Our poor tree

This is what happened during the storm we had Thursday night. We heard and felt a microburst of some kind hit the house. When I looked in the front yard our poor Jacaranda was leaning over. Of course we had to leave it all day on Friday like this because Kirk and I both had to work all day. So when I got home at almost 8 p.m. last night Kirk was already out front hooking it up to his truck with a "come along" compliments of my Dad who has every tool known to mankind. We did get it to stand up but there is a little curve in the trunk so we somehow need to try to get the base of the trunk more straight. The guy from Moonvalley Nursery only laughed when he told me "good luck" trying to stand that thing up. Gee thanks.

EEEK!

I was cleaning out and organizing our school cabinet one last time before starting school hoping that touching the books would give me some intense motivation to start. It didn't work. I have enjoyed this summer that is for sure. Anyway, I came across our plastic caterpillar that has gone A.W.O.L. for the past 5 months or so. And I will tell you why. Daphne hates caterpillars. Even plastic ones that go to a butterfly life cycle set. So....whenever she is absolutely misbehaving, mouthy, snotty, or just plain bossy, someone will get the caterpillar out, either Jared or myself, and just walk by her carefully placing it on her school books, pencil box, crackers, whatever is in front of her. She has a good scream, we all laugh, and Daphne is livable again. She is such a good sport. Though the last time I think she decided to hide it because I was asking her where it went and she just smiled and said it is "somewhere". Yeah the somewhere was behind a bunch of stuff in the cabinet. So do you want to know why Daphne hates caterpillars? Long, long ago about 8 years ago we had a co-op of about 7 families. We decided to learn about butterflies in the spring so naturally being a homeschooler, we had to raise our own butterflies. So being the "science" teacher, I ordered the class pack of 30 caterpillars from Insect Lore. I didn't realize that they were coming in one container and we had to divide up their food and separate them out into cups for the kids to take home with them. Yuck. Of course Kirk was busy so we couldn't make him do it. So Daphne and I, who was 8 at the time, helped me. She was very excited because she loves animals and such. There were a couple who weren't really moving and they were kind of extra, so I kept those and put them in our family's cup. I figured if they die it will be ours and we will just deal with it. No biggie. Okay, when it came time for them to form their chrysalis everything was going great. Except one. Okay this is gross. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Only half his body was trying to form the chrysalis which had turned into a gooey mess. So here is the head half of the body wiggling with basically nothing but goo for the other half. It was like out of some Horror Flick. So...that is why Daphne doesn't like Caterpillars. And yes you probably think we have a sick sense of humor around here. But it sure gets her out of her mood pretty fast. She laughs about it. Oh, by the way, we made Kirk scoop out the gooey caterpillar. He is the man of the house after all.

We're home

We are happy but sad to be home. Happy to sleep in our own beds after three weeks and sad because school and work is just around the control. Oh yay... The grass was so tall that Alexander had to stretch his neck really high to see over the blades. Time to use our new lawn mower that we picked up as a hand me down from Grandpa.

We're going home

Here is our new home. Just kidding. We made a stop in Bodie, Calif. An old Ghost town. American History at your finger tips. I came here as a child and remember walking around looking in the windows at all the old furniture left behind. This is an iron door to the vault of a bank owned by Herbert Hoovers brother. The only thing standing is the vault. The bank supposedly burned down. Look at all the details.Kirk really wanted to get a picture of me and kids on the door step of the school house. There were still desks in it and books. I would have loved to go inside and open up cupboards and books and see what else is behind closed doors.



Isn't this a neat piece of tin punch. I love stuff like this. I love having a digital camera to just take tons of pictures like this. This is kind of funny. Henry got hot. We had gotton there really early, almost 9 am, but it was starting to warm up. Jared went to walk away and he heard and felt this dragging sound. He turned around to see that he was dragging the dog along the ground by the leash. Oops. The dog wouldn't move. He was not getting up. I think he was saying I can't move another inch. We gave him some cool water and that motivated him to atleast complete our visit. He took a good nap in the van after that.

Don't tip us over

I think Grandpa is a little worried that the kids are going to tip the canoe. They sure were having a lot of fun. The girls figured out that it was fun to swim with the life jackets on. At one point Kirk had only Victoria and Kaleb in the canoe with the paddles. Kirk just sat on the floor in the middle and let the two little ones go where ever. It was hilarious. Of course they were paddling independently so they pretty much went in zig zag and circles. I just had to laugh. Sometimes it feels like that going through life with little kids. You never know where they may take you. And what a cool Dad to just release control and let them do it. I would have been probably telling them where to go. HeeHee

Dutch oven baking

Jared baked this cinamon cake with a little help from Mom and Dad. Mostly to make sure he didn't burn himself. It was really moist and tasted great! I could have eaten the whole thing. A curse of mine. This was part of some merit badge work for boyscouts. We do Lone Scouts which means that the boys don't belong to a troop. We really don't have time to fit in troop meetings so we squeeze it in here and there when we can. They still participate with the district with day camps and derby races. In the mean time we have fun doing things together.

Girly girls

Victoria really liked having her cousins all to herself. She interacts really well with others so it didn't surprise me that she was declaring that she was going to put her sleeping bag between Tamar and Nahlia in the loft. And they were going to sleep together.