We made it to pay day without bouncing anything!

That is a MAJOR Miracle.

Money goes into our account at midnight.  Throws confetti in the air.

As a result of course I need to go grocery shopping.  I'm going to meet my mom at a new to me restaurant.  I also have to buy an almost 9 year old his birthday pressie as we will be celebrating Samuel's birthday on Sunday--its actually Monday, but its easier to do on the weekend.

I spent today weeding my side yard.  This is it in all of its jumbled mess--sad thing--this is AFTER I've worked on it for 2 hours.  The picture unfortunately isn't great as it was just too dark outside when I took it.  But see how full it is in both the right and left coners.  And then there's one bush of daylillies almost in the middle.  And then NADA but buttercups--which are pretty this time of year--but still a weed.  LOL

Its got several more days of work.  I can only do it in little bits before my back gives out.  I continue to get exasperated with it as its over planted in half of it and nothing in the other half.  The daylillies should have been seperated early spring, but it was raining buckets then.  So I've decided I'm gonna just dig a bunch out and replant them.  If they make it great, if they don't the ones I leave behind will do much better.

They were so packed last year they didn't even grow.  I have two sets of plants in there that I have NOOOOO idea what they are.  I need to go take my camera out to them, and have somebody help me identify them.  LOL

Anyhow I've changed my mind multiple times about what to do with said garden.  Late last night I decided I was going to completely dismantle it and plant a few veggies in it.  This morning I was looking at it, and thinking some of the plants were quite pretty, and I hated to do that, so I was going to save them all.  And now I'm finding a compromise between the two.  snicker. 

I spent over 20 minutes trying to get the grass and butter cups out of whatever this is.  It had some kind of pretty  white flower in the fall.  I need to remember to cut them back in the fall I think.  I also had to spend quite a bit of time snapping out the brown dead left over from the flowers.  I just wish I knew what it was.  I also need to remember to take pictures when its blooming and get my wise xanga friends to identify it.  *snicker*  It as a result looks MUCH! better. 

This is the other bunch of stuff I have no idea what it is.  The yellow flowers by the way are buttercups--I haven't weeded this yet.  I had to have dh get the blackberrys out of it for me first.  He had gloves, and is stronger then me.  The wretched things are everywhere on my property.

I had one little suprise--a volunteer "weed"  that I have full intentions of encouraging.  This is a little vine maple that is growing in the back of the garden.  Its got quite a nice start.  Don't mind the stupid wire--the previous owners raised sheep.  Its one of those things that's gonna come down where I have four spare days. hahahaha

It gets the most deliciously brilliant red leaves in the fall.  I so hope it makes it. 

Anyhow the long and short of this garden patch is--its not what I wanted.  But pulling it out and starting over is ridiculous.   I don't have the bucko bucks that landscapers spend on DYI.  So I'll do the best that I can.  I think in the bare spots--well they'll be bare when I get the grass out I'm going to plant either my two zuchinni's, or try pumpkins.  I've had great success in the past with pumpkins, and the kids would love to watch those grow. 

The day ended better then it began.  Jeremiah began to uncling--and we went for a drive on our fumes to the beach.  I found three nice  shaped pieces of driftwood for my yard.  Rob informed me after hauling the third piece to the car.  NO MORE.  The last one apparently did him in.  *giggles*

With that my rock garden is quite done.  I will have to go take pictures of it and share them later, but for now my batterys need to recharge.

Rob helped me do some more maintanence to the yard, and the front yard is almost done.   *cheers*  I have one small bed to weed, and some grass to grow.  Grass seed is cheap so I'll buy some on payday if at all possible.   We killed some of the grass when we did the sunroom last fall.    My next project in the yard will be the side yard.  I don't have a back yard--just 22 acres.  LOL  The side yard is what most people see first as they come in the driveway.   I keep sticking my tongue out at it, as I don't like the plants in it, but I can't afford to replace them.   I'm sorely tempted to just pull the whole bed out rescue the daffodil bulbs and deep six the rest.   We shall see.  

Breathes.  Jeremiah's eye is MUCH better this morning.  It was glued shut at 7 pm last night, but now its just a tich red.  ITs obviously a virus not bacterial, so we'll go with status quo.

Its been a rather exhausting night--due to an earache, bugbites, and the goopy eye--from three different kids.

Rolls eye and shakes head a lot. 

I have added a sore throat to my list of symptoms.  But Samuel's up and moving so there's progress and not.  LOL

Its been a quiet day today.

Samuel and I have no voice.  I have very little energy and Samuel spent much of his day sleeping on the couch.

Jeremiah is heading down the same road--as well as getting pink eye.  His eye has started getting steadily worse.  IT was a teensy goopy this morning, but this evening it kept gluing shut.  So probably I shall have to go to the doctors with him tomorrow.

I'm NOT impressed.  We have NO gas in our car, and no money until Friday to get some.  And I do mean none.  The doctors is an hour away.  So I keep praying for a miracle.  If not we will get gas, write a check, and pray it doesn't clear until Friday--which is more then likely safe, as the stores out here don't deposit frequently--its just something I HATE to do.

So that's my day.

Its been a busy weekend.  We spent all day Saturday at my moms in honor of mothers day.  Samuel was invited to spend the night with my nephew who was staying with my sister at my mom's house.   When I got there I realized it was the last night of my brother and sister's operetta.  My mom had an extra ticket, and invited Kaylin and I to spend the night and go see it.   Its the high school musical, and is done at a professional level and has been for years.  We spent the night and in the morning my sister drove all of us out to our house so we could go to the beach.

Rainee and Sarah were the hits of the day.  They just had sooooooooooooooooo much fun together.  They held hands everywhere and just loved on each other.   It makes me so bummed my sister moved away.  She keeps talking about staying in Yakima when Tony's done his paramedic school.  I keep praying they will change there minds.

Anyhow I was taken by this picture of the girls, so took a few minutes this morning to play with it.  I thought it turned out quite cute. 

As I mentioned the next day Karla came out to get her beach fix.  Unfortunately it was raining an inch an hour.  We went anyhow but it was NASTY!  I took no pictures as I didn't want to mess up my camera.  My sister sent me this one this morning.  Its fuzzy cause of how much rain was coming down.  ICK!

All in all though it was a delightful weekend.

We headed two miles down the road to Slip Point.   In all the tourist books we've read it says that this has superb tidal pools.  We've gone to this beach about 8-15 x.    But we weren't overly impressed.  They just seemed like all the other tidal pools.  Today we finally planned the visit for a very low tide. And found out why it is so well advertised.  It was spectacular.   We saw over 100 different starfish, at least 3 varietys of sea anemone's.  Two varietys of sea cucumbers--something I'd never seen before though I've lived around the beach all my life.  Two varietys of live sea urchins--neither of which do I think I've ever seen alive.   Just incredible. 

These were our first three starfish.  We were soooo excited when we saw these.  And then laughed at ourselves later when we realized we'd found over 100 of them.

A live sea urchin.  This one is held upside down so we could see its teeth.  Once again we were thrilled to find this guy.  And then it got so we found literally hundreds of them.  We had a hard time stepping some times with ot stepping on them.  If you look in all of the rest of my pictures almost every one has purple spines sticking out. 

A little baby starfish--note the purple spine in the right corner of yet another urchin.  Oh and the bottom of the picture too.  *snicker*

The underside of a purple starfish--showing the kids all its little feet.

Kaylin who worked up the courage to pet one.  If you've never touched one its rather like touching sand paper, slightly warm sand paper.

And then my favorite find of the day.  This is taken through two and a half feet of water, so the picture isn't quite as clear as I hoped, but still turned out remarkably well.  These are red sea urchins.  They were just beautiful.  I have NEVER seen them alive or dead.    Notice all the many, many purple sea urchins, and the skeletons of quite a few as well.  (aka shells)

This little guy was a first as well.  There was a trio of people from B.C. who research marine biology.  They were able to identify the first guy I found like this as a sea cucumber.  We found quite a few after that once we knew what we were looking at.  The people were quite friendly, and they reassured us, that they learned/saw something new each time they came to the beach as well.  They said there is 10,000 species of sealife in the Northern Pacific Coast.   I believe it!

I took a detour away from the kids and found this HUGE collection of starfish.  That was when we stopped counting.  *sniggers*  The green circle thing on top of one of the oranges one is a sea anemone.

And this is a close up of a rather gigantic sea anemone.  In the very deep tidal pool we also got to see the flowery ones, but somehow I missed taking a picture of it.     Oh there are if you look small cretons as well.  And I KNOW I'm spelling those wrong .   They are the small black things with a white pattern down the middle.  There's at least 3 of them in the picture. 

All in all it was a spectacular visit to the coast.  And in my opinion worth about 3 months of sit down school. 

Warning slightly crass language in a couple places. But I thought it summed things up rather nicely.Oh, PS This is not open for debate. If you disagree move along---or do so politely. I refuse to get into a fight about this.

Note to self

NEVER watch parent trap again.

Jamari put syrup all over the girls queen size bed.

Rob says its ruined.

I'm hoping for the best. 

I started this morning early (for me)  and was out of the house by 8 am.  I drove Zeria to outside of town where I met my mom.  I left Zeria with her cousin (my niece) and headed home.  My nieces are visiting this week, and grandma invited Zeria over to spend some time with them.  We met not quite half way so neither of us had to do all of the driving.  We will pick her up Saturday when we go over to celebrate a late mothers day with my sister.   My brother leaves Friday so we won't see him.   Confused yet?  ROFL

Rob has one more day of work and then he finally gets a 3 day weekend.  The poor guy has worked sooooo hard this week.  He put in over 20 hours of over time.   HE could have had one more Saturday, but we had plans, and he needs a break at some point.    He will do overtime next Saturday.  This should get us mostly out of the hole.   And then as long as we're more careful we should be good.

We figured out where the "suprise" money was going.  We have just spent way way too much money at the local convenience store.  We calculated out at a cautious amount of an average of what we spent there a day and well it was embarassing.  Averaging that out for a 2 week period we suspect about $200 was going to the store (or more).   MAJOR BAD!  It just kinda creeps up.  $5 here, $10 here and wham lots of money goes bye-bye.   So no more "quick" runs to PB's.  LOL   The grocerys in our house suddenly look much better.

I spent this week painting the sun room.  Its not done, as it hasn't all been drywalled.  We're actually not sure what to do with the window side of the sunroom, as it has a huge amount of tricky cuts.   Now that it's painted I'm contemplating a mural on one wall.  Its not a huge wall about 3 feet wide.  But after playing around I'm thinking of doing something like this.

I never claimed to be an artist (ever)  and thats a rough sketch done on paint, but I think I'm going to try it.  The good news is I have almost all of the colors I need in my stencil paints already.  What I don't have I can mix.    So its a free project that will have a big impact.  Now I just need the courage to attempt it.   I need opinions as to what people think of it...honest opinions.

And other then that just being mom.

Edited I changed it to a jpeg can you see it now?

We went rock hunting tonight.  Rob found some superb specimens!  Several were much bigger then I anticipated.  We have almost got the rocks around the stump, and we added a bunch more around the fish pond.  I think it looks much better now.

The light was funny  so I'm not sure how well you can see, but here's two angles of the new garden.