All work and no play can make for a very dull summer

SO LETS PLAY!!!

This is my former BFF Anna Nelson. I say former because she is moving away from me to Portland, Oregon. I am bitter about it. Very, very bitter. So bitter in fact I took her kayaking knowing she had no idea how to swim. HA HA HA. Those are my feet. That is the only picture you are going to get of me. 

While we were out on the lake we noticed a fire that started up. As we paddled around I took pictures as it got bigger and bigger. Then I called home to make sure all my boys were still there. 

We stopped for lunch and we were met by the local welcoming committee. 

This is Daniel's friend he met at UCLA. She lives in Colorado so really they do not see each other. This summer her and her family flew to China and had a 14 hour layover in Seattle. So......I loaded up Daniel and Ike and went to Seattle for Saturday.She brought him back some really fun stuff from China......surprisingly it was all made in the USA. HA HA.....I kid. He brought her some cool huckleberry items because they do not have those in Colorado. 

After the airport we went to the Seattle Aquarium. Ike is an avid fisherman. The trip was bitter sweet for him. Surrounded by all these gorgeous fish and no fishing rod. 

They also had some nice touch tanks. I like feeling the sea anemones. 

They did have a couple tropical salt water tanks as well. Which is good because the fish of the pacific northwest are rather drab.

This is my absolute favorite picture of the trip. 

Finally an animal I can relate to.

These are my two oldest. The first of the family. I cannot remember the last time I got to spend a day with just them. Words cannot describe how special this day was for me. I am sure for them it was just another trip with their mother, sigh..... but for me it was an opportunity that is quickly slipping away. We laughed a lot. I teased and embarrassed them mercilessly and I watched them smile and laugh with each other. 

As you know I notice odd signs. Ones that should have been checked again for spelling, punctuation and grammar and of course just for making absolutely no sense at all. 

I personally prefer my toilet paper to be virgin toilet paper. Call me old fashioned but I do not want to reuse someone else's toilet paper. Keep that crazy practice in Seattle. Here in Spokane it is all virgin all the time!

So there ya go. 

Summer time fun for everyone!!

This summer I decided to take on the chipping paint on the house. Next summer I think I will just sew my face to the carpet. Seems like it will be easier, less hornets, and a lot less painful.

Daniel helped out a lot when he was home. We learned the joys of scraping. Turns out there are not a lot of joys to scraping. It was a very short lesson. As you can see by all the bare places on the cedar siding we has a shameful amount of loose paint.

I am not a huge fan of heights and did not enjoy being on the top of a 17 foot ladder. Turns out the hornets living in the apex of our roof was also not fond of having me at the top of the ladder either. I got stung in the neck once and Daniel, in fear of being stung, flung a paintbrush full of primer at them. Ya, that made a bit of a mess.

After scraping and two coats of primer I was ready to start putting on some color. I love colors!! I was really struggling trying to figure out what colors to throw up there and Ben had a brilliant idea. I love fiesta ware colors....why not use those. So I did!! 

 Because our house was build in 1950 it has come cool character to it. I wanted to have some fun with the diagonal siding and did chevron strips on it. This is the front of the house.

This is the side of our home. All ugly......

Nice and white with primer....

Now all happy and colorful!!!

 Here is the carport in front of the house. I figured you really should never paint a house from 1950 without including Seafoam green!! 

I love my home now. Well at least the trim work on it. I have actually have people stop while walking by and comment on how cool it turned out. She is defiantly unique, but really, would you expect anything else??

Now to put on a new roof. Ugh!! The one we have now has decided to start leaking. 

Huckleberry picking 2013.....aphid poop

This year we went huckleberry picking with Paulino again. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. He told me he knew the "perfect" spot. ( In huckleberry picking it is all about finding the perfect spot and then never telling anyone else about this spot so right away I was very suspicious) My instincts were right. This perfect spot was on the top of a mountain on the side of a cliff that was covered in aphid poop. Yes, you read that last part right.....covered in aphid poop.

We  were up on the mountains of Idaho, at least I think we were still in the continental United States, were the woods are filled with cougars, bears, and other assorted wildlife that would like to eat people but I was not worried one bit. You see our guide, Paulino, is an experienced big game hunter. I could be quite confident that there was no big game in the tri-state area because I also know his hunting record. HA HA HA.

This was Ben's very first time huckleberry picking. He learned the bushes are short, the berries are small, the bugs are many and we were covered in aphid poop by the time we were done. He cannot wait to go back next year!!

Jakey is sharpening his stick because every 10 year old boy will tell you that it is foolish to pick huckleberries without a sharpened stick at your side.

Somewhere on this bush there are huckleberries. What? You can't see them? Oh, well neither could I. 

After we were done picking for the day the boys and Paul shot some guns. By guns I mean totally ridiculous things that are totally impractical so of course everyone had fun.

All in all we got about 1.5 gallons of huckleberries. That will help feed my addiction to the little buggars. Did not eat any this time while picking! You may be wondering why....it's because I needed to go home and wash all the aphid poop off them first.

A Lesson in Housekeeping from a beloved former president

I will admit I may not have been keeping up on house work as best as I can. I have been very busy repainting the house this summer. But I figured I still had a fairly good handle on things until I found this stamp while sweeping the kitchen floor.

It is a 20 cent Harry S. Truman stamp. For those who are too young to remember when it only cost 20 cents to mail a letter it was a very long time ago. 

So maybe I need to start sweeping my floors more often.