Flag Day

Colin and Tristan are still cub scouts but they we're able to participate in this years Flag Day flag burning ceremony with the Boy Scouts. Flags that have been turned in as damaged or faded through the year are burned on this day in a ceremony including veterans and boy scouts. It was a very nice ceremony which the boys enjoyed being a part of.

The veterans and scouts march in.


Some words are spoken and a trumpet played.


The boys take turns adding flags to the fire.


The ceremony ends when all the damaged and worn flags have been burned.

Tristan was a little worried since the heat of the fire was so hot but he still helped place several flags into the fire. Both boys were in awe of the process and enjoyed the ceremony.

Rainy days and ferrets

We had a rainy week although it's supposed to clear for the weekend. The big event at our house today was that Tristan had his first shower with his waterproof cast on. The verdict is that the cast really does dry in an hour, cool! Tristan is feeling better every day and healing well as far as we can tell. He said that his arm rarely hurts now.


Seems like when we get rainy days the kids often play with the pets a lot. Lately the ferrets have been getting a lot of extra attention. Below Freeze visits with one of the ferrets.



Over time we have changed the ferrets double cage to a system where both sides match. It's much easier to clean than the old system with two different sized cages, ferret trail tubes still run across the top and connect the two cages. It's still quite large, if you plan to keep ferrets you need to allow a large space, even the single sized cages, good for 1-3 ferrets are very big.


This "ferret decor" is not the prettiest living room furniture but there will be plenty of time for furniture that doesn't house furry, fuzzy, scaly, finned... etc friends when the kids are grown.

A cast for Tristan

Tristan got hurt on the playground at cub scouts camping. He fell from a climbing structure but went right back to playing within minutes so I didn't worry too much at first. He later explained this to the doctor just this way "I fell and my arm hurt but I didn't want to be bored so I decided I might as well play the things I could still play with my other arm". The doctor laughed.

Getting from diagnosis to casting was a super long process though. First stop primary care physicians office- leave house just after 10:00AM for 10:45 appointment. Wait in waiting room for 30 minutes. Wait in exam room for 15 minutes. Doctor looks at Tristan and feels his wrist is at least sprained and we'd better get an x-ray. Doctor sends us on another 20 minutes drive to imaging center for x-rays. wait 1 HOUR, yes ONE HOUR in the waiting room at imaging center. Tristan polled others in the waiting room and found that everyone was told the wait would be 15 minutes and each and every person waited close to or over an hour to be seen! It was awful, we played 10,000 rounds of I Spy until we ran out of things to spy in the small waiting room. Finally have x-rays. Back to waiting room to wait for the doctor to read the x-rays. About 20 minutes pass and they set up a conference call with primary doc. Yes it's broken. Now we are going to try to get you into the orthopaedic doctors, so stay in town and keep in touch by phone...(yes you can go get something to eat) BTW it is 2:00 PM right when those words are said. Get food, go to get gas, hear from doctor that we need to head right to the orthopaedic office as they got us in for 15 minutes from now. Go to orthopaedic doc. Fill out patient forms and wait 15 minutes, in to see bone doctor. He checks x-rays sent from imaging center feels Tristan's arm (and gets a big OUCH as he got the exact spot, doctor said yep, on to the cast room. He quickly suggests a swim cast with the lining made of Gore-Tex material since it's summer and Tristan likes to swim. Insurance won't cover it but it's only $35 more and so much better as the kids can rinse out under there. Wait in cast room for about 30 minutes as a girl about the same age as Tristan is getting her cast done. Our turn, Tristan chose BLACK for his cast but the cast doctor talked him into his second choice of blue saying black is so hot in the summer. Cast on, made followup appointment for 1 month. It's now 5:00. Head across the street where our eye doctor happens to be located and cancelled Tristan's eye doctor appointment for the following morning! To stores to get a Wii game Tristan has been wanting as he will probably still be able to use the wii-mote even though it's his right hand. Need something for the first few days to get him past the initial healing period. Home about 6:30, Trevor says Grammy (my Mom) has called a MILLION times so you better call her back. It's my birthday and she was calling with birthday wishes. Tell her about Tristan. Get pets, kids everyone fed and situated and can finally sit down about 8:00PM.

What a day!

Cub Scouts Cross Over, Camping and Cute Puppies

Saturday we were on our way to the cub scouts cross over and camping event. On the way we saw a large yard sale and stopped. Well it was also a fundraiser for Puppy Angels and I fell in love with this tan dog named Curt. We have decided that if another young pup comes our way we will be willing to get a playful companion for Freeze. Our other two dogs are both 10 years old and rarely will play with Freeze. I would love to have gotten this rescue dog but they were asking $330. The group sounds like it does great work rescuing both local dogs and also island dogs from Puerto Rico (very sad state of affairs for animals there). Unfortunately these days we have the space and the love needed but not the money so this was not the pup for us. I was very sad to leave it behind though. It was the most interesting and quirky dog I'd met in awhile!


The kids loved all the puppies! These pups had just arrived from Puerto Rico a week ago.

So cute.

After we dragged ourselves away from the puppies we headed to the park where cub scouts cross over and camping was to be held. Hardly anyone was there and those of us that were didn't know where to pitch the tents so we let the kids play on the playground.

Finally an hour later some leadership arrived and we could start pitching tents.

Hayley stayed for cross over but didn't camp.

Below Tristan and I in front of Tristan's tent.

Colin sets up his tent and then relaxes before the events begin.

As part of crossover, which means "graduating"from one level to another in cub scouting, the Webelos had to prove their bravery by drinking snake venom or buffalo blood (really just kool-aid juice drink without enough sugar added I think!).

Colin and Tristan were hesitant but drank down their snake venom like the brave young men they are!

In less than a year now Colin and Tristan will be Boy Scouts no

longer cub scouts!

We made supper at the campground and then the kids played Frisbee and roasted marshmallows.

When it started to get dark the boys said goodbye to any parents and siblings not camping and then the night time games began. The boys played flashlight tags and had some mild fireworks to set off. Mostly they all just ran around with their flashlights making a lot of noise until lights out at 10:00!

Lights out didn't mean sleep though. There were kids who couldn't sleep talking, wildlife making all sorts of noises and worst of all someone in a neighboring street having a very loud party! I dozed maybe twice but got no real sleep. At 4:30 a rooster started crowing somewhere in the not far distance and everyone was up very early. All the kids were back on the playground by 5:30 am!

Later we had breakfast, kids played some more and eventually people started packing up. Somewhere towards the end Tristan fell from a climb across rings type structure in the playground and we later found out that he had broken his wrist but that is another post.

How did I get here? Or Chipmunk in a bag.

As soon as we got home from cub scout camping, which will get it's own post when I've recovered, we found there was a chipmunk loose...in the house! Unfortunately Flower the cat has been bringing them and holds them so gingerly that the chipmunks are still quite alive and well when he brings them in the house. Two were caught fairly easily over the past couple weeks and released. This one though was in a very bad spot under the turtle tank. The stand it's on just can't be moved it's so heavy. We spent half an hour trying to catch the thing and then just plain got lucky...the chipmunk jumped right into the turtle tank! It started swimming!!!!! We caught it right in a bag actually it pretty much jumped out of the water and into the bag (which held Tristan's meds for his sprained wrist). I was thinking we'd never catch it and a cat or dog would kill it. Well thankfully it all worked out in a funny way and we released little Chipmunk outdoors. He or she promptly climbed a tree and started trying to get the wet off!

Chipmunk to go!


Off you go now....


So cute.

Dog-gone dogs!

The dogs had a fairly naughty day today, well probably I should blame the children. They have gotten complacent about leaving the house without dogs slipping by on out the door too. So we had dogs on the loose and the following occured:

1. Freeze jumped in our man made pond and disturbed the poor frogs residing there.

2. Poppy was almost hit by a car, she was in fact bumped by it.

3. Bonkers cornered a young porcupine in the woods.

BTW this was all within about 15 minutes this morning. After Freeze was dried off, Poppy checked over for injury and the poor porcupine rescued from Bonkers I had to give the kids a serious talk about their letting the dogs escape. There is not a lot of traffic on our rural road that is true, you can go the better part of a day without a car coming by but when they do they tend to be speeding. There is a leash law in this state and dogs aren't meant to be running loose. Also our dogs just aren't well trained for being loose outdoors. We have a very large fenced back yard for them to play in, they get walked on leash regularly and are let off for a swim in the lake when nobody else is there. They really don't need to be running loose except for when swimming or in a dog friendly park. I think the incidents today helped the kids realize they need to be more careful.

Here is the frightened young porcupine trying to hide under a rock.


Colin was in charge of keeping the dogs away from the porcupine until we caught them and got them leashed up to bring back to the house. He happened to be playing outdoors with a squirt bottle when the incident began so he sat near the porcupine and sprayed the dogs if they went near the rock.



We took the dogs home, this was about 5 minutes walk into the woods. Then waited an hour before going back to make sure the porcupine had moved on.We weren't sure if it was still young enough that the mother was caring for it or if it was on it's own. I figured quiet was needed either way for it to get it's courage back to leave or the mother to find and help it. By the time we checked back the porcupine had indeed moved on so that was good.

Later in the day the kids played in the tents and also played a round of badminton.


I "practiced camping" since the cub scout camping event is coming right up and I do have to stay with the boys. Yes it was daytime, 80 degrees and close enough to the house to get a good internet signal but one has to start slowly with these tricky situations such as camping.


I have now slept in a tent for one hour on a cold night and stayed in one for three hours on a warm day. I think it's just the discomfort of the hard ground and the potential cold night temperatures which are what I dislike about camping. Well I haven't fully camped yet so I shouldn't say I dislike it but dislike the thought of it.

I read this book for ambiance while practice camping.

Bridge to Cadette

Girl Scouts have a ceremony when they change levels called Bridging. Today Hayley bridged from Junior Girl Scouts to Cadette Girl Scouts. I got no good pictures of the ceremony due to the fact that I had Hayley's camera set to "food" (who knew there was a food setting on cameras!). I did get Hayley to pose outdoors though. She also earned her Bronze award which is the highest award a Junior can earn.

The ceremony was quite long since there were several area troops and age levels bridging. Girls all the way from age 5-18 can participate in scouts and a couple older girls did bridge to adult today. It was interesting to watch. Hayley didn't attend a Bridging ceremony when she finished Brownies since the leader of that troop chose not to participate in the council wide events but preferred to just have it more as a fun homeschooled girls group. So today's ceremony was a first for us.

Hayley was a Brownie for 3 years, 2 in a troop and one one her own as a "Juliette" when her troop ended. Then we found a new homeschool troop for the Junior level. Hayley has been a Junior for 2 years. Now she will move to Cadette with most of the same girls she's been with for the past two years.

Here are a couple of pictures of Hayley from when she was a Brownie Scout.

making cookies at a meeting-

making bread at the leaders house for a meeting-

It's fun to see how much she has changed.

I'm proud of you Hayley for earning the Bronze award and working hard to earn badges in scouts for the past 5 years!

Camping time

Let me preface this with the thought that: I do not like camping!

Now that I've gotten that thought out of the way I can say that my cub scouts are getting older and they need to do things like camp.... outdoors.... all night, in tents. Yet since they are still cub scouts, not yet boy scouts, that means that a parent must camp with them (with the exception of the fully staffed summer camp). They have some camping opportunities coming up so we have been practicing. Colin and Tristan love all this, Bobby seems ok with it at times, (the older kids do not like it!) and I do NOT like it! I did sleep in a tent for over an hour last night though so that's progress. I suppose I really should work on this camping and cold dislike since I plan to visit Mt. Everest some day. It was insanely cold and windy so nobody slept outdoors all night. Here are some glimpses into our voyage into camping.... so far.

One thing a cub scout needs to learn is how to set up a tent by themselves. Colin and Tristan can both do this now, they learned quickly.


below Puffy, Hayley's hamster, eats some hamster food that Freeze spilled all over the yard.He had grabbed the bag of hamster food out of a shopping bag,he's so crazy.


These next two pictures are of Tristan and Hayley "camping" in a store tent display. LOL

Below, Freeze stole a bedroll and ran off with it, he is so naughty!

Next picture is a hamster in a ball checking out the tent.

Tristan and Colin rest in the bigger tent which we got at a yard sale.

We bought Tristan and Colin small individual tents too which they LOVE. The best $20 each we've spent in a long time.

Tent city,why on the front lawn? That's where they felt most comfortable to start with. They will camp more in the woods later.

Campfire which the boys made. I estimate that 2 dozen vegetarian hot dogs were dropped off sticks into the fire or burnt to a crisp. Cooking over a camp fire takes practice too, it seems!

Nighty night.

sweet dreams

It was far too cold the first night to sleep all night in the tents but they made it to about 10:00pm. The temps went down into the high 30's F!

The next day thought the boys went back to their tents bright and early and had breakfast out there. When it warmed up they brought their hamsters out too.

The tents are for sure the favorite activity here at the moment!