Camping 2010

Here are some pics from our family camp-out at Detroit Lake this year:
Upon Arrival
Get Sam's trucks out first.
Have some dinner.
Take a walk to the lake.
Stroll on the rock beach
bask in the beauty
Greet Maemae and Gpa Bob.
Breakfast, first morning.
Sam, "Up"
Sam, "Down"
Playing cards.
Stickers before dinner.
Aimee exaggerating her camp hair
Locals.
Playing with the big kids.
sliding over and over.
Locals working.
The Island.
Mounting the Island.
Too Hot, but cooling down.
Writing; "rite"
Playing with Papa the last night; totally broke in the new Tonka truck.

Ice Cold Video

Here is a video we got of Sam doing the "ice cold" routine in the car; I had forgotten I had taken the video or I would have included on the previous post.

Ice cold

Sam got to saying "Nice" while playing with Grandma B, as she was commenting on how well he was coloring and he evidently liked the word. He then stated to say "ice" for some reason, probably due to its similarity to "nice".

Then when we were coming back from Sherri's for breakfast, he combined "ice" with "cold", that he has been doing for a long time. I don't quite know how it all got put together in his little head, but he evidently correlated that ice is cold in the car on our way home and started saying "ice cold", unfortunately it ends up sounding like he has a cold bottom and a little bit of a potty mouth; see if you can figure that out.

Grandpa Bob!!

Sam really likes his Grandpa Bob. He and Aimee went up to visit Grandpa Bob and Maemae over a month ago and he still randomly starts saying, "ba pa ba, ba pa ba". He started doing this at the dinner table and it was fine until it started getting a little loud, so I said, "We know you like your Grandpa Bob and miss him, but you're getting kinda loud, so that's enough for now".

He then mouthed "ba pa ba" without making any sounds.

It was pretty priceless.

What I woke up to this morning...

This morning Sam was awake really early, like sometime before 7, when he usually sleeps in until at least 8. Aimee got up to figure out what was going on and I fell back asleep. When I woke up later, I didn't hear Sam and Aimee, so I thought they may be eating, which is the only time Sam tends to not be making other noise.

I went out into the livingroom to find this:



and when I got out of my shower they had changed position a little.



Evidently Sam had some kind of dream or something that had him pretty upset. Aimee couldn't get him to calm down so she just took him out to the livingroom and let him play while she laid down out there; notice the teddy bear pillow. Sam evidently was tired but needed some time to unwind from whatever had him upset.

Aimee said he woke up having been sleeping on his arm, see first picture, and she was comforting him on her chest when he fell asleep again. They were evidently out there for almost 2 hours before they woke up when I was getting breakfast for me and Macy.

They were so cute I just had to share.

The no work clean pond

For some reason and with no effort on my part, the pond decided it was time to clean up its act. It has been cloudy with algae for a long time and I couldn't find anything that would clear it for very long. Even changing the filter more often wasn't helping it at all, actually probably made it worse.

Anywho, yesterday morning, I walked out the from door and the pond looked weird, I could see the bottom, the pump, tubing and all the left over rock I missed when I tried to clear out the pea gravel in the bottom. Fred and the gold fish were huddled in the milk crate I put in there to give them some shelter and darted all around the pond when I looked a little closer.

I guess the strong sun we have been having lately was enough to UV treat the pond and kill the algae that had kinda taken over. I just wonder how long it will last. I may need to put a big flat rock on the milk crate to give Fred and the goldfish a little more cover. I really don't want the red heron to think it is a free buffet and that we cleaned up just for him.

Sam's Sick

Well, Sam has officially christened Aimee as a parent of a toddler, a sick toddler. He threw up all over her this evening after we ate dinner and were looking at some of his first year pictures. He didn't eat very much at dinner and was being kinda whinny; now we know why.

He seemed to feel a lot better after that and ended up going to bed pretty well, but woke up just about an hour ago and wouldn't go back to sleep. I was holding him and he started what kinda sounded like gagging, so I rushed him to the bathroom and he threw up again. He was wide awake by this time but seemed to be feeling better again, so I was rocking him in the rocker in his room when he sat up. He kinda whimpered and I thought here we go again.

I took the bowl Aimee had gotten for me and held him over it while carrying him to the bathroom. Then I smelled it. He had gone out the other end and from the smell, I can guess why he was so agitated; it must not have felt too good. I changed his diaper on the bathroom floor on a towel since I wasn't sure if he was going to hurl too, and just had him roll on his side on the floor when I was done. I rubbed his back and he ended up going to sleep pretty quick. I let him doze off for about 10 minutes before picking him up and putting him in his bed where he will hopefully sleep for the rest of the night.

I just hope this all wasn't brought on from having him out in the pool for too long today when it was really hot. I think we were out there for over an hour and were having so much fun didn't really think about if it would affect Sam adversely. I guess we will be spending tomorrow indoors and may stay home from church just to make sure Sam is not going to spread a bug if that is what this is actually.

Beating the heat...

Ha!!! After dealing with an extra hot house yesterday, I installed the window air conditioner in the Family Room last night and had a nice cool 73 degree house today. Then when the back of the house got way hot, especially in the office, I installed an old a/c unit that came with the house in the office and cooled all the bedrooms and the rest of the house down. Almost had to put more clothes on in the office when I had it cranked, before the rest of the rooms cooled off back here.

So Heat 1, John 1, but I think I am winning the rest.

The house was actually pretty cool the first two days of this heat, but it didn't cool down at night like it did the first night. It was still 75 degrees in the house yesterday morning. I figured since today was supposed to be even hotter, which it was at almost 100, I had better put them in and get it over with before we cook for too many days. It was hard to go to sleep the night it was in the upper 60s outside and hotter in the house; ended up sleeping through my alarm cuz I got to sleep so late and missed a office call I should have been on. Oh well.

Sam's idea of keeping cool was to have only his boots on and he started off with them on the wrong feet when he got them on all by himself initially.


We got through the hot days by having fun in the pool with Sam the first two nights it was hot. We didn't get the pool out until the early afternoon the first day so the water didn't warm up very much from the tap water (cold). Oh and I ended up smacking Sam in the face with the foot pump while I was blowing up the pool when he came up beside me when I thought Aimee had taken him into the other room. You can see the scrape/cut on his forehead, under his right eye, and evidently I also got him on the leg, which I didn't realize until tonight.

Well that day, Sam and I didn't really like getting in it for too long at a time since it was quite cold. I knew it was time to get out when Sam's teeth started chattering. The water level was up to his mid chest, so he was in it a lot more than I was and since he had a hard time walking around, he slipped a couple times and got dunked before I could react. He took it in stride but wanted to get out soon afterward cuz he was cold. The life jacket went on him after the first time he went completely under and he had to hack out some water when I picked him up. I figured it was the only option since the water was so deep that time.



The second day of heat we got the pool out a little earlier and I didn't fill it as much, so it was at mid-thigh on Sam. He had a lot easier time getting around and even though his legs were cold he stayed in a lot longer at a time. I even sat down in it since it didn't quite feel ice cold that day. It was about 90 when we were out there and it was nice to cool off a bit since the house had gotten a little hot and stuffy.



Today, we got the pool started this morning and Aimee was tasked with filling it up after she got done watering. She came inside and all of a sudden realized she was supposed to be watching the water level. When I went to check it was almost over the top of the 2' sides. Aimee seemed to have fun emptying the water with the 5 gallon bucket so that it wouldn't be too deep for Sam. It was already getting hot though and she ended up dumping a bucket of water over herself while I was videotaping her throwing the water out; I think it was all for show.



Anywho... Sam didn't end up getting in it tonight cuz the house wasn't as hot and we didn't make it outside to play. Although, Aimee and I did once we got done hacking away at a bush on the property line with the neighbors that was getting out of control and covering the sprinklers... again. So we filled up the yard debris buckets to put them out at the curb full this week for pickup tomorrow due to the holiday. We would have missed it if it wasn't for the holiday cuz i totally forgot to up the trash and stuff out last night... or even think about it being a holiday week. So we sat in the warmer water as dusk was turning dark and just talked and had a good time by ourselves; it was nice since this doesn't happen a lot where we are without Sam.

Anywho... hope everyone else is surviving the plunge into the Summer heat from the cold and wet beginning this Summer started with.

Tree Climbing Snails

I forgot to mention that while picking cherries, I made the funny discovery of climbing snails. A snail is evidently able to climb a tree and I don't mean just up the main trunk or branches. I found three in total, attached to the leaves at the end of some of the interior branches. Two were about 8 feet off the ground and I was very surprised to find one about 15 feet off the ground at almost the top of the tree.

Cherry picking family

For the first time since we have lived here, we got the cherry trees picked clean and the cherries washed and pitted in a day. The trees were pretty sparse this year and it only took us about 3 hours of picking.

My parents stopped by for the day and helped us pick the cherries; my mom was ground control and sorter of bad fruit and Dad was on Grandpa duty, keeping Sam occupied, while Aimee picked the low fruit and I was up the tree, literally out on a limb.

We got about 4 gallon bags of pitted cherries, plus made a cherry crisp that is awesome... sooooo good. I think I may go have another bowl with ice cream. Anywho... we sent my parents off with about half of them, have a bowl full of cut up cherries with sugar waiting in the fridge for pancakes tomorrow morning, a couple bags full for some friends and I will probably freeze the rest for later.

Fourth of July

We had a fun fourth. We spent the day outside; Aimee washed the cars and I worked on trying to clean out the sprinkler lines that got some kind of debris in them. Sam had fun getting wet with the hose and trying to help me. It was a mildly hot day so the mist from Aimee spraying the cars actually felt kinda good.

We did some fireworks with Sam at 7 before he went to bed, then got him up at 10 and did some more. He was a little disoriented when we got him up for the later ones, but soon got pretty excited to see all the fireworks in the relative dark, in the street outside out house. We had bought a package of fireworks from Costco with a variety of sizes of fountains. We did a lot of the smaller ones before he went to bed and all the rest, which included the biggest fountains at night.



Here are the empties and the final pics from the night before we went inside:

It was a lot of fun and I am glad we got him up for the nighttime show. He really seemed to like it despite signing "loud" repeatedly for the "illegal" fireworks that the people at the end of the street were firing off. We will definitely be doing this in the future, especially since Sam went down to sleep afterword without much of a problem. We did have to help him calm down a little from the excitement but it didn't take long and was expected, so easily managed.

Here are some pics of the "good", yet illegal, fireworks that were being shot off down the street from us.

Rework...

Saturday. Forth of July Weekend.

In the morning after dumping a load of dirt, I mixed up some of the dirt with some sand and garden compost to make some potting soil for Aimee to re-pot her flowers that are sitting on the hot tub. She used all dirt the first time and it just ended up caking and water doesn't penetrate well. After the new soil, they should do much better since is seemed like they dried out really fast. In the process we put some compost over the raised flower beds by the garden and it looks a lot more dressed up now. We are thinking of doing it for the rest of the beds along the fence to the right of those raised beds to make them look better until we got something else done with them.

I started to work on the patio area after that. I thought I was done with the digging on the patio for the time being, but in redoing the small deck, I found that I had to dig out the area by the house and also ended up needing to bury the cement footings 4.5 inches below that to even out the step from the house and to the ground. I filled up the rest of the trailer, which I dumped Saturday morning and filled it up again with another a half load of dirt.

Aimee graciously helped me with moving the deck out of the way in one piece since it was all nailed together; I never would have been able to do that by myself. We ended up moving it 4 times before I got it all right; first time off to do the adjustments, first time back on to adjust where the footings were and check their placement, 2nd time off to fill in the dirt around the footings, then 2nd time back on to have a nice little deck. It doesn't quite fit up against the house like I first had it but it will do for temporary; it is pretty solid.

I have found that I am not used to the step up into the house since I stumbled on the threshold at least twice yesterday. I should get used to it quickly. Hopefully Aimee won't have the same problem.

Sam ended up being outside with me while Aimee prepared a spiral sliced ham and the rest of dinner. Sam played with the sprinkler, his water sprayer and the water/sand table for a little while but mostly wanted to just mill around where I was working. He tried to help and mostly stayed out of the way as usual; I am able to just throw dirt around him into the wheelbarrow or ask him to go get my gloves or tape measure.

Oh and Sam was fascinated by the tape measure... he would pull it out about 5 feet, straight up and watch as it got taller, then bring it back down and let it roll back up. It was pretty funny to watch him experiment with it. He got a similar reaction to the torpedo level that would magnet to the steel door, but I had to take it away from him when he kept dropping it.

Aimee then helped me get the last of the landscape fabric down and I spread out the wood chips the rest of the way. I have determined that it is a lot for the space and I am going to put some outside the french doors on the other side of the house so we have some barrier from dirt coming in the house there also. We tend to eat dinner outside on that end of the house under the cherry trees, where it is shaded in the early evenings, so it would be nice to have some on that side as well.

And a before picture for those who can't remember, like me, because it was so many posts ago:


Here's the finished product:

Girl's night out, boy's night in

Aimee went to see a movie at the dollar theater with some other mom friends; they all went out to get a night away from the hubbies and kids. Well, Sam and I had a fun night playing before he went to bed... a little later than normal that night cuz we were having a pretty good time.