Little Lightning Party

Bugs cousin turned six this month.
I was trying to come up with a cute nickname to refer to him by.

He loves the Disney movie Cars so I am going to refer to him as Little Lightning, in honor of the main character Lightning McQueen.

The theme for the party was of course "Cars".

I haven't mentioned this before, but Bug is obsessed with wanting a Mohawk.

So for the party I gave him a Fohawk.

He loved it.

He thought he was the coolest.

I think he looks pretty cute.

There was water sliding, bubble blowing and trampoline jumping.

Along with the fun pinata pummel.

I only wish I had gotten a picture of the snake that showed up under the pinata.

That created lots of screeching, running and near crying from the adults.

Just kidding, well kind of, my mother in law hates snakes and was sooo happy that she was on the deck and not in the grass when he slithered through.

A fun time was had by all, I'm so jealous that Bug doesn't have a Summer Birthday.

I can't bring myself to cram that many kids into my house during the Winter!

Sorry I've been MIA

I am having a hard time living and blogging about it.
We had a long weekend last weekend and went "camping".
It was fun, but it's funny to call it camping when we drive up to a place in our RV and there are a hundred times more people around us than when we are at home.
I guess I should refer to it as RVing instead.
My dad did something a bit more exciting this weekend, he took a paragliding lesson.
How awesome is that? My dad, knocking on 60 and running down a sand dune with a parachute.
He also started taking electric guitar lessons, Bug is so impressed and a bit jealous.
My stepson is visiting from across the country.
He will be here two more weeks and so far has had a good time.
It's different having a teenager in the house.
As far as teenagers go, he is a really good kid.
I can actually sit and have a reasonable conversation with him about life.
It makes me just slightly less afraid of Bug becoming one.
So all of this makes for a busy time at my house. I'm going to try to edit some of the hundreds of photos I have taken the past couple of weeks.
No promises though, I might be posting Summer pictures in December.

Parade

I haven't been motivated to blog latley. I think it has to do with the weather. I have so many other things to do when the weather is so nice. I'll get back to it better when the weather turns cold again. Hopefully that will be a while.

Last week our little town had their annual Summer parade. The week is filled with rodeo, lumber jack competitions, fireworks and the parade.

Every year Bugs preschool/daycare center has a float and every year I ask him if he wants to ride the float or sit and watch the parade. Every year he decides to sit and watch instead of riding.

A couple weeks ago, while I was picking him up from daycare, he pointed to the float they were working on and said " Mom, that's the float I'm going to ride on in the parade"

So that's what he did. The theme of the parade this year was "Green and growing".

So there were lots of flowers, the kids wore green shirts and white hats so they looked like flowers. Except Bugs best friend, he didn't want his spiky hairdo messed up.

Notice Bug with looking bored, they were waiting in line for the parade to start. I was worried that he wasn't going to like it.

Husband and I went down to main street to find a good place to watch the parade.

Here he is as they passed by us... see him, the one in the middle, the only one waving.

Nope, he's not having any fun at all.

Vacation Part 3 ~ Horses and houses

Yes, I really know how to drag out a topic. This is my third and final post about our trip to my moms house. My mom has had horses for many years.

From the moment we arrived, Bug was completely enamored with the three horses and one spotted mule in the field. He wanted to be in there, with them, touching them. That is, he wanted that, as long as mommy was holding him or at least his hand!

They can be pretty intimidating to a small child. Especially Junior, who's back is almost as tall as I am and whose big head dwarfs ours in comparison. The weather was touchy the first couple of days we were there, so we didn't get to ride. Finally the weather warmed up and mom saddled up Junior so Bug could ride him around.

I was worried that he would be scared, two years ago he didn't last long riding with me in the field.

This time was totally different. Bug loved it and would still be up there today if I let him. At first we led him around by himself.

Then I got up and we rode around, but Bug insisted that he could ride by himself. So I got off and led him around, later he told his dad "I rode all by myself"

The property that my mom lives on is gorgeous, there are beautiful flowers, running water, and huge grassy fields. The house however, leaves something to be desired. It's very old and the plan has always been to build a new house on the property.

It's been a long arduous process of getting the correct permits.

But you can now see some progress on the new house.

With a big front porch that has views of the mountains. There will be huge picture windows and vaulted ceilings, but there is still a long ways to go. In the meantime some robins took up residence on the new porch. Can you see the baby birds poking out of the nest?

I wish I had gotten a picture of my old cat while I was there. He was pretty senile but was very loving and Bug doted on him while we were there. We figure he was about 16 or 17 and he died this last week. It was nice to see him one last time.

So that ends our trip to grandmas house, a nice time was had by all.

Broken

I hope everyone had a nice long 4th of July weekend. Mine started with a bit of excitement. Months ago my husband entered a big car race. The people who put on the show Pinks were coming to a race track near us and my husband couldn't resist entering for a chance to win ten thousand dollars. They were doing something different, called Arm drop racing. He was really excited but I was feeling a bit of dread about the whole thing. I hadn't been dreading it up until this last week, I couldn't pin point why I felt this way, I just did. So Thursday evening we had the motor home with the race car behind and headed out. As we headed down the hill into town the motor home died suddenly. Not good when you are towing a car and have no power breaks or steering going down hill.
Luckily husband got it to a stop and we sat trying to get it started again. He called someone and they came down to take a look. There was a switch under the dash that was not getting power to it and so they hot wired around the switch and got it started. We went on our way, realizing we would have to deal with it on Monday. As we entered the freeway it started to sputter and died again. Husband tried changing the wires around which created a burnt wire and smoke billowing out from under the dash. Great, here we are, my husband, me, Bug and our two dogs in the RV on a busy holiday weekend. Stranded along a very active interstate. Bug didn't understand why I wouldn't let him out of his car seat. I was so afraid someone could run into us and he would fly through the windshield. Husband went under the motor home as semi's rushed passed. Realizing we weren't going to get it started again. Husband unhooked the car and trailer and called his brother who was already at the track and our friend who is part owner of the race car. His brother came down from the track and the friend came from our town. I smashed all of our things into garbage bags and pillow cases. We only had one cooler so I tried to fit all of the perishables into it from the fridge. We called a repair place and they said we could leave it there over the weekend but they would be closing the gates at 8pm and we had to get it there before then. It was 7:30 when is brother showed up, hooked onto the motor home with his truck and towed it to the next exit and the repair place. In the meantime the friend hooked up to the race car and met us at the repair place. Then they had to switch the trucks and car trailer.
As I was getting Bugs car seat into the truck a bee stung Bug on the finger.
Husband and brother in law went to the track and our friends took me, Bug, our food, clothes and dogs back home. Bug and I went up to the track Friday morning and watched husband race, it turned out to be a fun weekend. Unfortunately husband didn't win the ten grand but the car ran well and he did a good job driving. We still don't know the cost of our weekend, but we got our stimulation (yes I know its called stimulus) check just in time to stimulate the tow company and the RV repair place. Don't forget the oil companies, they got a lot of stimulation out of us too. Sigh.

Tucker ~ The crazy dog

Tucker is one of my moms dogs. He's either a Kelpie or a red healer mix.

Her partner Mark picked him up from a local shelter last year.

They estimated his age at the time to be around nine months old. He was scared but seemed happy when Mark put him in his truck. As soon as they pulled into the driveway Tucker jumped out of the pickup window and ran into the fields near their house.

They called him, they tried to bribe him, but nothing worked.

He lurked in the tall grass, hiding but never coming very close.

Mom would leave food out on the porch and he would sneak onto the porch in the middle of the night to eat, then retreat to the field during the day.

After months of work, he will now go for walks with my mom. Let her pet him and put his leash on. But he still will not come into the house when Mark is there, and once drug Marks pillow out into the yard! He's like a wild animal, only letting my mom touch him and barking at everyone else who looks him in the eye. Right after we arrived Bug was playing with Tucker, Bug would run and Tuck would chase and bark. He wasn't being mean, just barking. We were all outside, mom and I walking around one side of the house and Tucker and Bug on the other. All of a sudden Tuck came up from behind me, nudging my hand with his nose a couple times. I looked down and then I heard Bug crying from the other side of the house. I ran around to see what was wrong, he was cowering behind my mom's bicycle crying. It seems Tucker scared him when he started barking a little to loudly. The dog didn't touch me or let me touch him again while I was there. He had only touched my hand to tell me something was wrong with Bug. After a day Bug got the courage to tell him "No Tucker, No bark" and as soon as he did Tuck would back off and go the other way. This poor dog, someone really treated him badly. He is so smart, but so messed up.

He would get so excited on our walks, trying to play with the other dogs but just blasting them over. My mom would have to scold him.

He is a pain in the butt, but what is she to do? No one else would have this poor crazy dog, she's afraid they would put him to sleep. She has a lot of work ahead to help this one, undoing what some jackass did.