A Busy Weekend

Saturday was a busy day with a bike ride in the morning. A very nice ride in the May Gray (when that term came up I don't know, I have only heard of June Gloom for Southern California) Up the mountain with the mist from the fog on my face.

After that Ethan and I headed off to a birthday party at Jumpin' Jammin' which was followed by the 2009 Scout Expo at Santa Anita Race track. We've never been and it was great fun. We had heard that Ethan could earn some belt loops at the expo, he soon figured out that some of the booths were just activies and others were the belt loops. For belt loops he did astronomy, science and computer, I just realized the geekiness of that.


On the non-geeky side Ethan participated in archery. It wasn't for a belt loop but he did get a patch.


Sunday I got up and went to play music for the kids at church. Always fun, it was a bit of a train wreck last time, this time went much better. After playing I came home and started working on the new play structure we got for the kids.

7 boxes of about a bazillion pieces. Kerrianne read online that these things take "handy" people forever to put together.

This is about the state I had it in when the kids got home from church.


The upper level floor in.


Junia liked climbing on it already.


Ethan like drilling holes in the roots in the ground.


The kids are already getting Uncle Leo on the slide.


So, today I was able to get the pic nic table, both platforms, the ladder and the slide on. So the kids will be able to start climbing around on it. I need to get time soon to get the roof on and the rest of the rails and it's good to go. I'm feeling pretty good about today's progress.

Visitor for Mother's Day

We had a very nice Mother's Day breakfast that, of course, included bacon and cinnamon rolls. Yesterday the kids and I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of flowers and pots and planted them out back by the pool and we were able to keep it a surprise until this morning.



We went to church and Junia's class sang songs for the moms.


When we got home and were getting out of the car I heard a sound over by the neighbors gate and looked up to see a bear head poking through to have a look at us. I asked the kids to go right inside while I pulled the camera from my pocket.

By the time I got the camera out he had one back into the yard and I saw him climb up on the block wall and over into the next yard. The neighbor there saw me, opened the window and asked what was going on. I said, "the bear just went in your back yard." Her husband went to have a look out the window and said the bear had gone over the next wall and into Jim's pond.





He seemed to be having a good time cooling off and trying to find the koi.

Then Don the next neighbor came along making noise to scare him away. Bear climbed out of the pond, back up on the wall, across the next yard, up the next wall and he was then gone.