Critters Galore

We had a bit of a slower week this week, which was fine with us. Last Wednesday I decided to take the kids swimming by myself (a first for the year). It actually went really well. We swam for 3 hours before I made the kids get out of the pool so that we could go help Mike work on getting the boat ready for the summer. While we were swimming, I kept hearing this strange noise and Kate kept asking what it was, but I couldn't figure it out. As we were getting ready to leave, my Mom came home and we ended up walking around her house to try to figure it out. We decided a bird must have been caught in the downspout, so Mom went over to free the bird. She was shaking all the dirt and sticks, etc out of the downspout to free the bird when I saw the tail of a squirrel coming out. I hollered, "Mom, stop, it's a squirrel." (For some reason, I think squirrels are mean...don't know why for sure). She stopped and Frank (Mom's dog) came over and was dragging the poor squirrel (still stuck in the downspout) around her yard. We finally got Frank distracted and Kate was talking about talking about the squirrel being stuck and Frank chasing it, etc. My dad showed up a few minutes later and she had to go show him the squirrel. So, dad shook the downspout until the squirrel could get free at which point it ran as quickly as possible to the nearest tree and proceeded to climb all the way to the top. What a traumatic day for the squirrel. :)

Another critter story, I had gotten some lettuce from my parents garden. I took it home and washed it (3 times to be exact and even spun it in the salad spinner each time). I was calmly eating my salad for lunch the next day and looked down and thought, "What is that?" Upon closer examination, I decided it was a spider and it was still alive. I pushed my salad away and my Dad asked me what was wrong. I told him I just couldn't eat it. Thinking I meant because I'm not a huge salad fan Dad said he would eat it. I said, "No, there's a spider in there and I just can't eat one more bite." Dad said, relax, just get it out, you probably already ate the mate anyway......needless to say I did not finish my salad......

Friday night we had another Mack Attack night which was great fun and Saturday night we had a "shower" for Brett and Tessa out at the winery. We had a lot of fun at that as well, but didn't take any pictures.

Sunday we took the kids to the Turkey Festival parade and they loved it. We shouldn't have to buy candy for quite some time. :)

Swimming

Taking a swim break

Watching Dad wash the boat

Turkey Festival Parade - Linc actually sat in this chair and watched for a solid 20 minutes.

A few posts back I wrote about my inability to let the kids outside by themselves...well, my AWESOME husband put a gate on our deck, so now I can let them play for a few minutes by themselves while I make supper or do a few things inside. With our two monkeys, it will probably never be more than a few minutes because they'll figure out how to get out, but for now it's working and I love it. Obviously, I still need to stain it. :) Thanks Michael!

One last note, for anyone who wondered if Lincoln would ever overcome his extreme laziness and walk, he is officially walking or I might call it running actually...he seems to have skipped right over walking and decided to simply run everywhere. We don't have any pics, but I need to get some because it's so funny.