6 in the Sticks

The light sabers are not so far away, just not grabbed as much now that the kids were introduced to Indiana Jones. Earlier today I heard the younger ones playing in the back seat as we were driving from Ashley's play practice. I over heard Charly tell Jackson, "Dr Jones, what do you think Dr Jones?" Later in the day, Jack had his hat on and managed to rustle up a "whip" and Charly was running around beside him with a pink monkey hanging from her neck.

Yes, our growing season just started to those that are noticing my flowers gathered amongst the rubble. Our vegetable garden is coming up nicely. Just need to finish planting the flower pots around the yard. I've had to mow the yard twice now! Jealous? :)

They hummed the theme song too and now that I have had it playing in my head for the past hour, wish I really would start humming something else.

She's in the center of the marching band. This was from the 4th of July parade on Friday. Saturday she was in another play, Shakespeare's, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then off to camp for a week early Sunday morning. It has been very weird not having her around this week and very weird not running around so much as well. We hope she's having fun. I bet she is, the camp is similar to a four star resort that adults would vacation to. I offered to switch places with her but she turned me down. I think I'd be an outcast too as I'm not a spring chicken anymore.

Play pictures.

We took the kids for a boat ride yesterday. We thought we'd head down the lake and check out the other camp sites and see what there is to see as we haven't ventured that far before. The sun was shining all morning and we didn't bother to check the weather report, besides, they're only right half of the time.

This is a picture of the drill that was put in the lake last year. Jackson said, "Mom! Look! They have a flag from America at the top!"

There was a dock on each side of it where the employees dock their boats when working. We went kind of close and we saw a couple of guys look out at us, I suppose wondering what we were up to.

I'd be kind of suspicious too. Watching a 16ft fishing boat approaching with rugrats and junk. Like Jeromy's favorite lawn chairs that he's so proud of. I have a hunch he got them from a garage sale at a retired people trailer park home in Florida. I think he will take those awful chairs to the grave with him.

We ended up pulling into a camp site on our way back home. Started a fire. Played in the lake. Jackson tried to catch minnows. I found a couple of nice pieces of driftwood. Jeromy accomplished his goal of building a fire. Charly screamed a blood curdling scream because the ledge rock we stood upon was crawling with ants. Ah, the peacefulness with the great outdoors and a four year old girl. After a bit, some dark clouds started to move in so we packed up and headed for shore.

Half way back, the sky grew darker and lightening started to hit so we bolted for another camp site on shore around the corner from where we usually ice fish. Started another fire but the rain came down pretty hard. We comforted the kids as they were a little scared and said how they wanted to go home. Then came the hail. I REALLY wish I would've remembered my jacket let alone my fishing bucket. The one that Jeromy makes fun of me for having as it's loaded with "just in case of an emergency" goodies. Like a rain pancho, waterproof matches, tarp, knife. I will never go on the boat again without it. Oh well, at least I grabbed the kid's jackets. Or thank God I grabbed the kid's jackets is more like it. So, we sang for the sun to come along with the ABC's in different accents and finally after about 15 minutes it did! Jeromy gave his talented Cinerella whistle and called what Charly described as "a girl bird" in and they sang a little tune together. Jeromy and the bird. We got the fire going better and dried up a bit, and I was happy he brought those darn chairs as we sat by the fire. Then we loaded up and headed for home again. As we loaded the boat up we saw more dark clouds and lightening coming closer again. A couple of fisherman said that we had tornado warnings out. Yikes.

It must have rained hard and fast as our lawn had signs of being flooded by our front door and Moose dog was frazzled and cowardly clinging by our sides. Some of you may not know that Moose gets very scared every times it rains after we had a bad storm in the spring of 2003. There was some harsh flat winds that came through and knocked one of our huge pine trees over and hit the neighbor's garage. He was home alone. Ever since then, it starts to rain, he starts to pace, a little bit of thunder and he goes and sits in the bathtub or shower downstairs. I'm sure our little lug of a pup Cooper snored through the whole thing.

Jeromy took these shots. He said he saw a triple rainbow.

I'll have to ask him where the third one is because I don't see it. Maybe you can.

Glad to be off the lake and safe in the house again.

My mom was a little shook up. She called me early this morning as she heard about the tornado warnings and tried our house and my aunt's house and was getting busy signals last night. She was happy to hear everything was safe and sound. Speaking of mom, she had her first break with chemo this week. Fifteen more treatments to go. Brian and I will go with her for another scan and follow up with her Oncologist the beginning of August. We're hoping the scan doesn't pick up anymore cancer. Mom is doing pretty darn good considering everything going on. She's pretty exhausted though, but her spirits are great.

Deep Thought By Jack Handey:

Many people don't realize that playing dead can help not only with bears, but also at important business meetings.

My favorite kind of day. Not a plan in place. Just getting to enjoy the moment. Phone didn't ring once. So nice to take a breather.

Today we went to see the Traveling Wall. It is the exact replica of the wall in Washington DC that has the names of all our fallen soldiers, 58,000 of them, from the Vietnam War. It is amazing. It just seemed so strange though in a sense to see thousands of names printed up. I definitely got choked up. I sort of felt there should be something more than just a name printed on a wall to see but it was done very nice and honorably. Out of all of the names, just eight of them were women. And I learned that the war lasted more years than I had remembered. Yeah, yeah I know, I was only alive for the last several wisenheimers, you know what I mean. Here are my pics.

Thousands of names, printed one after another in white. Some had symbols next to their name to determine who had died, and who were among the missing.

This is how the wall looked from the backside.

The kids thought it was neat although I'm not sure how much they actually understood from what we explained. Jackson thought it was pretty neat that there was cammo around the bottom of the wall. After a bit, they were off to the park for some playtime.

When we got home, Jackson mastered his bicycle with no training wheels. He tried it last summer and didn't have the patience so the training wheels went back on. Today, he is a biking maniac.

Good Job Jack!!

Charly tried too but decided she should wait until she gets older as she explained to me.

Last week Charly & Jackson wanted to go fishing pretty bad but the weather wasn't the best. Jeromy ended up just taking them to the public access. Charly caught a pretty good sized fish and all by herself. That's a four year old's motto, "I can do it all by myself!" It's pretty funny when she catches fish, she'll get a fish on her line and not say a word so you won't have a clue that for the past 30 seconds she's been trying to real one in. She was pretty proud that the fish we ate with dinner was the one that she caught. You can probably see for yourself in these shots.

Cooper is getting so big. He is a very good dog and gets along with everyone so well, including our Moose dog.

Charly is holding an ice cream cone here see how his eyes are locked into it?

Chewing on a puppy bone.

He is four months old now.

Deep Thought By Jack Handey:

I wish outer space guys would conquer Earth and make people their pets, because I'd like to have one of those little basket-beds with my name on it.

Note to self. A consistent pan of rhubarb crunch in the house makes high school grad daughter pause from "living life to the fullest" and stop home frequently. Save entry for future ammo.

Spike. He likes me. This is the best shot we got of him and it was taken by Charly. The key is to get as close as possible, I'm talking inches from his face, and snap the shot. I can't do that. I get a foot away, and for some reason he starts charging towards me, it kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. He's always done that and I'm not sure of what he wants to do when and if he actually gets to me as I always move. He has been a good pet for Ashley. He is a bearded dragon. On this particular day Ashley had him outside while she changed the bedding in his tank.

This afternoon I was taking a picture of the dogs laying around in the yard when out of no where, I was attacked by a deer!

You got me Jack!

His reenactment of Bambi.

Meanwhile Charly is building a house out of scotch tape and junk mail.

He almost got the kitty.

An old friend of mine sent this to me. Thought I'd share the lion story.