Butterfly

This is a Swallow Tail butterfly. It's actually a perfect one. Sometimes you see a tail or two missing. At first I was disappointed when I saw that until I did a little research on them. If you look carefully you will see some little blue dots by the tail. These are actually there to confuse the birds as they think they are the butterflies eyes. When they swoop down for a bite of butterfly they are actually attacking the tail and not the head. This does little harm to the butterfly. They really seem to like the Marigolds as I have seen them there several times. They are so beautiful I'd like to get more pictures, but they really don't like me and my camera hovering around them.

Watermelon Party

It's a

WATERMELON

PARTY!

We can turn any event into a party and how fun is that!

I made Rylie a watermelon sweater and hat. When I found watermelon plates, napkins, and towel I thought it would be fun to turn it into a party. I also brought a watermelon when I went over this morning. We tucked her new watermelon towel in her shirt and dug into the watermelon. I thought she might eat more, but I think she was so excited to have her "Peeps" there that she was a little distracted. It looks like she is loving it though.

 

Cara, Rylie and Carole - Julie is taking the picture.

Lake Padden Triathlon

Jodie is at it again. This time she was in the Lake Padden Triathlon. It was a competitive 1/2 mile swim - that's across the lake and back again, a 21 mile bike ride and a 5.2 mile run.

Here she is getting ready to enter the water for the swim portion of the triathlon. She's already giving us a thumbs up. She was ready for this.

READY - SET - GO!!!!

 Out of the water, wet suit off and ready to head out in her bike. She had a very quick transition which really helps with her overall time.

 Back from the bike ride, change shoes and hat and she is off for her 5.2 mile run around Lake Padden. That is 2 trips around the lake.

 

Coming in to the finish and still smiling!

 The timer shows 2:43. That time started as the first swimmer entered the water. Jodie's time from start to finish was actually 2:35. She was hoping to finish in under 2:30, so she came pretty close. She had a little trouble with her asthma on her last lap around the lake and that slowed her down a bit.

 One happy girl!

New TV

Why or why do they make TVs so difficult these days. Why can't we just take the old TV out and put the new one back in. Oh no, that would be way to easy.

STEP 1: Since son-in-law Jerad was here to help Ron remove the old, and very heavy TV, we had him help with the reconnect. Not so successful as we realized the connections did not match and we probably needed a new DVR box from Comcast. The new TV has High Def and the old box would not support that. So for the time being we bypassed the box and put the cable directly into the TV.

STEP 2: The next day I go and get the new box from Comcast. Now we'll just plug everything back in, right?. Well, no. The new plugs are different. After many tries and a few calls to Comcast, note the phone beside Ron, we still did not have the connections right. Of course the directions are not real helpful, We need to connect 4 devices together and the directions only show how to connect 3. Mind you, we have 3 sets of directions all of which are a little different from each other. Oh, my!

STEP 3: Call son-in-law Will who is off on Fridays and can answer our 911 call. He comes over and finds we basically have things connected correctly, but we still are not getting a picture. Lucky for us he has the same make TV and just happens to know that we needed to go to the menu then to input and then switch to component. How would he even know that? Surprise we now have a picture, but we still aren't finished. Turns out we are trying to mix old and new technology and that just doesn't work. Now we need to get a new DVD player so it will have the correct connections, HDMI I believe, on the back so we can connect it to the TV.

STEP 4: Will and Ron are putting everything back in place. Well, at least for now. We need to go shopping for a DVD player and then we'll start this whole process again.What has happened to the days of plugging the TV in the wall and WALKING up and turning it on. I must be getting old.

Father's Day

Ron and his girls, Jennifer and Amber

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Survivor Mud Run

 June 18th was the Survivor Mud Run at Remlinger Farms in Carnation. Even the  name sounds cold, wet and hard. It's a 5 K obstacle course in the mud. Sounds like fun right? OK, this is not something I would do, but Jennie and her  friends did. They started out with such enthusiasm and looking so cute...

and ended up a muddy mess. I don't see as much enthusiasm now either. The course was quite hard and very muddy. At one point Jennie and Nicole got stuck in the mud up to their knees and couldn't move. Someone had to come and pull them out. Since this was an obstacle course they were crawling under ropes, over walls, through culverts and tires, climbing up cargo nets and over mounds. Ah, did I mention this was all in the MUD! When Jennie got home she took a nice long, hot shower. It took a lot of scrubbing to get the mud off. She was still getting it out of her finger and toe nails the next day. The girls are now much smarter and wiser and probably won't do this again. Girls and mud just don't go together.

Cowlitz - June

  

We spent a week at the river. It's a time to relax and have fun, but there are also jobs that need to be done now that we are owners. Ron and Skeet are fixing the Neeley's fountain. 

 

Notice who is mowing the lawn and who is sitting and watching. Ron wanted to cover all the grass with gravel, but said he'd keep the grass as long as he ddn't have to mow it. He knew we wouldn't be able to keep it mowed since we live 3 hours away. Skeet and Jan said they would help with the mowing and so did Keith and Sheral. So far so good. Since we were down for a week I mowed the grass twice while we were there.

 Keith and Sheral had not made Bun deJours before, so this was the week. They had a great time and thought they were delicious! Look at how perfectly brown Keith got his.

 

 In the campground there is a tree with wisteria growing up through it. Look at how twisted the trunk has become. It's a little hard to see, but look for the  wisteria way at the top of the tree. It really is beautiful.

 These cones are on Sheral's favorite tree that we pass as we go for our morning walk. This tree is beautiful just about any time of the year.

 The Spring flowers are in bloom in the campground flower beds. The Iris and Lily were just calling me to take their pictures

We have lots of doves in the park. Well, we think we have lots of doves. We hear them all the time, but they are usually hiding in the trees. For some reason this week they were out and about and we got a chance to see them. Then again this could be a pigeon.  We looked in the bird book and the two are in the same family and look a lot alike. I guess I always thought that doves were light gray and pigeons were darker with darker heads.

Here's another critter that I need to look up. We saw several of these skins around, but no live bugs. It's like they just jumped out of their skins and crawl away. I'll let you know if I find out more about this guy.

 And here is the best part. Skeet and Jan brought Molly and Sam, their grand kids, for the weekend. They are so cute and we had a great time playing together.

Lizzy's Birthday

Lizzy is Amber and Jerad's God Daughter. She is turning 4 and had a very fun birthday party. She loves Fancy Nancy, so I made her this hat in pinks and purples that Nancy, and Lizzy, like.

 

Airplanes

 This was a weekend for airplanes. It started off with this plane flying very low over our house. It was quite loud, and we could hear it coming, so I'd run outside with my camera. We weren't sure what it was, or why it kept flying by, but it sure was fun to see. Later we learned that there was a Warbird Show at the airport, so figured this plane had to be coming from there. We also learned that it is a PBY-5A Catalina Flying Boat, which is a historic Warbird. As I researched it online I found that a few years ago the Whidbey Navel Air Station brought one back to the base to restore. Since this one had the same numbers as the one in the Whidbey pictures we are pretty sure this is the one based there. These planes flew sometime around 1943-1957.

This same weekend we went to Ferndale to see the remote control Warbird Airshow. One of Ron's friends from the Lions flies planes with this group and he was telling Ron about the show. What an amazing sight it was. These planes are quite large and when they are in the sky it's hard to tell them from the real planes.

Most of the planes even have pilots. Some have Teddy Bears and that's pretty cute!

I love this picture. Can you see the people in the plane? It could be a test. Is this a real plane or a remote? Looks real, but it's remote. I told you they were amazing!

Getting ready for take off.

Some of the planes even leave vapor trails. Well, not really vapor, but a smoke of some kind for these little guys.

When they take off they go up fast. It's also quite impressive the tricks they can do with them - stalls and rolls. On some of the planes the landing gear even retracts once the plane is in the air. It's all very realistic. Oh, and the price. You might be interested in knowing that the planes can range in price from a couple hundred dollars to ten thousand.

To add even more excitement to this event some of the real planes from the Bellingham Airport show did a fly by at the remote show. There were 3 Bi Planes and a Piper Cub. Here are a few pictures of the real planes.

 The Piper Cub gave the spectators a special treat by coming in for a touch and go on their small remote plane runway.

 Bi Plane

 Piper Cub

 Here's one of the Bi Planes coming in for a fly by while the other 2 wait in the background.

Close enough for a Good Bye wave to the  crowd. What a fun event.