This morning as I was walking out the door, Lucy stopped me and told me that there was a spider in the doorway to the ‘doghouse’.  I followed her in to see the spider.  She stopped in the middle of her room, got on her hands and knees and put her head near the floor.
I looked at the doorway and saw some old cobwebs in the corner so got close, bent down and peered into the bottom corner.  I didn’t see any spider so I turned to tell Lucy there were only webs and I came within about 3 inches of putting my face into a black widow on her web in the middle of the doorway.  Lucy had been right.  The spider was a couple of inches off the floor, hanging upside down so that its hourglass was very visible.

I took a picture and then squashed the spider with my shoe.

Sorry about the blur.  It didn’t look so blurry on the little screen of my phone…

Last week, when the drywallers put up the first pieces of drywall, some of the ceiling pieces had foot prints on them.  (See pictures in the previous post) Max and Lucy were baffled.  They asked how the workers could walk on the ceiling and the walls.  I told them they must have special boots.

A few days later, on Sunday, as we were looking at the progress, Max told me that he knew how the footprints were on the ceiling.  In a hushed voice, as if to guard state secrets, he said ‘They walk on the pieces when they are on the floor.’  I congratulated him on good thinking. 

I wonder if he had an ‘a-ha!’ moment in the middle of the night when the solution came to him?  Did he sit up in bed and go back to sleep satisfied?

Enjoy!

So beautiful – great weather and hardly anyone on the lake.

Max and me

Cousins Nate and Alex and Max

Matt and Lucy

Cousins Emily and Nate

Auntie Katie and Uncle Rich

Yaya and Cousin Alex

Happy Boaters with Poppa

Thanks to Uncle Jeff and Auntie Jan for letting us enjoy the boat and cabin!

Cousin Abby-Sue and Pop

Lucy loved going fast in the tube!

Yes, our 63 year old Pop can still shore-start at water skiing! 

Today we cleaned up the cabin and headed out.  A big thanks goes out to the Bernards families (Jr. and Sr.) for their generosity in allowing our big family to use the cabin and the boat.

After we left the cabin, we went after a geocache.  Success! (even through Lucy’s whining).  Then we stopped at the Hungry Hut and experienced the truism that Jeff had said earlier in the trip.  “Its not that great, but it is the one in town”.  The kids had ordered chicken strips and they were raw more than half way through.  Who can say ‘salmonella’?  The supervising lady was also kind of brusque.  “Its not that great, but it is the one in town”.  So true.

We stopped in Bakersfield for a McDonald’s break.  I whipped out the GPS to see if there were any close caches.  One was across a parking lot less than 500 feet away.  Toby and Lucy gave up about half way due to the heat.  They waited in the shade of a parking lot tree while Max and I soldiered on.  Success!

Home in the evening and with the kids helping it was easy to unpack the car.  A great long weekend.

Jeff had to leave early today, so we began to use the boat right away.  We only had the single, double booted ski to use so I couldn’t shore start like I prefer.  After I ski’d, Jan ski’d, because she wanted to say she still could.  Poppa didn’t want to be left out, so he decided to try.  He also prefers to shore start, and decided that he just wouldn’t use the back boot.  Using lots of binding slime, he squeezed his foot into the boot and yelled ‘Hit it!’  He successfully skii’d with only one foot in the binding.  Congratulations!

Camp was cleaned up and we were off the lake by 2p.  After naps, we drove to McKinley Grove to see the giant redwood sequoia trees.  Those trees are huge.  It took 10 of us holding hands to encircle a medium sized tree.  Rich, Katie, Alex, Max and I were in the car together, so we decided to stop for a few geocaches along our way back.  We stopped for ones that were within a few hundred feet of the road we were driving on.  Rich is really good at following the device.  He was the first to spot 2 of them.  We were 3 for 3 on this run.  Alex really seemed to like it.

That night, Poppa and YaYa presented separated the boys and the girls for some special time.  The girls did some fingernail painting together (Lucy has little red flowers on her thumbs).  The boys all got small flashlights with shadow covers (to make shapes in the light). 

Poppa took the boys (and me) out for a night walk with their new flashlights.  We stopped at the water tower (which looks like it is brand new) and Nathan climbed up the ladder on the side.  But there was the ladder gate about 8 feet up, so Nathan couldn’t go any farther.  Alex climbed up and was working his way through the cage when he decided there might be an alarm and he didn’t want to go to ‘Juvenile’.  Max scurried on up and slipped right through the cage.  He went to the top of the ladder and let us know that there was a roof on the top of the tank.