June update

Well the first month of summer vacation was good for the kids. Almost drove Chris batty because there were no activities planned and they were home all day but we survived. Three of the four weekends Nate volunteered with his cub scout troop at a food bank helping to carry out food. I don't think he really grasped the significance of him helping out but regardless I am very proud of him volunteering.

July starts up swim lessons. Chris has a doctors appointment Monday so I get to take them to their first class – yay. I almost think Chris planned this. And August will be cub scout popcorn sales (which I got volunteered to run – yay). In case you have not caught on the yays are sarcastic.

We just finished up a trip to my parents. The kids had a great time. Friday we went to a drive through safari. Who would have thought that they had those in East Texas! Mostly it was deer (no surprise) but there were also buffalo, antelope, llamas, elk, camels and emus. There was also an alligator pond but we took a wrong turn and missed that part. The part the kids enjoyed the most was feeding the animals. Each person get a bag of animal feed to throw out to the animals – we were advised to throw not hand out the food because some of the animals liked the hands more than the food . Most of the animals would come up to the van as we threw out the food. The funnest part was when we drove up to a big pond with ducks. The ducks (and turtles!) came out of the water to get the food we threw out. Several large catfish came up close to the shore to try and get some food. I was able to throw some food out far enough to get into the water and the fish went right after it. In that part was some of the biggest squirrels I have ever seen. I swear they were bigger than small dogs.

After that we came home and after a small rest we went out to dinner at Dairy Queen. I took my laptop to take advantage of the free wifi they had there. Mom has dial-up (shudder) so I tried to take the opportunity to convince her that her next computer should be a cheap laptop that she could take to Dairy Queen and McDonalds and do her email and internet surfing there. Overall I think that worked but the (small) flaw in the plan is that if she has to get another computer it would almost have to be a laptop because I don't think they make computers with modems anymore (and mom is not one to spring money for a high speed connection when there is free wifi in a place she goes to several times a week – sigh).