We survived July!
This summer has flown past by just like that! In the past I’ve always had a pretty leisure summers where we could just chill and travel up north to beat the heat. This summer somehow became super busy for us.
To celebrate Independence Day this year, we decided to go to a firework show at Fiesta Mall on July 3rd. We put the little guy to bed and drove out for the show. The two older kids definitely enjoyed the show. I remember watching firework shows a lot growing up so this was a great experience for me as well.
July 4th fell on a Sunday so it was good change of pace as well since we are doing the major fun activities on Monday. We made a red, blue and white trifle for dessert. Apparently Jonny thinks that there should be jello in the trifle but the recipe I found says differently. We tried to make some jello last minute but we ran out of time. Oh well, the trifle was still super yummy. I did make it with a gluten free cake so everyone was able to enjoy the special treat. Of course, we went on a walk after dinner. This has become our Sunday tradition—a walk around the neighborhood after dinner. There is a Chinese saying—or maybe a Wuhan saying—Take a walk of 100 steps after dinner, you will live to at least 99 if not to 100 years old. Not really banking on this saying for longevity but at least we do enjoy the accompany and chats for these walks.
This year our church was able to bring back the annual tradition of the July 4th breakfast so we had a busy continuation of celebration on the 5th. Lots of good food and lots of swimming happened that day.
I was called to be one of the photographers for our stake’s girls’ camp this year. They were going up to a camp ground, but unfortunately there was a fire. Everything got moved locally last minute and as the leaders were scrambling to put together a fun experience for the girls, I was getting pretty excited about this opportunity. For one, I did not grow up in the church so I have no idea what a girls’ camp look like. Two, it’s always fun to do fun photo projects. I was at camp for three full days, pretty much shooting for 12+ hours each day. I had no idea what I could expect, since I’ve never been to camp before, the first day was a little tough. I had two cameras strapped on me with one having a flash attached the whole time. So much actions were happening so I was chasing around a lot. It was a little overwhelming and taxing physically because I was pretty much literally holding my arms up for hours and hours straight. At the end of the night, my shoulders and even the back of my hands were hurting. I texted my friend who is an amazing wedding photographer and straight up told her—I totally gained a new level of respect for you wedding photographers. How do you do this?!
It was a learning experience for sure for me. On day two and three, I switched my focus and approach and decided to just go back to my usual way of shooting and gear set up. And I let go of chasing after every single moment and just stayed with some of the interesting stuff for longer period of time to make sure that I get a good photo. It was a much better approach and much more enjoyable for me.
They went to this arcade place(as shown in the first image) and I decided to get on the rides with the girls trying to get some photos of how it feels to be on the ride. I have to say, it was not the best idea to bring a camera onto a ride—I was focusing on the girls on the same ride cart with me so my eyes were telling my brain that we were not moving, however, my body was flying all over the places. Yeah, to say that I had to take some time to recover to settle my stomach is an under statement. With that being said though, well worth a try. The things we are willing to do for good photos.
To help respect the privacy, I won’t share their images here but it was a blast for me to be able to spend three full days doing what I love and figuring out how to solve problems on the go.
Unfortunately, while I was out at camp, Jonny got in a really bad car accident. He was on duty for the evening swimming lesson for our little guy. A car pulled right in front of him out of a parking lot and there was no time for Jonny to really do much about it so he T-boned the other car. Even though it was the other car’s total fault, we still had to deal with the consequence. Luckily the two older kids were acting out so my babysitter was kind enough to offer to watch the older two for another hour so Jonny could just take the little one to his class. It turned out to be a blessing indeed because otherwise the other two kids would have to experience the trauma too. And luckily, we have good carseats installed correctly and the air bags were all working well. I didn’t have my phone on me at the time of the accident so after I was done with shooting for the day I saw this really weird voice message from Jonny and then this message telling me to give him a call when I can. I listened to the voice message first and realized it was an accidental call from Jonny and it recorded the conversation at the accident site. My heart just dropped and I thought about the worst case scenario immediately and gave Jonny a call right away. When I heard that everyone was ok, it was such a big relief. Even though our van was totaled, at least the people were all ok and that is the most important thing.
Our insurance was helpful and was pretty on top of things and helped us to get it all settled relatively fast. The only problem was that apparently it is the worst time to need to buy a second hand car! The prices are just insane. But we need a car to house all the kids and their carseats…we just had no choice but to actively look for a car. We found this private seller who was moving out of the country for work and we did get a decent deal out of it. Hopefully this new van can stay safe with us for a long time!
I went back to pick up all the remaining personal items from our old car at the junk yard and wow it was tough to see how bad shape the car was in. We signed the title over to insurance company and got our payments. Then reality finally hit me when the whole active process was done that wow, I could have lost Jonny and my baby boy. Or if I were not at the camp, it would have been me and all three kids in the accident. It is such a good reminder that we can never take it for granted that we will have the people we love for however long time we would like.
PS. it worked very well for me for a couple of days to be really patient with my kids and just be appreciative about their existence but how funny we are as human beings, as time goes by, I find myself getting frustrated with the tiniest things my kids do again and want to just scream at them. Oh human.
PPS. we have been joking that our white van got tanned so now it’s a darker shade. Ha.
Since I was busy with all these stuff and my kids swimming lessons, I got so behind on so many other things. I did not get pretty much anything done with all my other projects. But this time, I have been rather at peace with the fact that I am not getting as much done as I would like. It is indeed important to make sure that I take care of myself first so I am at a better state to handle all these problems/tasks that are not going away anytime soon.
We have been enjoying watching the Olympics too. It is always inspiring to see how hard these athletes work to achieve that level of excellency. My kids have been especially fond of watching the swimming events because they have been working on their strokes this summer.
So that’s what was going on in July and I’m glad that we survived all the curve balls. School starts in 1st week of August here but I don’t think I’m totally ready to go back to school mode yet especially when we are still getting excessive heat warnings often! We did get a good amount of rain recently so that’s always good!
That’s all for now. I’ll talk to you next month!
