“Ice sCream”, You Scream, We All Scream… “Don’t Do It Nate!”

I went to the temple this morning b/c I was only able to go once in June and I want to go 24 times this year, or an average of twice a month.  So since I went 3 times this month, I’m caught back up with my goal.  Anyways, I saw some Polynesian sisters in the dressing room and got my hopes up that their sons might be in the session, but they weren’t.  But, I had a neat moment in the celestial room.  I was having a heart-to-heart with Heavenly Father and expressing that I want to have more children and raise them in a happy & righteous family.  It was very emotional.  There was a set of scriptures sitting on the table next to me so I opened to the topical guide and decided to look up a scripture in 3 Nephi 22.  That whole chapter hit me in a way that I’ve never read or understood it before, especially these verses:

6) For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth (if you consider 26 years old young), when thou wast refused (by Jason), saith thy God.
7)  For a small moment (4 years, which is short in the big scheme of things) I have forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.
13)  And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.

I sat in the celestial room for at least 30 minutes, b/c the next session came in and I was still in there.  It was nice to just sit and feel the peace in that wonderful place and have a heartfelt conversation w/ my Heavenly Father about my hopes and aspirations for my life and to get more of an eternal perspective.

I came home and got Autumn dressed for the day and she could barely contain her excitement about going to her school for the ice cream social.  She’s been talking about it since Wednesday and the time finally came.  We got there right at 11:00 and were the first ones there.  We went to her classroom where her teacher, Ms. Cyndi had an ice cream bingo game set up.  Autumn won a little smiley eraser and thought she was hot stuff.

After that, we went out to the bouncy house, which was the main reason we came.  I wanted her to have a chance to jump before it got too crowded.

At first she wasn’t too sure about it b/c there were some rowdy boys in there that were doing flips and jumping all over.  She just stood over by one of the pillars.  But then they went inside and she had the whole place to herself.  She had a blast and was jumping all over the place.  I loved seeing her long braid flying up in the air behind her.

Luckily I was able to find some shade to stand in while she jumped, but even after a while that got to be too hot for me.  I was finally able to convince her to come inside by telling her they had ice cream.  They had it set up so cute w/ different toppings in little cups that looked like ice cream cones.

They even had little kid-sized water bottles.  After we ate our ice cream (which was really creamy and good), we walked around to the other rooms to see what games/activities were going on in there, but there really wasn’t anything.  So, we went back outside and Autumn jumped in the bounce house again w/ a little girl from her class.

When I couldn’t stand the heat anymore and she had a super sweaty head, we left to go get the car washed.  She was such a good little worker and helped me vacuum out the car.  I am glad we had a free coupon, b/c the car was dirty and looked so much better when it was clean.  Autumn was so excited that I gave her a $1 to give to the guy that dried off our car.  I think it made her day, as well as his.

We went to Mom & Dad’s house to see what was going on over there and Nate was putting this shelf together for the pool bathroom.  He’s a good little doobie.

We had stopped and picked up Vietnamese food for lunch and Autumn was chowing down on the spring rolls.  It was so good and just hit the spot.  Maggie was here studying and we kept telling her to come in and eat w/ us but she said she had already eaten, plus she wanted to get in the pool and swim.  We didn’t want to swim b/c the pool pump broke so the water was stagnant and gross.  We watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants b/c Nate thinks Blake Lively is drop dead gorgeous (I think she’s just cute) and we had been talking about the Grecian part when we were at Zorba’s for lunch.

After the movie, Autumn finally couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted to go swimming.  She didn’t care that the pump wasn’t working and the water was all murky and gross b/c of the diatomaceous earth Dad had put in yesterday right before the pump broke.  The water was so cloudy that I couldn’t even see Nate when he would swim along the bottom.  He wanted to try planking on the waterfall and he was yelling at me to hurry up and take the picture b/c the rocks were so hot they were burning him.

Then he got really crazy and put on some shoes and went around to the front of the house and climbed up on the roof and planked up there!

He’s what I would call an EXTREME planker.

He climbed down the roof and was joking to Autumn that she should put up her arms and catch him.

Nate’s crazy and hair brained stunts on the roof didn’t stop there.  He decided to jump off the patio roof and into the pool.  The only problem w/ that is he would be jumping into the shallow end.  And, if he jumped far enough to make it into the deeper part of the pool, he could possibly hit the hot tub b/c of the angle he’d be jumping from.  But, Dad didn’t forbid him from doing it, he even video taped the whole thing.  I know he thinks it was a dumb idea, but at the same time I think he was secretly cheering Nate on b/c jumping off the roof is something that runs in the Johnson boys blood.  Anyways, Nate did it and was perfectly safe and fine as you can tell from the pictures above.

After all that excitement, we went in the house and Mom had made some fried potatoes and then squash and zucchini for dinner.  So scrumptious!  We hung out and watched some TV and talked and just enjoyed spending time together.  I hope our pool guy can figure out why the pump isn’t working b/c otherwise we’ll start growing algae and harboring mosquitoes in the pool b/c it’s supposed to be 110 degrees this week!