vacations!

In all the craziness it is suddenly time for vacation! Today was supposed to be the last day of swimming, but for some reason the pool was "unbalanced" and they canceled til tomorrow. So daddy will have to pick D up from the neighbors and take him (fun). Because tomorrow is the day K and I go to the Tetons! Girl weekend here we come. Of course the timing is terrible, because the next weekend is my family reunion at the beach (which should be delightful also) AND the audition which is right after I get back! So hopefully I won't be too awful to be around, and I'll get good practicing as well as good visiting in. I swear I don't plan the auditions to fall right after vacations, it just keeps happening that way.

new dog

I guess I haven't mentioned the fact that another dog has been left with us. It appears that he was dumped on our road (same as Donna 3 years ago) and he is the same age she was - around 8 months. Weird. Also strange is that they look like twins - black lab-like with white chest markings. So alike that the person who found the dog thought it was Donna and brought him up to our place!

Since Donna was there in the driveway, it was pretty obviously not her. Also the male factor, and the age were good clues. But the "finder person" was going to take him to the vet, where they only can hold lost pets for 3 days. She was willing to make posters to put around the neighborhood, and we agreed to keep the dog if/until the owner called. We also advertised on Craiglist, but no one called, so last week we took "Darwin" to the vet for the big snip-snip.

Darwin is not the smartest of dogs. The day after the vet experience he discovered a new species: porcupines! Both he and Donna had a face full of quills. Fun. A couple years ago we took our first dog to the vet for porcupine quills and it was $300! Since then we (mostly J) pull them out ourselves. The dogs aren't happy at the time, but they keep going back for more! And indeed, Darwin was quillful again the next day (yesterday). Hopefully he is getting a clue, but I'm not holding my breath.

ha!

Ok a month later and I'm at exactly the same place with the house! That is sad, and it will be my goal to muck out the living room by the end of July.

D is out of school now - next fall he starts 2nd grade! We have done one session of swimming lessons, I was not really thinking he would be into that, but he did great! He's kind of timid about new things, but armed with grama's goggles (thanx G!) he was a little tadpole. We are signed up for another 2 week session for the end of July. Last week he did a 1 hour a day drawing class - not as instructive as we had hoped for but he had fun and drew lots of obscure prehistoric insects (the new obsession).

We did have a crazy driving marathon for the 4th - went to J's old stomping ground (the farm) on Thursday night (after swimming lessons), Friday we drove on the the beach house and grampa joined us there. It was really great, we had a fun time and D tried oysters for the first time and loved them. Nasty. We went to the beach and D had a shovel - spent the whole time digging little nature displays (his words) and putting pieces of shells, sticks and one dead fish (very small) in them. When J found the dead fish D was so excited, and as we left he said "This is the best day of my life!" Awwww.

Of course then we headed back for the farm and fireworks with Uncle S (Boom-Boom). This is a neighborhood effort, usually held at another farm. The boyz really go crazy and the display rivals that of many towns. Also LOTS of fireworks - went on from kid stuff during dinner, big stuff starting about 10 til 12:30 in the morning!

The next morning we headed back home in HOT weather, fortunately we had missed most of the heat at the beach (only staying at the farm in the evening) but I was really grateful for the A/C in the car! Looking forward to getting some stuff done around the house (yeah right) and the Fireworks Concert coming right up (last Sunday of July).