Monday Quickie Catchup

It's catch-up time again - today was a very busy day, kicking of a very busy week!

#1

First up - From Cindy's Puddle Jumpers Files:

One of our PJs who was with us all school year long, has been gone for the past month and change, vising Japan with his parents. Today, Kaoru surprised us all by coming back to daycare before Summer ended!


And a return from Japan would never be complete without some exotic Japanese candy for all!



Reviews were split down the middle between "Love it" and "They can keep it!" among his Puddle Jumper Peers...

#2

Doing a Good Deed for Mother Nature:

We've written about, and shown several pictures of Fircrest Park, the big open park and swimming pool just down the hill from our house. But if you go in a different direction, and go a bit further, you'll come to Thelma Gilmur park, or as it's more commonly known, the Haunted Trails. Every year at Halloween, the park is infested with ghosts, ghouls, spooks and other assorted scary good times! It makes such an impression, that it's pretty much called the Haunted Trails year round. At least here at our house...

Anyway, Cindy has been taking the PJs down there a couple times a week, where they run wild, play hide 'n' seek, and generally have a wonderful time. Then last Friday, when they got to the park, they saw a horrible sight. A turtle had been brutally attacked, and lay near the entrance to the park with a broken shell and a fair amount of blood. There was a lot of justified anger at whoever would do that to a turtle... and then today they went again, and the poor thing was still there. So after dinner tonight, we took a shovel and some grave markers that Kaylee and Tyler had made, and gave it a proper burial.





It felt really good to do something nice for the park that brings us so many good times throughout the year.

#3

"Are They Ripe Yet?"

From the Haunted Trails, we headed over to another local nature spot, Blueberry Park! We had gone there last week, and the bushes were loaded with berries, but were still small and green.



Tonight things were looking a little better, with most bushes having a handful of plump, juicy blueberries... Hopefully NEXT week we'll actually be able to get enough to really use.



And the evening is winding down with everyone gathered around the living room watching "Penelope."

With that much going on, I never got around to writing a Music Monday column this week - but I have some good ideas rolling around in my head, and hopefully NEXT Monday I'll get one of them published!

The rest of this week looks to be equally crazy - Wednesday I'm taking the day off work and we're taking the whole gang to Wild Waves, followed by Fircrest night at the Tacoma Rainiers... Thursday we've been invited to our friend Winnie's house for dinner, and then Friday night we're heading over to the Tri-Cities for a weekend of fun times with family and friends!

Man, it makes me exhausted just thinking about it!