It’s summertime yay! Except I did see on someone’s status that summer is half over which is crazy. It’s been a clear blue sky in the Okanagan this week. Mom, Morgan, and I arrived safe and sound to our new house around the fifth of June. We spent the first day here deep cleaning the house we’re living in. Unfortunately the renter before us had done a bunch of damage and stolen the appliances and light fixtures so there’d recently been work done and new appliances put in so we went to work wiping walls and cleaning. We did the actual moving in the next day and now we feel pretty settled. We need things like a couch, an area rug, patio chairs, etc. but those are wants at this point, not needs! We live on a little hill close to Salmon Arm, about 6 minutes from church and school and 8 minutes from a lovely coffee shop. Morgan spent a few days the next week painting the house a dark grey color and then started working at 4X Ranch again, the place he worked occasionally after school the 2 years we lived here before. He’s glad to be back. I spent a couple weeks working in a strawberry/asparagus stand which was fun. Mom came along with me for a couple days and that made the time fly.

Zac and Cecily and cutiepoo Eloise came and visited us for a weekend and officially became our first company, along with Mom of course. We had a full house and I don’t know if there’s much better than catching up with dearest people and understanding life with each other. Such a fun time.

Mom, Morgan and I left for a long-planned trip to California after work the 21st of June and drove straight thru to Winton. Morgan and Jalen had been planning for several months to hike Mt. Whitney, the highest mountian in the contiguous United States, which can only be done with a permit and theirs fell on June 26. So Monday morning, the 24th, Mom, Morgan and I left early and drove over the Sierra Nevada Mtns to Manzanar, one of the ten Japanese internment camps that sprang up after the WW2 attack on Pearl Harbor. We drove through on the road that takes you past the old softball diamond, different Japanese rock gardens, and assorted old buildings. We watched a film on the history of how the camps came to be and toured the museum. The Owens Valley where Manzanar is located is high desert and gets very hot in the summer with bad sandstorms and very cold in the winter. Most of the Japanese-Americans who were relocated to this camp were from Los Angeles and the Bay area, so they were completely unprepared for the climate. More than 10,000 people lived in the camp in barracks, ate in a mess hall, and shared communal latrines with no privacy. A couple things stood out to me from our visit, one being the fact that although the Japanese-Americans were wrongly forced from their homes and into the camps, for a large part of them there was a measure of relief that they were being sent somewhere “safe”. Many of them lived in danger following the attack on Pearl Harbor simply because they were Japanese. Many were threatened, some attacked or forced from their neighborhoods. They (and not all of them I’m sure) viewed their relocation as a step to safety for their families. I was also impressed with their resilience. The rock gardens and little ponds and gardens that they carefully watched over were a showing of their culture’s ancient philosophies of meditation (Zen) and harmony with inner self and nature (Shinto and Buddhism). It was a very interesting afternoon. You can read more about it here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar

We spent the next day around Mammoth Lakes, Lone Pine, and Bishop with the guys- Morgan, Jalen, Carlos, Corey, Brad, Caleb- who were going to hike Mt. Whitney. Thrifted, had coffee with Carlos&Jodi and family, and swam in the afternoon. Wednesday morning at 230, after an evening of food prep and organizing and weighing backpacks, the guys started their hike. Mom, Dani, and I left around 8 am and headed for home. The guys summited in good time, around 11 am I think? and were back down around 5 pm and Morgan and Jalen had to drive the 6 hours home still. This was Morgan’s second time hiking it so im very proud of him:)

We spent the next 3 days swimming and catching up with friends. Coffee with Jesse&Barb, coffee with Jenn, meals at Matt&Sherris and Dan&Natalie’s and Benny&Sharilees, and a bunch of Mexican food with Mom and Alicia. Soaked up the last days with Mom being with us this summer. Best days. We all attended a Winton wedding on Sunday and after a giant OrvilleKoehn family deal Sunday evening, we headed out. We dropped Mom off at the airport on our way through Sacramento which made us sad. My mom is pretty cool. I mean what Mom drives an iffy car through 9 states behind the bus and sleeps on a foam mattress on the bus floor at night. Plus all the other stuff she helped us with like work and cooking and decorating. I always say that of course Morgan is tops. But my Mom is my best friend. And I’m so thankful for that because many don’t have that opportunity. But anyways. We had a good coffee somewhere north of Seattle and a taco truck burrito close to the border. We got home to BC the 1st, Monday evening.

This week I taught Bible School in the mornings, a class of 9 of my old school kids so it was so fun. Today was the program and this evening we went to Eric&Kaitlyn for supper. Lots of other stuff these weeks: lake days, camping, coffees with friends, flowers from kids, yummy meal invites. Our house is very warm in this heat wave and the bedrooms are 90* so we are camping in the living room by our one a/c. It’s fun. Yay for a/c. I started yesterday helping with garlic harvest. I’m on the processing line, mostly beginning next week. A bonus is I’m either working with Morgans old students who all love me, I’m sure, or singing Mexicans so it’s win-win. Also I can see Morgan occasionally because he’s also working garlic harvest.  Have a happy week♡ 

xo cheyenne