Life's Little Insanities...

Well, for those of you didn't know, we've already begun our vacation trip for this summer. We left our house the afternoon of the 13th and arrived at Aunt LaNita's house in time for dinner. Kellen has been attending a day camp Mon-Thurs of this week at the school that Madeline and Rose go to, because Allison was going, too. They got to learn all kinds of really cool things about weather this week. Kellen did feel a little funny about the whole thing on the premise that he and Allison were the only ones not in Kindergarten or first grade. Oh, well. You can't win them all! Both kids have been having a blast playing with the cousins and going swimming almost every day, though.

Monday afternoon/evening I had a bit of an upset since a child that LaNita was watching took my cell phone home with her (thinking it was a toy) and I couldn't find it anywhere. On a chance, I drove to the family's home and they were able to give it to me! Oh, relief!!

On Wednesday evening, we went to a small circus that was in town. You can see just how small, since the picture I took shows everything there was to see. There were a total of six performers, each doing a couple of things. Not a grand circus, but certainly enough to entertain the kids!
After the circus, we were headed back towards town with intentions of getting ice for making snow cones. We were derailed. The traffic leaving the circus made things quite slow and at one point the truck driving behind me didn't slow down. It turns out that either his brakes failed or the truck didn't have any (I'm not sure which, since there was a slight language barrier) and he ended up slamming into the rear of my car. Thank goodness for seat belts and car seats, because no one was injured in the accident. Mark had some upper back pain the next day, but everyone else is perfectly okay. The guys in the truck didn't have insurance or money (they're living in a tent in a nearby cherry orchard) so we'll see what my insurance company is able to get out of them. In the meantime, it's almost certain that my car is a total loss. We're fairly certain that there is frame damage, which will cost more to fix than the car is worth, considering it's 10 yrs old with 130,000 miles on it. For the time being, it was drivable enough for Steve to trade vehicles with me in Yakima (so that I can continue our trip) while he drove the Malibu back to his parents' house and borrowed their Mercedes (19 yrs old, 180,000 miles) for the foreseeable future. At least Madison gets a new car seat out of the deal...
In the course of the accident, since I was following Mark and LaNita, my car got shoved into the rear of their van, as well. The damage to theirs will require replacement of that particular panel, but at least it doesn't render the car undriveable.
And this is the little Nissan pick-up that caused all the hullaballoo. Needless to say, he received a citation for driving without insurance, but I'm not sure he'll get more than that. I have to say, it makes me really angry that this accident deprives me of a vehicle, endangered my family, and will require me to still pay a deductible (only $100 thanks to Steve's forethought), but we'll be lucky just to be able to contact this guy again (let alone get anything out of him for it) because he's a migrant worker in the fields here!!
But on to more pleasant things... Today we drove out to Summer Falls for a picnic lunch, a glorious view, and much time spent trying to teach 3-4 children (depending on waxing and waning interest levels) how to skip rocks across the water. Truly a wonderful afternoon! The picture below is the view of the falls and the water, with Spencer standing in the foreground.
I think that about catches up the last week. I know, I haven't written anything about day camp, but I'll be sure to devote some time to that when we get home again after the reunion. And this will quite likely be my last post until we reach that point.

A Little Randomness...

Just so you know.... Kellen and I will be going to Cub Scout Day Camp all this week, so we'll see how good I am at getting on and posting our stuff at the end of the day, but it might just be a lump sum at the end of the week. The summer has kept us hopping and I just haven't been getting on the computer every day, so I haven't checked anyone else's blogs in quite a while. Sorry about that. But I also don't see that changing real soon since we are getting ready to embark on a road trip. We will finish Day Camp on Friday, go help a nursing home learn how to use the bowling game for their Wii on Saturday, and then leave for Aunt LaNita's house after church on Sunday. Steve will get to play bachelor for two weeks while the kids and I play in Washington and go to the reunion. Three days after we get back, Kellen heads up to Cub Scout Resident Camp with Steve, while Maddi and I hang out at home. Then Steve leaves for Nashville for several days (work related) and Kellen goes to Camp Lutherwood for a week, so Madison and I are (again) hanging out all by ourselves... Anyway, this week begins the busiest part of our summer so, although I am planning on lots of pictures, I probably won't get to post most of them until mid-August :)

So, last week... We had people over again on Thursday (the 3rd) to do finishing touches on the boards that would go on the sides of our 4th of July Float. As you can see below, Madison decided to 'help'. The touch-ups should've only taken about a half hour; instead they took more than two. The far right end of that board was a dark blue with the word "Freedom" painted on it in white. Thanks to Madison, we painted everything over in white, re-covered in the blue to get a solid coat, and then re-painted "Freedom" on it. We were just glad that she didn't get much of it on her clothes! She had so much fun!

This is our float while we were waiting in the staging area before the parade started. Steve was an absolute hero for the day! After our local Fireman's Pancake Breakfast, he took Madison home (about 8am) and stayed with her the entire day so that I could help out with all the parade stuff. After all, I was on the parade committee... I sent him a text message as we were heading out on the parade route so that he and Madison could walk up and watch us go past. Kellen and I didn't get home until about 330pm, so it was a pretty long day. We walked the 2.5 mile parade route and then went back to the fire station (they are our sponsor) to disassemble our float. I know it's hard to see in the pictures, but our theme was 'Colors of Freedom' so we had a post at each of the four corner of the float representing the four branches of the military and their colors. We won 2nd place in the Youth Entry category :)

Later in the evening, we had our cubmaster and his family over for burgers and some fireworks on the driveway. Steve figured that since Dave, Dana, and myself were all going to be up to our eyeballs in parade stuff all day while he was at home, then he would fix dinner for the rest of us. He even made potato salad to go with dinner :)

Kellen and Madison LOVED the fireworks! We didn't go to watch the city show or anything, but they were enthralled with getting to do our own little stuff at home. In that respect, they are totally like Steve. Steve likes watching fireworks, but he's a pyro at heart and would really rather set them off himself!
Then, on Saturday, we rode bikes up to the city park where the university art department had some tables set up for kids to be able to come play with modeling clay. This would be fun all by itself, but it also satisfies a requirement in Kellen's Art Activity for his Webelos Badge. So this is the dish that Kellen made at the park that day :) In order to satisfy everything for the Art Activity, we need to take pictures of all the art stuff he does (pick five items out of nine to complete) so that he can make a scrapbook or a portfolio of it afterwards.
I think that's pretty much it for our weekend... We are definitely in for a busy week this week, though. Madison will be staying at Dave and Dana's house while I go to Day Camp, and Steve will have to be at camp an hour before Kellen and I get there every day. Tomorrow, he will have to leave the house at about 5:30am. Ugh! We'd better get to bed early tonight!

Busy... But not much to tell...

I know we've been doing things the last several days, but I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what. I know that we had people over on Saturday to help with painting the side boards to the trailer that our Pack is going to be using for the 4th of July parade, but there really hasn't been much else. Today I hardly left the sewing machine. I really needed to get this quilt top finished so I could get it mailed to Mom so, by completely abandoning my housework for the day, I managed to get the entire thing done from start to finish in one day. Whew!

We also pulled out the sprinklers. This is a wiggler kind of thing that I bought at Wal-Mart last year; a great purchase!