Random Whatevers

Yup, those are my thoughts today. It is raining outside and it is so beautiful! The dust is gone and the new leaves and colors are so vibrant! On the other hand, the flooding by the door is worse than ever. Jon's smashing of the concrete is definitely not one of his most favorite things to do. More of it is removed, but not enough yet!

Last Thursday we had a Scout Court of Honor. Jon will advance at the next one, he has to do one more campout to complete one of the ranks. I was kinda damp at this ceremony. I had been drinking one of those sugar free carbonated water drinks and I am ALWAYS careful when I open them..except once this evening and it literally exploded all over the table and myself. I was very thankful that my camera was put away and the liquid was sugar free. The funniest thing, as it happened I had two split second thoughts. The first was that I wish I could see it (like in a photo) and the second was 'it really does make a 'sploosh' sound!!!'

I also learned that even though my camera is good with batteries and I had spares, it is best to have spares that are not already dead. Thus, the camera was not working very well when I took the shots upstairs! I need to get good rechargable ones.

On Wednesday night, we found our water line that had been missing. This is for the UGS. When the addition was put on, the start to the system was dug up. Since it was getting to be spring, we thought it might be good to find it. Well, we did. It reminded us of Beverly Hill Billies, but alas there was no black gold, just muddy water. On the other hand, it was great to finally find it. Steve had dug out a great deal of dirt in the back yard and we were starting to despair!!! Now, of course, the hole will fill with water for a little while. One thing about rain over here, it never lasts long, but it dries up very fast!

And then, here is the school here. Well, outside of it anyway. I understand why they have two mascots, but really. In the grand scale of life, wouldn't the tiger wipe out the cute little scotty dog? (Ages ago two schools merged and when they became one they kept both mascots). Personally, I like the idea of a tiger in a kilt, but I might be the only one! If you look close you will see a metal scotty dog and the larger tiger. On their new reader board, though, there is a guy with bagpipes. He is a figure you see a lot of here.

OK, so much for random. Next on the agenda are dishes and laundry! LOL. Just finished reading Just Ella and Palace of Mirrors by Haddix. VERY good reads.

Dear Tony....

I love my new camera! It is the most awesome thing I have ever used!!! We took it to Tillamook this weekend. It was a sad/glad weekend. I will post more on that later, but for now, I am sending you a note full of photos!

You know we stayed with David and Wendy..here is Jet working on his truck. He went racing on Sunday morning.

This flag one was taken while I was trying to figure out how to shoot moving objects. Later we went to Short Beach, Radar Beach, or 100 step beach with Anita and took lots of pictures there. I think the moving water came out pretty well!
At the beach we found a mama crab. Anita said the goo stuff was babies.(Does God not have a sense of humor???) She was supposed to be running and she did for a while!

Dad found this cool mussel thing and then Anita insisted that we needed a picture of the two of us..I hate being in photos! The driftwood we were sitting on made me taller, though! LOL.

On Sunday, Linds was baptized!! Very cool to be there for that!

On the way home we stopped at Arlington, of course. It was so fun to use my new camera there! I took a photo of a fish (we are not sure what the fish was!) and ducks. I liked the mama duck ones! I used my telephoto option to capture her. I hope that she is left alone for the duration of incubation. She was awful close to the path, but very far from the water.

Then, we got back to the house. It is very warm (a bank temp thing in Pendleton read 86 degrees!!!) and Teddy seems glad to see us. He stayed with grandma.

We miss you tons and I hope everyone has enjoyed reading your letter!!! Mum.

April Showers...

It is an old saying, but oh so true. April showers bring May flowers. We have had snow and rain and April first it was horrid! Everyone celebrated getting their snow tires off by sliding all over the place!!! In between the icky stuff we have had some fairly nice days. Which were very handy for getting stuff done. Another saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pictures with more than a few words to explain them!!!

First: What do you see here? Jon said that it looked like the alien material off of the modern War of the Worlds movie.

Next is the water problem out our back door. When it rains we get water, lots of water. These photos are after much of it has dried. The first is from inside the house and the second is from outside the house. Kinda funny, when we lived in Tillamook our house NEVER flooded. Here we get water inside whenever it rains or we get snow.

We finally got started on taking out the sidewalk (that is what the green spray painted line is for, we are taking it out in that area first and then the rest of it in a large section. Steve will repave it when it gets warmer. (now it slopes toward the house).

My garden was also worked on. OK, it will be a garden someday. The stairway to nowhere was moved 3 times. I had it near one of the length wise boards on the fence and Moses managed to use the stairs and the board to help him over the fence to the other side! This area is more work for him. He has to kind of go around and then over and he has already gotten stuck between the slats when he did it! (It was very funny as he was trying to be tough and was growling at a cat in the other yard while he was stuck.) The walk way thing will be where the bridge from Music Man will go and the green fencing stuff is going to be a water feature of some sort. WE have also marked off the veggie garden area and planted a western red cedar and put in the silver posts (really an old shower curtain rod) for my sweet peas.

Note, the stairs are the ones I dropped on my foot and left me a very purpley bruise that has merged into greens and yellows! Nice and Eastery, which brings us to the lovely flower that Jon made me for Easter. It is HUGE and heavy and, as Jon said, will never need pulled. It is supposed to be a dandelion, as they are one of my favorite flowers and not one of Steve's. (the smaller yellow one I bought in Tillamook).

More eclectic reading for April. Garden books, Mercedes Lackey, ect. And that brings us up to date with notes in a minor key!!!