Sunday, June 21, 2009

Busy Summer




My ideal is to have an empty calendar with nothing to do, but whenever that happens, we see that we have nothing scheduled and then pack the time full of activities!

The kids are done with school and music, but we are still keeping busy!

After a week a my parents we were back for a week and then it was off to Virginia to meet 8 week old cousin Luke and visit with the rest of his family (my sister, hubby Bryan and cousin Brooke). Tornados in Denver added a day of extra travel time, but the kids handled it like champs! We were in 5 states, plus DC in two days (OR, CO, TX, MD, DC and VA - although my mom always says it doesn't count as visiting a state or country if you are only in the airport!) We were right outside of DC, but didn't do any of the DC things. We did head off to the national aquarium in Baltimore one Day. Still it was nice to see my sister's family again and hang out with the cousins. We miss them living so close!

With my family checked off the list, we then moved on to quality time with Mac's family: his mom, sister, sister's fiancee and son were all here for most of the week. Lots of fun to see them too, especially since Jared is right about Megan's age.

We have plenty else lined up for the summer, too: swim lessons, a weekend at the beach, camping at Timothy Lake, a trip to Iowa and then two weeks in Southern California for Kendall's wedding/family catch-up. Plus, we have a landscaping project going on and we are spending lots of time in the garden. Meanwhile, my quads somehow just stopped working (don't ask, I have no idea) so I am doing some rehab related stuff... a nice quiet summer- HA! I suspect only a fraction of it will make it to blog-land (for example - the photo above is Meg's last day of school, only about a month late!). Hope you are taking advantage of the warm weather and empty calendar, too! :)

Friday, June 5, 2009

This Stinks!

This morning when I was getting ready for work, Mac comes in.

"Hi."

This was not a "hi-honey-how're-you-doing" Hi, this was a "Let's-get-down-to-serious-business" Hi.

"What's up?" I ask.

"What is the worse thing we could have caught in the trap?"

After the loss of our chickens, Mac has been setting the live catch trap every night. So far we have only caught one of our chickens (John Jacob), during the day while they were out in the pasture. The trap is mostly for raccoons, so I knew a cougar wouldn't fit. I tried to think of the next most ferocious thing.

"A coyote?" I query.

"No, I would've loved to catch a coyote."

"A weasel?" We had just watched The Big Lebowski and the weasel in the tub scene flashed through my mind.

Mac said he'd have no problems with the weasel/possum genre. This was worse.

"Well, I am pretty sure you didn't catch a rattlesnake." I said, inserting my own mortal fear animal.

"Nope... There's a skunk in the trap."

Oh. My. God. I looked out the window and indeed, there was a mephitis mephitis pacing in the wire cage. Now I understood Mac's dread. The problem with a live trap is that the animal is completely unharmed by the trap. So we've got one extremely pissed off skunk in a two foot box ... a recipe for disaster! Now, just how do we get out of this predicament and end up smelling like a rose (or at least not like skunk)??


Follow up: Mac called in the professionals. They are coming to take care of the critter tonight. I am not sure what that means exactly for Mr. Mephitis. $75 to take care of this mess. I thought that sounded kind of high since we had already taken care of the trapping part, but Mac would have paid double to have somebody else take care of this, especially since our neighbor's advice was: Throw a tarp over the cage, pick it up and drop the whole thing into the livestock tank until it has drowned.


Thursday, June 4, 2009

Flower Child

This year we skipped the tulips and hit the peony farm instead, along with Kris and JD.



Afterwards we all went out for Thai food, at which point I am sure Kris and JD were feeling pretty good about their decision to NOT have kids!



Minus a few (hundred) temper tantrums, I swear they are very cute!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Our Week in Lincoln

We had a nice week in Lincoln over Memorial Day week. I spent the first three days at Western States Training camp, (running 74 miles!) and Mac played a lot of golf. Besides that we...
took several walks,



enjoyed the scenery,



played with Uncle Roger's old tractor,



ate lots of popscicles,


learned how to clean up a spill without wasting your drink,



went to the Folsom zoo,



took a ride on the train,



enjoyed the sun,



rode in the cattle car,



got a haircut,



worked on our swimming,



and spent lots of time in the garden.




It was a nice trip.