My dilemma

School is starting next week here. Today, Heidi and I went over to her school, new school for her, to walk around and get familiar with the layout and all. You may or may not know that Heidi and Alex are both legally blind, from a genetic retinal dysfunction called Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. To look at them most people never realize that they are visually impaired, just a couple of (very cute) kids with glasses. Only when they have their white canes, is it apparent to others that they don't see very well.

Anyway, this summer, Heidi became more comfortable and confident riding her bike. So the inevitable question arose. "Can I ride my bike to school". We live too close to the school for a bus, so I was planning on either driving or walking with her to school, weather permitting.

Heidi sees well enough to ride her bike to her friend's house without any trouble, however, we worry that she isn't aware enough of cars to be safe in maneuvering around the school with lots of cars around. And then there is the other thought......

Picture this......little girl riding her bike to school, parking it in the bike rack and then getting her fold up white cane (signifying that she is blind) out of her backpack and walking off to class using her cane. Is there something wrong with this picture? :-)

But how to explain all of that to Heidi. I wanted to say, "No, because I said so!" But no, I hope I explained diplomatically that it isn't safe enough for her to ride a bike to school. Thankfully, she accepted it philosophically enough.

Working Things Out

As you probably know I am the mom of 3 kids. They are all 4 years apart. I hoped that maybe because of the distance in age they would not fight as much as my brother and sister and I did. Well, I was wrong. Especially with the two older girls who have to share a room, the squabbles are ongoing.

So yesterday, Heidi found her camera that she got for Christmas. We put new batteries in it and she was taking pictures of everything.....the dog, the cat, Alex, the t.v. program, and so on. So it is no surprise that she went into her shared room and took a picture of Maggie, or Maggie's bed, I am not sure which. Maggie came out yelling, "Don't take a picture without asking...." She wanted me to talk to Heidi about it and work it out. I told her that she needed to work it out with Heidi, that I was staying out of it. The next thing I heard was Maggie and Heidi talking.

Heidi: I won't delete the picture, but I'll pay you a dollar.
Maggie: Ok!

Not another word was heard about taking pictures without permission or anything else. I was in the other room laughing silently. Apparently we are prone to bribery at any age.

Small Miracles

I experienced a small miracle today. You may know that last Wednesday I lost my keys and haven't been able to find them. I got home from taking the kids swimming and when I tried to leave later that evening.. no keys. So I borrowed Kevin's key and we have both been driving around town for the last 5 days. Below is a photo where I found my keys today...Monday.



I am just amazed and laughing at myself over this whole thing. How did those keys stay on top of our van while we drove it around for 5 whole days? Thank you Lord for small miracles!

JET SKI ADVENTURES

A couple of weeks back we decided to try out jet skis for the first time ever. We live very close to the Columbia River and in this area, "everyone" has boats or water toys of some kind, except us....oh and my in laws....oh and the next door neighbors.....well you know what I mean. Anyway, there's this place that one can rent jet skis, right on the river so we tried it.

It was a great time, with my in laws coming along for the picnic. Kevin took the girls out the first time. Then his dad went out with him. Dad's hat fell off and they both decided to lean over to get it. You can guess what happened! That's right, they both fell in the river. After some time of watching them try to get back on the jet ski, the jet ski rental guy started out there to see if they needed any help. Just as he was headed out there, they made it back on the jet ski.

Now for my turn. I was a little nervous because I have never done anything like this before. The rental guy (a young teenager) showed me how to run the jet ski. I didn't quite understand and asked lots of questions. He looked me like I was an idiot. So I headed out on a trial run. When I came back in I didn't know how to stop it or anything, so came in too fast. Oh well, nothing damaged at least. Then, with Heidi hanging on behind me I went on my way. I was speeding along feeling pretty good when the kid came out on his jet ski. "Uh oh, what's wrong now?" I thought. He informed me that I needed to go faster as the speed that I was going was too slow and was hard on the engine. Think 1st or 2nd gear. OK, I gulped and squeezed the accelerator and sped up to a terrifying speed.(I was probably still going to slow.) Then I decided I better head back in 'cause I didn't want to use up all our time. We had rented the thing for an hour. So I slowly came back in trying to remember all the rules, like stopping the engine before you are too close to the riverbank and all that.

Then it was over. Kevin took Maggie out and then our hour was done. So here are a couple of pictures of our adventure.


1.Coming in from my ride.
2.Mom, Dad and Alex watching from the side
3. Kevin and the girls

Dancing Dog

The kids and I have been going through the pictures and videos that we have stored on our computer in recent days. We came across this video which we remember fondly. It is of our dog Ritzy that we had when we lived in Nampa. She was a very excitable dog and liked to get in on the action if the kids and I were doing anything like dancing or tickling or whatever. So here's a video of her dancing with us.

4th of July

We had my husband's family over for the usual 4th of July BBQ. It was a good time of fun and fireworks. I just have to wonder however, what it is about fireworks that gets guys so fired up. Here's some pictures of what I mean.



In the first photo, we are all relaxing, chatting etc. In the next one, some fireworks get brought out and all the guys are up out of the chairs trying to get in on the

action. My sister in law was hiding in the house. :-) You can see from the photo, my daughter is in on the action too, but has her ears covered in case it gets too loud.

So I guess it's true that in some ways we never grow up.

Hope you all had a great 4th

Bowling with the kids

Today we went bowling. The local bowling alley has this great deal where kids can bowl 2 games for free. So the kids were excited to bowl. One problem, I am a not so great bowler, having only done it a handful of times in my life. So how am I supposed to teach them how to bowl?

Well, here's how it went..... The girls had the bumpers up and I didn't and we all got close to the same score. My younger daughter kept swinging her ball out to the side and I was just sure she was going to lose it and whack the girl bowling in the next lane, but fortunately that didn't happen.

I think I got one strike and one spare through two games of bowling. My final score for the 2nd game, (the better score), 98. My eldest daughter scored a 94 and my younger daughter scored 86.

Well we had fun, and it was nice and cool inside the bowling alley too!