Today, Zach and Jessie started raspberry picking 15 minutes away. I have to get them there at 7:00 in the morning. They picked for 2 1/2 hours. Twelve is the youngest age, and it's a rare opportunity, so I signed them up. Zach did it last year. I bought local strawberries today right near the raspberry fields. They are so delightful and perfect. Pretty soon, I'll buy raspberries!

I'm pretty sure Zach and Will both have shot up like an inch in the last month. Maybe that wasn't lime koolaid I thought I was making. Maybe it was Miracle Gro.

The Best Day of Swimming Ever

This afternoon I decided to take Will, Jess, and Zoe to Sumner Community Pool for their 2-3:30 family fun swim--about 30 min. away. It became clear after awhile that traffic was REALLY slow. I thought this was due to the road resurfacing that has been happening on our main road out of Orting. But it was some kind of accident or something, and at a certain point, traffic was NOT COMING OR GOING. It was just about 2:00, but I thought, I'll turn around and go right at Military Rd. and try to find my way over there. But Military Rd was truly blocked due to resurfacing. There was no time or justification to do a really long roundabout. Sooooo, we turned around toward home again. But, I thought, I'll salvage this and we'll go to the river, where we had some nice times in the summer last year. Plus, it's free. After stopping at McDonald's to change in the bathroom and get starving people burgers, we head to the river. Of course, they're resurfacing that road, too, and there are monstrous vehicles parked where we normally park. So, we turn around and park in a place where we have to walk around a mile to get to our spot. We walk and walk and get there. The river seems low and the mud in the region is excessively squishy. But we didn't go this far to turn around yet, right? Everybody strips down and finds long ways around the mud to get to the good part. And the water is so cold and the air only 70 degrees, that one's feet ache after a short time in the water. Get out, walk around, maybe get used to it? Nothin doin. Time to call it a day. I'm wearing flip flops, and there is this one spot that is SO SOFT, that I just sink and fall directly to my knees. I'm carrying my bag and what's left of my drink. I have mud up to my thighs, but I keep everything from dumping and even my shorts mud-free. It must have looked really funny, but I was not too happy at the time. What a truly disappointing time. I think I'll move to Australia.
And then I was going to make devilled eggs for dinner, and when I removed the shell, it pulled off tons of white, on every egg. So the eggs looked like they had been assaulted by hungry voles. So we had egg salad with biscuits instead. Weird. I did actually see a vole like creature on our way out of the slough of despond. It was a good sized mole, I believe, and it swam from the water into a tunnel in the mud!

What's new?
Chris got medieval on our garage--deep cleaned it Saturday. It looks a lot bigger, and is a sight to behold. I took Zach and Jessie swimming, which was fun. Zoe went to a neighbor's brother's baseball game. Then I went for a bike ride. Dinner was quiche, or as Alton Brown calls it, "refrigerator pie." Yum.

Sunday--had parents over for Father's Day. Chris barbecued ribeyes and made the world's best barbecue beans with bacon, molasses, maple syrup, etc. I baked giant potatoes and served green salad. I forgot to add the bacon to the salad. Duh. Dessert was gourmet sorbets--coconut, chocolate, espresso, and raspberry...with decaf. Weather has been perfect--upper 60s, low 70s.

School is officially done tomorrow! Wow!! Jessie wants to go back to "regular school" in fall. The new middle school will be done then.

In bed sick all day yesterday. Not fun. Feeling quite a bit better and going to the doctor in a few hours.

I had a very extreme and scary dream last night. One of the books I'm reading is The Time Traveler's Wife, so that impacted me. I dreamed I was at Fairwood, and so were a bunch of other people, of course. It was 1945, and the stinkin' Nazis, with Hitler and tanks showed up!!!! I had all the kids but no Chris. I was wondering if I should hide in the woods with them or stay behind and help others. At one point, and this is funny, because my Mexico vacation, with its touristy pirate ship came into play, Hitler was on this pirate ship, and some of our people were on it. Very quickly, he brainwashed our youth to fire croquet balls at their own family with cannons!!! I am not making this up. It was very dangerous. I had to dodge quite a few. Later, IN A CAB, if you can believe it, with 2 teenage girl Fairwoodians, I was screaming at them so hard for shooting croquet balls at their family members ("Would you really have wanted to smash your grandmother in the face?!?!?!?") that I was turning red and spitting. I actually asked an older Fairwoodian, "The Nazis didn't REALLY come to Fairwood in 1945, did they?" So I guess I had a hint it was a time traveling nightmare. Very glad to wake up!!

Meheeco

We are back to reality now. Had a grand time in hot, sunny Cancun. We sweat and relaxed and got waited on and walked and experienced and had a very enjoyable time. Some of the times--not so good. Like, you get accosted by shop owners and salesmen trying to bribe you to go to timeshare presentations, which are supposed to be "90 minutes," but are more like 4 hours. And they don't want you to leave. That was a nightmare. But we went to a gorgeous eco-adventure park called Xcaret (esh-caret) right after that. It was expensive to get into, and that was their bribe that got us into the ruddy timeshare presentation in the first place. One of the highlights of Xcaret was swimming, with life jacket, fins, face mask, and snorkel, this underground river they carved out of lime stone. It wasn't 100% enclosed and not too deep. We saw fish and crabs there. We also sailed on a sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico. Weather here is gray and cool. I will post more pictures on Facebook. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa for watching the kiddos for a whole week!