Another Dam Update

On Saturday, we worked outside in the garden, pulling weeds, etc. The garden is not something worthy of pictures. Let's just say we mowed about 2/3 of it because the weeds were the only thing that grew. We did manage to uncover 4 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, 3 broccoli plants and 3 small rows of zinnias and marigolds. The girls attempted to swim and play on the slip n' slide, but they were soon freezing.

After all that hard work, we drove through McDonald's and traveled to Lake Red Rock. The girls insisted on checking out the flood status over there. There is still a lot of water. The walkway to look closely at the spillway was closed. The pavement was buckled and there was a lot of debris along the way. We were able to stand near the rocks where there were lots of splashing waves.

We stood near this man for awhile. I think he was having a GOOD day! He gave 15 to 20 fish to a family who was fishing near him while we were there. He told them he had 150 fish in his truck and had given away over 100 fish so far that day. As we watched from a distance, he continued catching more fish.
This guy walked up to him and they were talking for awhile. And sharing fish.
It was very windy today and mostly cloudy. The clouds moved on in time for the beginnings of a beautiful sunset. It was even more beautiful on our way home, but I didn't get any pictures (our camera batteries died before that).
The girls LOVED getting splashed! Big Sis DID NOT want to go home. It wasn't pretty. Lil Sis happily skipped to the car, while Cool Daddy-O carried a kicking and screaming Big Sis. Big Sis doesn't act this way very often. She's begging to go back tomorrow. We just might do that.

Our Cherry Tree

The girls have been helping pick cherries this week. In the 11 years we've lived here, we've only kept the cherries one year. We let our neighbor pick them ....we usually end up with some pie out of the deal. That's enough for us.

Big Sis helped yesterday for the third time this year. She really enjoyed climbing the ladder. And talking. Our neighbor said she was quite entertaining.

Little Sis spent her time outside whining about why she couldn't climb the ladder and other little stuff. She decided to come inside and resume playing with Legos.

We went out for pizza last night. Mmmm! We've finally found a pizza place we LOVE! Have I mentioned we've lived here a long time?

Pay It Forward Friday!

An Iowa Mom is hosting Pay It Forward Friday. It's where I link to one of my favorite blogs, and so on. Go, check out the link and learn more :)


Title Of Blog I Would Like To Feature Is: A Lazy Organizer

URL To That Blog: http://laragallagher.com/blog

I Like This Blog Because: She gives great organizing tips, yet she's human and is sometimes disorganized. She's funny and has great ideas. She also has a newborn.

Here Is A Post I Enjoyed: Oh, they're all good...just check out her side bar entitled "paper trail" to check out past posts.

FOR MORE PAY IT FORWARD FRIDAY'S, VISIT AN IOWA MOM.

Go check out the Lazy Organizer. Then go read An Iowa Mom and create your own link to your post on your blog.

This is my first week doing this....I plan to make it a habit. Join me, if you will.

Some people wonder why there's a bucket in my trunk...

I only have one interesting tale from the past couple days. Today, after story time at the library, we went to Wal-Mart and our favorite grocery store. As we opened the trunk to get out our re-usable grocery bags, I remembered that the car was sitting outside in the rain today. I grabbed the bucket that resides in the trunk, and held it under the left tail light to collect the rain water that would otherwise drip in the trunk. The girls were laughing about the car peeing.

A retired gentleman walked up to his truck parked near by and appeared curious about our activities. I told him we had a problem and the repair would cost $300, so we just decided to carry the bucket with us. He agreed that the bucket was a much more economical solution. He then added that it's a good conversation starter. He laughed and said he could tell others, "Hey, I saw a lady milking her car today!" So, yeah, I'm the lady that milks my car.

Don't Look Now, but I Think We're Being Followed

We had a very interesting day. Cool Daddy-O and I participated in a geocaching event with several other participants. We arrived at our favorite coffee house and listened to the rules of the day. The first part of the event was not unlike The Amazing Race. We were given a piece of paper with the name of a local business with a question to ask when we arrived.

Before we started our journey, I ordered a cup of java to go. As I was waiting, the organizer of the event came up to me (Cool Daddy-O was sitting outside waiting on me) and asked if I minded being on TV. He then asked if our local TV station reporter could accompany us on our adventure. Before I knew it, I was wearing a microphone and telling Cool Daddy-O what was happening.

Our first clue took us to the library where we posed the question, "Where are your bookworms?". We had to sign in that we were there and then we received our next clue. Each of the ten clues we collected contained parts of the coordinates that were needed to find the hidden caches at one of the county recreation areas.

At the carpet store, we asked where the shag was. At a jewelry store, we asked for a green jewel. At a grocery store, we asked if they had sardine ice cream (it was on back order). At a local cosmetic store, we asked if they painted frogs. We looked for elbow grease at the hardware store. We learned that the local shoe store doesn't carry size 24 ballet slippers.

Yes, all of this was videotaped. In a small to medium sized Iowa town on a Saturday morning. The customers in each of these businesses gave us very odd stares when we walked in with a camera man in tow. They were also quick to get out of the way so they wouldn't be filmed.

We didn't even try to explain what was going on. First of all, so few people know what geocaching is and secondly, not everyone knows about our local TV station. Hopefully, they'll all learn a bit more after the show airs later this summer. For those of you who are curious about this, just leave a comment and I'll let you know when the show will be on. It may also be available to watch on the station's website.

Once we had our coordinates collected, we fought a tremendous number of bugs to find the five hidden caches along the hiking trails. I only fell once...I was tripped by some weeds that "grabbed both my feet" and I went down on all fours. I thought I was unscathed as my hands and knees were fine. When I arrived home, I discovered that the 2 spots on my legs that felt hard and swollen (I though they were bug bites) were actually giant bruises. Apparently, I was attacked by some branches during my fall. I've always bruised very easily...so it looks a lot worse than it feels.

We also met some new people and got to see what some of central Iowa's geocaching celebrities look like. There are some people who view this hobby as an addiction of sorts and some are quite competitive. So far, we're just in the hobby for the fun and exercise. I think we're going to continue to meet some pretty cool people too.

This weekend we attained our 50th find (although we haven't figured out how to log the most recent 5). For more information on geocaching, you can check out the link under "fun stuff" on the right side of the blog.

There's a First Time for Everything

Tomorrow Cool Daddy-O and I are participating in a Geocaching event. We're leaving the girls behind with a sitter. The girls don't know what we're doing. So, I decided to take them on their own geocaching adventure this afternoon. There were four new caches hidden in town that had not yet been logged. We found all four and we were the first to find each of them! Whoo Hoo! Sometimes, there are prizes for the first person to find a cache. We found $1 in the first one and $3 in the last one. The last one was hidden on the side of one of our favorite buildings in town. The place we affectionately call "the ice cream store".

Here they are after they finished their cones. Notice they are wearing huge t-shirts. These shirts were gifts we received from a friend during VEISHEA. Initially, we decided to use them as paint shirts. We recently discovered they make excellent ice cream shirts too. Chocolate is the favorite flavor of our little ones and I just got tired of chocolate ice cream stains on their shirts. They think they're pretty cool to wear, and I don't stress out about their clean clothes. Cool Daddy-O loves his new shirts too! They all have cute little slogans on them about not getting drunk and causing riots during ISU's VEISHEA celebration. It's actually pretty amazing that Cool Daddy-O wears something with ISU on it. He is a Hawkeye, you know.

Today was the last day of Bible School. The girls had a blast and enjoyed singing along with the music CD as we were driving between cache sites this afternoon. They also LOVED playing on the monkey bars at the church's playground.

Next week, we're going to be lazy and sleep in. We're going to wear jammies until 10 or 11 every day. Then we're going to hang out at the library and learn about bugs.

I'll try and post more geocaching tales tomorrow after our fun date / outing!

Why Is the Playground Flooded?

Here is a photo of the spillway at Red Rock.

We traveled to Lake Red rock again on Monday. I wanted to show the girls the changes since last Wednesday when we played on a playground near the spill way. We were able to drive over the dam and look down as we drove across. Sure enough, all we could see of the playground was the very top of the swing set, and the little roof tops of the climbing parts. Little Sis kept asking "why?". We spent some time at the visitor center and talked about the animals escaping the flood waters.

Big Squirt checking out the lake

The girls are attending Vacation Bible School again this week. This morning as we were driving to the church, we talked about what we're thankful for. Little Sis is thankful for mommy, daddy, cats and stuffed dogs. Big Sis is thankful for family, our car, friends, animals, etc. Her list went on and on. I'm thankful for blue skies, good health, two wonderful little girls and an awesome husband. I'm thankful for cats, too. :)