Crater Lake

Crater Lake was amazing. It is the clearest lake in the world. You can see 142 feet down into the lake!  That is amazing!  The lake was so blue. 

But see that nice wall the kids are sitting on. Well that wall was only 50feet long. The circumference of the lake is 26 miles!!!  Needless to say I was a wreck watching Lauren, Lucas, Abby, Sam and Ammon run around a small grouping of tree to see the next CLIFF!  After about 20 minutes I called off the adventure. We got back in the car and drove home. Even though it was as a 2 hour drive each way and we didn't hear a ranger talk it was worth the trip to see the breathtaking crater. 

Happy 4th

We are having a fun picnic with the Dyers, McPhies, Hepworths. There were so many girls!!!  This time Amber Dyer thought about Sam wanting some boys to play with, so she invites the Hepworths because they have 2 boys Sam's age and a girl Chloë's age. 

Happy 4th!!!  

After our picnic we went to the San Jose Giant's game.  Nothing better than fresh cotton candy!

Well except the churros. Fresh hot churros! Oh yum! Fiona is holding a yummy churro! 

Fiona's uncle, Matt, works the scoreboard for the baseball game. He let us come into the box. It was so cool. Lauren and Chloë and Fiona pushed different buttons to change the videos on the BIG screen!

Too much summer

As of yesterday at 10am the kids had enough summer free play!!!  This time when I said go climb a tree they rebelled. Can you believe that? ;). They wanted computer time, movies, kindle access and iPhone games. Yesterday was painful. After way too much screen time and 3 Popsicles each and some homemade ice cream. (At scouts last week Sam learned how to make individual portions of vanilla ice cream In a ziplock bag.)  At one point I banished Sam outside. He sat in the hammock for "over an hour", he said.  

Well, today I wasn't going to make that mistake again.  I told the kids they could watch one show in the afternoon after cleaning, math and reading. When the time finally came they couldn't agree on what to watch. So after bickering and crying I informed them if they couldn't agree on what to watch they wouldn't watch anything.  Sure enough they couldn't agree so I sent everyone to their rooms to read. Lauren had to go rest on my bed. Well, 30 minutes later look what I found. 

She slept here for about 2 hours. It was a great nap. I am so happy to have my happy Lauren back. 

Tonight for dinner one of Daniel's partners came to dinner. He is a very nice man. Lauren, now well rested, talked his ear off over dinner. The amazing thing is she has very relevant things to say.  It was a nice visit.