What we do in the heat of summer

Will has been being so nice to me and posting his Be Reals because he knows I want to see what he is doing at work. He got to drive a water truck one day last week. He is coming up on a deadline and worked all day Saturday and went in this morning an hour early. He has a good attitude about it too. He's learning a lot from this job. He gets news skills almost daily and is busy earning the respect of all the guys he works with.

Most of my week last week was spent at the World Language summer institute. It was great to meet colleagues from around the district. I met 3 Spanish teachers from Ivy's high school as well as lots of others from all around the valley. Also, my colleagues from Basic were there and I always love hanging out with them.

On Friday I sat with Sammy who teaches at middle school in Las Vegas. She is mostly bald with a short purple mohawk running over her head and has meaningful tatoos all over. She saved her legs for icons from each Spanish-speaking country . Below you can see Paraguay (water carrier), Uruguay (the flag) and there is a Mexican cartoon character (but she has lots from Mexico including Frida Kahlo and a sugar skull). She was my parter for a game and was easy to talk to and let me take pictures of her tatoos after class.

I'm especially partial to Picasso's Don Quixote on her right shin.

She still has room for more! She also gets the mascot from each school she has worked at. That would definitely be incentive for me to stay in one place!

This weekend was the funeral of Keith Evans, the first counselor in our bishopric. He was getting ready for church a week ago and just dropped dead in his house. Jodi (his wife) tried to revive him, and an ambulance was called, but they never did resuscitate him. He was 63 and seemed healthy. It was sobering.

I did get to run some last week, but not as much because I only have energy for a few things these days. Summer Institute took most of the energy. 

 Monday is Coach G day for Ivy and I am organizing an walking group of mothers of runners. (Are you proud of me?) Carrie is a friend I met last year from the Coach G group. Her daughter will be a freshman this year at Coronado and we agreed to walk during practices. Just yesterday we convinced another mom to join us.

Faith and Collin are coming to visit this weekend and we are really excited about it (and hope the heat doesn't scare them off forever!) It has been pretty hot for the past week and it's only getting hotter. This morning when Ivy and I went running at 6am it was already 90 degrees outside.

We are trying to get night hours of driving in for Ivy. A few nights a week I will take her after sunset. It's good that she's getting practice at night. You forget how different it is for a new driver. 

I called Mary Aillery this morning and talked to her. It was great to catch up on her and her family (and all of our common friends from Stamford.) I was grinding wheat and thought, "I've lost Mary's bread recipe." So glad I lost it because it was a good reason to call. Sure miss that lady.