sunburned. Impossible, thought I; I’ve four layers of sunscreen on. Nay, Captain, this radiation’s so strong it’ll burn through steel. Turn around and toast the other side! So I did.

In the evening we straggled like zombies back to the car. How delicious to leave the crowds behind, and come home to our home in the silent woods. The evening breeze was a blessing after the heat of the day, the dogs were frantic with welcome, the ducks quacked to see us (they think we’re bringing them greens), and I felt so good I buzzed up half a cord of firewood and had it split and stacked before Jess called me for dinner.

I cheerfully acknowledge that mine is not Approved Behavior for men my age. Men my age are supposed to have a boat and cruise around on the lake, wearing sunglasses and radiating superiority. They bear the required goatee and mandatory debt. They do NOT dive into the lake with the dog. They do NOT swim with their children, at least not where others can see.

So what. Yahoo!

I love to go swimming with the kids. I love to go careening off the dock with the dog and plunge into the water at the same time. This time Hank was distracted by the tennis ball in the water and this is the closest we got to simultaneous impact, while Jessica had the camera. I wish I didn’t have quite so many pictures of me on this blog, but her pictures of the kids and me did not turn out, since we were cannonballing off the dock and look like squealing blurs. We splashed around for the better part of two hours, diving, jumping, yelling, splashing, and generally making nuisances of ourselves.

I am an embarrassment to the Manly Template. Sorry, guys. I’d rather spend time with my kids than money on the Template. Enjoy your boat payments!

It’s been pretty warm around here. If you live in Tucson or Manhattan you have my condolences, but “pretty warm” for us is above 90 degrees, with 70% humidity or higher. Our SIP house stays delightfully cool, and when it’s hot I’d rather be inside. We leave all the windows wide open all night, and close them in the morning; and that way the house stays cool all day without spending a dime for air conditioning. As a missionary in Argentina I would go out and work regardless of the weather (and it got even warmer down there), but now when it gets hot I’d rather sit in the cool house and read. (Yes, I even got some books from the library, as if I had the time to read them. Go figure.)

So if I have heavy labor to do outside I like to do it while it’s cool outside–early in the morning. Last Saturday I was up betimes, prayed and studied scriptures as I do every morning, then went outside and fixed the railroad tie steps down to the garden. Then I awoke Emma and Becca, our two oldest children. Jess was down watering the garden heavily, in preparation for the day’s heat. (Next year I’d like to put in a drip irrigation system, to reduce the stress that heavy watering puts on our well.) When the girls came down I put them to work painting the shoop, which as you may remember has only been half painted since last year.

They did a good job. The paint had spent the winter in the shoop and was half liquid, half solid, and all gross. The liquid part was full of chunks and had the consistency of runny oatmeal. But the girls kept at it, painting every wall all the way to the eaves, and even painting the chicken coop on the back.

Here you see both of them at work on opposite sides of the shoop. This picture was taken by Abby, age 7, so it’s not quite in focus; but I still think it’s important to record our labors. (The chickens’ size is a trick of the lens. They’re not that big.)

While they worked I was busy digging a trench for a water line up to the top of the poultry yard. I want to put a hydrant in right over the duck pond (nee styrofoam boat). In the wintertime, when the whole yard fills up with snow, it will be handy to have a water supply exactly where we need it. Every day last winter we supplied the ducks’ drinking water using buckets filled at the garden hydrant. That was a tough job, especially when the mounded snow grew slippery.

In the summer heat it’s hard to remember that over half the year up here is cold and snowy. When the snow gets deep, anything that’s not under a roof is so deeply buried it’s impossible to access. So even though it’s hot, we’ll prepare for winter while the sun shines.

Maybe I should start marketing pictures of our Romaine lettuce (I think that’s what it is) to seed catalogs this year as champions of Romaine-ness. And if you steal a copy of this picture to represent as your own lettuce, I wouldn’t blame you. I don’t think anything we’ve ever grown has looked that healthy. In fact I’d have taken a picture of the whole row here instead of two plants except that Jess had uprooted the third one back to serve at dinner.

If anyone’s interested in cabbage, our cabbage looks almost this good. Maybe in my outlandish enthusiasm for things green-thumbian I’ll post a picture of our cabbage tomorrow, and the Tomato Jungle after that, and the Forest of Bean Blossoms, and good grief, what’s next? I had fresh strawberries for breakfast this morning, and Swiss chard at dinner last night. What’s Swiss chard? I don’t know, except that Jess steamed it like spinach and served it hot with butter. Nummy. When I was a kid I thought no one could come up with a yukkier dish for human consumption than boiled spinach. Slimy, gloppy, a sinister dark green, and with all the flavor of an iron pipe. It would have tasted better served with hot tar. But the chard last night looked much like the boiled spinach of my youth, and I quite enjoyed it. In fact, I talked it up with my kids in the very way my dad used to whenever Mom served us something questionable from the garden. Ugh, adulthood.

Here’s Becca on the tippity-top of Chicago Peak, shooting the opposite direction of the image I posted yesterday. This one gives a better sense of altitude.

Here we are on the trail, heading out. The ridge above leads to Chicago Peak, so named (I assume) because the jagged blocks that compose the ridge resemble a city skyline.

And did we yodel? Yep. I told the kids that since we’re of Swiss stock and we’re up on a mountaintop we might as well yodel. And with all the cliffs and rocks about, it worked pretty well. If the wind wasn’t stirring, some of our echoes reverberated four or five seconds. It doesn’t sound like much, until you time five seconds on your watch. That’s pretty good for an echo!

We teach our kids to be proud of their Swiss heritage. My line comes from the wooded countryside outside Bern–honest, hardworking people from a venerable line extending back for centuries. Our people built their own home and raised children, animals and a garden on a hillside where they also picked huckleberries (sound familiar?). Jessica has Swiss in her blood too. When our house gets messy we do a five-minute “cleaning blitz,” where each child has five minutes to tidy up a particular room or area; and I tell them, “Swiss clean!” That means as neat and clean as they can make it.

Someday when we can figure out where to put it, I’ll raise an American flag outside—and right underneath, a Swiss flag, the red square banner and white cross of our fathers. We’re Americans first, but we honor our heritage.

Did you ever perform this summertime ritual–lighting sparklers on the Fourth of July? Do you remember the hissing sound of a burning sparkler, the pinpricks of heat as stray sparks hit your hand, the tiny vibrations coming down the wire? What kid in America has not written his name with the brilliant chattering light? What kid in America hasn’t burned her hand on a hot sparkler wire that she thought was out?

The cost of fireworks goes up every year, but sparklers are still relatively cheap and they’re always a hit. Being on a tight budget, that’s all we bought this year, besides two purple cardboard canisters that contained a surprising quantity of pop and sparkle. The sparkler ritual turns into a sort of dance. Dad lights the first match (and the second, third, and fourth: the wind was blowing) and holds it an improbably long time under the first unlit wire. All at once the magic ignites: sparks fly from the wire in all directions, hissing and gleaming; kids squeal, start back, and return immediately proffering their own wires. Dad calls that they must light from each others’ wires since he’s lighting no more matches, and time after time as a sparkler burns out a child tosses the glowing wire into the empty steel bucket, begs a fresh one of Dad, and scampers off to light it from the nearest sister. Mom orbits the scene, camera in one hand, Jacob kicking excitedly in the other. Even shy little Sarah handled a tentative sparkler or two, until a jumping spark made her cry.

When the last box is opened the excitement has not quite ebbed. Dad announces “Last box!” and the kids moan “Ohhhh,” in the time-honored up-and-down tone; but disappointment is forgotten when Mom and Dad say, “Shoes on, grab a jacket, go potty, let’s go to town and watch the fireworks!”

And that is what we did.

Here, parenthetically, you also see our sorry little front lawn. We planted it last fall. Rain and spilled manure have helped the little plants along, and it’s acquiring an appearance of green; but the soil is hard and constant traffic from kids and dogs hinder its growth. Sod is prohibitively expensive, and we can’t fence off our grass enough to keep the dogs out. But somehow, gradually, our grass keeps getting greener.