Good morning

I miss Zeria's cornrows!

I just spent fifteen terrible minutes detangling her hair.

She wants long hair so bad and just can't take care of it.  and it always ends up me being the bad guy and getting the mats out.  And she cries and shrieks, but won't let me cut it...not that I really want to.  Its all frought with exasperation.

The good news is its "mostly" tangle free.

The bad news is we start over tomorrow unless she lets me braid it.

The floor is making good progress.  Everything is glued down, but none of it is grouted that is todays plan after church. Rob is kinda groaning today.  He must be getting old.  *giggles*

My living room is MESSSSSY Cause everything that lives in the sunroom is currently in it.  Unfortunately it will be like that for a couple days.

Rob is sweeping out the sunroom and then the fun begins.

Jeremiah keeps tripping over his head today.  I swear.  He's gotten it banged hard three times this morning.  He ran into the door, He ran into Rainee, and I can't remember what else.  Its been a crying kind of morning.

He's now umm "helping" his dad.  Which consists of talking none stop and walking in dad's dirt pile.  Every father needs that kind of helper right?

Its sunny outside, which just figures since we have a two-day indoor project planned.  Ahh well, life gets that way. 

Zeria's kitty caught its first mouse!  We're thrilled, and hope it continues to do that.

I continue to watch the hurricane with dread as I know how horrible Katrina was.  God's power is...overwhelming some days I guess.

My birthday pressy is bought and purchased. 

Now for the hard part.

My birthday pressy is natural slate mixed color tile for the sun room.  We finished the sun-room over two years ago, but never put the flooring down.  At one point we tried using our laminate out there and it just didn't fly.

We quickly realized we needed something that could absorb water.  And then the rainy season came and we realized our roof was leaking super bad and just got discouraged.

This spring we got a new roof, and we haven't had any leaking since then, sooo for my birthday I asked for it to be finished.

I wanted slate, and started out looking in the garden section for the more rugged slate, but absolutely fell in love with some slate tile.  Its rock, but its multiple colors, and very pretty.

Now...for Rob's process installing it.  I can't wait to share pictures, and hope its not frought with too much exasperation. 

Had a couple proud mommy moments today.

This morning about 10 Rainee announced she wanted to learn how to do a cartwheel.  I have no successfully taught four of my children how to do so....although Kaylin's is still a bit weak, she only learned about a month ago.

So I started to do it, and she started crying.  She just didn't get it.

I cuddled her, and told her she didn't "have" to do it.

She cried some more.

I sent her to her room.

When the tears were done she came back and said "Can you help me again?"

I did...

She couldn't get it.

And she started to get teary eyed.

I called a halt.  I wasn't gonna go the road she'd been an hour earlier.

Two hours later, she came to me again.  I showed her a third time what to do, and she tried it a few times.  Didn't get it perfect, but I could tell she was finally grasping the beginnings.

She wandered off without tears.

An hour later about 5:30 tonight she came and she has it.

Its not a true cartwheel yet, but its how you begin to do one, and its spot on. 

If her determination continues it should be a true cartwheel within a week.  A lot of stubborn determination there!!!

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This evening about 20 minutes ago a good 30 minutes after the kids were sent to bed I took a bite and immediately started choking/coughing/asthma.  My two oldest lept from there beds and ran to check on me.  Zeria grabbed my water, and Sam stood there making sure I was okay, and then began pounding on my back after I asked him to.

They waited quietly while I attempted to throw up.  And just did everything they could do to help me.

They could have stayed in bed.  I wasn't dying.  Just coughing.   But I truely appreciated how much they helped me

So my phone and internet went down yesterday at 11 and was down the rest of the day.

This is twice this summer.  I'm assuming they are working on the lines, but not sure.

It was a mixed blessing.  But over all I would say it was kinda of nice to be quiet.

I had a family emergency late Monday, and ended up going to the doctor with it Tuesday afternoon.  Rob stayed home so that I could take just KK.

KK has developed a violent allergy to "something".   She started hyperventilating and then after a few minutes threw up. 

She was drinking strawberry milk at the time.  Which by the way has NO strawberries in it.  NONE.  IT does have all kinds of yucky chemicals and stuff.  So it could be any of them.  I don't believe its milk as she's drank it lots of times without such a scarey reaction. 

The reaction was worse as we were on the road in no-man's land.   The 35 minutes of the road that has no houses, no stores, no cell-service. 

I did a lovely long blog about all the details of that drive, but my internet went down and it got eaten. 

The short of it was Rainee also drank the strawberry milk.  We *KNEW* she was allergic to red-dye, and she hasn't had any in two years.  I allowed her to buy the milk not totally realizing it had the red-dye in it.  And she also reacted....i.e. puked it all over the car and herself.  *bluch*

It was a long long drive from town to home.

Rainee's didn't scare me.  She drinks it, she throws it up.  The doctors are aware of it, and we just avoid it like the plague...ALL of us help her avoid it, the kids are very good to make sure its avoided.  Puking is YUCKY. 

KK *may* be allergic to the red dye.  Or one of the other ingredients.  The thing that scared me was the hyperventilating.  So we went and discussed it with the doctor.  Not my favorite Dr W as he was out, but my second favorite so that was good.  She had no ideas which chemical it would be, but suggested we read labels a bit more closely.

The drink was something they bought with their own money, I just never do pop/and crud for them.  But I will be more aware of what they buy. 

After a bit of talking about the hyperventilating, and her giving KK a thorough check-up she wrote me a script for a epi-pen junior "just-in-case"  Probably if we lived in Port Angeles she wouldn't have.  But I reminded her we are 35 minutes from the nearest hospital...which is a very rural very ill-equipped hospital.   So she volunteered the epi-pen for peace of mind.

I like peace of mind.

Part of me wondered if I was over-reacting.  But the other part of me knows that Rob wigged and took the day off when he heard about it...so probably I'm not.  The doctor didn't seem to think I was either.  They know that I don't run to the doctor for every sniffle.  So *shrugs*  KK has options, and now I need to figure out which chemical made her do that...

My top three suspicions are red dye 40, blue dye 4, or carrageen.  Carrageen is actually a algae or seaweed derrivitive and can be purchased in natural food stores.  Its used as a thickening agency.  And is supposed to be avoided if you have a thyroid condition.....which she does.   

So we'll see where this lovely adventure goes.  And pray that it was a once off. 

While my hubby played with rocks yesterday the kids and I explored our environment.  This was above where the rock was in a fairly recent clearcut.  Already replanted with baby trees that were about a foot and a half tall.

A beautiful devils club.  Yeah terrible name.  But their a terrible plant vicious thorns.  But the berries are sure purdy.

The kids eventually got curious and wandered over the edge of the clearcut into the woods.  I followed them via a small skidder track to make sure they didn't get too far off-course.  I stopped and they called "Come ahead mom you have to see this beautiful little valley."

They were right I did.  It was huge, but it was very serene.  Eventually they all followed us and climbed down their and splashed in the little creek.

I chose to stay at the top of the valley as my asthma hasn't been great due to the cold, and it was a straight up and down through brush proposition.

So ya all know that I love rocks.  I brought home rocks from my last vacation to Eastern Washington.  I collect BIG rocks.  I have a rock garden that consists of exactly that...rocks.

I can't be too weird cause my next door neighbor does the same thing.

HMM maybe its a Clallam Bay thing.

Any how yesterday we went for a drive looking for cedar boughs for Rob.  He's wanting to build himself his own bow.  He needs my brother to give him some tips.   Cause at this point the bows my brother built when he was 9 are better then Robs.  But hey he's having fun, and it got me up in my beloved foot hills.

So after acquiring some Cedar for Rob we continued to explore a couple roads we'd never been on before.  We found several spectacular views that a camera would NEVER do justice to so I didn't bother, and some you guessed it big rocks.

This was the first big one I drooled over.  I knew it was too big.  Rob disagreed, and got out, so did Sam.  Sam couldn't even budge it.  You can see its almost as big as him.  LOL

We opted to leave it behind....yesterday.

Today when Rob woke up he wanted to go back better armed.  But he didn't want that one as much as he wanted this one.

See the bad thing about my rock collecting is Rob enjoys it too.  He gets to be "manly" and use his musCles.   And we all get to go exploring old logging roads.

Now that rock was particularly "cool"  cause its sparkly granite.  And its flat.  Thus it didn't look that big.  As a side note the board in the bottom corner of the picture is a 2x12.  It rather gives you the "size" of the rock.

hahahahaha

Over 45 minutes later Rob discovered it was a wee bit bigger then originally suspected.  And suddenly he was craving my brothers rather strong back to help him push it up onto the trailer.  Unfortunately all he had was me (with a bad back) and 6 kids under the age of 12.

As a result after an hour and fifteen it didn't quite make it up on the trailer.

He decided if he had his come-along then he could do it.

So tomorrow after church we're gonna go back and get that darn rock that's now sitting in the middle of a dead-end logging road.  Its not quite in the middle people can get around it if they want, and its a road that has grown-up and very very rarely does anybody drive on it.  It seemed stupid to move it to the side to have to move it back to the middle tomorrow.

Tomorrow he will park the trailer BELOW the rock, and he will use the come-along.  It will be tricky to get it below due to there being no place to turn around the trailer, but its probably worth it.

And darn it its a purdy rock.

Even if it is a wee bit big.

Oh and its not quite as flat as it looked on the top either.  LOL  It comes up to Rob's knees in height and its probably as long as Jeremiah is tall.

I think we just might be a wee bit nuts.

As I mentioned last night I finally got the pictures off my camera.  Its been several weeks so I have a very random mix.

The first is a picture of the worlds largest spruce tree.  It is HUGE.  See how far my kids are spread across it...

Yeah there are rain spots all over the picture.  This was the day we took a shower with all of our clothes on.

My vicious KK.  She is so funny.  She is really my most mild-mannered child.  Very mellow, basically never looses her cool.  But has an incredibly violent streak in play.  She loves sword fighting, guns, blood, guts and gore.  (All pretend of course)  I guess its the way she gets her agression out, and why she is Samuel's loyal companion....even when he treats her like dirt. 

And let's not forget this "vicious" child.   He forgot to play nice.  And KK was telling him off in no uncertain terms. 

In regards to buddies.  These two are so great together.  They spend HOURS collecting things.  Mostly berries.  And they have after 3 days finally collected enough blackberries for blackberry smoothies.  They spend most of there day looking for berries.  This was taken the morning after our buggy camping trip.  We stopped a Ruby beach to explore.  Its normally a gorgeous beach, but was very very fog covered, so I don't have great pictures of it.

Its a Pacific beach versus a strait beach.  And this particular visit it was extremely crowded.  I've never seen it like that before.  I guess that's what you get for going in the summer time.

see how many people are buried in the fog?  I don't think we'll be going back in the summer time.  LOL  Winter is much better for beaches, no peoples!

So after that beach we headed home...actually past home to go camp at the beach.  I was still trying to convince myself I wasn't getting sick.  (haha) so we headed to a strait beach that you can literally camp on.  Its not advertised, but people do it somewhat frequently.  It was nice and hot there, and just relaxing.

No he's not actually swimming his hands are touching the ground even though it doesn't look like it in that picture.  The biggest dumb about this camping spot was we didn't bring swimming suits.  And the kids kept swimming in there clothes, and then changing, and then swimming again.  As a result if we had spent the night they would have had nothing dry to sleep in.  Lesson learned.  LOL  Next time swim suits and towels.  Cause it was fun otherwise. 

My main swimmer.  This kid should have fins!

A rather cool shot of a heron flying.

And our campfire on the beach.  It ended up being a very nice fire, and was fun to cuddle by.  But by this time I was dizzy, and achey alllllll over.   So we left at 7 pm for home.  It was a wise choice considering how nasty sick I ended up being the next day. 

So that's the highlights of our camping trip almost a week after we did it.  LOL 

This must be evidence that I'm starting to feel better.  I actually am, I'm coughing occasionally, and that's about it.  *cheers*  I guess stuffing myself with well-max was worth it.  Nasty tasting stuff that it is. 

On second thought I have to share this for my sister Karla.

This is "my" dog.  I actually "share" her with Kaylin.  While we were packing last week she climbed in Kaylin's bag and had a strong opinion as to wether she should be removed or not.

So too lazy to upload pictures of the last couple weeks.  But here is where we camped the first night last weekend.  I doubt you can read the journalling. 

It says.   We wanted one last camping trip before summer ended.  Alas this wasn't the perfect trip.  We had vicious car attacking hornets, and man and kid attacking bugs.  We only stayed one night as a result.  Sure was a pretty spot though.

The hornets.  We must have hit a nest just after checking out the first campsite.  And they literally attacked our car banging off the windows for about 20 miles.   When we'd speed up they'd land on the trailer and ride with us, and when we'd slow down they'd start attacking our windows.  It was all rather like a bad sci-fi movie.  *snicker*  And definitely a story to remember.