Life of Boomer
Amber, Zia and her mom went to Portland this week. So for 5 days it was just me and Lincoln inside because it was too hot to go outside. Not much happened around here really.
So, we'll begin this blog with a Boomer photolog. Really you can break the subjects of blogs down pretty quickly. If you're not blogging about your kids, you're blogging about your pets. If you're not blogging about your pets, you're blogging about your hobbies. If you're not blogging about your hobbies, you're probably blogging about a lot of crap no one cares about. Anyway, this week Boomer did some sleeping. In a variety of positions.
Sometimes he falls out of his box while he's sleeping.
Sometimes he loses his dignity while sleeping.
Actually, he loses his dignity every time he sleeps.
Every once in awhile he'll wake up long enough to kill something. This time he killed a small rabbit. He was happily dragging it between his legs like a lion to his lair (the flower bed) when we found him.
The rabbit was promptly dissected in the name of science. The rabbit ate clover very previous to his death, by the way.
While Zia and Amber were gone Lincoln played in his pool a lot.
And Batman came to visit at least once.
And, uh, we saw this snake in the firepit. I think it was some kind of garter snake but I don't know.
OK, enough boring stuff. Zia and Amber had fun in Portland and Zia took 150 pictures. Mostly of flowers she saw. Here are some of my favorite pictures off her camera.
Back at home, here's Zia's rodeo outfit. We managed to avoid all rodeo activity this year but Zia did get to wear her get-up to see Rodney Atkins in concert. I know, I didn't know who he was either. Heh.
While Zia and Amber were gone I finished a small painting. I did it fast and eliminated a lot of the detail work I usually do. Instead I just did flat washes. Most people probably couldn't tell the difference I suppose. It kills me to do it that way but it's the difference between 10 hours and 40 hours.
Wow, I’m far behind.
Where to start, where to start.
We've made two trips to Billings in the last couple of weeks. The first was for Bobbie Jo's wedding. The wedding was in a beautiful little valley outside of Billings ("Baker's Battlefield" - turns out Baker didn't battle anyone - he incorrectly massacred a large group of Indians on this spot and now white folk return here to do the chicken dance at weddings). The bride and her father rode in on horses. The guests wore ballcaps and cowboy hats and talked about their yearlings.
Scott and his girlfriend Lisa visited us from Gig Harbor. We haven't seen Scott since we lived in Milwaukee (he went to medical school with Amber in Seattle) so it was nice to see him again. Zia went into full-on assault-the-visitor mode. We did some amateur rock climbing.
Amber's mom and I took the kids fishing. Fishing lasted about 5 minutes before the kids got bored, which is pretty much what we expected to happen. "Why haven't we caught any fish yet?" Zia wanted to know. "Because your line was in the tree for 10 minutes and has been in the water for 30 seconds," I explained. We didn't catch any fish.
The weather has been pretty awful around here, as usual. Amber was a lifeguard at the pool growing up and remembers not being able to open up the pool during the month of June at least one year. It looks like this year is like that. For every nice day we have, there are two cold, rainy days. At least it is killing the grasshoppers as fast as they hatch but with the thunderstorms coming over every day sometimes it's hard to do anything outside. I think we're going to get a stretch of 3 or 4 nice days this week but you never know.
Watching this storm come in was like watching the end of the world come. It didn't end up being as bad as it looked though.
We've been up the mountain twice lately so that I could cut firewood. The weather looked bad for the first trip but we went anyway (it's getting to that). We watched the temperature fall to 32 and the rain turned to snow. It snowed on us the whole time but we cut a load of wood. The kids wouldn't hardly get out of the truck. They climbed around and ate a bag of Cheetos while weren't looking. Zia took the first picture. She takes more pictures than I do now. I have to constantly clear out her camera there are so many pictures.
Here is a Boomer picture for Leah. Boomer is all cuddled up with his blanket (a bandanna) and a stuffed animal.
This is what it looks like when I stand inbetween the kids and the TV. Lincoln is wearing his lab googles.
There have been a lot of turtles around lately. Someone told me its because they are looking for a place to lay their eggs and the river is too high this year. Some turtles get captured for pets.
Lincoln and Zia at the park. Zia is very proud that she can finally do the monkey bars.
This weekend we took the 4-wheeler to Amber's uncle's ranch, borrowed two of his 4-wheelers and took the kids on a little trail ride (Amber's uncle was injured by a bull 2 weeks ago - our second trip to Billings was to visit him). While a tornado destroyed an arena in Billings we rode around under storm clouds. The thunder was booming off the mountains but it didn't rain much.
Look how safe the kids are being! They're wearing their bicycle helmets! Heh.
There are a couple of old homesteads and other junk out there.
A moth Zia and Lincoln found.
When we got home we found that we had missed a hail storm that had destroyed half of Amber's flower beds. Even hours later there were drifts of melting hail stones.
And finally, another Zia picture. We drove to Gillette to visit Dennis and Davette's new baby, Elam! The Boston Terrorists were excited to see everyone.
Oh, wait. Here's one more Zia picture. One of those great ones that you haven't seen until it uploads to the computer and surprises you.
Seatthole
We spent 4 days in Seattle this last week. We have more friends in and around Seattle than we do in probably the rest of the states combined. I don't know if that's great or sad, but at least we have friends somewhere. Amber's friends, the Jelacics, graciously let us stay at their house while we were in the city.
We were able to visit most of the places we enjoyed while we lived there and spent plenty of time driving from point A to point B in the process. Amber and I both decided that we do miss Seattle but we're glad we don't live there anymore. Too many people, too many cars. We don't have an iphone either so fitting in is impossible!
We had breakfast with Robert and visited his studio in Ballard. The kids were awful. In the second picture you can see Amber pinning Lincoln down and Zia sobbing in the hallway because she couldn't spell "Washington." Sigh.
We went to the Ballard Locks because "they were close." The kids were unimpressed with the hydraulics but very interested in the gift store (which was one of the themes of the trip, I guess). This is the small lock empty and being cleaned.
We met up with Will, Leah and Django at Dick's even though Django and Leah don't even eat hamburgers (how did we end up with so many friends that don't eat hamburgers or donuts? Heh.). Django's van made a good place to eat lunch.
We drove over to Carkeek Park, one of our favorite parks in Seattle, where we destroyed ecosystems on the beach.
There's ALWAYS a molester van at the beach.
We also hiked around a did a couple of letterboxes. Our letterboxing total for the trip was 10 finds and 2 boxes MIA, which is pretty spectacular considering at least one child was breaking down at any given time.
All the magnolia and cherry trees were blooming in Seattle. Very pretty. At least it is spring somewhere.
Ate some Thai food at Krittika's.
Bought some shit at Archie McPhee's.
We went to the zoo with Lela and Kate, who are close to Zia and Lincoln's age. The kids always wanted to know what was "next," but somehow were never interested in the current animal.
Lela and Zia. Zia was very interested in all the grafitti and quickly learned the differences between tags, throw-ups and pieces. After I took this picture she wanted to know if she could be arrested for taking a picture by the grafitti.
An abandoned tennis court in the middle of the city.
Having a snack.
Throwing rocks into Lake Washington with Kate.
And that's about it. Now that we're home the cat is in great need of love and there's a million other things to catch up on. So I better end there.
