As hardcore Phineas and Ferb fans know, the song states “There’s 104 Days of Summer Vacation and school comes along just to end it.” Firstly, I want to know where this mythical school is that actually has 104 days of summer break. We top out at 79. Additionally, I would like to point out that “school comes along just to end it” UNLESS you’re a parent, then it’s definitely a reprieve of sorts.
Summer vacation of 2022 is officially in the books. Although spring started off at a breakneck pace I 
felt like summer slowed down a bit. We elected to take a summer off from driving/flying to the Midwest. It was nice to be here to babysit the pets, the garden, etc. for the entire summer. About 90% of the energy to plan our annual Midwestern pilgrimage falls squarely on me, and I just selfishly needed a summer off. The bright side of this is that grandpa Bruce and grandma Laura got to visit Utah for the state July 24th holiday. The downside is we have a niece who’s approaching her first birthday, that we still haven’t met in person.
In June we led off the summer with a quick trip to St. George for a Baxter family reunion. Garth and Maydene had the super great idea to rent out a couple condos at a resort (Arcadia Resort, Santa Clara, UT) where all the extended family could stay and visit. Each condo slept about 20 people and gave us all the amenities to keep kids and adults comfortable. The resort surrounds a small waterpark which the kids took full advantage of. The adults could relax in the AC as it was already quite hot in Southern Utah in June.
Upon returning from Southern Utah we promptly starting building our new backyard fence. The fence project was spurred on by removing the giant pine trees on the north side of our yard along with finding relatively decent used fence panels on KSL. Every bright idea starts with the classifieds.
About 25 fence panels were delivered to our driveway in the spring and sat there waiting for us to plan the next steps. The more we thought about it, the more we realized taking them apart and rebuilding would be more reasonable than trying to figure out how to secure them as they were. They were HEAVY and had some pickets of questionable quality, so I spent about 3 days with a screw gun dismantling them all into their component parts. This left us with a huge pile of 2 x 6’s and hundreds of pickets. We were lucky enough to have existing chain link fence with t-posts that were cemented in, so we used that as a framework to attach the new rebuilt fence. Over the course of 2 long weekends with strong winds and temps in the upper 90’s we assembled and painted our ‘new to us’ fence. You can get a lot done once you’ve gotten over being crazy and just dive into a project headfirst. We’re really happy with how it turned out.
Early June we also set up the swimming pool for the summer. The swimming pool has a definite lifecycle each summer. The first several weeks it’s up, the kids are SO excited to get in they don’t even care that the water is freezing and they are hypothermic in the first 15 minutes. For the next 6 weeks or so, the swimming pool is warmer and exciting enough to go in daily for an hour or so. The next 2 weeks the swimming pool is less enticing and only becomes fun if friends or a parent comes in to play. The last weeks of the summer before school starts, the pool has lost its charm and it’s time to take it down. Our pool gets great use from the kids in the summer but I’m always rather excited to take it down as well.
June wouldn’t be complete without our annual trip to the chalk art festival Father’s Day weekend. The weather was beautiful this year! We went early to watch the artists working and enjoyed a quieter time without much of a crowd. One silly highlight of our outing is we ate inside a restaurant with the kids for the first time since the pandemic had started. For a time, we were the only ones inside the restaurant other than the staff. This is pretty unheard of any time in downtown Salt Lake let alone during the chalk art festival.
July brought many standard summer things: pool time, play dates, hot weather, and fireworks. At the end of the month during the July 24th holiday, we had a week with the WI grandparents. The highlight may have been the kids’ and grandparents’ first trip to a rodeo! It was a fun night out now that the boys are old enough to stay up past bedtime without entirely melting down. We forever spoiled the grandparents as far as rodeos go, because we caught the finals for the Days of ’47 Rodeo, which happens to be on the national circuit and televised. We saw a much higher talent level than your average small town rodeo show. During the grandparent visit we also checked out a small hike in the big mountains of Big Cottonwood Canyon. It had been a few years since we’d ventured up the canyons with the grandparents and they never disappoint. We also baked cut out cookies, visited with the Baxter parents and grandparents, and took Andrew to see his first movie at a theater (Minions: Rise of Gru). Many memories were made!
I had saved one indoor project for “the hottest week of summer” and think I timed it pretty well as I painted our basement stairs a weekend just before my parents’ visit where the outdoor temperature hit 103. I honestly think it may have been the hottest weekend of the summer and painting in the cool basement with a fan running was just the ticket. It’s an impressive before and after so I will share. I was sore for upwards of a week to 10 days after this project. Hopefully this is the first and last set of stairs I fully paint this way.
August was our annual Midvale Harvest Days celebration and block party. We hosted the block party for the second year in a row and had 55-60 neighbors stop in/hang out for food, homemade root beer, and bingo. I’ll say it every year, I really love Olympus Street! The end of the week brought a parade and festivities in the park. We were roped into helping by Mayor Marcus who had our information from our block party duties and happens to live around the corner from us. I absolutely threw Jason under the bus and volunteered him to run kid games in the park. The morning parade was pleasantly cool, and then when we headed over to the park it RAINED! The standard hot sweaty fun suddenly became cold wet fun.
AAAAANNNNDDDD just like that the 79 days were over and it was back to school time. Summer break always feels long and short at the same time. The fun that makes the cut for the blog always leaves out the parts about the boredom, bickering, and mess making which comprise the rest of summer. I’ll throw out an honorable mention to the 4000 snacks sacrificed in making it through summer between regular meals (for those of you running the numbers, yes that’s 16.88 snacks per child per day, which I feel is pretty accurate). Happy Back to School Everyone!
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