New Skills

When an obviously sick raccoon appeared near the house the other day, I couldn't even figure out how to load our shotgun. After having to call our neighbor over to shoot it, I decided I needed to know how to load and shoot the shotgun. John gave me a quick primer, I hit my intended target, and that was it. Until yesterday. Another raccoon appeared, this one not looking sick at all. She was at the compost pile, right by all of our chickens and our back deck. For those of you who don't know, raccoons are notorious chicken killers and egg stealers. After nary a moments thought, I called for Max to bring me the shotgun. I took aim, and sacked my first coon. We did some research to decide if we thought the raccoon might have rabies. Other than being out in the daylight, it showed no other signs of being rabid. Deciding it was safe to preserve the hide, Alex got busy with his new found camp skills. He gutted and skinned the raccoon. We spent the afternoon discussing various aspects of anatomy, hunting vs. killing, etc. while we watched Alex work. And work he did. He's going to tan the hide when we get back from Florida.

Busy Being Me

On our way home from Ella's gymnastics class, she and I had the following conversation:

Ella: "Mom, why haven't we done our alone time yet?"
Mom: "Well, we've been pretty busy lately...Max and Sophie were busy with Nature Camp, Alex has been busy with WoW, you've been busy with gymnastics..."
Ella: Mom, I've been busy being me."

Yes indeed.

Some of our wonderful busy-ness:

1).The Coulters came for a visit. As usual, Shanna inspired me beyond belief and we worked diligently researching and testing all natural ways to make my aprons water repellent, with bees wax :)
2). Sophie injuring herself, having to get a tetanus shot, reacting VERY badly to the tetanus shot(her first ever immunization), then having minor surgery to remove pieces of wood from her foot
3). Alex leaving on his very first ever trip ALONE to Hawk Circle, in upstate NY, where he had to fly by himself
4). Losing computer and email function for several days, on ALL our home computers
5). Getting tickets, through Madeline, for So You Think You Can Dance
6). Having our neighbor come shoot a sick, possibly rabid raccoon
7). Making bread
8). Gardening
9). Eating tomatoes
10). Eating more tomatoes

The Screamin' Serpent

Max decided to try his hand at this very difficult K'Nex building project, generously given to us by the Traaseths. With Alex away and not able to help, I was a bit concerned that Max would struggle and end up getting frustrated. I needn't have bothered. After 3 long days of constant work and a complete taking apart and starting over incident, Max succeeded. He did it. All by himself :)

Getting started

Taking it all apart

Rebuilding

Ah...Sweet Success!

"U" is for You and Me....

"N" is for Anywhere and Anytime at All,
Hanging with Our Buddies!

Seeing the World Through Rose Colored Glasses

....Or through the lens of an underwater camera.

"F" is for Friends that do stuff together....

I love friends :)
We had the best weekend with Madeline and Nicolas and Gillan and Jesse. Just absolutely perfect, if not quite long enough!

Madeline captured our trip to the Falls on her blog. I wanted to wait to get back the waterproof camera pictures from the camera she brought me just for that purpose. It was WAY harder than I imagined, with the water pummeling down on me as I tried to look up. We all had a go, with some very interesting results, to be put in a later blog post.

In addition to our trip to the Falls, we also went to our favorite pizza and ice cream spot in St. Elmo, and the cool playground with the giant horse penis zip line. We fooled around with my new digital Rebel (hehehe..my surprise bday present from Juan Miguel!) trying to capture night pictures at the park. I'm not sure how successful we were at the photos, but I'm fairly certain I blinded several children in the process with the crazy flash.