And at it again. 

So I've been wanting to make this one since Sunday, when I realized the two pictures would go well together.  What does everybody else think?

Heard from Kaylin;

Get back here I'm the leader.

Yeah umm.  that sums up our national leaders doesn't it!

Baton practice was yesterday, the girls have improved so much.  But my back bit the dust, and I ended up in loads of pain.  Its mostly better today, but I'm still not thrilled about certain movements.

I ended up playing mindlessly with MEEZ last night instead of doing anything profitable.  It was about the level of my concentration. 

Cat is limping, but moving around, so we shall see.

Mommy is limping but oh wait never mind.

And that's the mind drabbles from here. 

Kaylin's cat got in a fight, and has an infected tail, and is limping.  We absolutely can NOT afford to take it to the vet at the present time, even though Rob who refuses to take any animal to the vet considered it. 

We all love this cat.  Its our favorite.  It sneaks in a eight foot window to sleep with Kaylin.  And when we go to the river it follows us.  We are NOT supposed to have indoor cats, but I can't get upset about one that determined, and so its a spoiled baby.

So today we did minor surgery on the cat with me completely grosed out the whole time.  Rob was quite enthralled.  The cat is locked in a cage so it can be kept an eye on, and we're praying hard it will recover.  I told myself I wasn't going to get attatched to an animal again, but this stupid cat forgot to listen, and I am.  Darn it. 

The good news is its very alert and still its playful self.  While Rob was cleaning out the infected wound it laid perfectly still, and only meowed twice when we hit a sore spot.  Kaylin came over and began to pet it, and it just lapped it up.  Blacky has personality, and darn it I hope we fixed it. 

 Phew I finally have everything loaded.  Although I know Country Sunshine has been peaking via photo blogs.  LOL  Anyhow our weekend was action packed and quite fun.  But in all honesty I'm ready for a low-key weekend this coming weekend cause I'm getting tired.  LOL  Our weekend started about 10:30 Friday when we headed down to the Spring Tavern to camp.   They are the owners of the beautiful beach we camped on a couple weeks ago.   We had decided it would be a awesome way to watch the fireworks on Saturday, and a great base for the weekends events. 

Friday was spent digging tunnels in the sand, and building driftwood forts.  And yes I helped!

Isn't that a grand one?  We had a lovely time building it.  Of course the big piece of driftwood was already there.  LOL  

After a hard day of play the kids roasted hot dogs, and Rob and I got our customary Friday take out.   Did you know you can roast hot dogs with your toes?  I didn't either.  Stares at Samuel and giggles a lot!

Thursday night I had told Country Sunshine about the beach.  She lives about 45 minutes from where we do, and was looking for a good camping spot.  I knew just the spot.   After dinner before Rob's and I's dinner the kids and I headed back down to the beach where we finally got to meet in real life.   We chatted for a while, while the kids all stared at each other, but wouldn't make friends.  Rob arrived with dinner, and they headed down the beach to the river.  

Rob and I ate, and decided to join them.  Neutral territory made everybody relax.  And our kids quickly taught their grandkids how to dirt surf, and a few other tricks.  Oh and how to make grandma nervous as Annhelica climbed up high on a piece of driftwood.  (that would be Rainee's fault.)  *giggles*

The river was very low, and the kids had a great time splashing and getting FILTHY dirty.  If you go to country_sunshine's site she has pictures as well, though none of my kids as she didn't have her camera at that point. 

See lots of kids, digging, splashing, and sliding. 

We headed back to the tent to brush five layers of sand off, and watch the sunset.  It was one of those long lingering ones that changed colors multiple times. 

Rob and I tucked the kids into their tents and walked down and watched, and watched.

I must have taken 30 pictures, and their all gorgeous.  I choose to share three, so you all don't hate me.  *snicker*

Saturday morning we woke up and headed home to get showers, and ready to go to the parade.   Before we went we saw 2 eagles, 4 seal, 1 otter, and two cranes.  It was a lively morning on the beach!

The parade started at 11, it was a short one, but a lot of fun.   The highlight was this offering from Rob's place of work.   It was appropriate somehow.  Okay it was my highlight.  *giggles*

After the parade we went up to one of Rob's coworkers houses who was saleing Indian Tacos.  They were VERY good.   The kids had frybread with jam on it.  Rob and I thoroughly enjoyed our Indian Tacos.  MMMMMM!   His coworker's gonna get a good giggle at Jeremiah!

When that was done we went down to the petting area.  My friend Teresa runs this every year.  We fell in love with the miniature horses.  The baby was shorter then Jeremiah.  And he isn't very tall!  So cute.   We have been boarding a pony for Teresa all summer named Thunder.  He's a bit of a butt, and needs some serious training.  But as long as no one's on his back he's a big baby.   We love him.   Teresa' has been totally fed up with said pony and threatened to take him to the meat market.  We hated to see it happen, but couldn't justify the $$ for a pony that currently can't be ridden.  When we arrived at the petting zoo she said "Congratulations your the new owner of Thunder."  Apparently we now own two ponys.  ROFL 

Now if I could just find someone to break him.  If I weighed less I could do it, but I'm a bit heavy for it.  Darn it all.  Rob can ride him, but knows diddly about horses.   And the last time Rob road him it lasted about 45 seconds before he hit the ground.  *snicker*  Ah well, he makes a good lawn mower. 

Rob and the kids headed down to the beach at this point, and I stayed for the auction.  I love auction's.  It was a fundraiser for the annual fireworks.  I ended up buying several VERY nice wooden planters, and varying and sundry junk.  *eg*.  I shall have to take a picture of the biggest planter I bought.  I'm actually going to use it as a indoor woodbox.  Its beautiful, and looks great in the spot I put it.  We'd been talking about needing one, and now we have it. 

The rest of the afternoon after the auction was spent staring blankly, reading, and watching kids.   Rainee had bad asthma off and on all weekend.  She hasn't had symptoms in forever.  Rob reminded me we experimented with taking her off her Singular about 3 weeks ago.  I'm guessing that wasn't a good choice, so she'll go back on it, and hopefully things will be normal again.

About 8:00 we headed down to the beach to sit on the sand and wait for the fireworks.  The kids continued to build forts, play in the driftwood, and just move in and treat the beach like it was their own.  I mentioned to Dorrie the owner the beach was never going to be the same.  She just smiled and said "High tide is a marvelous invention." 

My parents arrived about 8:30 to join us in the wait for the fireworks.  My dad got in several stick wars with the boys, and was his normal insane self.  The boys loved it

The object with stick wars is actually like sword fights.  They are NOT to hit each other just the sticks, and 99% of the time it works.  They rarely get hurt, and its a lot of fun to watch. 

After a never ending wait while we watched all kinds of peoples small fireworks displays and waited for it to be pitch black the fireworks finally came.  Jeremiah actually woke up to see them.  He missed the ones at the Spit.  LOL   They had a bit of a rough start like their was technical issues, but they ended up being gorgeous!

We headed to bed to the sounds of more fireworks (locals blowing off their $$)  and woke up at 7 to race home and shower, and do the fun run.  After the fun run we took our tent down and headed home.   We were going to go to the restaurant for lunch, but they were still serving breakfast, and the kids had their hearts set on lunch.  So we went back at dinner time instead. 

All in all a very busy weekend that makes me tired thinking about it, but still very fun. 

This weekend has been our Clallam Bay Sekiu Fun Days.  And we have thoroughly enjoyed ourself.  I will do a journal of how/when/where we went tomorrow.  But I had to share my proud mommy moments first.

This morning we got up early and headed for the Fun Run.  Rob competed in it this year and very much enjoyed it.   The two oldest had decided they wanted to do it as well.  Its a long run for 9 year olds!

If you look way over to the right hand corner where the vaguish buildings are that's where they started at, and they aren't quite at the half way point in this picture!

I encouraged Rob to run his own race, and told him I'd follow the kids in the van and be support for them.  He offered to run with them, but he LOVES to compete and rarely gets to do it, so I wouldn't let him.   Before the race we actually expected Zeria to be the one to get tired--in particular with asthma.  As a prevention for the first time we gave her albuterol before the race.  It made a HUGE difference.  We WILL do this again!  She was amazing, she had fun the whole race, and never got too-tired.

Samuel however about half way through was just dying.  We had told him we didn't care how fast he went, finishing should be his goal.  And I could tell he really wanted to quit.  But I didn't offer it to him.  I figured he could ask.  LOL  Zeria when she realized Samuel was dying wrapped her arm around with him and they ran arm in arm.

I told her she could go ahead, but she said "NO!"  She was sticking with her brother.  "Buddies to the end."  She said.  When we got to the last mile of the race we were off the main road, and I let Jamari and Kaylin run.  Kaylin kept up with the two oldest the whole way.  Jamari fell back quite a bit.  Rob finished in third place, and then walked to where the kids were running, and ran with the three littles.  I let Rainee run the last half mile.  And she did!  So amazing considering her COPD.

Anyhow Zeria was just such a strong encourager today, and took such good care of her brother that can be such a big bully.  And this is them at the finish line.

How sweet is that?

Oh and the wet on their shirts is from me.  I dumped water over them a couple times at their request.  They were HOT!  Anyhow Zeria came in first in her age group--okay she was the only girl in her age group.  And Samuel came in second.  But what amazes me is that they did it, and did it with pride. 

If your bored and looking for a new game.

I've been highly addicted to this;

If you like words at all you'll like it. 

I'm not going to admit how much I've played of it today.  ROFL

But the good news is I mowed my close-up lawn so I haven't been a total bumb. 

94 degrees.

And that's all I've got to say.

Except pass the ice water!

Good morning

Its a day.

Rainee is scrapbooking before breakfast.  She spent her hard earned money at Costco yesterday on a fabulous scrapbooking kit.  It was something I was coveting.  LOL  It was $19 for two photo albums, a huge amount of embellishments and paper.

I dug out a bunch of pictures that were extra's and she's having great fun.  She already went through 2 things of glue sticks.

It looks like its gonna be hot and sunny again today, the forecast says hotter, we shall see.

For whoever it was that asked I live in Western Washington.  (read very western).  I live a mile from the coast, so its just always cool.  Last year I was a bit bummed as to how cool.  As we never got hot last summer, but I got hot yesterday.  I actually walked down to the river and went swimming at 9 pm.  It felt wonderful.

I need to water some plants today that I don't normally water, as their gonna shrivel up otherwise. 

I ordered my math u see yesterday.  I'm looking forward to getting it.  My friend who did the evaluation and didn't know that was the curriculum I was picking brought by some of her old school stuff--and wa la one of it was the manipulatives from the math u see which saved me a nice amount of money.  *grin*