Rejoice with us the missing has been found.  Jeremiah's catterpillar was found under the couch.  That is one happy little boy

Jeremiah has a several year love of caterpillars.

But yesterday he found his first of the year and he was truely in love.  He made a habitat for it.  And worried about needing water for it.  And kept taking it outside "cause it needs fresh air.

The love however wasn't returned, and last night it escaped due to the habitat not having a lid.

There is a little boy absolutely devastated.  

And a mommy trying very very hard not to laugh while listening to her husband comfort his grief stricken son.

Summer continues...had two days of gray, but back to blue.  That is Cookie he LOVES to swim with the kids.  Not just to get across, but to swim. It is soooooo funny

Jeremiah "fishin"   HE loves to "fish"

KK on our way back from one of our many trips to the river.

Clallam Bay county park beach.  The bridge is finally open. 

And my sister at her grad party.  All done high school. 

So my mom and dad had a HUGE sofpool.  One of those that's heavy duty plastic that's supposed to last a bazillion years.  My mom left it when they moved due to hating maintaining it for my dad to use.  She's NEVER been in it. 

My dad used it for awhile after the seperation, but he didn't maintain it and it got nastier and nastier.   HE offered to sale it to us for an unbeatable price three months ago.

He delivered it to us yesterday--which had its own set of dramas not from my dad, from other corners--while we were at my sisters grad.  He couldn't deliver it while we were here due to the restraining order, so that's why it worked that way.

Anyhow this afternoon was dedicated to cleaning it, and attempting to set it up.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

No instruction manual (dad lost it)  didn't help much.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Nasty, stinky, nasty, dirty. 

So Rob cleaned and cleaned it.  And it still has some work that we'll do with bleach after the water is in it.  We couldn't clean any more due to not being able to get in the walls.

And then the fun part began.

Getting the wretched, nasty, stupid, terrible, awful, dumb, dumb, dumb rotten son of a skunk flat on the bottom.

So much for my back--not that I had a good one to begin with.

We tried many, many, many approaches to get it to move flat.

And finally we mastered one.  Rob and Zeria lifted, and I pushed from the inside.  And eventually we got it relatively smooth.

Where was our heavy lifter Sam?  Finally having his birthday friend over.  We asked him to help a couple times, but his focus was less then stellar, and yeah we sent him away.  LOL

So no pictures yet as right now all it looks like is a slightly dirty piece of pool blue plastic. 

Unless you wanted to see our mud-infested bodies from lifting, pullilng, dragging, and falling on the slime infested thing.

My kids will have a blast in it summer.  But I have to say the set up was not enjoyable. 

On a rather insane note.  We umm immigrated several toads from my dads house that were in the pool. 

How do you get a giraffe in a fridge??
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You open the fridge and put him there.

How do you get an elephant in the fridge?
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Now come on you can't just put the elephant in the fridge, first you have to take the giraffe out.

All the animals in the animal kingdom held a meeting together, who was the biggest?
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If you said the elephant your wrong, because come on already you have to take him out of the fridge!!!!

And meanwhile how are you going to swim across the otherside of the alligator infested river?
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Its not alligator infested cause all the alligators are at the meeting did you forget already?????

Its still gorgeous outside.  It was so weird to wake up at 2 in the morning with both of my bedroom windows wide open and be too hot.  But very very nice. 

We will of course head back to the river in a bit, and hang around.

Rob went into town catching a ride with a van pool to get my moms car.  Some how the communication broke down however cause he got there at 8 am and NO ONE's home.  *snicker*

So he's sleeping on her couch waiting for her to show.  And of course she's not answering her cell phone. 

Other then that just enjoying acquiring a tan.

We have had the most incredible weather.

And nowhere to go due to no car.  So we've hung at the river with a vengeance.  WE head there at about 9, and come back for lunch.  Take a wee down time, and back there until dinner.

I could live this way all summer. 

But I know better then to plan for that. 

Anyhow each day on the way to the river I walk under this beauty.

And we head to this hole.

 This is KK's favorite ocupation at the river floating on the sail board.  I picked this up a couple falls ago on Freecyle knowing it would be perfect for the river.  It is.  I even play on it sometimes.  And tip myself off of it accidentally.  LOL

Jamari sunbathing.   Yeah that's the bridge to the main highway.  Its actually funny cause you can't see us playing down here.  I know I've looked from up there.  But its where the best hole is this summer.  We've swam here other summers, but last summer there wasn't a hole there at all.  And this summer is the best, because due to the river knocking down some brush, we can walk straight to it, rather then wading up the river for a 1/2 mile like we did previous summers. 

Zeria is still my biggest swimmer.  She LOOOOVES the water.  But Jeremiah is offering her some competition.

We also met another swimmer.  A bird that is apparently hard to spot on the Peninsula.  But after hanging in the same place for several days running, we even found their nest, and have gotten to see peaks of the babies.  The parents have no fear of us. 

This is the American Dipper.  I had to spend sometime with my bird book and online before I truely identified it.  And then I was psyched to realize there are only two KNOWN nests on the Peninsula.  I emailed the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society my pictures, and he emailed me right back this afternoon and asked permission to use my pictures.  *too cool*

They are really hard to get pictures of due to how gray they are, they just blend into the river.

See the parent peaking out of the nest.  There nests are apparently unusual due to the sideways nest hole.  Very cool  I might sit under the bridge tomorrow on my chair to see if I can snag pictures of the babies.  We shall see.

This afternoon we got to see one of them swim.  They are the ONLY American song bird that swims.  They dive in the river and swim using there wings.  Very fun to watch.

We've had a occasional weird noise in the excursion for several months.  Two weeks ago Rob took it to the mechanic, but as weird noises go, it went, and disappeared.

It came back on the trip, and by the time we were home it was quite bad.  So back to the shop today, and OUCH!

Its gonna be expensive.   Its going to take a week to get the parts.  And I mentioned we are a one car family and we live a LONG way from the grocery store.

The good news is we did make it home and we aren't stranded somewhere for several weeks.

The bad news is we had baton tomorrow.  And my sis' grad on Saturday.  *growl*  So I'm not sure what we're going to be doing.

It is soooooooooo nice outside.

Its rather a crime I have to coach baton today.  LOL

My children are outside with zippy bags catching bumblebees and yellow jackets.   I think its my fault.  This morning they wanted to know what was for lunch, and I told them my standard icky bug stew.

They of course did not believe me.

And then I said,  "Yes, we are, now Jamari go catch me some more, so we don't get hungry."

A few minutes later with a big beaming grin on his face he brought back one.  I shrieked, and the game was on.

There will be no bumblebees inside zippy bags in my house tanky very much.

We've had a nicer summer this year then all of last year put together, and its not even summer yet!

Presentation of the athletes

Samuel second place on his solo.  Yeah he didn't want to pose.  So this he gets.  *snigger*

Rainee waiting with  Grandpa for her solo time. 

First place on her solo.  She did soooooo well.   

I know its fuzzy darn it.  But she worked equally hard for her third place.  She's in an older age group against children who have twirled since they were three, and she still got third place!

First place at state in 0-8 state solo.  

HMM don't have a individual one of Zeria not sure why.  So those were the picture from Saturday.

On Sunday we had a nice drive home...in 89 degree weather.  Which was WAY nicer then the 100 degree weather my poor ocean kiddos had to twirl in on Saturday.  NASTY!  

Our first fun stop was at a cave alongside the road that I'd noticed on the way to state.

It had a huge over hang, and gradually shrunk into this wee cave.

It went back about ten feet or so...but no picture inside of it, as I don't do caves.  LOL

Our second stop was Cedar Creek Falls. 

From a distance it looks like this.  If you notice up at the top you can almost see a second falls.  Well up around the  corner where I snagged this picture we stopped at a second look-out, and were able to see both falls from different vantage points.

This was the best of the pictures I took there. 

The rest of the drive home I managed to lose my battery (it fell out)  so no other pictures.

We did stop and swim at Lake Sylvia (a new to us lake) which is on our way home from baton, so I suspect we will stop there again, as the water was nice, and I know we're going to be hot some days on the way home from baton this summer.