Idaho vacation - part 2

For the next 4 days we played in the water.... A LOT! DeAnn, Daren and their crew got to Cascade at about dinner time on Monday. and it was craziness from then on. When we first got there the girls didn't want to do anything other than sit in the house and play on their phones & ipods. eh, not!So we made them go for a walk :)

 After we got everything in the house and settled we wentt o take the sailboat out. We are waiting on the pier for the boat. Took longer than planned, sicne the motor didn't want to run right.

 And here comes Sean and Dad with the boat. Finally got the motor running so they could come pick us up.

 Sean being a dork :)

 The girls with Grandpa.

 Eeyore enjoying sailing. After a while the wind died and we had to take the boat back in. I was bummed. I don't think the girls minded too much though.

 By the time we got in and got back tot he cabin the rest of the family had arrived. After dinner everyone wanted to go to the beach. The great thing about 90 degree weather, it's still hot until the after the sun goes down!

 The young popstar :)

 The girls finally came out of their shells. Thank you Camilla! Sabrina & Abby had so much fun hanging out with their cousins. Especially since they only get to see them about once a year.

 Mom/Grandma even came to the beach to watch the kids play.

 The men/boys enjoying the water. Once the sun went down it got kinda chilly so we headed back to the cabin.

 The chatty cathy's of the group (aka teenage girls!) stayed in the motorhome while the Cox family was here. Probably a good thing too, cause from info we gathered they didn't sleep much. Anyway. On day 2 we tried to get them out of bed in the normal ways. But of course they had just went to sleep, so they didn't want to get up. Chandler & Camden got on top of the RV & were bouncing around while Sean was tilting the RV from the side trying to get them to wake up.

 They finally succeeded and the girls came in for breakfast.

 Camden & Chandler had to do a "non-motorized" boating trip for scouts. So Sean went out with them on the river. The boys started in the canoe & Sean in the kayak. As they went they switched it up. Dad/Grandpa said it should take them 4 hours to complete the trip and he'd be there to pick them up at 2. It only took 2 hours so they had to sit around for 2 hours since no one had brought a cell phone.

 While the boys were in the river the rest of us went to beach. hmm, imagine that.

 The girls spent most of the time sitting around playing with the seaweed and telling stories.

 After the boys returned we took the boat out for some tubing. SOOO much fun. I was the official photographer, and I love my camera. Cause even though I suck at taking pictures I was able to get some awesome shots of the kids on the tube. Of course, Eeyore had to drive for a minute :)

 Corinna the rockstar.

 While waiting for the tube, the girls buried each other. I really don't understand the facination with this, but this happens everytime we are near sand.

 Sean got a picture of me in the tube, before i got a lifejacket on. Luckily I put one on, cause not long after this I went for a swim.

 Abby for the first time on the tube

 Camilla, the crazy girl

 Clayson

 Sabrina before we took off. Poor girls missed a few spots with sunscreen and ended up with second degree burns on her ear and a strip on her face. ouch!

And last but not least Camden. He's just crazy. After being out on the water all day we were beat. We went back tot eh cabin had awesome dinner then walked to the gas station to get some ice cream.

Idaho vacation part 1

We got into Boise on Saturday night about 11. Long day, although it was shorter than the trip coming home! On Sunday we didn't make it to church, we just laid around and go used to the awesome dry heat and the sunshine! Then for dinner we headed over to our friends house. We met Matt & Dawn when we lived in Virginia and they lived around the corner and down the street :) It was great to see them. We haven't seen them since LL was about a year old. yikes, time flies!

 Jack helping, even after his mom said she didn't need help :)

 Sean loves to torture the kids. He's got a knack for it.

 Although admittedly, they all begged for the same treatment.

 We took our party outside to enjoy some more of the beautiful weather. Coming from where we do, this was HEAVEN!

 Why they even have umbrellas is beyond me :)

 I let LL and Jack take some pictures. So funny. Above is the one LL took, at least she looked in the veiw finder.

 This is the one Jack took. Among many of the trees. He couldn't seem to understand that he needed to look before he hit the button. The joys of digital..I could erase all the tree pics.

 The family pic. And get this, their dogs name is...."Trixie" ugh! They got the dog and it had that name. But it was really weird hearing the dog getting a scolding with my name. hahaha

 Matt went in to get a refill and the kids took all the big chairs and left him with the little one.

 After the adults got done with the ladder ball Jack played a little by himself. Funniest thing in the world watching him throw those things. Sean found a new way to play too. He threw 2 of the strings at once. Every time he did they both landed on the top rung. Crazy game. And we lost everytime we played. Matt & Dawn have had way more practice than us.

After ice cream and ladder ball we sat around and talked while the kids went down the slide. One of them got the bright idea to go down on the mini-tubes. Hilarious. Probably would have been faster without the tubes, but eh, less fun I guess. It was great to see them after all this time. Hopefully we will see them before another 5 years passes.

Vacation in Idaho & girls camp

We've been back for a week and I have yet to post about our great vacation. I'm a slacker, I know. I have over 800 pics that I took over the two weeks. We had so much fun. Lots of time in the water, and perhaps too  much time in the sun :) I'll post ASAP, I wish I knew how to do one of those photo collage things, then I could put lots more pics on here. anyway. vacation pics soon, I promise :) I also realized that I didn't post a single picture from my week at girls camp. I guess i need to do that to. loved it again this year. Love working with the young women, they are so much fun!

If you give a pig a pancake... the home owners version

For our house inspection we were told we needed to get the attic fan fixed. Over last summer we thought let it go and ALLLLLL of my candles that I had put in the boxes of decorations melted. So I made an "ultimatum."  The fan needs to be fixed! NOW! So, Sean asked a friend, a heating & air conditioning guy, to come over and look at it.
When he came & looked we found that most of the electric in the house were connected to 2 breakers.
We also found wires that didn't have good connections.
So we called an electrician.
He came in to give us an estimate for 2 new wires into the attic, one for the attic fan & lights, the other to attach to the bathroom GFI outlet. Also to put the drier on a different outlet & put a GFI switch for the washing machine in the basement.
The guys came to do the work.
They were able to put the lines to the attic & get the fan running. woohoo, no problems there.
Then they move down to the basement to put the drier on the same line as the washer, and find that the washer isn't on a GFI switch, like it's supposed to be. (GFI switches are grounded and have a circuit breaker right in them, and are supposed to be on all switches/plugs associated with water. i.e. the bathroom, kitchen & laundrey room) So they had to change out the outlet before they could add the dryer.
Then they went to attach the wire that they ran to the attic for the bathroom. Found that the bathroom didn't have a GFI switch either! So they had to install on in there.
Then they installed the GFI switch for the sump pump, the only one that we planned on installing.
Sean was checking everything to make sure it worked. The sump pump kept shorting out the new GFI switch. The guy was nice enough to look at the pump. yeah, It's so corroded we are lucky we haven't flooded. sigh.
So now, we have to go buy a new sump pump.
Oh the joys of home ownership!

Reasons I hate the English Language

I'm still waiting, rather impatiently now, for my lilies to bloom. There are bunches and bunches of buds, but no flowers yet. sigh. So I thought I'd tell you about an issue I've been dealing with :) The other day at work I was trying to edit a webpage and rewrite just one sentence on the page. I was struggling with the wording so I talked to one of our English writing guys. We have 2 that I know of on staff that check ALLLL the writing in our office. So anyway. The word was "drag" but past tense, so I'm thinking "drug." Uh, no, a person or thing can't be drug, they are "dragged." huh? But if you "hang" something on the wall, it was "hung." But a person wasn't "hung until dead" they were "hanged until dead." WHAT?!! Who makes these rules anyway? And how about fun? There is no such word as "funner" or "funnest" but if you put an "ny" on the end of "fun" you can say something was "funnier" or funniest." why? seriously, I HATE ENGLISH! This has made me second guess most of what I say. And if you know me, you know I LOOVVVEEEE to talk  :) Yeah, I hate being seen as ignorant more, so this makes me want to keep my mouth shut! grrrr. And what about "farther" and "further" ? hmmm, who in the heck decided we needed two similar words that mean almost the same damn thing. And what about "lay" and "lie" Do you "lay" down or do you "lie" down and who determines the difference? And to make matters worse, think about a single goose, and many geese. But if your looking at a single moose, you also look at many moose. huh? wait, aren't they spelled almost identical?! What's the difference? change one letter and you change the rules?! Who made up these stupid rules anyway?!! so there you have it, I hate the English language and these are just SOMMMMEEEE of the many words that I hate :) Now maybe I can sleep at night and stop thinking about it. As for talking, I'm going to go speak Spanish now, at least there they have rules!

Early summer flowers and photography practice

Last year I dug out all the random iris bulbs that had been planted along the side of our house in no  apparent pattern and planted them in a row in front of our wines & roses bushes. I had no idea what color they were, but figured, even if they were purple they'd look cool. I lucked out & got yellow. Didn't even know they came in yellow. Once they bloomed I decided to attempt some "macro" photography. eh, I guess they came out okay. Not all of the iris's bloomed, kinda bummed about that, but hopefully next year more will flower.

 My Easter lilies are taking FOREVER to bloom. Not sure why, but I thought they were supposed to be one of the first bulbs to bloom. oh well, the buds are on them now, I'm just waiting for them to pop, so I can take a picture of them and admire the smell!

  While I was out taking pictures this huge bumble bee and his buddy were taking advantage of the large number of flowers on the bushes. I'm kinda glad the flowers are gone now :)

 And this would be a random picture of our incredibly fat cat. She just keeps eating. She does do some exercise now, but man, she's huge!! She's lucky she's cute.