Tomorrow we sign papers for our new house at 10:30 AM, that means we leave here at 7:30.

There is no internet there yet so I most likely won't blog tomorrow...just so ya know :)

I spent the morning going to the library and the grocery store. Came home, had lunch and....

coffee....yes, we're back to that.

Then we went geocaching again. Will it ever get old? I don't know, but we were 4 for 4 today! Nice :)

These were taken the second to the last time we were at the ocean beach. I had nothing else to post because guess where we were all day? Okay, not all day. I did my housework as promised :)

I should blog about something other than geocaching, shouldn't I?

Well, sorry...that's all I did today! Yes, again!

We are up to 12 finds now and it's SO. MUCH. FUN.

Other plus? So much exercise, except you don't notice because it's SO. MUCH. FUN! Hehe.

Rebekah is pretty high energy (duh...no one reading this blog knows that) and it's been great to have her outside everyday burning off that energy and she's starting to really get into it now that she has spotted a couple of the caches herself!

Today she said, " hurry up and put it back so the muggles* don't see us". Too funny.

Okay, not really funny but I'm adding it here for my own personal memory, yesterday she walked past some spray painted writing on the pavement and casually asked, "what the hell?". Sigh, Mommy needs to watch her potty mouth. But in her defense, I kinda wondered what the hell too...I give her points for using the correct **context.

Tomorrow I am staying home and doing housework!!!! At least for the morning ;)

*muggles are people who don't know about geocaching, adapted from Harry Potter I am guessing.

** of course we had a long talk about inappropriate words and how we shouldn't use them

Today's geocaching adventure:

Morning: Looked for 4, found ZERO

Afternoon: Looked for 3, found three.

Evening: Went back to look for one of the un-found and found it! Woohoo!

Bekah scored rubber stamps, tattoo's, paper punch/stapler, toy belt buckle, penguin charm, and a monkey magnet.

Ashley chose to not go with. Also, no cute pictures because my camera battery was completely dead...bummer.

Geocaching

Daddy and Bekah in hot pursuit of the cache.

Do you geocache? Today we spent a couple of really fun hours trying out this new hobby and I have to say I am 100% hooked!

If you've never heard of geocaching you'll want to check out www.geocaching.com, get yourself a GPS and join in the fun! You use your GPS to find a small hidden container, inside the container are little trinkets (usually) and a log book. You take a trinket (if you want to) and leave something that you brought (called swag), you sign the log book and when you get back home you log your find on the geocaching website. Pretty fun stuff.

This was a really clever hiding spot along the trail, can you see it? Makes you wonder how many you walk past everyday, doesn't it? Here is Rebekah putting the rock back together after she scored a rubber stamp and we left a sand dollar and a pin (button).

I went to our local liquidators and loaded up on swag tonight, we have 10 caches printed out to find tommorow. Ashley was swimming with her church group today but she is planning to come with us tomorrow. We'll keep you posted!

The other day we took Rebekah to the farmers market for the first time this year, and met up with her friend from daycare. They hadn't seen each other since last fall (life has been busy for both Mommy's) but they picked up right where they left off.

There was much rejoicing in the streets, playing ring around the rosie and "tag you're it". Can't you just see the joy?

Lots of giggles were shared over things us grown-ups are not privy to.

Ah, to be young again!

Do you know what this is? It's hours of fun for about $2 worth of ingredients. It's not running to the store to buy anything. It's using our imaginations. It's home made play-doh!

A few weeks ago I bought three or four little party containers of play-doh for Bekah at a thrift store. She'd never had play-doh and I wasn't sure how it would really go over, so I started small.

Well I realized the other day that her remaining 3 little tubs were crumbling and dried out from so much use (not to mention starting to get the mono-tone grey that happens when all colors are mixed together).

Since we are conserving money these days (who isn't?), I wanted to make some play doh here at home and also show Bekah we don't have to run to the store to make fun stuff. The added bonus is avoiding the chemicals in the commercial stuff.

I have a play doh recipe that calls for cream of tarter, which I don't have because...well I can't think of one single recipe besides play-doh that I'd need it for. So I found a recipe that didn't call for that and on we went. Another issue we had was the only color of food coloring I had on hand was pink. Using our thinking caps we decided to use cocoa powder for brown, and non-toxic finger paint for blue....so we ended up with pink, white, brown, and blue play-doh. It was fun to make, cheap, and still going strong a few days later.

Here's the recipe:

3cups flour

1/3 cup salt

2tbsp oil (we used olive)

1cup water

food coloring

Mix dry ingredients with oil then add food coloring to water and mix together. Add water to flour/salt/oil mixture slowly~about 1/4 cup at a time and mix together with a spoon. Once you've added all the water, knead the dough with your hands.

I finally made the trip down to see my dear friend, Josi and meet sweet little Deirdre. What a doll! Bekah had fun playing with Kells, and slept all the way home...it was a good day!

Another beachy day!

Happy father's day to all of the great Dads out there including my awesome step-dad and my wonderful husband! Also happy fathers day to the Mom's out there that have to be both Mom and Dad for whatever reason!

We spent the day at the ocean beach, had a small bon fire and roasted some hot dogs. I roasted my face a little too (sunburn) but we won't discuss that.

Ashley made the fire!

Ashley also set up this nice family shot, which may be as close to a Christmas card photo as we'll ever get :)

Bekah running, and running, and running....... Ash was chillin' on the log.

I am taking my crispy face to bed now because I am beet beat! :)

annnnd one more

Another doll on her way to Wooden Nichols

Also I have signed up for twitter...I am not sure why yet. However if you want to follow me, my user name is simpler1773.

Do you tweet? If so, let me know so I can follow you :)

Fresh out of the studio ....

This is Rebekah "scaring" the waves back into the ocean so it doesn't wash away her drawing in the sand.

Customer Service Review...goin' postal.

I think I'm a pretty fair person. I try not to be overly judgemental and I try to be considerate of how my actions affect others. Where is this going you ask?

Today I went to the post office to mail a large box to my Mom. I calculated before I left the house it would be about $20 to mail, not horrible. I get to the post office in downtown KENT, WA. zip code 98032 if anyone wants to avoid it, and there is a pretty long line. Okay, I'll deal with it even though I have the bouncing 4 yr old with me who loathes long lines (actually she loathes short ones too).

After about 10 minutes it's our turn. I don't even get all the way to the counter and the guy shakes his head and says loudly, "oh no THAT won't do". I look around wondering what he could possibly be talking about when he LOUDLY continues with, "you need the addresses to be in opposite corners, one here and one here (as he jabs his finger at my box), YOU need to fix it....NEXT".

I just stood there with my mouth open for a moment and tried to process his rudeness first of all. Then I shuffled over to the postal table and considered my options. I didn't have a sharpie with me so I would have had to scratch out the address and write it with a pen down in the corner, and if my original job wouldn't do, I don't think that would have passed inspection either.

By the way, imagine a piece of paper or envelope correctly addressed and taped to the top of the box, that's what it looked like except without the paper. I didn't have the addresses in a weird place or anything.

So by the time I get over the shock of this mans actions and walk out the door, I'm starting to fume! I'm thinking how ridiculous that was and heading to the UPS Store...I'll be damned if the postal service is getting my $20, and yeah, I doubt it really concerns them but maybe if enough people seek out alternatives they will be forced to evaluate their issues.

#1: He didn't need to be rude or loud
#2: It would have taken him 2 minutes to help me if my addresses were really in the wrong place. But no, he preferred to send me back to the end of the line or out the door.

So we get back in the car and I call Grant to vent to him about what just happened and Rebekah is in the back seat taking all of this in.

I walk into the UPS Store and they smile and say "Hi! How can we help you today?" Oooh what was that I heard? Was that customer service? AMAZING! Take note postal service!

So I tell Cathy (according to her name tag) that I need to mail this package. She says sure she can help me with that. Rebekah pipes up and says "The person at the post office was RUDE". Cathy tells her that they actually get a lot of customers coming in that say that. And Rebekah proceeds to tell her the post office "isn't getting any of my candy OR my business"! Yes, she's learning young. Yikes.

Anyway, Cathy was great and we were in and out lickety split. Not only was UPS cheaper (!), they also give you $100 worth of insurance for free AND a tracking number. And they get big huge bonus points for not treating me like I was a ginormous pain in their hind end! Thanks UPS Store.

Obama, I love you but you better not even THINK about bailing out the postal service when they go down. Thanks :)

P.S. I know not all postal employees are like this, but this is not the first bad experience I have had with the postal service.

Have you heard of Sea Shepherd International? Well, I really had only heard of the TV show "Whale Wars" and didn't know a whole lot about the organization at all.

http://www.seashepherd.org/

Last night, thanks to my little bout of insomnia, I had some time to look around their sight. I am so glad there are people out there that are willing to stand up and do something about the injustaces in this world.

I read and watched the segments on the seals and had to wonder exactly WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? Sickening. I don't forsee myself joining the crew of The Steve Irwin, but on a small level I'll do what I can.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT


We are soon moving to Ocean Shores, WA. Where I plan to spend a lot of time on the beach enjoying nature. When you visit, I'll be the one with the garbage bag picking up plastic and other harmful garbage as I walk...look around everyday and ask yourself what you can do. Small things add up, tiny itsy bitsy seemingly insignifigant things matter.

Take care of your little corner of the planet and inspire others to do the same. I know I sound like a tree hugger :) I'm okay with that.

Sitting in a little coffee shop in Manzinita, waiting for our order. This is Rebekah....

trying to do....

THIS! :) Cheap entertainment!

Anyone know what these flowers are? We saw them in Nehalem Bay State Park (Oregon) if that helps. While there were hundreds of the bushes of plain yellow ones...these two tone ones were rare. Beautiful though!

I snapped this picture in the tiny town of Manzinita. I thought it was rather cute :)

More camping pictures.

Rebekah's first fire roasted hotdog.

S'mores....delicious!

Our family picture outside of the yurt.

On day two of camping we met Rae Ann and the girls down on the beach.

Rebekah loves having the beach as a giant canvas.

Anytime during camping that we were not with the girls, I was bombarded with, "I wonder what Stella and Ivy are doing?" She loved playing with them! And I loved chatting with Rae Ann too!

This last picture is walking from the beach back to the campsite. Simply beautiful country side along the Oregon coast, just heavenly!

Second camping post: This was Rebekah's first time camping, and I think it's been about 6 or more years for the rest of us!

Ashley relaxing at the camp site

Relaxing x's three!

Daddy teaching Rebekah how to make fire.

The girls roasting hotdogs for supper.

Ashley on the top bunk in the yurt.

Back from our fabulous camping adventure. Great weather, great friends, and beautiful scenery! What more could we ask for? I'll be breaking up the adventure into a few posts since I'm behind a day or two.

We started out pretty peaceful :) This was taken only about an hour into the trip (trust me, it wasn't all this smooth!).

Just a little ways past our campsite, is the Tillamook cheese and ice cream factory. So we stopped in there for some cheese curds and ice cream. It was Ashley's first time there.

Good stuff! Onward to the campsite!!