Living on the Edge

Long Lake Crawdads

The weather was beautiful while we had our visitors.  They must have brought the sun with them from California!  One afternoon we went down to the lake to find the crawdad trap we had placed. (We have some kids in the neighborhood who keep taking it--not all kids have been taught manners apparently).

DD placed it under the tree...in hopes that the crawdads would crawl into it.....finally.  It had a can of catfood in it and was just ready for the little critters to crawl into it.

We found them under the dock!  But they just wouldn't crawl into the trap.

Sorry, I got sidetracked by the forget me nots growing along the river.

Still looking for the crawdads....man that river is still chilly!  You don't see me in there do you?  The girls said, "Mom, it's not bad once you don't feel your legs anymore!"

Does it mean I'm getting old when I won't walk through that cold water?

The river still is running high and looks soooo big right now.

Best Buds Since Birth

We had friends visiting this past week.  They are some of the really good friends we had to leave behind when we moved from Humboldt County to Spokane 3 years ago. 

These four girls are like sisters.  They range in age from 9 to 12 and they were together every Sunday (even in the womb-since we are good friends with their parents), they went to the same daycare, the same school and often got together at other get togethers on Saturdays as well. 

They have always gotten along well, exceedingly well.  I was worried though that it had been awhile since they were together and maybe the connection wouldn't be there...

Those fears were quelled within two minutes of piling into the car at the airport, they talked non-stop for the twenty minute ride into town.  They had filled each other in on the past year and half of their lives in an amazingly short period of time! 

And they continued to have plenty to talk about over the course of the next four days! 

The visit cut into my blog time...but we had so much fun during the visit.  And now I have lots of pictures!

My First Baby Turns 12

I'm not exactly sure how this happened, but 12 years have passed since the birth of our first baby, Q. The funny thing is that I'm not a day older!  Yeah I wish.  How did time fly so fast?  I am still working on losing the baby fat...aren't all mamas? LOL!

Her birthday was mellow this year...we told her that she was too old to have a big birthday party.  We went out to dinner at her favorite resaurant, Rancho Chico on Northwest Blvd, and got dessert at Baskin Robbins.  Then we got her a new bike at Walmart to replace the bike that was stolen from her by our neighbor, Crazy Karol.  (still no resolution to that situation..the wheels of justice move so slowly) 

Notice my favorite piece of hair hanging in front of CC's face?  Love that whisp of hair.  It tells you what her mood is.  The little strand you see is a sign that she is happy.  The more strands that hang there, the darker the mood!

No, this isn't a living creature...though it looks like a hamster doesn't it?  It's one of those Webkins.  How many do you have in your house.  Don't ask, we have too many.  I'm sure they are Star Trek's version of Tribbles.  If you leave them in a dark closet, they multiply readily!  Captain Kirk, I know how you felt! 

If it looks like we got off easy on the birthday event this year...

No way!  As a compromise to not having a party we agreed to an End of School BBQ at our neighborhood's park along the lake.  Easy enough.  No house to clean!  Buy some dogs, big cooler of pop, snacking foods, and bring all the watertoys down to the lake and let them play.

Then she came home with her guest list...hope you are sitting down...I should have been.

There were 40 names on the list!!!  ("Mom there are only 39 names, my name is on there too!")  Her closest buds from school.  Knowing her, I believe that.  And worse yet, I'm reading the names and half of them are boys!  After I took my high blood pressure medicine...oh wait, I don't have high blood pressure...yet...I let her daddy give the stamp of approval...and he did.  I was a bit surprised, but I made him swear that he would be there in uniform. LOL!  Not really, but we did invite another family we are good friends with whose husband is also a sheriff's deputy...maybe we can park a sheriff's car there too?!

Now why did we say yes?  We don't know if we will be here next school year.  If our house sells we are off to Idaho so she won't be with these friends next year.  It's also a great way to meet all these friends that she has been 'hanging' with all day and all year and see which ones we need to keep our eyes on...especially those boys!

Since it's summer and Hoopfest weekend, I'm sure the number will be cut back to a more manageable amount.  Unfortunately, RSVPing appears to be a lost art!  So we have no idea how many are coming.  We may be having weenie roasts throughout the summer...we may need to invite a few of you if we end up with too many!

Kung Fu Panda

I saw this movie yesterday with thirty or so middle school kids.  My oldest, Q, earned the reward field trip from raising a certain amount of money in their school fundraiser.  So for raising $150 they earned a day off from school and a trip to the mall which included Baskin Robbins ice cream, lunch (on their own), 45 minutes to wander around the mall, and a movie at the theater.  It was a nice reward for the kids to have a day off.

OK, so I went as a chaperone.  There were 35 kids going and 3 teachers.  As someone who rarely goes to a mall...our kids are not the kind of kids who get dropped at a mall to wander around on their own.  So the idea of the school dropping my child off at a mall to wander around was a bit unnerving for my husband and I. Since my dear hubby has probably only entered that mall a total of 3 times since we moved here, it was left for me to go.  Keep in mind that I've only been there maybe 8 times myself in 3 years!  I have to grab a map every time I go or I get lost.

Ice cream, lunch and store wandering went without a hitch...I think.  It looked as though a few kids brought a bit of money to spend.  We saved ours for treats in the movie.

The movie we saw was Kung Fu Panda.  Now I like the actors who did the voices in the movie.  I also liked some of the words of wisdom in the movie.  I particularly liked when the wise old turtle said:

"Yesterday is History,

Tomorrow is a Mystery,

Today is a Gift,

that is why they call it the Present."

But I don't know if it was the pace of the movie, the time of day or something in the popcorn, but I had a very hard time staying awake in the movie.  I am sure Q dozed off a bit too!  Maybe it was the animated-ness of it.  But it was cute...a bit overdone on the heftiness of the main character I think.  I think they crossed the 'emphasizing big' vs. 'flaunting fat' line.

When you read the description of the movie it mentions that he

"is a clumsy bear.....just another portly panda bear....lumbering panda bear" 

Call a spade a spade for heavens sake.  He is a fat bear who is eating every chance he gets during the movie.  To use his inner power he imagines the enemy to be food!  The movie description says:

"if the noble Po can master the martial arts and somehow transform his greatest weaknesses into his greatest strengths, he will fulfill his destiny as the hero who saved his people during their darkest hour."

So now Hollywood has made a politically correct movie by creating a fat hero.  That's great!  But call it what it is...don't give it fluffy names to mask what he is....a 300 pound teenager who lives on McDonalds fries and shakes.  Dressed in a Panda Suit, calling him portly and lumbering, he becomes socially acceptable to Hollywood.  Think about this:  If this had been a movie with real people and not animated...would it have worked?

Bye Bye Tooth Fairy!

The famous nighttime visitor, the tooth fairy has left the building. She made her very last visit to our house the other night.  Q finally lost her last baby tooth.  If she wasn't Q, she probably could have lost it a month ago!  The darn tooth was hanging by who knows what for the past 6 weeks...I don't know how it stayed in there so long...The adult tooth was growing up right under it!

I kept warning her that the dentist would insist on pulling it if she didn't get it out herself.  I tried to put the fear of fillings, cavities, needles...anything to get her to pull the darn thing.

I even tried to pull it...but I'm too squeamish for it and couldn't get a good grip on it.  So instead, I called DD over to the couch.  It was the night before her ortho appointment and time to get the darn thing out.  And what do you know? POP! Right off, he got it out.  Did you hear a yell the other night?  I think it registered about a 4.2 on the richter scale.  It wasn't because it hurt.  It was because she tasted the blood :-)  So funny!

Where did our babies go?  It's kind of weird now to think that we are done with the tooth fairy.  But it was time. The darn tooth fairy was having trouble remembering to leave the money on the first night lately.  And it's probably a good thing that she won't be back because she left $8 this time!  I'm not sure what he...ooh I mean she....meant by leaving such a steep payment.  Setting the bar high isn't 'she'?  She is going to have to get another part time job to keep up with that payment schedule!  Thank heavens it was the last one!

CC lost her last one last summer  at age 9.  She is an overachiever that way...of course she had a bit of help in losing a couple of her teeth due to her last (yes, she's had more than one) bike crash.  I think she lost 3 baby teeth and one adult tooth in that crash!  But that's a story for another day because it's getting late tonight.

Wolves in North Idaho

This is my favorite picture from the past few weeks.  

The girls and I did a girls day out together this week.  There is this place in North Idaho I've been wanting to take them to for quite some time now.  It's called Wolf People and it's in Cocolalla, Idaho.  The name of the town is fun to say...it kind of rolls off your tongue...

Each day they are open they bring a couple wolves from their wolf refuge.  These are wolves that they use for education.  They will go and visit schools and teach children the truth about wolves...to help educate everyone on what is fact and what is fiction.

It was amazing to see them up close.  They are much larger than I thought they would be.  I guess I thought they were more the size of a coyote.

Q might be the animal whisperer, but CC has a way with dogs.  They love her.  She is our dog girl.  Both wolves licked her hand and greeted her.  (Our dog Buddy is the same way...she is the only one that he will lick/kiss!)

The male wolf loved having his back scratched...they were working on shedding their winter coat big time!  It was just a little unnerving to have your kids scratching a wolf's back.  But like when we were in Alaska and the girls got to feed the reindeer, it was a chance of a lifetime!

Yes, the gate was open!  Nobody got away!

They were a little wary, but pretty easy going....just don't go near their bones!

Wolf People is a pretty important place now that the government delisted the wolves.  Wolves can be hunted now, which is sad.  Their numbers will drop dramatically and all because people fear them or fear what they think they might do.

A Belated Mother's Day

Well, this is the third time that I've started typing this post.  If you are reading this it means that MSN didn't fail and send my typing into far nethers of webdom.  Of course if you aren't reading this you won't know that I am screaming and throwing my laptop across the room in a fit of frustrated web-psychosis.  Actually I wouldn't dare throw my laptop...because it's my friend now.  I'm not sure how I got along without it...mostly because it's off limits for the kids...so I know if something isn't working right...I messed it up!

We celebrated mother's day a week late this year because DD had to work.  The girls planned a special day for me. They whispered about it all week. They were so excited to have a secret that I didn't know.  It's fun that they are old enough now to actually keep a secret.

So Sunday afternoon we headed downtown and ended up at Riverfront Park.  The falls are incredibly high right now with the extreme spring run-off. So a favorite spot right now, for tourists as well as the local population, is the Riverfront Park's Gondolas.  It's normally a great photo opportunity, only made better by the river's high flow.

The gondolas take you down and over the river.

 

It was hot out, but the mist from the falls kept us cool.

It's not an incredibly long trip...but it's fun.  Of course Q was so relaxed throughout the ride.

Yup, that's her grip.  I don't think she let go until it was time to disembark back at the top!

She looks like she's having fun!  She is...as long as you don't make her let go of the railing.

This goose had a nest with a view of the river.  Our gondola went past her and her nest on the cliff.  I bet those babies have a short learning curve for learning to swim and probably for flying too.

This little troll was also there to greet us at the turnaround point  across the river.

Of course the girls knew that second to having a family day, my favorite part of the day would be the chance to take some fun pictures!

Jr. Lilac Parade

Our oldest girl, Q, plays the flute in advanced band.  she moans and groans about practicing, but she does it. She even practices songs that she isn't required to practice, sure sign that she really does like playing the flute!  Grumbling is just easier to do sometimes. 

Last weekend was the Jr. Lilac Parade.  At Q's middle school, they have a large marching band, very large when you combine all three grades.  Their band teacher is very motivating.  He obviously loves what he does.  And his enthusiasm has been caught by the students as well.  And from what I hear, if he's given enough oreos and he is in a great mood too! 

There she is.  She is that itty bitty thing at the very end. She got the back spot. As she put it, she was the only one who marched correctly.  She was the lead or something like that because of her spot.  It's some sort of marching term that has left my head for the time being.  No, those aren't all 8th graders around her...she's just short like her mama!

Here's a close-up.  Mama is proud for sure.  Notice the funky black and white effect that I tried to make her stand out in the crowd!!  That was a fun trick. 

One last shot to show you how big their marching band is:

Don't they look good?  See how tiny she is?  Just when I think she is getting tall, I see a picture like this and then I have to remember that her parents are only 5'8" and 5'3"....poor kid.  She doesn't stand a chance! 

Oh, and I almost forgot...THEIR SCHOOL GOT FIRST PLACE IN THEIR MARCHING DIVISION!!!

One last weekend of soccer

CC had the Wendle tournament last weekend.  It was a tough 3 days of soccer all in a row.  The teams they played were tough.  I'm not sure if they had played any of these teams during the regular season.  Some of the girls on the teams looked a little older than the rest of the team. They may have had a couple ringers in there. (Nobody would have really cheated would they...it was just a kids tournament?)   And my little CC played her heart out, yet they didn't win a single game. 

It did have its benefits though.  We didn't have to spend all of Sunday on the soccer fields!  Little blessings!  Here are some fun shots I took of CC during the weekend.

She loves playing forward, but she is becoming an awesome defender.

Look Ma! No hands!  She also found out that stopping it with your face can hurt quite a bit!

I love this action shot!  CC was defending the goal again!

Bless the Patron Saint of Soccer Moms

There must be one.  There's a saint for everything.  So I googled it.  I found this site:  Patron Saints Index

It lists the saints for an amazing list of topics.  You can search by saint name, topic or topic and name if you feel the urge!  It's amazing!  I didn't see one specifically for soccer, but there is one for Sports.  Saint Sebastian.  And his day to be honored is January 20th.  Not exactly in the middle of soccer season....

Here is his profile as listed on the site...I think it's a stretch to call him the patron saint of sports.  What do you think?

Profile

Son of a wealthy Roman family. Educated in Milan. Officer of the Imperial Roman army, and captain of the guard. Favorite of Diocletian. During Diocletian's persecution of the Christians, Sebastian visited them in prison, bringing supplies and comfort. Reported to have healed the wife of a brother soldier by making the Sign of the Cross over her. Converted soldiers and a governor.

Charged as a Christian, Sebastian was tied to a tree, shot with arrows, and left for dead. He survived, and with the help of Saint Irene, recovered, and returned to preach to Diocletian. The emperor then had him beaten to death.

During the 14th century, the random nature of infection with the Black Death caused people to liken the plague to their villages being shot by an army of nature's archers. In desparation they prayed for the intercession of a saint associated with archers, and Saint Sebastian became associated with the plague.

Now maybe if he'd been beaten by soccer balls....guess they didn't have them handy then.

Enough digressing...St. Sebastian must be watching out for us this weekend.  DD has to work and CC got her schedule for the soccer tournament.  This is what we will be doing starting Friday evening....

Saturday afternoon...

Saturday evening...

Sunday morning...

and Sunday afternoon, TWICE, if they make it to the winner's bracket...

That would be the happy dance again!

Now, Mr. Wendle, I'm not sure if you really created the Wendle Tournament, or just sponsor it every year.  But didn't you have a mama?  Did she really LOVE soccer?  Did she drive you to soccer games  in a Ford vehicle every weekend, and does it bring back fond memories of your childhood to see the games played in her name each year on Mother's Day?  Cuz I can think of a veggie garden that would love to have me in it on Mother's Day weekend!! 

I am excited though about the tournament itself. CC's team may actually make it to the winner's bracket Sunday afternoon. They are pretty good this year.  Also feeling that St. Sebastian must be helping out here as well.  Only one daughters' team is playing in it (Not sure how we would have done this schedule with both girls).  Q has a reprieve this year.  Not because she is lounging around eating bon bons and watching movies. No, she is in the school's marching band and they are in the LILAC PARADE on SATURDAY MORNING AS WELL!  Fortunately our first soccer game Saturday isn't until the afternoon and the parade is in the morning.  phew!  Saved there...at least time-wise. 

Today I will be filling the gas tank to full so we can make it to all the shuttling!